“So I’m that fascinating?” I try to kid, but my voice wobbles.
“You’re the most fascinating woman I’ve ever met.” He kisses my fingers and nibbles his way up my wrist, along the inside of my elbow, all the way to my shoulder. “You’re already dressed? We have three dozen condoms to work through.”
I roll onto him, so he’s pinned under me. “Can I be on top this time?”
His smile crinkles the corners of his eyes. “I love your enthusiasm, but it was all a jest, love. You’re going to be sore if we take it too fast.”
“I’ll be fine,” I whisper, wriggling out of my shorts and tank top. “You’ll take care of me.”
I’m a jerk. I know his kryptonite, and I use it shamelessly.
“Always. I’ll always take care of you,” he promises through a fresh round of kisses.
Neither one of us argues with his statement, even if we both know always isn’t in our cards. Our inability to face just how temporary our arrangement is is comforting now, but it’s going to wreck us later.
But first there’s just now and the heat of Cormac’s kisses. I fall into them instead of worrying about the inevitabilities of our uncertain future.
Cormac 5
There was a reason I was reluctant to sleep with Benelli.
Sex is never easy, and nostrings-attached sex is hard enough when you feel woefully little for the person. When you have no feelings for the person you’re fucking, it’s all just a baseless waste of physicality and an emotional black hole. But there’s a worse alternative.
You could fall in love with your nostrings-attached partner.
Because I’ve gone way beyond caring for Benelli.
I love her.
I love her bravery and the force of her confident personality. I love the way she twists problems around in her head a million ways. I love her frighteningly fierce loyalty. I love her willingness to embrace what she can and assume responsibility for what she must.
I love all these traits except, of course, when they put a chokehold on our relationship.
It’s not as easy as just asking her to marry me. Even if the thought of marriage didn’t coat my guts with a ten-inch casing of ice, she’s not looking to just get married. She’s looking for a groom to fill an entire complicated place in her family. The man she winds up wedding will have to be enmeshed in her family’s clannish social life and will have to be willing to give himself over to what are, from the information I’ve gathered, rather shady business arrangements on her father’s part.
I’m not that guy. I’m not even the shadow of the ghost of the polar opposite of that guy. There’s not a negative number low enough to represent how slim my chance of success in that role would be.
This would all be bad enough on its own, since philosophical problems skewer me with a depth that pragmatic problems usually don’t.
Usually don’t.
Unless, of course, a certain pragmatic problem happens to be eating ice cream and giggling with some hulk of an idiot in the very square where I’m trying to get some work done on the passages chronicling Odysseus’s return to Penelope. Irony applicable, of course.
And unless this problem happens to be wearing an unbelievably tiny, sexy dress and shoes that are a podiatrist’s nightmare, but make her legs look at least twenty sexy, silky feet long.
And unless this problem is now dating guys who, other than being boring, sparkless lugs, aren’t the types of creeps who warrant fistfights and throwdowns from her secret lover/sometimes defender.
There isn’t a single thing I can do in this situation but sit back and grit my teeth, waiting for the setting sun and my chance to crawl, undetected, through her window and into her arms.
The perfection of the nights isn’t always enough to erase the aggravation of the days.
A pack of cigarettes blocks my view of Benelli. I glance up at Lala’s face, gold hair pulled back in a high ponytail, face hidden by huge sunglasses that probably have less to do with the sunshine than with the fact that she can drink the most stalwart drunkard under the table and, most nights, she does.
“Take one. I think you need it.” She shakes the pack, and I offer her my best version of a socially appropriate smile.
“Thank you, but I don’t smoke.” I gesture to the seat across from me, and, even though I want silence to brood in, I like Lala and don’t want to be rude. “Please sit. Can I get you something?”
She waves the waiter over. He always just scowls at me when I raise a tentative hand in his direction. Then again, I don’t have the face of an angel and lush tits barely covered by a few scraps of material. She orders two black coffees, noticing my empty mug.
“Not that more caffeine is what you need, tiger. You look like you’re on the cusp of having a stroke.” She lights up and takes a drag, joining me in spying on Benellli and her date. “He seems nice.”
“If you like lumbering half-wits,” I growl.
“Not all of us went to Harvard, professor,” she chides, flipping through my notes as if she cares. “So, what are you doing this fine day? Other than stalking my best friend and trying to murder her date with your steely glare?”
“Basic translation work. Nitpicking over whether to use ‘staff’ or ‘rod.’ ‘Sack’ or ‘pouch.’ ‘Hall’ or ‘great-room.’ Decisions, decisions.” Am I making sense? What am I even saying? My eyes are on Benelli, her head bent close to the lug’s, nodding at what he’s saying. She catches sight of me and her face goes still for a minute before she shakes her head and refocuses.
We made a pact. I get her at night, all night. She lives her own life during the day and early evening. She hates when our two worlds intersect. But I miss seeing her in the sun. I’m greedy for more of her than our meager arrangement allows for.
“So, what’s this story about?” Lala flicks the pages, and I rip my eyes off of Benelli’s date, his hand hovering intimately over the small of her back.
“You’ve never read The Odyssey?” I ask, not bothering to disguise my disappointment. Lala loves shocking me.
“We didn’t all go to snooty boarding schools in England, Oliver Twist.” I grin and she tilts her huge sunglasses down and narrows her eyes at me. “Oliver Twist is English, right?”
“Yes.” She’s a twit, but she’s a witty twit, and talking about Odysseus will take my mind of the urge to make my fists hamburger meat because some daft asshole is touching Benelli.
On a date.
A date she agreed to.
The coffee comes, and I sweep some of the papers up. “So, Odysseus. Right. Well, he was a hero of the Tojan war. And he never came home, once it was over.”
“Wasn’t he on a ship?” It’s like she’s reaching through a blurry, murky fog for this detail.
“Yes. Very important detail, actually, because Poseidon, who’s the god of the ocean, is pretty damn pissed at him during this whole ship voyage.” I pass her the sugar and she sweetens her coffee to the point where it basically converts to coffee-flavored syrup.
“Why?” she asks, sipping her coffee and leaving a deep red lip print on the rim.
“Because he’s a dick.”
She almost chokes on her first sip. “A dick? Is that your official scholarly opinion?”
“Actually, yes. I think my thesis may wind up being ‘Poseidon is a Dick: A Look at The Role of Pissed Off Gods and Their Nonsensical Rage.’” We share a smile and I continue. “It’s not all terrible for Odysseus. He’s being kept on an island by this goddess, Calypso, and she’s using him for sex.”
“Ooh, dirty.” She leans back and cradles her coffee in her hands. “I like this. Tell me more.”
“Well, Calypso doesn’t get to keep him forever. He’s got this wife, Penelope, who he’s super in love with, other than the cheating, which is sort of forced, and he hasn’t seen her in two decades. So Athene intercedes, and Zeus makes Calypso give him up.” I take a long sip and refuse to look over at Benelli. Refuse.
“So, does he get back to Pe
nelope? Does she forgive him for the whole sex slavery thing?” Lala asks, excited.
“Yeah. Trojan heroes can get away with a lot of pretty heinous behavior. Odysseus is no exception. Penelope’s got this mad mob of suitors, you know, since her husband’s been gone all these years, and she’s a hot, rich woman. Odysseus connects back up with his kid and his dad, and gets this whole plan underway where, in order to win Penelope’s hand, the suitor has to pull back his old bow, which is pretty badass. All these rich assholes from Itaka come and try, but they can’t do it.”
I glare at the lunk holding Benelli’s hand in his and have to make a firm decision not to run up to him and attempt to rip his arm from his shoulder and beat him over the head with it.
“Wait. Is this a movie? Isn’t there, like, an archery contest and there’s a prince, but the real king is away. And he wins the girl?”
I’m sure she must be kidding, but she seems completely serious. Maybe she’s still drunk off bootleg Hungarian liquor.
“That would be Robin Hood, Lala. You really need to stop watching so many movies. Books, love. Books will open up new worlds for you.”
She slips her foot out of her stiletto and rubs it over my calf, just for the joy of seeing me jump. “Why read them when I have such a smart friend to explain them to me. So does he not get Penelope back?”
“It’s not a tragedy. Of course he gets her back. He strings that bow like a madman, slaughters all her suitors, and takes her to bed. The end.” A small part of me feels deep shame for my blatant bastardization of one of Western Civilization’s finest tales.
But Lala has ripped her glasses off and her eyes are shining. “That is such a badass story.” She nibbles her bottom lip and swishes her coffee in her mug before looking up at me again with this kind of renewed manic determination. “You should totally pull an Odysseus with Benelli.”
“Pardon?”
I’ve been waiting for two weeks for her to say something like this. I thought it might happen when Benelli’s family came and the dates picked up. Then I thought it might happen when Lala and I started spending more time together and she realized that I was actually a pretty decent guy in general. Apparently all I needed to do was share the heroic Greek classics with her.
“Listen.” She stops and goes to take a drag, but just watches the curling column of smoke instead. “I’ve never seen Benelli this happy. If I was a bitch, I’d be jealous, because she’s pretty much spending any time she’s supposed to be hanging with me counting down the minutes until she gets to be with you.” She taps a few inches of growing ash into the tray, keeping her hands steady so it stays in one long line.
“That’s not the deal, Lala,” I remind her. “Odysseus was Penelope’s husband. And he had a kickass bow. I have mind-blowing sex with Benelli and a career that’s less than useless to her family.”
“Is that all it is?” She purses her lips at me.
“Of course. What possible use could the Youngbloods have for the fact that I speak fluent ancient Greek and—”
“It is just mind-blowing sex?” she interrupts.
“No.” I don’t play with this question. “No and you know it. It’s never been just that for me at least. But we had to agree to that. I try not to think about the possibility of anything more, because there isn’t a chance, Lala. This isn’t some romantic story…peppered with archaic bloodshed. This is real life.”
“I think you should try.” She sets her lips in a stiff, stubborn line.
“I think you should try quitting.” I flick a finger at the smoldering ashtray.
Lala takes a long look at the toxic ashes and butts, then gets up with a flourish, stalks to the garbage can, dumps the tray, and tosses her pack. She saunters back and runs the gold lighter over and over in her hands.
“You take this.” She makes a move to hand it to me, but leaves it close enough to her body that I can tell it’s a contested gift.
“It looks expensive.” When I don’t put my hand out to take the lighter, she reaches over, takes my hand, and presses the lighter into my palm.
“Take it. You’ll be doing me a huge favor.” She rolls her hazel eyes, bright with emotion she does a fair job of blinking away. “It’s a Youngblood thing anyway. Winch gave it to me years ago. It was one of his grandpa’s, and I liked it, so he got it for me. I don’t even know why I hang on to it.”
“I think you do know.” She startles up at me, her eyes wide with shock, and shakes her head. “You must.” I hold it up and we both look at how the gold glints in the light. “Why didn’t you throw this in his face when you broke up? Or toss it out on freeway when you drove away from him for good?”
Her laugh is sad, and she wipes a finger under her eyes, leaving a runny line of mascara trailed along her temple. “You know what? I guess I do know. My family has been tight with Benelli’s family since before I was born. Our mothers were maids of honor at each other’s weddings. So, yeah, I guess I just figured Winch and I were, you know, fated? Destined? Like an arranged marriage, but sexier. Funner. And it was fun. We snuck around. Drank stolen sambuca under the stars. Made out in the backseat of his dad’s Mustang during every family get-together.”
“Sounds like romance.” I’m not even joking. They’re the kind of teenage dalliances I wish I had under my belt.
“It was.” Her smile trembles with pure sadness, an expression so alien to her usually cool-and-collected face, I don’t know if I could have imagined it before I saw it. “But I took him for granted. I guess he’d been around for so long, I stopped seeing him as his own person. I just felt like I owned him, the way his family did. And we grew apart. But I still always thought we’d be together forever. And then he met…her…this girl.” Her hazel eyes are suddenly more gray than any other color and she plucks the paper napkin under her coffeecup into furious shreds. “And he fell in love. Real love. Love so strong and amazing or whatever, he didn’t even think twice about me.”
“I’m sorry.” I know what it feels like to have your heart dug from your chest with a dull spoon. I know what it is to think you’re with a certain person, only to realize in a single blink that the person you were in love with may have never existed at all.
“Don’t be,” she snaps, sweeping the napkin bits off the table so they rain down on the stones like confetti at a parade. “Take the damn lighter though. It was martyrish of me to hang on to it for all this time, and if I’m acting like a martyr, that means I’m becoming my mother. And if that’s happening, just shoot me now before I slide into a miserably unsatisfying mid-life slump.”
She reaches for the cigarettes she threw out and begins a frantic search before I dare to mention, “Gone. In a fit of chivalrous daring.”
Her laugh is defeated. “Oh, perfect. So damn perfect.” She points an accusing finger at me. “You better make this happen. Now I need to get away from you, because I actually like you, and I’m about to go into heavy nicotine withdrawals already.” She cups her hand under my chin and kisses my forehead. “Wouldn’t want to scratch those pretty green eyes out. Her date drops her off at six-thirty. Go get her, hotshot.”
I listen to the retreating click of her heels and wonder how long it will be before she breaks down and finds a shop to buy a fresh pack in. When I glance up from my papers, Benelli and her date are gone, and I attempt to keep my wild imagination in check. We never agreed on any firm boundaries for Benelli’s dates. How could we? I’m not her boyfriend. I’m sure she’s not sleeping with any of them, but is there anything else physical going on?
Most likely.
These dates are her way of determining who she’s going to spend the rest of her life with. Whether or not she has physical chemistry with the assholes she’s dating is a realistic part of the process.
I’m deep in thoughts that feature some random meathead getting touchy with my girl when the waiter storms over to my table, yelling in such quick and awful Hungarian, I’m not even sure it’s comprised of anything but swears. I look down at my
hand, where I’ve bent my coffee spoon in half. I ignore his fury and toss the bent spoon and a few extra bills on the table before I grab my papers and stalk to Benelli’s aunt’s house.
I skulk in the bushes like a criminal, waiting while the hulk agrees to a cup of coffee in the kitchen. I can see Abony pouring him the brew at the same table I sat at with Benelli when she bandaged my hand. The guy stays a good half an hour, and I feel more and more like a fucking idiot every minute I hide out, gaping at him. The second he leaves, I see the flash of Benelli’s bright blue dress, and her bedroom light goes on, even if it isn’t remotely dark at just after seven.
The light is for me.
I know I could just walk through the back door. Benelli’s told me multiple times that Abony thinks she should run away with me. Or stop toying with me and send me in her aunt’s direction. Which definitely freaks me out slightly. But I don’t go in the back door because there’s a certain ridiculous kind of romance to scaling a wall and popping in through her window.
Usually she’s changed by the time I’ve come by, her tight clothes shed for comfortable ones, her styled hair brushed out, her face makeup free. I like her natural looking, but, when I come through and see her this way, I wonder if she’d ever put the effort into dressing up for me.
“Hi.” She smiles and wraps her arm around my neck. “How was work?”
“Terrible.” I don’t mean to sound like such a short-tempered asshole, but I can’t seem to stop the words that fly out of my mouth like a runaway train on a path to sure destruction. “Since we’re not actually dating, do we have to go through the boring domestic routine?”
Some of the shine dissolves from her eyes. “Everyone asks each other how their day went, Cormac.” She drops her hands from my neck, and I miss the sweet weight of them immediately. “The woman who did my nails asked me today. So did the manager at the restaurant I ate at.”
“Of course. How was your date?” I ask with elevated faux interest.
She crosses her arms tight, and I think she’d plop on her bed if that damn sexy dress would let her. As it is, I don’t think she could bend in it.
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