“A date.”
Camila scoffed. “Huh?” She averted her eyes for a moment before looking back at Alina. The problem with being so pale was that even the faintest blush was obvious.
The senior agent didn’t care if Camila was attracted to the man or not, even though she was surprised, given the woman’s generally cold nature. In the end, she trusted Camila’s objectivity in evaluating possible useful assets for the ID.
“A date,” Alina repeated. “You’re going to go on a little date with Technician Constantine, and you’re going to do it before I come back to Neo SoCal.”
“I presume there are things I need to do on this date, other than enjoy a good meal?”
“Yes.”
The corners of Camila’s mouth twitched. “What will you be doing in the meantime?”
“Getting things ready.”
Chapter Nineteen
Jia sighed and stared down at the blue martini in front of her. She used to have an easier time wiping away her problems.
The problem with developing a tolerance for alcohol was that it took more effort to get her drunk, and that meant every drink was a careful balancing act between risk and release.
She didn’t want oblivion, but it would have been nice to be a little more relaxed.
Light chatter filled the brightly lit bar. She had carefully selected the place, interested in its distance from the typical hangouts favored by police from the 1-2-2. Given the price of the drinks, the average cop wouldn’t drink there anyway. She hadn’t mentioned that to her friends, but neither of them was picky, nor had they pressed her on her reasoning.
Imogen frowned from beside her. “Don’t be a drag, Jia. It’s girls’ night! No guys. You were the one who said you wanted to go out, and you’re all gloomy.”
“No guys, indeed. I’m betting men are the problem.” Chinara took a sip of her own drink and set it down, a faint look of disapproval on her face.
The problem with having good friends was they could always see right through her.
“What do you mean?” Imogen looked at the two other women, blinking. “I love Michael, but I don’t always want him around. If anything, I don’t think we have girls’ nights often enough. You two don’t agree?”
Chinara shook her head. “You’re forgetting something important.”
Imogen grimaced. “Oh, yeah. I forgot. Fake boyfriend.” She wrinkled her nose. “I don’t get it, Jia. Do you want Erik to be here? Am I still way off?”
Although Jia had confided in her friends that she wasn’t actually dating Erik, she hadn’t made the reasons clear. Maintaining the web of lies was stressful, especially when Imogen and Chinara could discern her emotional state. Oddly enough, keeping secrets about dangerous conspiracies in the UTC didn’t strain her at all, even if they were vastly more important.
“It’s not like that,” Jia murmured. “Not exactly.”
Imogen peered at Jia, suspicion on her face. “You never were clear about your reasons for fake-dating versus real dating. I didn’t want to be a bitch about it, but if it’s got you down, you should tell us, so we can talk it out.”
“It’s complicated,” Jia insisted. “I’m not trying to be mysterious. It’s just annoying, and I don’t know if bothering you with the details would help.”
“Don’t be a martyr.” Imogen rolled her eyes. “Dating’s always complicated. That doesn’t stop anything, and I know you’re into him. I’ll clear up the mystery for you. The only important question is whether he’s into you. Everything else is secondary.”
“That’s not true,” interjected Chinara. “If it were true, she would still be dating Corbin—for-real dating. Corbin obviously liked her, and she liked him enough to begin dating and stay with him for a while.”
“There was no sizzle there. No fire.” Imogen slapped the table, but no one in the club noticed. “What’s dating without the fire? Pointless! That was why Jia kicked him off the dating tower.”
“It wasn’t that dramatic.” Jia sighed. “No kersplats at the end. We just weren’t right for each other. In this whole situation, that’s the least complicated part of it.”
Imogen jabbed a finger toward the detective. “You dodged the question earlier. Is Erik interested in you, or is it one-sided?”
Jia pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed. “If I controlled everything, we would be dating for real, but it’s not that simple, and it’s not just about chemistry.”
“What’s it about? He likes women, right? If not, give it up. That’s a fight you’re not going to win.”
Jia nodded. “Yes, he likes women.”
Imogen shrugged. “What’s the problem, then? The last time I checked, you were a woman. If we did a survey of the guys in this room, you would mostly get rated ‘Level Ten’ for sexiness, especially in that dress. Um-hmm.”
Jia glanced down at the short red dress clinging to her body. She had been wearing it the first night she met Erik. Had she unconsciously chosen it earlier for that reason? It wasn’t impossible, but she also didn’t have a huge number of party dresses, so it could have been his precious Lady playing a prank of her own. At least that meeting of possibility and reality didn’t end with someone shooting at her.
Chinara locked eyes with Jia. “Be honest with us. He doesn’t have somebody else already? No good comes from pining after a man who’s in love with somebody else. Trust me. I’ve been there. It’s only pain for everyone involved.”
“It’s nothing like that.” Jia laughed. “It’d be easy if it were something like that because I don’t think I would have let myself be attracted to him, but no. He’s just got some baggage he needs to handle, and because of that, he doesn’t want to date right now. The fake situation has been handy for fending off my family, but it’s close enough that it’s making me want more.” She swallowed more alcohol as her friends nodded sympathetically. “But that’s not fair to him. He made his position clear, and it’s not like his reasons are selfish. I understand that some of this is him trying to protect me, but I don’t want to be protected. I’m a grown woman. I’m willing to take risks.”
Chinara dropped her face into her palm and sighed. “This is even worse than I thought.”
“How?” Jia asked.
“Because this isn’t just about having a little fun with your hot partner. You’re already in love with him!”
Jia winced, then picked up her drink and took a sip. “I think using the L-word is going a little too far. I’m not denying I’m strongly attracted to him, but I’m more interested in dating and seeing where things go. Love implies something far stronger.”
“Were you in love with Corbin?” Imogen asked.
Jia shook her head. “No. I liked him, but I never felt that way about him.”
“Do you feel stronger about Erik than Corbin?”
“It’s not that simple.”
Chinara snorted. “Maybe it is. Just because you want to keep calling things complicated doesn’t mean they are.”
Imogen clapped her hands. “Oh, this is perfect. I love it, no pun intended. Jia Lin giving up on being ultra-rational for once and letting her heart lead her. Maybe it’s the end of the world!”
“Oh, come on.” Jia rolled her eyes. “I’m not a machine.”
Imogen shook a finger. “But you are overly analytical and prone to hiding behind rational thinking. There’s nothing wrong with letting go every once in a while.”
Jia doubted that. Imogen’s worst-case-scenario probably ended with her getting fired.
Jia’s ended with Tin Men and yaoguai armies as part of a dark conspiracy murdering Erik and her before going on to subvert the rest of the UTC. Even her normal duty could change to life and death at a moment’s notice. Cultivating control hadn’t been a mistake.
“Don’t encourage her.” Chinara frowned. “Not everyone needs to be you, Imogen.”
“This isn’t about being me,” the other woman responded. “This is about her for-real dating her hot partner.”
Chinara turned to Jia. “If a man’s straight-up telling you he’s got issues and he’s not ready to date, that’s not just a red flag. It’s him shooting flares up into the sky, saying, ‘Warning, do not date unless you want pain.’ I’ll give him credit for being honest with you instead of using you, but you're an idiot if you pursue this.”
“You don’t understand.” Jia sighed and surveyed the bar, taking in all the happy couples chatting. Couldn’t there be someone here breaking up, so she didn’t feel like the odd woman out? Maybe she would get lucky, and some woman would toss her drink in her boyfriend’s face. The long seconds ticked by with nothing.
No one committed assault via drink.
“Don’t listen to her, Jia,” Imogen interjected. “Sometimes love is about risk. Nobody’s perfect, and everybody’s got issues. If everyone needed everyone else to have absolutely nothing wrong with them, no one would ever get together. We’d all sit around making ‘perfect’ the enemy of ‘good enough.’”
“That’s true,” Jia mused. She put her drink down.
Erik had helped her understand the importance of similar concepts as it applied to their job, but she’d not thought to apply it to her personal life. That was less bound by law and regulations, only Lin stubbornness.
Chinara’s frown softened into a pitying look. “Yes, it’s true, but that doesn’t mean he’s right for you. It’s not your responsibility to fix Erik. That’s what we’re talking about, aren’t we? He’s a man who suffered something that most people will never have to deal with. It’s not surprising he has some leftover issues.”
Jia wanted to laugh. It was true the Molino massacre had deeply scarred Erik, and that the heart of their disagreement over dating related to him having unfinished business, but he wasn’t asking her to fix him. Her earlier doubts were all gone, and she agreed with him. Erik didn’t need grief counseling. He needed to bring justice to the monsters behind the murders. If the UTC was as perfect as everyone believed, he wouldn’t have to dedicate his life to avenging fallen soldiers.
“Whatever is between us isn’t about fixing anyone,” Jia replied softly. “It’s more about priorities and sacrifices. I’m more prepared than I thought I was to make sacrifices to be with him.”
“Yes! True love!” Imogen shouted. Some of the other patrons turned and looked at their table with amused expressions.
“I think that’s a bit of a stretch.” Jia glanced around before continuing, “At this point, I just want more than we have.”
“There’s no such thing as true love, anyway,” Chinara insisted. “Love is something that grows carefully from cultivated compatibility. True love is what we were talking about earlier, making ‘perfect’ the enemy of ‘good enough.’”
Imogen looked at her friends. “You’re as boring as Jia used to be.”
“Hey!” Jia frowned at her friend. “I wasn’t boring.”
“If anything, you were more boring because you were fooling yourself by being overly analytical about the whole thing. Chinara hit the right point earlier. Are you, or are you not in love with Erik?”
Jia leaned back, tossing the question back and forth. Love was such a loaded word. She wouldn’t deny the pull of the man’s handsome face and raw physicality. The 1-2-2 was filled with impressive specimens of manhood, but none of them summoned the warmth that being around Erik did. Mere attraction, no matter how fiery, fell far short of love, and lust wasn’t enough to change her future over. It might not be love, but it was something she didn’t want to toss aside easily either.
“I’m not sure what I feel,” she admitted, looking her friends in the eye. “I just know I’ve never felt this way about a man before, and I want to pursue it and see where it goes.”
Imogen grinned. “It might not be love yet, but it sounds like the road to love.”
“It could be a lot of things,” Chinara suggested, her voice quiet.
Jia snatched up her glass and downed the rest of her drink in one huge gulp, enjoying the burn as it slid down her throat. Her mind was far too clear for this conversation, and she could push it before she risked numbness.
“There’s another problem,” she explained.
Imogen frowned. “Stop looking for trouble where there isn’t any. We were making so much progress.”
Chinara shot Imogen a dirty look. “Go on.”
“To be clear, I’m not saying I’m in love with him,” Jia continued, “but if I am, it might be for the wrong reason, or I’m strongly attracted to him for the wrong reasons. For now, let’s just stipulate that I’m somewhere beyond mere interest.”
“What do you mean, you might be in love with him for the wrong reason?” Chinara asked.
“Before Erik came along, my career was dead-ending because of all the idiots I worked with and the corruption blocking me.” Jia glanced around the bar to double-check that none of said idiots were there, but all the worst ones had already quit, even if a few lazy cops lingered. “I was just as obsessed with my job, but I was bitter because no one would let me do it properly. I am attracted to Erik, and I do like a lot of things about him, but I can’t help but wonder if this is less about Erik the man than Erik the symbol of a life change. That’s not fair to him.”
Chinara nodded slowly. “I see.”
Imogen scoffed. “Jia, you’re overthinking this. Everyone’s more than one thing for everyone else. Aren’t all new relationships about changing your life?”
“But this is different.”
Chinara’s breath caught. “No. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but Imogen’s right.”
“She is?”
“I am?” Imogen blinked. Her cheeks were flushed from her drink.
“Yes.” Chinara nodded, a smile growing on her face. “I thought this was about you rebounding from Corbin and maybe overreacting to someone who’s his opposite, but if you’re avoiding this because you’re afraid of how he’ll change your life, that’s a terrible reason.”
“Terrible?” Jia echoed. “I wouldn’t say it’s terrible. It’s a reason accompanied by a lot of careful thought.”
Erik had been the one resistant to dating, not her, but he also hadn’t shot her down. Her presence on Earth was a big part of why he hadn’t accepted Alina’s offer. None of that sounded like a man uninterested in taking it to the next level.
Yes, stronger feelings than she had anticipated had grown, and she couldn’t be sure what Erik truly felt. But if she didn’t even have the courage to push against his resistance, she’d never have a chance. She understood his situation, and she also understood why he would be reluctant to push himself.
“A man who agrees to fake-date isn’t a man who’s not interested in something more,” Imogen commented as if reading Jia’s thoughts. “He’s dipping his toe in the pool, issues or not. If anything, that’s not fair to you.”
Chinara nodded. “I think if this isn’t going to happen, you shouldn’t fake-date him. You can be friends, but you should either push for something more and soon or just accept it’s not going to happen so you can move on. After thinking about it, I believe Imogen’s right. Waiting for perfection just means you’ll end up alone and missing someone who could have otherwise made you happy. If you have chemistry and compatibility and understand one another, it’s at least worth a shot.”
She raised a finger. “But you have to understand from the beginning that it might not go anywhere. You know how difficult men can be to read. I’m worried that you’re already in too deep, but I’d rather see you take the chance and fail then spend the rest of your life wondering, ‘What if?’ At least one of those you can come to terms with, and a man like Erik doesn’t come around every day.”
Jia grabbed her glass and lifted it before remembering it was empty, to her disappointment. She set it down. “If I push, it could change everything between us.”
Imogen nodded. “That’s the point.”
“I’ve got a lot to think about, but right now, the only thing I want to think about i
s more drinks.”
Chapter Twenty
From her comfortable seat at the long white table, Ilse surveyed the conference room walls slowly and methodically, taking in all the details of the projected paintings of different famous generals and admirals.
She cared little about military history, Army or Fleet, even if they were her current employer, but even she recognized some of the men and women on the walls. Most wore stern expressions, and medals and ribbons festooned to their dress uniforms in an inscrutable pattern she’d never bothered to learn. She shook her head.
The pictures bothered her.
It was the uniforms that annoyed Ilse. They always had, even when she was a child. There was something about the idea of forcing conformity down to appearance that repelled her.
The very point of a uniform was to take an individual and make them less than themselves so that a group could be stronger. She appreciated why many people desired that and how it was even necessary in the middle, but it was nightmarish to her. A large part of the reason she chose to study psychology was to understand the nature of individuality better.
Now, working so closely with the Defense Directorate, she saw uniforms all the time, and not just on the walls. She was working at creating artificial individuals in a place that exalted the group as paramount.
The door slid open, and Colonel Adeyemi stepped through. He had a colorful salad of ribbons on his uniform, each telling a story of bravery, death, and blood. It wasn’t that Ilse was bothered by that. The story of humanity was one of struggle. It was only the consuming of the individual by the collective that bothered her about her uniformed associates.
The colonel took a seat at the head of the table. “Sorry for being late, Dr. Aber. I was dealing with the general. He wasn’t happy with my latest report, and he made it clear the admiral agrees with him. He had a lot of colorful words about the progress of the project and about leaving the subject with Blackwell for so long.”
“Myopia,” Ilse declared. “They are high-ranking officers. They should consider the long-term implications more. Weren’t they promoted because of their superior performance and vision?”
Cabal of Lies Page 13