I sit back down. “I really do want to know why you would never want to live here. I grew up here.”
“I hate this damn city.”
Oh no, he didn’t. “Excuse me?”
He sighs. “I told you you wouldn’t want to know.”
I poke his chest with my finger. “You don’t know what I want.”
For a few seconds, he stares at his chest, then looks up, his eyes appearing brighter. “No?”
“Most certainly not.” I nest in my chair like a bird might before fluffing up her feathers. My feathers are fluffed. He’s about to get it. “For one, you just met me. For two, you are here in my apartment for reasons known only to you, and I don’t know what I want to do about it, so you can’t possibly know what I don’t when I don’t even know it. Are you following me?”
The man nods.
“How could you say you know what I want when you never asked what I wanted?”
He opens his mouth, but I shush him. “You never asked because you’re not interested, and you’re not interested because you’re too busy taking care of yourself.” I sit back. “There you go.” I’ve turned into a bitter old lady who vents at random people at every opportunity. We were talking about Selnoa, the city, not him or me or my ex or my messed-up life right now, and I drew parallels and circled back to my problems. But I’m right, you know. “You don’t know what I want.”
He’s quiet for a while. Then: “You want your old life back.”
I suck in a breath. “Shut up.”
The man shrugs.
“You know nothing about my life. New or old.”
“Fair enough,” he says.
I clear my throat. “You can’t tell me anything about yourself because your life is in danger? Along with mine?”
“Yes.”
“Were you staying at the Crossbow mansion?” I ask.
“Define staying.”
“Like you’re staying here.” My heart pounds in my ears. The man disassembled my gun in seconds. Seconds. He seems polite and nonthreatening in the sense that he promised not to hurt me. It doesn’t mean he won’t.
“I wasn’t staying there, no.”
“Did you work at the Crossbow mansion?”
“I’m not one of Crossbow’s men.”
Relieved, I sigh. “Thank God for that. You can stay here, then.” I walk to the bathroom and adjust the hot water. “Take a shower before you sit on my daughter’s bed.” I test the water. “We have an old boiler here that I never replaced, so when you need hot water, you have to turn it on and wait. But everythingelse has been upgraded. Almost. I mean things here and there, like the AC unit I need to get for my room, and other small things. Also, the bathroom is accessible—” I turn to go back and run into him, bumping my forehead on his hard chest. Damn. Does he work in construction?
“Excuse me.” I look up. He’s tall, and I’m five three, so this close up, I have to crane my neck as far as it’ll go.
“I thought you were using water to mask the sound of whatever you were actually doing,” he says to explain why he materialized behind me like Houdini.
“Oh. Oh no. I’m not creative with escape plans. When it comes to hair, I’ve got all sorts of ideas but otherwise, it’s dull around here. You don’t have much hair, so I have no ideas.” Why am I overexplaining? Am I nervous? Yes, I think I am, and I don’t think it has anything to do with fear but more to do with having a handsome man within arm’s reach. Am I horny? It’s been a while. I should masturbate more. Really should do that more often.
He’s staring.
I point at the shower. “Go ahead. I’ll bring towels from Chi-chi’s room.” I use the door that leads to her room from the bathroom and come back with a stack of my daughter’s dark blue towels.
When he takes the towels, he traps my hands under his. “I don’t think it’s dull around here.” He squeezes my hands before releasing me. I remain standing there, his touch warming my skin in ways that my thirty-seven-year-old brain finds very, VERY stupid, and my vagina finds very exciting.
