“Are there expectations at all?” I muse to the phone book on my desk.
“He wants your body,”Ryan’s voice says.
I roll my eyes. “He doesn’t touch me like you did,” I accuse.
“That doesn’t mean he doesn’t want you. And you want him to touch you. Don’t you, aberrant boy?”
“Do I?” I wonder.
I stare at the names in front of me, absently reciting them in my head. Oppel, Oppelt, Oppermann, Oppliger… My thoughts turn inward as I examine what I feel. How my body responds. If it responds at all.
Glimpses of my cleansings with Ryan flicker through my mind. How my body responded then. Does that count? That wasn’t all on its own. Ryan made my body respond then.
Relationships perplex me because of the weird childhood I had. Most would say fucked up. I’m inclined to believe them, but I suppose I’m not completely free of the brainwashing. That’s what everyone says, because I still believe that Ryan loved me.
I was there. I know how it felt to be loved by him.
Ellory and Avory hover in my mind, and I think that maybe the only time I’ve everwantedany kind of relationship at all has been with Ellory.
My therapists say that I’ve latched onto Ellory not because I’m truly attracted to him or in love with him, but because he’s the first and only person to have ever offered me safety. He saw what was going on right away. In fourteen years, he’s theonly personwho had ever tried to save me.
Hero worship. I’m not actually in love with him. I’m not actually attracted to him. I hero-worship him.
So what is it about Gracen that makes this different? It can’t just be because he smells good. And he does. He smells better than any other living thing I’ve ever been close enough to smell. Better than any place I’ve ever been. The way his scent saturates me is absolutely intoxicating. Addicting. I want more.
“Hey, Malin.”
I look up and realize I’m not in my office anymore. I’m in the breakroom, standing in front of the fridge and staring inside. Huh.
“Hi,” I return to Jessica. I take a step back so she can get into the fridge when I realize that’s what she’s waiting for.
“What’s up?”
I take a step back and close the fridge, shaking my head. “Guess I’m thirsty.” The cabinet to the left of the fridge is filled with different multi-use beverage containers. Different sizes. Different style lids. Hot and cold; glass, metal, or plastic. All with different departments of Van Doren Technologies branded on the side.
My house has a hundred of these, and yet, I grab another. There are probably ten in my office, but this one is nice. I don’t have this one.
Returning to the fridge, I fill my new cup with ice and then water.
Jessica is now sitting at the table, eating the contents of her food container as she watches me. Unsure if I’m supposed to stay, I join her at the table. She smiles and pushes another container toward me. There are berries inside, so I take a couple.
“How’s work?” she asks.
What do I even do for work? I shrug. That answer works for both of our questions. “How’s… law?”
Her smile widens. “I’d like to say the nastiness of this country is finally calming down, but I’d be naïve to say so. Always busy.”
In a place where megachurch cults hurt thousands of people and are tax-free because they’re registered as a church? Yep, I get that. It’s incredibly stupid of people to think these things don’t exist because there’s not an instance around them.
“Are you due soon?” I ask, dropping my eyes to her belly.
Jessica smiles and rests a hand on her stomach. She’s the only person I’ve ever seen pregnant. None of the surrogates who carried my nieces and nephews has set foot on the VanDoren Estate. Then there are the kids who come from adoption. Sometimes they’re not infants when they join this family.
I wonder if all women are as cute as a doll when they’re pregnant, like Jessica is. I’m not sure if I understand what this ‘glow’ is all about, but she’s certainly beautiful.
“Three weeks,” she says.
“Girl, right?” I ask.
