“Because I’m demisexual. I can’t even think about having sex with somebody unless I know their heart belongs to me.” She puts her hand across her heart as if that’s where she’s storing Chloe’s heart. Although from the way I’ve seen them together recently, I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s exactly where it lives.
“Right,” I say. “So you’re saying, if Chloe offered you no-strings sex but you knew she liked someone else, you wouldn’t say yes.”
Radia clenches the hand on her chest into a fist and knocks it against her sternum. “Ouch. That hypothetical just physically hurt me.”
“Right,” I say again, but this time there’s more affirmation in it. Radia’s right. She’s confirming what I already know. It would be a bad, bad, bad idea.
“Have I helped?”
“Yes,” I say and force a smile in her direction. “Thanks.”
“You’re not going to tell me who this hypothetical and strange offer came from?”
I open my mouth and then catch myself just in time. “Just a guy at the gym.”
She rolls her eyes. “I swear you pick-up more men than weights at that place.”
My smile is even more forced. “I’ll have you know, I’m hitting a PB with my current dry streak.”
Her eyebrows quirk. “Really? How long are we talking?”
I quickly add up the months. “Nearly seven months.”
Surprise sends Radia’s eyes wide. “I take it back. You definitely are picking up more weights than partners. Maybe you shouldn’t train with Marcello so often. Maybe he’s cramping your style.”
I prickle at the mention of his name in such close proximity to my not-completely innocent hypothetical situation, but Radia doesn’t seem to notice as she keeps talking.
“Maybe you should take up this strange and hypothetical offer then.”
“You’re changing your mind?”
“I’m realising this is not about me. It’s about you. And who knows, maybe you can blow their mind in bed and that makes them fall head over heels in love with you?”
My neck elongates. I hadn’t thought of that.
Radia moves away and retrieves a duster and spray from under the counter. My mind busies itself with some of the many ways I could make Marcello very, very happy in my bed.
“Also, why are they offering you no-strings sex if they don’tlikeyou like that?” Radia asks, pulling me out of a very vivid and visual fantasy.
“They don’t know if they’re queer,” I admit, too keen to go back to daydreaming so I don’t fully realise what I’ve just said.
Radia snorts, loudly. “So you’re going to be their guinea pig?”
“Is that so bad? Guinea pigs are cute.”
“And live in cages, often for suspiciously short amounts of time.”
“So you don’t think blowing their mind in bed is a real possibility?”
Just as I ask the question, the door opens and Chloe walks in. Dressed in jeans and a T-shirt and smelling unmistakeably of coffee and baked goods, it’s easy to deduce she’s just finished her shift at the café. And, like it often is, popping in to see Radia on her way home is the first thing she does.
“Oooh,” she coos, flashing us both a big beaming smile. “Who’s blowing whose mind in bed?”
I open my mouth to tell her it doesn’t matter and to level a warning look at Radia, but the woman is too damn quick.
“Giles is hypothetically blowing the mind of someone he’s hypothetically quite keen on but they’re not hypothetically into him, although they hypothetically want to sleep with Giles because they hypothetically don’t know if they’re queer or not.”
“That’s a lot of hypotheticals,” Chloe says and then chews on the corner of her lip. “I think you should hypothetically do it.”
