I turned around, meeting Dig Graves.
“What the hell?” He asked.
I splayed open my arms to the museum of Delphine De Astor.
There were a few people who had tried to connect with me before. Mostly for monetary and influence reasons. People liked my family’s pockets and the position my brother held in government. Being my Soulmate would have assisted them in their goals, monetarily and influentially. Once, a woman had tracked me down to my yoga class and flung me against the wall and pressed her chest into me, trying to force a connection. Another, a man, tried to connect with me during one of my brother’s speech rallies, trying to pass it off as a hug.
Honestly, I did not care why Dig Graves had memorised my face. If he wanted to connect with me, he had to get in line.
Dig stood in front of me, his leather jacket freckled in blood, a spray of it across his cheek. His black hair was dry now, the ends just flicking up under his earlobes as he tore down his hood and ruffled back his hair.
He held a bouquet of wildflowers and a plastic shopping bag.
His mouth parted, taking me in, taking in all of me. The real Delphine De Astor mixed into all her portraits.
I pointed to a painting by the windowsill. “Why am I pregnantin that one?”
“No.” He dropped the bouquet of wildflowers and the plastic shopping bag. From out of the bag spilled packets of face masks and bottles of nail polish.
“So, you’re an artist.” I stretched my arms over my head. “That’s nice. I did watercolours for a while, I was very good at painting puddles. Oh! Did you bring food? I ate all the apples.”
“Get the hell out of here!” He flung his finger to the door.
“Do you know how hard it is to get a man to remember my eye colour? And here you are, having remembered every curve and freckle and mole and strand of my hair.”
He lowered his hand pointing out of the door.
I dragged my finger over the crook of my nose he had sketched on the wall. Dig Graves had a room of me; I supposed I had a room of him too. My shrine to Dig Graves was stuck in my head, behind a locked door I only opened when I wanted to stick my hand between my legs and quench the ache that lulled there on occasion. I had also mapped out the features of him I had memorised from our single night: his strong physique, the depth of his laugh, the cocky grin, the heart-shaped sunglasses.
“I’m not going to have babies,” I said.
“What?”
I pointed to the painting of me pregnant. “I’m infertile, found out a year back. Nasty business with my ovaries. I tried to cry but it didn’t work.”
He nodded in understanding and punched a hole through the wall of my pregnant belly and tore out the plaster piece by piece until he had demolished the thought of me being pregnant and then turned and looked to me for approval.
“Yeah.” He cleared his throat and leaned casually against the wall. “I, uh, I don’t want to have babies either. They’re shit. I hate them.”
“I love babies.”
“I love babies too.”
“I just can’t have them.”
“Me either. Fuck having kids. It looks awful. Childfree, that’s the way to go.”
“I want to have children, but through adoption.”
“I also have plans on doing that.”
“But sometimes I think I’d rather focus on my career, so maybe not.”
“Okay.” He nodded. “Maybe not.”
I pursed my lips.
“Get out of here.” He snatched my arm and hauled me out of his Delphine De Astor room and closed the door. “What are you doing?”
