Safe to assume she meant Zephyr and not the down-on-his-luck drunk.
I exhaled. “He’s too sweet. Or too clever. I can’t tell.”
Colette clucked her tongue. “I don’t believe that.”
She was right.
Why was she always right?
Grumbling, I laid my head back on the top of the booth seat, consulting the murals overhead. “I’m not built for this,” I said. “I like stability. Predictability. Zephyr is…” I trailed off, studying the mythic heroes decorating the ceiling. After a long pause, I swallowed. “He makes me stupid.”
When I straightened, Colette was smiling over the rim of her martini glass. “He makes you happy.”
I couldn’t deny that, but my feelings didn’t change the facts.
“It’s a mistake,” I said.
“Or an opportunity,” she countered. “You’ve become… disillusioned. Adrift. Your days are?—”
“Mydays?” My meaningful look targeted the hellhound first, then the drowsy lounge around us. The rattle of ice in the bartender’s shaker was the loudest sound in the room.
“Ourdays,” Colette conceded, “are not what I would call fulfilling.”
Whether in this lounge or the dead zone of my office, I couldn’t deny we’d become a little… pathetic. I was an aged being, a higher demon who once held status in Hell, and Colette was a warrior. A French revolutionary now possessed by the soul of a battle-ready hellhound. Yet here we were, day drinking, fresh out of our resident suites where we lorded over the city from on high. Pitiful.
“Has the crossword lost its luster?” I asked.
Colette scoffed. “Years ago. And so have you. But I think you may be able to get it back.”
“From a stripper,” I muttered.
Colette’s brow dipped in warning. “You have to stop calling him that.”
“From a sex worker.”
“Lucas.” She said my name the way a mother would, but her austerity gave way to affection as she continued. “He’s a man. A beautiful young man who chooses to spend his time with you. I’ve seen you watch him onstage. Did you know he watches you too? He looks for you in the crowd. And when he sees you, he smiles.”
He smiled often in the spotlight. So joyful when he was in the air, carefree and full of the whimsy conveyed in his movements, the music, and the masterpieces he created night after night.
But the shadows returned the moment his feet hit the ground. Darkness lurked in the furrows of his brow and thecreases around his eyes. Unspoken worries, because while we were getting away with our liaisons, I was fairly certain Maslow was getting away with something much worse.
I’d told Zephyr I would fix it. I’d made that promise, and then I did nothing. Maybe it made me selfish, but I liked our arrangement. I liked that Zephyr counted on me. I liked knowing he searched for me from the stage. I liked that I made him smile.
And—this was the worst part—I liked the boundary between us. Zephyr was cleanly compartmentalized, tucked away in that neon-lit corner of my life. What we shared was a part-time indulgence. I stayed just long enough to enjoy him, to feel connected to someone for a while, then I left him behind without consequence. He stayed in his world, and I slipped back into mine. No overlap. No mess.
Anything else would require commitment. More than that, it would require opening the part of myself I’d closed off long ago. I would have to expose the soft, scarred underbelly of my heart and risk rejection by a beautiful young man who had his pick of lovers, and he could ruin me.
That was why I hadn’t approached Maslow and why I didn’t press Zephyr for answers about his fear or his hunger. Because getting those answers might’ve forced me to act, and acting meant endangering the fragile thing we had.
So I didn’t.
I let him stay afraid.
I let him think I’d fix it, and I didn’t.
“I don’t deserve him,” I said, slowly arriving at the revelation. “He wants nothing from me. Nothing that matters. He turned down my money. I haven’t offered him any deals… He’s content with my time. Touch. Intimacy.”
Colette stared at me, incredulous. “Those things don’t matter?”
