Axon handed me some tubers and a variety of other vegetables to chop while he cut the meat into cubes.
“Do you have a favorite food that Orsu and Julie make?” I asked in way of conversation.
Axon nodded his head. “I like Julie’s tacos. The texture of the soft flat bread along with the spiced meat is very satisfying.”
There was a beat of silence before I teased, “Aren’t you going to ask what my favorite food is?”
“I already know what your favorite food is,” he said without a hint of inflection in his voice, as if it were a well-known fact that he knew what my favorite food was.
“How? I’ve never told you?”
“Your favorite dinner is Orsu’s ribs recipe. Your favorite lunch is the stuffed bread that you all call hot pockets, and your favorite breakfast is pancakes with iced black tea and cream. You close your eyes as youtake your first sip and moan after you swallow.”
My jaw hung open as I took in Axon’s very thorough and descriptive recollection of my eating habits.
Realizing he may have said too much, he tried to play it off by shrugging his shoulders and saying, “it’s just something I’ve noticed.”
He’d guessed right. Those were all my favorite foods. How much had he been paying attention to me? I liked this feeling of being so well known by someone else. Not just anyone, though, Axon.
I needed to change the subject. We were on a very slippery slope to heartbreak. I couldn’t like Axon like that, not unless we luminesed.
“You know Lumod is a pretty chill guy. I wonder if he’d be okay with not having sex very often.”
Axon’s shoulders tensed up and he started cutting the meat more aggressively.
“Do youwishto be mated to Lumod?” He emphasized the word wish and bit out Lumod’s name as if it were a sour fruit that had gone bad.
“Not really,” I admitted. “It’s scary not having a choice, though.”
“Luminescence has never made an unhappy pairing,” he commented.
“Really? Everyone in your old dekes was happily mated?” Axon paused and thought for a moment.
“Everyone starts off happy. It’s up to the couple tomaintain their relationship.”
“Who ended up unhappy?” Now I was curious.
“The Savrix,” Axon began, and I wasn’t at all surprised. Everything I’d heard about the Savrix was awful. “His mate saw who he really was, and she tried to distance herself from him, but the more she pulled away, the more restrictions he put on her.”
“Dameron is a real jackass. Did they have any kids?”
Axon’s expression turned grim. “They had one child. He brought much joy to his mother’s life.”
“But not Dameron?”
He shook his head. “Layla, Dameron’s mate, kept their sietling from him as much as she could, and Dameron didn’t fight her on it.”
“Did she die in the stiffness?”
“Yes,” his answer was short and full of pain. Even though his mother was still alive, it must be hard to remember all the other women from his dekes who were not.
“What happened to their son after that?”
Axon shook his head. “His story is not mine to tell.”
That was fair. This conversation reminded me of how Axon doesn’t carry himself like the rest of the guys. Most of them still bear a lot of shame over what happened despite the fact that we humans have told them they most likely were not the cause of the stiffness.
“You aren’t like the rest of the guys.”
