The question hangs between us.
I tilt my head. "Are you asking ifyou'remy type?"
Marty shrugs. "Well, I'm not sure if that's what I'm asking. Actually, no. That's not what I'm asking because you don't know me, so how could you possibly know I'm your type?"
I let out a breath and lean back in the booth. OK. I guess this guy wants to have some real talk. Unexpected, but not entirely unwanted. "So… whatareyou asking?"
"Well…" he looks me straight in the eyes. I'm talking, locked the fuck on. "I'm asking which one you prefer. Do you like soft guys?"
"Like you?"
He laughs. "Am I soft?"
I shrug. "You look a little soft."
"Why? Because I take yoga?"
"Yes. Mostly. But also… I dunno. You've got that golden-retriever energy."
He smiles. "Golden what?"
"Golden retriever. You know, in romance books—" But I stop. Because I'm not a romance writer anymore and I don't want to explain these things to him.
"Oh, right," he says. "Yeah. I've heard of that."
"Heard ofwhat?" I scoff.
"Tropes. Dark romance."
"What?" My mouth is hanging open.
"What? Why are you looking at me that way? I stumbled into Booktok one day last year and…" he blows out a breath. "Never quite recovered from what I saw."
Now… I'm intrigued. My voice lowers too. "What did you see?"
Marty shifts in his seat. His fingers drum the table again, then stop. He looks down at his salad like it might save him from this conversation.
"I mean—" He clears his throat. "I saw... videos. Of women talking about books. Dark romance books. Really dark ones."
I just stare at him.
"Like, not the billionaire CEO kind of dark. Not the 'he's brooding but secretly has a heart of gold' dark." His voice drops lower. "The... theactuallydark kind."
My mouth falls open.
Marty's face is flushing now. Red creeping up his neck. "The kidnapping kind. The—the Stockholm syndrome kind. The—" He stops. Swallows hard. "The kind where the guy is legitimately fucked up and does fucked up things and the woman?—"
He can't finish the sentence.
I lean forward. "And the woman what?"
"Wants it anyway." The words come out strangled. "Even though she shouldn't. Even though it's wrong. Even though every part of her knows it's wrong but she—she still?—"
He cuts himself off, breathing harder now.
"You watched videos about that?" My voice sounds strange. Distant.
"I fell down a rabbit hole." He's looking anywhere but at me. "For like... three months. Just watching these women talk about their favorite dark romance books. About mafia bosses, andstalkers, and—and monsters. Literal monsters sometimes. And they'd get this look in their eyes when they talked about it. This... thisneed."
