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The room doesn’t answer. My body has its own response. Immediate, inconvenient, and humiliating.

I turn toward the bed I still cannot sleep in properly, toward the dresser I haven’t filled, and to my own reflection in the mirror, flushed and rumpled and not remotely reset.

Don answers the door barefoot, shirtless, and wearing a pair of flowy pants so aggressively white they look like their own light source.

“Oh good,” he says. “You lived.”

“That was uncertain?”

He shrugs. “Secret step-son and unresolved inheritance alone in a house? I’ve seen Murder, She Wrote.”

“I’m fine.”

“You look fine.” He steps back to let me in. “In that escaped hostage kind of way.”

Don’s place is smaller than Casa Sirena and way too modern. Flat whites, grays, and glass everything. It has the warmth of a corporate headquarters.

He walks back to the patio with his phone pressed to his ear. “No, Jeremy, I’m not ‘using your house.’ I’m making use of the house. There’s a difference.”

Don points at the coffee pot on the table without looking at me.

“He is not,” Don says into the phone. “You’re projecting.”

I take the chair across from him.

The ocean is somewhere below the terrace, bright and impossible. Morning heat glances off green leaves and bright flowers. Don sips his coffee, listens, then closes his eyes as if summoning patience from a god who has blocked his number.

“Just because you need to hit every trick who smiles at you does not mean I’m here doing the same.” A pause. “No, Paul isn’t either. He’s our friend in his time of need.”

Time of need.

Jesus.

Don sees my face, lifts one finger, and continues. “I’m hanging up now because you’re boring me…Yes, I am! I am.”

He taps the screen and sets the phone facedown.

“No kiss goodbye?” I ask.

“A kiss my ass goodbye.”

“Salty.”

“We’re divorced—divorcing, whatever—so let it flow.” He pushes the coffee pot toward me even though I already have a cup. “How was your night with the camboy?”

I grimace. Night with the camboy sounds like the title of a book with abs on the cover and a swirly font.

“We talked.”

“And?”

“And we agreed to stay out of each other’s way.”

Don blinks. “That’s good.”

“Yes.”

His eyes narrow. “What aren’t you telling me?”