Page 24

I ignore him and he walks away in a huff.

Once he’s out of earshot, the woman leans over, as if sharing something confidential. “You looked like you could use an escape hatch. Hope I didn’t misread the situation. I’m Lana.” She guides us to a table, then stops and looks over her shoulder back at the bartender. “Two, Wesley. Thank you.”

“I’m Zae,” I say, watching the young bartender get right to work on a drink Lana has apparently ordered with some frequency. “And, you definitely didn’t misread the situation.” I shudder thinking about my brief exchange with Buddy Fischer. “He was… something else.”

She nods knowingly and finds us a nearby table. She pulls a seat out for me and I slide in, then prop my crutch up against a nearby chair.

“Not your partner, I hope,” Lana says as she settles in across from me.

I almost choke on my last bite of piroshki. “Oh no. God no.”

“Then your man is…”

“Not here.”

“Ah. Are things not going well between you two?”

I hold my answer as Wesley arrives with two martinis, each with a single olive and a lemon twist. Lana raises hers in toast and then drinks.

I sip at my own martini, the vodka sliding down my throat with a pleasant burn. “It’s early still,” I say, giving the same canned response I used on Marek. “I’m sure we’ll find our groove.”

Even as I say it, I can feel my cheeks burn at the thought of the one man I connected to immediately. The man I have zero chance of being with, but who is stuck on a loop in my mind like a damn commercial jingle.

Lana seems to notice my embarrassment and grins. “It can’t be too bad, I think, if you look like that while thinking of him.”

“It’s…” I clear my throat, uneasy at how easily she reads me. “Where’s your man?”

She waves her perfectly manicured nails in the air dismissively. “Looking for me somewhere in the gym.”

“Why?”

“Because that is where I told him I would be.” She grins deviously. “We must keep them guessing, no? Men, they crave the hunt. The chase.” She pronounces ‘the’ like ‘ze’, and the more animated she becomes, the thicker her accent. “This… Lottery… it is too simple. Too clinical. This is how romance dies.” She stabs her finger into the table. “Take my man, for example. First night. We have sex. Good. Now he can’t keep his hands off me. Excellent. What is the problem then? He has a good body. Is good with his hands. But I need more.” She grasps at the air, searching for the right words until they land on her ruby lips, and she smiles from ear to ear. “I need to be wooed. To be worshipped.”

I chuckle at her exuberance. “We’re all kind of skipping the dating part, aren’t we?”

She nods, sniffing, then pulls out what looks like an electric cigarette from her purse. When she sees me looking at it, she shrugs. “I only have a few left. They are smokeless. By the time we get to Mars I will be done with them forever.”

“No judgment here. I almost got myself and another guy killed because I wanted to save a cherry tree cutting.”

“You would risk so much for a tree?” she asks.

“I’m a botanist,” I say, as if that explains it all.

“Oh that is exciting. A field I always hoped to learn more about but never seemed to have the time.” She lifts her glass then pauses as her eyes wander to a man entering the dining hall, and she puckers her lips at him.

“Your partner?” I ask.

She smiles like I just said something silly. “An option.”

“An option?” My words catch in my throat. “You’re joking, right? Aren’t we supposed to be following these strict lottery rules?”

She shrugs. “We are surrounded by beautiful men, no? Why not take a taste, see what is to our liking?”

Her words make my mind wander again to places it shouldn’t go. To Marek and the way he makes my knees tremble.

Lana studies my face, and a small smile finds her lips but not her eyes. “Of course I’m joking.” She nods one too many times. “We must be grateful. Grateful our partner arrived safely.”

I raise an eyebrow at that. “Did someone not arrive?”