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SEPTEMBER 12, 2022

Nemo

Australia in August was mild yet, even at ten thirty at night, so the temperature was just above fifty degrees. However, there was a breeze coming off the ocean, so he used it as an excuse to pull Gem to his side as they strolled the two blocks to the restaurant.

After they ordered, Nemo took hold of the hand closest to him that she had on the table. “Gem. Can I ask you something?”

“You’re going to ask me why I left both times, aren’t you?”

He grinned. “I’m like Scheherazade with her manatee. Relentless.”

Nemo observed closely as Gem looked down where his thumb was caressing the back of her hand. The slow and steady stroke was almost hypnotic. She was considering how to answer his question. The darkness of the restaurant, with its soft yellow table lighting, was soothing and less baring, but she clearly didn’t want to talk about it here.

“Can we take a walk after dinner?”

He opened his mouth to speak, but she cut him off.

“I’m not dodging the question. Honest. I’ll answer it. Just not here. Not now. Let’s eat, and then I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.”

“Okay. But I’m holding you to that, sugar cat.”

“I promise, Nemo.”

With dinner over, Nemo guided Gem over to the opposite side of the street and onto the sidewalk along the waterfront. His eyes continually scanned the area around him, and he kept himself between her and the street, his arm once again around her shoulders, pulling her tight to his side. Patiently, he waited for her to start talking.

“So. Why I left.”

The only sounds were the ocean waves, the seagulls, a few distant calls from the night surfers, and randomly passing cars.

“I told you the basics about my mum, how that affected my da, and what my childhood was like. The prize he was after when he met my mum was the Saturn Diamond. He had to make a choice. He chose Mum. He’d never failed at collecting his quarry before, so despite how happy he was with her, he always felt like he let the diamond slip away. Then he got a second chance, only to have it snatched from him again.”

Nemo put the pieces together. “His accident.”

“Yes,” she confirmed. “The entire time he was recuperating, it ate at him. And when Mum left him while he recovered, it snapped something inside him.

“The diamond became an obsession. I think, in his mind, if he’d been able to steal the Saturn Diamond, Mum never would have left him. To be honest, I think she would have left eventually anyway, but we’ll never really know for sure. Anyway, he couldn’t let it go. And since he could no longer do the theft himself, he set all his sights on me. At first, I was excited to have his eye. To know that he was admitting that I, his daughter , could be successful.

“In the beginning, I loved the work. With each job, though, the pressure became more intense. I didn’t recognize that his obsession was starting to take hold of me as well.

“When you and I first met, I was on my way back from a job in Madrid. Da took on a contract job for a pink diamond being held at the Museum of Natural History. He never told anyone that he didn’t actually do the jobs anymore, that it was his daughter he was sending out to collect their prizes. As I was on my way home from that job, I decided to take a detour to Valencia just for practice, and I met you.”

He turned Gem down a wooden sidewalk leading out onto a pier. During the day, men used it as a place to sit and talk as they pretended to fish. At this time of night, it was deserted.

“I didn’t want to like you. But despite the charm and jokes, you were honestly concerned about me being hurt and wanted to make sure I was taken care of. You were temptation itself, and I tried to use snark to push you away. You just kept coming at me, and with one kiss, you became a drug. My eighteen-year-old self would have followed you to the ends of the earth if you’d asked, but even I knew that you were out the door in a few hours. You were my first, and all I could hear in my head was Da’s voice, like always, reminding me not to be a fool. Not to be distracted by a pair of pretty eyes and a fit body. I always heard him in my head—things he claimed he told me were for my own good, but now I see they were things to bind me to him. To prevent me from becoming my own person. To make me into himself. The only way he could do that was to drill into me over and over the mistakes he made with my mother, hidden in the guise of how others would use me for their own ends. The irony was, he was doing that very thing to me.”

They were at the end of the pier now. A soft rumble of thunder came, letting them know that a storm was brewing over the ocean, and a bolt of lightning flashed in the distance. Nemo pulled Gem between him and the wooden fencing. Her head rested where he knew she’d be able to hear the heartbeat he felt pounding in his chest, and he buried his nose in the curls at the top of her head, breathing her in, trying to send her comfort without words.

“When I managed to steal the Saturn Diamond for him, I was on top of the world. I knew for sure that he’d be so proud of me. He’d love me best of his children. That he’d forget his bitterness toward Mum and become a real father.”

“Let me guess. He got more demanding.”

“What’s the saying? Bingo?”

Nemo squeezed her to him just a bit tighter. “You hear his voice in your head, don’t you? Telling you all the ways you’re a fuckup. Telling you all the reasons I, or someone like me, couldn’t possibly love you. Couldn’t possibly find any value in you. Because you’re just a girl, and a little girl at that, and, therefore, of hardly any use at all.”

She looked up at him. Her eyes had this appearance of always being wide open or of her always being shocked. Maybe it was the crystal blue of the irises that made her always seem startled and fearful. His memory went back to one of their encounters years ago, when, in his head, he’d likened her to prey spooked by the predator. She’d been standing so still he couldn’t even tell if she had been breathing, and he could see every moment of her debating with herself, deliberating running from him or remaining frozen and waiting for him. Her slight build made her more waif-like, and the paleness of her skin made her seem more fragile, but he knew for certain that his little sugar cat was anything but weak. Vulnerable, maybe. But never ever weak.

“How did you know that?”

Give her honesty or no?

He lifted one hand from around her waist to brush back what he referred to as her rebel curl, trying to push it out of her eyes as the breeze blew it across her face. It just kept flying into her eyes, making her smile at his endless fight.

“Guess my nickname should be Sisyphus, too,” he whispered, kissing the tip of her nose.

They both giggled at his reminder of how she nicknamed herself after the man who’d angered the gods and was punished by being given the destiny of rolling a huge boulder to the top of the mountain, only for it to roll back down to the base once he got it there.

Then the smile went a little sad. The corners of his mouth were still turned up slightly, but his lips were otherwise straight.

“You answer him sometimes,” he shared. “Out loud. In a whisper, but I hear it. I don’t know if anyone else does, but like you… I’ve trained myself to hear noises far more subtle than most people would pick up on.

“Then there’s the look on your face when you hear him. People might mistake it for concentration on whatever you’re doing or looking at. But it’s different. Not angry. Not sad. Almost as if you’re…” He searched for the word. “I don’t know. Resigned? That doesn’t feel like the right word.”

“That you’ve come to accept what you are to that person? You’ve come to understand that the way they think about you is how they will always think of you, and nothing you can do will change it, and that’s just how it is?”

“Yeah. Like that.”

Gem pursed her lips and nodded, her eyes at chest level on Nemo. “Yes. I still hear him. I tell myself that he was wrong about me. That it was when I was stealing that I was hardly useful to anyone. After all, those were things, and things don’t make anyone a better human being. They don’t make us more capable, more honest, more empathetic, which is what the world needs, and we, in turn, can be useful. Purposeful. And things don’t add to the world, either. They’re just… there.”

“It’s why you went to work for Loki and company. You needed to prove you and your talents were useful.”

Her smile twinkled like the stars reflecting in the pupils of her eyes. “Exactly.” Then the smile disappeared. “Lately, Da’s voice found its way back in there. Even though I know his words are untrue, my failure over the last six weeks has brought him rushing back. I guess the reason I’m talking to him out loud is because I’m trying to push him out of my head since responding to him inside my head doesn’t seem to be doing the trick.”

Nemo tucked her head back to his chest. “He’ll go away again. This was just a bump in Le Chatte Noire’s perfect past. Now you see how the rest of us mere mortals survive.”

She laughed, which, in turn, made him laugh. He rocked her back and forth in small sways, but even though the laughter died, the rocking did not. They simply rocked together in the ocean breeze.

“There’s another reason I know what you were feeling,” he admitted.

“What’s that?”

“Midas.” He looked out at the storm over the ocean, creeping ever closer. “My whole life, Midas has had to look out for me. When I was born, our umbilical cords got wrapped around each other and nearly killed me, and when they finally managed to extract me from my mother, I came out with two dislocated shoulders, which have since turned into a bonus for my work. Midas has always felt responsible for that, despite the fact that there was no way he was.” Nemo shrugged. “Shit happens when you’ve got two babies struggling to get out of you. I certainly never blamed him for it, although we give each other shit constantly about killing each other in the womb.

“We had a father in our lives, but he left when we were young. Although Midas is only eight minutes older than me, he became the man of the house, and I became the irresponsible son.” Looking out over the ocean, there was a smile on his face and a laugh in his voice, but his eyes and his words held sadness behind them. Regret. “I was always getting into trouble. I didn’t even have to go looking for it. It found me, and often. Fights. Bad marks in school. Trouble with the police. And every time, Midas was there, bailing me out of trouble, sometimes literally.”

She studied his face before she spoke. “The fights were over your brother, weren’t they?”

He looked down at her. “Pretty smart for a little girl, aren’t you?” he joked. “Yeah, they were. Midas was always so serious. A nerd from day one. Loved taking things apart, making them better, and putting them back together again. He loved books and maps, and his math skills were off the charts. Don’t even get me started on anything tech related.”

“So he got picked on,” Gem guessed, “and your bad marks were because you were trying to keep an eye on him.”

Nemo nodded. “Totally clueless about the threats around him because he was so deep into his books. It was up to me to protect him . I couldn’t focus on anything because I was constantly worried he’d get the shit kicked out of him, and he probably would have on a daily basis just for being so fucking brilliant.” He shook his head and looked out across the water again. “Did you know he has a master’s in psychology? Did university all online, undergraduate to graduate school. He could be anything he wanted to be. Instead, he’s spent his entire life getting me out of one mess after another.”

“And the trouble with the law?” she prompted.

He groaned and looked back at her. “By the time our ‘father’ bounced out of our lives, I was already on a path hell-bent for destruction. Things just got worse. Our mother was working several jobs just to keep a roof over our heads, the lights turned on, and food in our bellies. Midas got work as soon as he could to try and help out, and it wasn’t always legal. He was so good at computer shit, he had a reputation for never getting caught, and by the time he was sixteen, grown adults were paying him to do who knows what over the internet.

“The only thing I was good at was sports, and I excelled. Midas thinks I could have been an Olympic sprinter. I think he’s crazy, but who knows? I had no direction. Father missing, mother working, Midas hacking. I was left hanging, feeling like I had no skills to contribute, so I ran wild. No dare was too big.”

“Nemo the thief was born,” she said with a grin.

“Yeah. Something was stolen, vandalized, whatever—it was that Sawyer Newton boy. Funny thing is, over half the shit I was accused of, I never did. But I let the reputation build because with each new sin attributed to me, it allowed Midas to shine. I never even told him the stories weren’t true. I just let him believe they were because it was better for him to think I was a fuckup than I was adrift. He just kept fixing shit for me, and he still does. I’m a horrific disappointment to him. He never says it, but I see it in his eyes when he solves yet another problem for me.”

“He loves you, Nemo. He wouldn’t do it otherwise. And clearly, you love him, or you wouldn’t let him believe the lies. Sometimes, we have to mislead others in order to protect them. Midas may have been getting you out of jams all these years, believing he’s protecting you, but the truth is, you are the one protecting him. Sacrificing your own self-worth so that he’s able to do what he does.”

Two sets of blue eyes watched each other. His heart felt near to bursting because, after thirty-one years, someone finally got him. Someone understood who he was behind the brash personality, the infantile pranks, the parade of women, and the constant fuckups. Gem knew him, and she’d probably seen right through him since the day they met.

At that moment, Nemo knew that he wanted to make love to this woman and show her what her own worth was, but he refused to make the first move. This time, it had to come from her. She had to want it, and whatever she wanted, she would get. He wanted to be everything to her, not just a boyfriend.

Boyfriends catered to a girlfriend’s wants.

He preferred to give her what she needed, though. To be her partner because if he could fulfill all the levels of her triangle—basic to self-actualizing—then she wouldn’t have any wants. If he could satisfy her needs, he was demonstrating not just the ability to provide but the ability to nurture and grow.

He almost laughed at himself. For years, he had been chasing ass—and could you really call it a chase when most of the time, all it took was a wink and a smile?—to fulfill his need for Gem in his life. Most nights, he hadn’t even had to buy the girl a drink. She was ready to go. And the encounter would be over in even less time. Just a “Hello there, pretty girl,” an “Oh my, you look like you have a big cock, let’s go,” and a “That was fun.” Not that anyone wanted to be pinned to a restroom wall of a seedy bar for much longer than that, anyway, but sometimes you didn’t even get the third part of that conversation .

But this? With Gem? It was different.

He felt her warm breath on his neck, and her fingertips pressed into the muscles of his shoulder blades. She sighed, but it was so quiet he barely heard her over the waves coming in on the shore. Her face tilted up to his.

“Nemo? I want you.”

Instantly, his lips crashed onto hers. She wanted him! He couldn’t resist that if he tried. He didn’t want to hear logic and reasoning as to why they shouldn’t. All he wanted to hear was her panting breath in his ear as he worshiped her. Ruined her. Loved her.