Page 24 of Omega

“You never felt anything for any of them?”

He was quiet for a moment. “Hmmm. That’s not what I thought you were going to ask.”

“What were you expecting?”

He hesitated. “A number.”

“I don’t think I want to know the number.”

“Probably not,” he agreed.

I didn’t even like that answer, as vague as it was.

“No, I never felt anything for any of them. I didn’t let myself. I…I didn’t let them get close to me, see the real me, and I didn’t try to get to know them. I didn’t want to.”

“Did it ever backfire, the proposal? The contractual casualness of it?”

“Yes. More than once. If they got clingy, started asking too many questions, demanding things that smacked of intimacy, if they got too personal, I’d send them home. That happened…not frequently, but more than I liked. I suppose it was inevitable. This is going to make me sound like an ass, but I’m going to say it anyway: if you present women with the unobtainable, a mysterious man, however unapproachable, however cold or distant, however clearly he may make his intentions, there will always be those who try to…get him. Change him. Make him hers. Someone will always think she’s different.” There was truth in his words, and in his preface to the statement.

“And me?” I asked.

“You didn’t try, Kyrie. You triednotto. You were you; you played by the rules and just tried to get through it with your own heart intact. But…you were different from the beginning. It was always different between us. I tried to convince myself otherwise, but it was in vain.” He tilted my face up again. Kissed me slowly, gently. “Can we be done rehashing the past, Kyrie? Please? I don’t like to think of that any more than you do. That’s not why were here; we’re here for the future—our future together. Let’s just focus on that, all right?”

I nodded, reached up and clung to his neck. “I like that plan.”

“Me too.”

5

LAYLA, THE NOPE-FISH

I found Layla by the pool, lying in a lounge chair, clad in a neon-orange bikini that would have fit in a Tic-Tac box with room to spare. God, I loved her, but she dressed like a skank sometimes. She had huge round bug-eye Audrey Hepburn shades on her face and her hair pulled up in a sloppy knot.

I had a glass of sweet white wine in each hand, and I extended one to her as I took the lounge chair beside her.

She accepted it, took a sip. “If you gotta be exiled from everything you know…this is the way to do it.”

“Right? Roth has amazing taste.”

“This place is awesome. I could hang out here for a minute.” She still wasn’t looking at me.

“Layla.”

“I’m enjoying the sunshine and this really tasty wine. I don’t want to get into it.”

“Dude.”

She swiveled her head on the chair back. “Don’t ‘dude’ me, Key. It’s fine. I’m fine. Everything’s fine.”

“I’m a woman too, Layla. You can’t fool me with the ‘it’s fine’ bullshit.”

She laughed at that. “Okay, well then…whatever. It’s not fine, but I still don’t want to fucking get into it. We’re cool, I just need a minute to figure my shit out.”

“We’re not cool. I have no clue what’s going on with you.” I grabbed her bottle of sunscreen lotion and squirted a dollop into my palm, spreading it onto my arms. “We can’t be keeping things from each other, hon. We’re all either of us has, right now.”

“You’ve got Roth,” she said, pushing her sunglasses higher onto her nose.

“And so do you. We’re a family, Layla.”