Page 28 of The Hardest Hit

“Entirely,” he agreed, and she found herself laughing at his blatant honesty. In Georgia, she had never been naked. After sex, she’d been up and clothed in short order. She had always wished she were brave enough to be more of a nudist but privately thought her boobs were a bit too floppy to be wandering around naked. She looked at Evan and made a decision.

“Well, I don’t mind being naked, but I’d rather come down and watch you cook.”

“As long as you stay naked, you can do whatever you want,” he said with a shrug.

“Oh,” she said, suddenly remembering the layout of his condo. “Doesn’t that mean that half the city is going to see me in your living room?”

He grinned. “No, there’s a coating on the glass. You’re safe.”

“Oh, all right then.”

Ten minutes of making out later, Olivia was nakedly drinking wine while Evan made dinner in his boxers and t-shirt, which he deemed necessary for cooking purposes. She watched him moving around his kitchen with the easy familiarity of someone in their element.

“What do you do for a living?” she asked.

“I’m an investment manager.”

She tried to square that with what she knew about him. Every financial guy she’d met since moving to the city had been a complete douchebag. She could see his career working with the condo, but it didn’t seem to match the comic books and the way he’d leapt to her rescue.

“That doesn’t seem like you.”

“It’s what I do,” he said with a shrug. His face seemed to close off a little.

“But do you love it?” she asked.

He stared at her. “That isn’t a priority,” he said after a moment.

“For who?” she asked, laughing. “You do realize, that our entire generation is predicated on pursuing our true passions?”

“Um, I’m pretty sure mine was predicated on doing what my grandmother told me to do.”

“That also doesn’t seem like you,” she said.

“You haven’t met my grandmother,” he said.

She realized that a line of tension head formed in his back and had been there since she asked about his work. She was making him uncomfortable.

“Evan?”

“Yes,” he said, smiling at her, but it seemed a little forced.

“Here are the rules: I’m prone to asking completely the wrong thing and not noticing, so if you want me to stop, you have to tell me to stop. I won’t mind.”

“You can ask,” he said, with a real smile. “And I’ll even answer. It just doesn’t make me happy.”

“Then tell me something about yourself that does make you happy.”

He stared at her as if she’d asked for the moon. The silence stretched on and she had a nervous thought that he wouldn’t have anything.

“I speak halfway decent Japanese, but I’ve never taken a class.”

“Have you been to Japan? Wait, yes you have because you said you were on a layover in Tokyo.”

“I go a couple of times a year for work.”

Olivia sighed in hopeless jealousy.

“You like Japan?”