For a moment, I didn’t think he was going to respond.
“Don’t ask questions you already know the answer to, malyshka.”
It was one.
And it was me.
The knowledge wiggled a heavy feeling in my chest. A feeling that felt too close to panic, yet far enough away it eluded me.
Elena sat at a booth with catering and party pamphlets spread across the table, telling her hovering mother, “No, Mamma, she doesn’t like pink.”
Celia threw her hands up. “She’s having a girl, Elena!”
“She wants to do green.”
“Green?”
I chose to let them finish that conversation and poured myself a glass of iced tea from the pitcher on the bar.
“I’ll tell you what, tell me your favorite drink. I’ll take you home and make the best one you’ve ever had right now.”
I smiled. “I like it, very original. However, might go over smoother if you didn’t live with your uncle.”
Benito Abelli had offered a new ridiculous pickup line every time he’d seen me since we first met. It was fun, and harmless, and usually brought a smile to my face.
Elena’s cousin leaned against the bar beside me. “The basement is all mine, baby. Even has its own entrance.”
I laughed. “You really know how to tempt a woman. I’m not really a basement kind of girl, though.”
He pushed a strand of hair behind my ear. “And what kind of girl are you?”
“Flighty.” The voice held the slightest clench of his teeth.
I tensed.
Because that word came from the man I’d been sleeping with for the last week. The one who washed my hair and reverted to Russian when he fucked. I caught his form in the bar mirror as he passed behind me.
He’d just insulted me.
We’d done it all the time. It’d been all we used to do. But now, it felt like . . . betrayal. An unsettling feeling roiled in my stomach.
“Ouch,” Benito murmured.
“He means, perfect,” I said. “He’s obviously gotten the terms confused. Easy to do when there’s so much air in your head.”
If looks were tangible, the one he gave me before disappearing down the hall toward the basement entrance would have been a sharp spank to my ass.
I’d seen him naked and heard him come, but with clothes on, in public, our differences were glaringly obvious. Him, the cold, strait-laced professional. Me, the jobless, flighty girl who was still trying to get her life together.
I stayed at the club for an hour, trying to help Elena and her mamma find common ground between their disputes, but unfortunately, there wasn’t a color between pink and green that would suffice, so that argument remained at a standstill.
As I watched the clock close in on nine that night, anxiety swelled in my chest. I didn’t know what to expect from him when he arrived. Would he act like nothing happened today? I had more respect than to allow him to insult me in public and then screw me in private, right? Though, it did create a boundary that reminded me this was just sex. And over the last few days, the things he’d said to me had blurred the line.
But, as the clock ticked by, a niggling doubt arose that maybe he’d realized how different we were and decided to end this.
Nine turned to ten, and ten turned to eleven.
He never came.