Six
SIX
Mia
OKAY, SO APPARENTLY I’d just said that. Aloud . I licked my lips, aware that my choices basically consisted of bolting from the couch and making a run for the front door, after which I’d need to have extensive cosmetic surgery and change my hair color in preparation for moving to New Zealand.
Or, alternately, I could brazen it out.
“What would it look like?” Luca echoed blankly. “Um... well... I guess you’d go up to Byron’s room and have sex with him?”
He looked faintly shell-shocked, which was fair—but his tone lacked the kind of jealous omega rage that one might normally expect in such a situation. Feeling like I’d fallen through a hole into a pitch-black cave system that I would now have to traverse blindly, I forged ahead, feeling my way.
“Just... with him?” I hazarded. “Not with both of you?”
Because, yeah, that was a totally normal question to ask someone you barely knew. Wasn’t it?
Luca made a soft, choked noise.
“It’s only that you kind of made it sound like the bar was a... mutual ... pick-up expedition,” I blundered onward, because that felt marginally less terrifying than trying to backtrack, at this point.
“Oh, my god,” Luca mumbled. “This is a deeply weird conversation to try and have from the opposite direction.”
Abruptly, I hit the outer limits of my popcorn and Dr. Pepper-boosted courage. I started to scramble up from the sofa and found its squishy, well-worn cushions surprisingly difficult to escape.
“Sorry... sorry,” I babbled. “Don’t mind me, it’s late, I should probably be leav—”
Slender artist’s fingers grasped my forearm.
“No, stop,” Luca said, sounding somewhere between tired and mortified. “It’s a totally reasonable question. Sit down. I’m the one who’s sorry.” He paused, frowning. “Huh. We both apologize too much. Thought that was just me.”
Reluctantly, I sank back into the sofa’s quicksand-like embrace.
“Omega thing?” I offered sheepishly, to fill the sudden silence.
“Maybe.” Luca released his light grip on my arm. He turned his body to face me, swinging his feet up on the cushions and hugging his knees to his chest... making himself small. “To answer your question—yes, the singles bar would have been a mutual pick-up, if I’d found anyone suitable. Which I didn’t.”
“Okay,” I said, not sure what else would be appropriate. Especially when I now had a deeply distracting mental picture of Luca and Byron tag-teaming some naked stranger who absolutely did not look like me.
The sharp bite of Byron’s pheromones still permeated the room. I squirmed a bit, cursing my own betraying scent.
“Look,” Luca said, drawing my gaze back to his expressive green eyes. “If you want to get revenge on your husband by having your own hookup, Byron is an A-plus candidate for that. He won’t care that you’re using him as much as he’s using you, and he’ll show you one hell of a good time, no strings attached.”
I swallowed hard.
Luca sighed and continued. “But—and I don’t mean to sound like an asshole, here—that’s a bit too complicated for me. Especially since I already kind of like you. I’m definitely more of a C-minus or D-plus candidate for marital revenge sex.”
It was such an honest answer that it succeeded in jolting me out of my mental porno reel, thank goodness.
Do not tell him how hot you think he is , I coached myself in firm tones. Do not, under any circumstances, say anything to make it sound like you were using his friendly invitation for a movie night to get at his hot alphas. Because for one thing, that would make you an asshole, and for another, it’s not even true .
“You know what?” I said. “I think I need a friend more than I need another nail in the coffin of my marriage.”
Luca looked relieved, though it might just have been because it meant he could change the subject to something less awkward.
“Cool. In my experience, relationship drama is more entertaining in movies than it is in real life.” He seemed to waver for a moment, then he pulled out his phone and started thumb-typing. “I’m texting you Byron’s number anyway, though. That way, you’ll have it if you ever need to bring out the big coffin-nailing guns. You can bypass me completely and do whatever you need to do.”
My phone was still turned off to thwart any pissy texts from Nat that might be coming my way. I resisted the urge to pull it out and check my messages. I didn’t manage to resist my body’s small, internal shiver of... what? Anticipation? Excitement?
When the hell had my brain decided it was excited by the prospect of cheating on Nat?
It’s not cheating , I reminded myself. We have an open marriage. Apparently .
“Okay, thanks,” I said. “I think.” Narrowing my eyes, I examined him for any subtle signs of jealousy that I might have missed earlier. “And... you’re really okay with that? I know you said at the bar that you and Zalen weren’t together. But aren’t you and Byron together? I mean, if you’re bringing home people to, um... share .”
Not your business, not your business , my conscience chanted.
Except... if Luca was setting me up with Byron, it kind of was my business.
Green eyes slid away from mine. Luca let his phone fall onto the sofa cushion next to his hip.
“It’s not what you’re thinking,” he said, sounding tired. “Byron and Zalen help with my heats sometimes, that’s all. The rest is... stress relief, I guess you’d say? It doesn’t really mean anything. I’m not exactly mating material.”
Once again, I stifled the urge to unpack someone else’s baggage. Fortunately, the little voice in my head that occasionally steered me toward good life choices screamed ‘ danger, danger, do not proceed!’
I actually listened to it, for once.
“Got it,” I said. “But promise me that if I accidentally step on your toes in any way, you’ll tell me? I wasn’t kidding earlier when I said I needed a friend more than I need a bit of action on the side.”
Even when the action was hotness in a three-piece suit .
Luca waved the words away. “I don’t own Byron’s dick. You’re not stepping on anyone’s toes.”
I tried not to read anything into the fact that he didn’t add, ‘ and Byron doesn’t own mine .’ He probably thought it went without saying.
I couldn’t stop the small, nervous laugh that escaped. “Well, for what it’s worth, I’m not really ‘ action-on-the-side’ material. I think I just have a slight weakness for tattoos and rumpled three-piece suits.”
To my relief, Luca only snorted. “Don’t we all.”
I’d half-expected an interrogation from Nat the following morning. But when I finally checked my phone after pulling into the driveway, there had been no angry, butt-hurt texts waiting for me. Nat’s office door was still firmly shut, and I gathered he was sleeping on his futon. By the time I woke up, he was already gone, presumably to the gym.
I couldn’t decide if the icy cold shoulder was better or worse than another fight would have been. In the end, I went back to sleep until it was time to shower and go to the restaurant. Nat was already there, and the walk-in was freshly stocked with asparagus, at least. What minimal amount of conversation we exchanged was clipped and businesslike.
Only later that night, when we were back at the house, did he finally acknowledge that I’d left and gotten back well after one a.m.
“You’ve clearly got your own thing going on, Mia. Maybe it would be best if we focused on the restaurant. The rest of this isn’t working, and it hasn’t been for a long time.”
“Yeah, I’d noticed,” I told him, hating the way my inner omega wanted to cringe and grovel in the face of his emotional distance.
And then, he left.
Was he running to the arms of a lover? Staying at a hotel because he couldn’t stand the sight of me? Sleeping on a bench in the changing room at his twenty-four-hour gym?
Unless I stooped to monitoring his credit card, I had no idea. And that assumed he only had the card that I knew about.
The next couple of weeks fell into an uncomfortable pattern where we interacted the bare minimum necessary. I texted with Luca a few times and met him for a morning coffee once, but I resolutely didn’t use the number he’d given me for Byron. Things were plenty complicated already without adding that particular wrinkle.
Service at the Elderflower Inn continued to suffer. The staff was, understandably, on edge. There was nothing quite as catastrophic as that terrible dinner service on the night I’d visited Luca, but the quality of the food was suffering, and so was the front-of-house atmosphere.
Worst of all, the entire time it felt as though a guillotine was hanging over my head in the form of a Michelin star review. It took many positive visits for the inspectors to grant a star, but only one or two bad ones to take that star away.
If the forum gossip had been right... if an inspector had happened to show up on our worst night, and they happened to be one of the customers whose order was incorrect...
If a different inspector happened to follow up while Nat and I were dragging our marital shitshow into the kitchen...
I wasn’t kept waiting very long. The letter came twenty-two days after that first, terrible dinner service.
‘We regret to inform you that after multiple anonymous inspections, our inspectors have found a sharp decline in the quality of fine dining at the Elderflower Inn. In fairness to our readers, we are considering removing your one-star status from the Michelin Guidebook. Rest assured that future inspections may eventually result in reinstatement, should the quality return to previous standards ...’
I stared at the words for long minutes, uncomprehending. They blurred and shifted on the page, which rested on the chipped Formica of my kitchen table next to the torn envelope.
Nat wasn’t here. As usual, I didn’t know where he was.
A drop of clear liquid landed on the letter’s formal closing. Sincerely yours ...
In the next moment, I was sobbing—collapsing into a worn dining room chair like a puppet with cut strings. I couldn’t breathe. Snot ran from my nose in a river. My eyes felt hot and tight in their sockets.
I wanted to scream, to throw things, to smash furniture.
But all I could do was weep, until my head pounded with pain, and my chest hurt like it was being constricted by a steel band.
Afterward, I lay with my head in my arms on the table for what must have been half an hour at least. Eventually, I peeled myself out of my chair and stumbled to the bathroom to splash icy water on my face. I stared at my reflection in the mirror for more long minutes, not truly recognizing the pasty gray woman with the bloodshot eyes gazing back at me.
Blankly, I pulled out my phone. The text with Byron’s phone number was buried beneath random back and forth with Luca about whatever came into our heads that we’d wanted to share during the last three weeks.
I pulled it up and opened a new text window.
Hi, it’s Mia , I typed. Is that offer of no-strings attached sex still open?
I hesitated, then hit send.
A minute passed, then another.
Just when I was about to turn the phone off in abject humiliation, dots marched across the screen.
Hot rom-com girl? Yeah, sure thing. Meet at a hotel? Where will you be coming from?
Jennings , I texted back, floating inside a gray, fluffy cloud of surreality.
Another pause, then more dots.
I’ll be at the Super 7 North on Broadway in an hour. Ask for a key at the desk under my name.
Then, hard on the heels of that message...
Oh, right. I know you said there wasn’t going to be a spelling test, but text me your last name so I can have that keycard waiting for you.
Dimitriadis , I sent.
See you there , he replied.
I turned the phone off and returned it to my pocket robotically.
“Well,” I told the empty house. “That was a lot easier than I assumed it would be.”