11. Violet #2
The pause before equipped ran longer than the sentence needed. He was either asking about skill or about something more anatomical, and either way, he wasn't asking it as a hypothetical.
"There's a huge difference between books and reality," I said, careful. "I can't speak for all women, but I know what I'm reading is fiction. Real life is a different thing."
He nodded, but his sharp jaw sat a little tighter than it had a moment ago.
"Still. It would make your partner self-conscious. He'd be constantly trying to outdo what he physically can't match."
I set the sweater down. "I'm not responsible for managing a grown man's fragile ego. If he feels insecure next to literal fictional characters, that's his problem to solve, not mine."
He stared at me, then laughed, a deep sound, his head dipping forward. "That's really something, Violet."
"Why do you ask?"
He shrugged. "Only curious." He picked up a thick stack of books and set them gently into the box. "Has any real man you've been with ever met your high expectations?"
My jaw nearly hit the floor. "I can't believe you're interrogating me about my sex life right now."
He looked unbothered. "Do you find the topic uncomfortable?"
"It makes a person assume you have an ulterior reason for asking."
"What do you think my reason is?"
I looked at him, holding my tongue.
The answer that sprang to mind, the one sitting heavy right behind my teeth, was that he was asking because he was interested.
Because he wanted to know what I expected, and whether he could meet it.
Because a man didn't interrogate a woman about her sexual expectations unless he was plotting to become relevant to the answer.
That was the confident answer my instincts fed me. It was also, very possibly, the delusional answer of a woman who'd been secretly writing a steamy slow-burn romance novel about her boss for months and had started dangerously confusing her own fiction with her reality.
I was not going to say any of that out loud.
"I don't know," I lied instead. "So, will you finally tell me why you're asking?"
He smiled, wicked. "Tell me, Violet, are you at all curious about mine?"
My heartbeat climbed into my throat.
"Our conversations are always crossing lines," I managed. "Why do we keep leaning into that instead of just being normal friends?"
He burst out laughing, a bright sound that wiped the grief from his face and made him look years younger for a second. "That's really good. All right. Let's talk about something else. Tell me about yourself."
I thought about the request a moment.
There wasn't much to say. The only real things I could point to were the secrets I never spoke out loud to anyone: my fractured relationship with my family, my unconditional friendship with Sloane, and the terrifying fact that I was standing in a messy room with the man I'd been writing a romance novel about for months, and he was casually asking me to tell him about myself.
None of those were things I could confess.
"I really don't have anything interesting," I deflected.
He shook his head, refusing to let me hide. "I don't believe that." He looked at me steady, piercing. "I look at you and I think you're just like an onion."
I burst out laughing, the tension breaking. "What do you mean by that? I'm not an onion."
"You absolutely are." He insisted on it. "It's like each new layer would make someone cry. Talk to me."
I hesitated, weighing the risk. Then I offered a small smile. "Okay. My family and I aren't on the best of terms right now."
He leaned against the wall, crossing his arms. "There it is. That's definitely something."
I smiled, sad, and nodded.
"They had high expectations I didn't meet," I summarized. "I'm sure you can't relate to that feeling at all."
He looked at me with something quiet and kind in his face. "I really can't," he agreed, dry. "I'm far too successful."
I laughed despite myself.
"Enough about me."
He lifted a skeptical eyebrow. "That was way too short."
"I really don't have anything else to tell you. You already know the rest of it."
His jaw tightened. Just a small flinch, lasting a second, the hard muscle ticking under the skin.
I saw it, and I knew what it meant. Elena.
The loss was woven through everything, through the company, through his hollow house, through every room he walked into, and I wasn't going to push on that fresh bruise.
Not here, not standing in the middle of my ruined apartment surrounded by cardboard boxes, not when his jaw had just given away that much pain.
"Sure," I agreed quietly. "Let's move on. We're both pretty boring people anyway."
He laughed under his breath, and we finished packing.
By the time we taped up the last box, it was too late to head back to the office. We stood in the center of the emptied apartment, the boxes stacked near the front door, and he looked at me, expectant.
"So, where are you moving to?"
I shook my head, rubbing my tired eyes. "I have no idea. I'll just get a hotel for now."
He looked at me with a particular expression, his head dropping in exasperation. "You have to be kidding me. You'd rather spend an absurd amount of money on a sterile hotel room than just come home with me?"
I froze.
Come home with me. He said it plainly, no heavy romantic weight attached. And I stood there in my gutted apartment, clutching a heavy box of paperbacks, and tried very hard to be a logical, reasonable person about the offer.
"Simon, I can't just move in with you," I argued, weak. "I can't just—"
"Stop talking."
He hoisted one of the heaviest boxes without effort, tucked it under his arm, and walked straight out the door.
I stood frozen in the empty apartment and watched him leave. I'd really thought it would be one night. Two at the most. A brief, annoying inconvenience, a problem that would resolve itself by the weekend when Sloane got back and I could crash with her while I sorted out a new lease.
But Simon was already hauling my possessions to his car, and come home hadn't sounded temporary. Somewhere in the blurry space between the lobby last night and this moment, I'd stopped being a stranded houseguest and started being something else, something I didn't yet have a clean word for.
I picked up the last box and followed him out.
Marta was bustling in the kitchen when we got back to the house. She heard the front door open, appeared in the hallway wiping her hands on a dishcloth, and looked at the stacked boxes Simon was carrying, then at me.
"Welcome back," she said, level, her sharp eyes darting once between us before she turned back toward the kitchen.
"Thank you, Marta."
Simon set the boxes down in the center of the living room and turned to me. "You can leave them down here for now. I'll have someone sort them out tomorrow."
I shook my head. "I'd rather take them upstairs now."
He studied me for a long second. Then, without a word of protest, he picked up the two heaviest boxes and started hauling them up the stairs.
I grabbed the rest. We made two quiet trips, and by the end of it, everything I owned was stacked neatly against the wall of the guest room.
I stood in the doorway, staring at all my worldly things sitting inside his house, then stopped looking and went back downstairs.
"Dinner's ready," Marta called from below.
We headed back down. Marta was setting the last steaming dish on the dining table when we walked in.
"Where's Olivia?" I asked, looking around.
"She's already in her room and fast asleep," Marta reported. She looked pointedly at the two of us. "Sit. Eat."
We sat.
The long table felt different with only two plates on it. The dinner-table quiet was much softer than the tense car silence had been, domestic and peaceful, the kind that settles when a grueling day is finally done.
We ate for a few moments without talking. He reached for the bread basket. I refilled my water glass.
Then he spoke. "Seeing as we apparently have nothing to talk about, we could always circle back to our earlier conversation."
I shook my head at once. "No."
He tilted his head, innocent. "Why not?"
"No reason," I lied.