Chapter Two
Andrej
“OH, brOTHER DEAREST, where are you?”
My eyes rolled without any input from my conscious faculties. Then, I sighed, and I wasn’t even sure why I was sighing. “Where am I ever, Sofia.”
She grabbed the edge of the door and dramatically pulled herself into the room. “Andrej. Brother. Are you aware that your parents are going to be hosting a major party in a week and you are expected to attend?”
“I am.” But I had almost forgotten. I wished I had. I also knew what this question precipitated—so I chorused with her.
“Did you find a date?”
Sofia narrowed her eyes. “Anj, seriously.Mom and dad are just worried that you spend too much time isolated and you’re going to be alone.”
“Alone and lonely aren’t the same.”
“Ah, the defense is already up,” she said, leaning on the door frame. “Come on, brother. Please. Try?”
I put the pen down and sighed. “Sofia. I have. I have tried. I would love to find someone who I could spend my life with, laughing, love making and living. But every. single. date. sees me as not much more than a money bag. A sugar daddy. A marriage with a prenup entitling them to half of whatever I got after they spit out 2.5 kids and trap me into dealing with them my whole life.”
Her eyebrows rose. “Cynical much, brother dear?”
“Only as much as I need be.”
My sister stood from her lean and walked to the bed to take a seat. Bad sign: sister settling in.
“Andrej, we all want you happy. If you think hiding away as one of the most eligible bachelors in Seattle society is going to shield you from the blood sucking leeches, you’re wrong. They’ll find you. They seduce you—”
“They’ll try.”
“They’ll do it.”
“Not if I’m not around to be gotten.”
She took The Deep Breath, and I knew I was in for some kind of grilling. “Are you really very serious about hiding away for life? You don’t ever want to find someone to spend your life with?”
“Everything I have tried has been an unmitigated disaster, Sofia. I don’t want to spend my life with someone who only sees the dollar signs and not the person who would be there for any reason any time.”
She cocked her head and studied me. “Are you ace?”
I lifted an eyebrow. “An ace? Like a World War II flying ace? Ace of spades? Which is a great song by Iron Maiden, by the way—”
“Aroace, Andrej. Aromantic asexual. Ace.”
She was losing me even more. “I’ve had sex….”
“Aromantic. You don’t feel romantic attraction despite being in a situation or relationship where it should have been there. Or asexual—where you don’t like or don’t want sex.”
“I’ve had sex—”
“That means nothing. Look, I’m trying to help you here. If you’re in the ligitibqua community—”
“The friggin’ what ?”
She laughed. “LGBTQIA community. Ligitibqua. Someone’s mother tried pronouncing it on Tiktok—oh, never mind.
If you’re in the rainbow spectrum, I’m trying to figure out a way to break that to our parents.
That they aren’t going to have a regular picket fence-two kids-lovely wife situation with you, and they need to back off with the finding a partner thing. So. I ask again, are you aroace?”
“No?” I answered.
Sofia pinched the bridge of her nose. “Okay. So, you’ve felt romantic attraction.”
“Yeah, I mean, you remember me and Fern in high school. We were nearly inseparable, and that was a good, healthy normal relationship.”
“You slept together?”
“Yes, that we did. It was nice.”
She raised both eyebrows. “Nice. Well. Okay then, possibly on the asexual spectrum.”
“The hell, Sofia?” What was she talking about? It was nice. We both had fun, and we were both satisfied.
“Sex should be a little more than nice.” She waved me off. “So you’re interested in sex and romance. Got it. You’re not adverse to those.”
“Never said I was.”
Shaking her head, she huffed out a breath. “Not everything is straightforward, brother dear. Sometimes things are very, very complicated and complex. Certainly, sex and sexuality are. You may change the way you look at things and feel about things as you get older and find other experiences.”
“Well, that’s fine, but what are you trying to do here?”
“Figure out if I can rent you a date or if that’s going to far.”
I froze. “Excuse you?”
“Rent a date. Come on, if you were aroace, I would tell mom and dad to back off completely and let you figure this out. But if you’re not, then I’m going to continue to bother you and figure out what we can do to get mom and dad off your back about a date for the party, so you don’t feel the pressure while you’re studying for your exams.”
That… actually made a lot of sense to me. My licensure exams were coming up and the firm didn’t want to hire me full time unless I had a PE license. I’d put off both the FE and PE exams too long. “So, you rent me a date, mom and dad back off for now and I can just worry about the exams.”
“Precisely.”
I stared at her. “There’s a catch.”
“There’s no catch.”
“There is absolutely a catch.”
“I already booked the date for you.”
“Jesus Christ, Sofia!”
“What? I know what I’m doing. You can trust me. You also have to trust me.’
“My IQ is somewhere around one forty-five, one fifty, and I have no idea what you just said.”
She laughed and jumped up from the bed. “Just trust me, big bro. I know you and I know what I’m doing. Be open-minded and you might actually have a good time.”
“I doubt that,” I grumbled.
With a quick boop on my nose, she pranced out of the room. “Trust Sofia. She knows what she’s doing!”
Oh, third person. I was really in deep with this hairbrained scheme of hers. I stared at my screen, my eyes unfocusing wondering what she was getting me into.
And at the same time, she was saving me a lot of pain and anguish from listening to my mother complain that I wasn’t seeing anyone, I wasn’t interested in dating anyone.
I was interested, but Sofia knew—everyone I had dated in the past four years had seen nothing more than my family’s money.
Or they had thought that I was some kind of freak in bed.
I wasn’t. Vanilla was fine with me. I knew that I was handsome, but I was, despite what my sister thought, a romantic.
I liked the dating and getting to know each other part of the relationship.
I didn’t need to smash immediately. Or even before the 10 th date.
I had always liked to wait. I liked to wine and dine and make that first time special.
That first time had only happened three times. Fern, Joanna and Gillian.
Joanna had been the only one to hang on after that.
With Sofia’s question, and my fingers pressing into my eyes hard enough to cause fireworks behind them, I realized that maybe… maybe I was the problem.
Fern and I had not had much sex after the first time. It was nice but it wasn’t what either of us had thought it would be. We parted when we went to college.
Gillian couldn’t ghost me hard enough after the first time. She was so gone, I still didn’t know what happened to her. Didn’t really matter; we weren’t really compatible anyway no matter how much we liked Star Trek.
Joanna had been sweet. We’d been a great couple, and we’d had a lot of fun. Eventually though, we sat down and had the marriage talk and realized that while we both wanted it, we weren’t in love like we thought we ought to be. We ended as good friends, moving out at the end of the lease.
I’d been in her wedding as a groomsman just three months before. She and her new husband, Doug, were some of my best friends and I really loved that she was so in love with him. He treated her like a precious jewel, too, so it was perfect.
But even when we had been together, there was no steam. No ripping of clothes, no hiked skirt sex against the wall. We would almost always have sex in bed three times a week, and maybe on a Sunday morning.
Scheduled.
I took a deep breath. This was a horrible thing to realize about myself. I was boring in the sack.
I grabbed my phone.
Andrej : Was I boring in bed?
Fern : You… what? It’s been thirteen years since we hit it.
Andrej : yeah, well.
Fern : It was fine, Anj.
Andrej : so it was boring.
Fern : Kinda. I mean we completed the act, but yeah. Kinda boring.
Andrej : was there anything particular? Like… was I too…
Why was I asking this?
Fern : LOL, no. Your offering was more than adequate, trust me on that. You don’t need to worry about that.
Nice to know my dick was big enough. Little bit of an ego boost there.
Andrej : so I’m just boring in bed.
Fern : We were boring in bed. We were seventeen. It was normal. What’s wrong?
Andrej : I am apparently still boring.
Fern : I’m telling you, Anj, when you find the right person, there’s no such thing as boring. Even routine is more than ‘just good.’
Fern : Also, expect a wedding invite.
I gasped out loud.
Andrej : CONGRATS [party emoji]. I’m so happy for you!
Fern : Thank you.
Okay, so I was just boring in bed. How the hell did I solve that?
The screen of my computer flashed with a warning. I was still in the middle of a practice test for the FE license. I still had to figure this out, and I need to stop worrying about my dick and my performance.
I walked to my door and closed and reset the test. I needed to pass this—I had a lot hanging on these licenses.
***
Staring at myself in the mirror, I sighed. I really hated wearing a tuxedo. I didn’t think I looked terrible in it, but it was awful to wear all the starched parts and the stiff fabric.
“You always look good, Anj,” Sofia said from the door.
I spun and gasped. “Sofia…”
She stepped into the room and gave me a little catwalk spin. “You like?”
Her deep purple gown shimmered in the light of the room. She was sporting a one-shoulder, almost backless, thigh-high leg split, skintight, besequinned dress that just… made her. She was stunning, and her dark red hair tumbled down her back in loose, chunky curls.
“Jesus, Sofia. Did you bring a bat?”
“What?”
“You’re going to have to beat the men away from you. Did mom approve that?”
“Better to seek forgiveness than ask permission.”