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"I can imagine," she sighed. "But you shouldn’t let that keep you from-"
"Maybe if I met the right guy," I replied. "A guy I knew I could trust with it. But there aren’t exactly a lot of those working in this industry, you know?"
"I guess you’ve got a point," she agreed, smiling slightly. "You want a drink?”
"Fuck, yes," I replied, and she laughed again. I eyed her as she went to grab me a beer, trying to work out just how she really felt about this – was she being honest with me, but she seemed to put forward this front that it didn’t bother her? Was she telling the truth, or was she just barely holding in her disgust at the thought of me being attracted to guys? Her expression didn’t seem to shift when we broke eye contact. Maybe she really didn’t mind...
She handed me the beer, and I snapped back into the moment. If she was going to be the first person I spoke to about this, then I wanted her to be straight with me.
"Be honest," I told her. "Would that put you off a guy, if you were interested in dating him?”
She paused for a moment, as though considering the question. I watched her carefully. I didn’t know how she was going to react to this. I mean, I knew that I was attracted to her, but now I had said that, I might well have just blown my chances with her...
"No, it wouldn’t," she replied, locking eyes with me once more. "I think it could be...kind of hot, actually."
"Hot?" I replied, surprised.
"Yeah," she nodded, her teeth resting on her bottom lip for a moment, a slight pink tinge warming her cheeks. "I mean, we could talk about hot guys together, maybe even, I don’t know..."
She trailed off. I got the feeling I knew where her mind was going. I raised my eyebrows.
"Oh, like that, huh?” I asked, chuckling. "I didn’t know you were wild like that, Jo."
"Neither did I," she laughed. Oh, there it was, the tension between us again, but this time, it seemed to have shifted in tone – shifted to something a little more honest, something a little more open. I wasn’t concealing a part of myself from her now.
"So you think some women might be into that?" I remarked. "In theory, I mean?"
"In theory, I guess they could be," she agreed, her eyes sparkling. She had been so reserved when I’d first come down here to talk to her, clearly not exactly warming to me after what had happened the day before, but right now, she couldn’t keep the smile off her face.
She sighed and glanced down at her watch.
"I should get down to work," she told me reluctantly. "But maybe we could talk about this later, yeah? If you want to, I mean."
"I think I would," I replied. Knowing that she didn’t see this as a turn-off – knowing that, if anything, she actually saw it as a plus – made the attraction to men that I had been doing my best to hide all of this time seem a whole lot more appealing. And yeah, I knew I couldn’t just expect other people’s acceptance of it to turn into a personal embrace of this, but damn, it helped.
"I’ll catch you later, then," she told me, and she flashed me another smile before I turned to leave her to it. My mind was racing with the shock of what I had just done – not just the shock of the confession, but the shock of how she had taken it, too.
Maybe there were more people out there who would have handled the news the same way. It would have been worth considering, right? Guys who I met through this line of work who were hiding their own secrets, looking for the perfect time to meet someone and...
Yeah. And. I didn’t exactly know where that led, but I liked the thought of it, liked the possibility that seemed to hang in the air when I thought those words to myself.
Could Avda have been one of those guys? I had no fucking idea, and there wasn’t a chance in hell I was going to complicate our already-antagonistic relationship by trying to read more into it than I knew was there. I mean, yes, I did think he was attractive – and my bad attitude towards him had been a way of getting him to pay attention to me, that much I could tell now.
The last thing I needed was to get ahead of myself, and let myself get distracted by the thought of what might happen, when I was only just wrapping my head around all of it myself. Whatever came after this, whatever came next, at least I had finally been honest with myself about my desires – I had finally come clean about everything that I had tried to hide for so long, and damn, there was a part of me that felt really, really good about it.
And that part of me was curious to find out if Jo really meant it when she told me she found it hot.
Chapter Twelve – Avda
"I think it’s my turn," I told Kyra, as I lay on the floor beside her, a battered old Monopoly set spread out on the floor in front of us. Jo was helping her play with me, and, despite my best efforts, I was well and truly getting my ass kicked by the two of them.
"No way!" Kyra replied, frowning up at her mom. Jo grinned down at her and dropped a kiss on top of her head.
"I think we’re going to have to hold off on the rest of this game tonight," she told Kyra gently. "It’s getting late, and you need to be up for school tomorrow."
"Promise we’ll play again?" Kyra asked me seriously, and I extended my hand to her as though I was making a serious business deal.
"You have my word," I replied, and she shook my hand. Jo laughed, shaking her head at us, and rose to her feet to get Kyra ready for bed as I tied away the rest of the Monopoly pieces.
