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Hmm. I guess, if I could do anything—anything—then there are two specific things I’d do. I don’t want to tell Silus either of them, but he’s right in saying this little date will go by quicker if I talk.
“If I could do anything, I’d go to the moon,” I tell him.
He’s clearly not expecting that answer, because his thick, dark brows lift, and he asks, “The moon? Why would you want to go to the moon?”
I shrug. “I don’t know.” Biting my bottom lip, I add, “No, that’s a lie. I do know. I’d go to the moon because I want to look up and see earth in the sky. Big and round, blues and greens in a sea of black… I think it’d be the coolest, most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. And the silence of space—you can’t get a thought to yourself in this city.” I smile to myself. “Plus, it’d be neat to bounce around in low gravity.”
Silus looks taken aback. “You’ve thought about it a lot, haven’t you?”
“Every kid dreams of something big. Some want to be president or ballet dancers or paleontologists finding new dinosaur bones, but I’ve always wanted to go to the moon. Get off this rock.” My voice quiets. “I always knew there has to be something better out there. If I made it to the moon, I don’t know if I’d ever want to come back.”
He leans back in his chair. “Okay, space is off-limits. If you could do or be anywhere on earth, what would it be?”
Either my original answer wasn’t enough for him, or he wants to learn more about me. I don’t know which one annoys me more. Silus has no reason to care; this whole dinner date, in fact, is just a ploy and not a real date. Still, I know he won’t let up until I give him another answer, so that’s what I end up doing.
“If I’m limited to this planet, then I guess I’d want to be in the middle of nowhere. No stores for thirty minutes or more. A house that’s all mine. Not a big one, and it doesn’t have to be new or anything, but it does have acres and acres of land in all directions. No neighbors to be seen. I’d want tall trees, grassy fields, a river or maybe a pond on the property.” I chuckle at myself. “I think I’d like to learn how to garden. It’s not really a useful skill in this city.”
Silus lets out a heavy sigh. “You continuously surprise me, Thea. You constantly remind me that you are not what you seem.”
I shrug. “A lot of people are learning to garden these days.”
“Yes, but typically when asked a question like that, people answer where they’d like to go. A vacation in the tropics, Rome, Paris, that sort of thing. But not you—visit to the moon aside. If you were given the choice, you’d live a quiet life in the middle of nowhere. You don’t think you’d miss the constant hustle and noise of the city?”
“Maybe for a bit, but I think I’d get used to it quickly.”
Silus asks, “What would your brother think of your dream of living so far removed from the city? I know you mentioned your plan, after selling me off to Cormac, was to buy a house somewhere else and get your mother help once she’s released, but you’d have more than enough money to find yourself a ranch out west.”
A sigh leaves me before I say, “Sometimes you make sacrifices for your family. Besides, in life you don’t always get what you want.” I go in for another cheesy bite of pasta. “What would you do if you weren’t shackled to this city? Besides Everest, I mean.”
“I’m not chained here. I could leave, if I wanted to… if I found a reason to.” When he says that, he stares at me a little too hard, and I have to glance away just so I can breathe again. “My brother could handle everything in the city. He’d never leave it. He has the city in his veins.”
“But not you?”
He thinks on it for a while before he tells me, “It might be nice to get away from it all, to be just a man and not someone everyone knows—present company notwithstanding, of course. A house in the middle of nowhere sounds nice, actually. Would you mind if I join you there?”
I chuckle. “Sure, and you can bring a unicorn while you’re at it.”
Silus watches me eat for a minute, and then he asks, “Is it so unbelievable to you that I’d want to join you?”
“Uh, yes? Besides the fact that I don’t think you’d ever leave this city, we also aren’t dating. This—” I gesture between us with my fork. “—is fake. You kidnapped me because I helped kidnap you. We’re not really together. You can’t say you’d want to spend the rest of your life with someone you just met and barely even know.”
“Why not?”
His question, spoken so curiously, makes me speechless. It takes me a good long minute to say, “Because… because it’s just weird. No one does that. This isn’t some cheesy romance movie where the two leads have to fall in love and get together in the span of two hours—an hour and a half after commercials. Life isn’t like that.”
Silus won’t let it go. “And why not? Why can’t life be whatever we make of it?”
I meet his pitch-black stare and tell him, “You’d get bored.”
“Bored of the quiet life, or bored of you? Regardless of what you mean, I don’t think I would. I think, love, you’d constantly surprise me. You’d keep me on my toes, even if it’s just the two of us.”
God, this guy. He just won’t give up, or at the very least he won’t stop saying super weird shit. With a sigh, I say, “It doesn’t matter. It isn’t like I could ever leave Max and my mom. That’s just a fantasy.” The moon or a house in the middle of nowhere; the latter is as unobtainable to me as the former. That house might as well be on the moon.
“Occasionally, fantasies do come to life.”
I say nothing to him—which is fine, since the waiter comes with our entrees. Silus got some kind of chicken alfredo, while the plate that is set before me is full of… chicken fingers and French fries? The waiter even gives me my own personal ketchup in a metal bowl.
When I glance at Silus, I find the man is grinning at me. “After having you for two weeks and seeing how you react to the food I bring you, I’ve come to the conclusion you are a very picky eater and have the palate of a child.”
