Page 46 of Jonesing for a Spy

20

dysfunctional dance

Mirren

Please let the man be baiting me. How do you confuse Pat Benatar songs when the reference is so spot on?

Strider

You’re too young for that reference.

Mr. Anderson, are you fishing?

Your brother is my age, but those songs are your parents’ generation. How do you know it?

My parents always had music on while we were growing up. Besides, I saw 13 Going on 30.

Um, hold that thought.

It’s not a full minute before his next message.

That movie is as old as you.

Again with the fishing. I’m twenty-seven, thank you very much.

My phone rings, and it scares me enough to fumble it, answering it as it tumbles. “Shit. Damn. Hold on.”

The chuckle that rumbles through the line vibrates along my sternum as I collect my phone.

“Hey.” I’m surprised and annoyed, so why do I sound breathless?

“Hey, baby,” his smooth, rich voice replies. “Did you have a good day?”

Not really. No.

I told my dad about you.

“It was fine.”

He’s silent on the other end of the line for longer than I’m comfortable with. “Strider?”

“That’s the last time, Freckles.”

“Last time what?”

“That’s the last time you lie to me. Next time, I’m gone.” There’s no way to describe his tone other than cold, lethal. “Wholly, completely, absolutely without another thought or another chance. Gone.”

Well, that took a turn.

I want to get my back up. I want to be angry at the way he speaks to me. And I am, but I know the other thing warring in his voice. It’s pain.

“Tell me—” I don’t offer an apology, even if I should, because it wasn’t a lie. It wasn’t me trying to deceive so much as it was trying to not say I struggled dropping off a man I hardly know, feeling like a piece of my soul was shredded as it was ripped away from me, especially after just a handful of days. “You’ve said it before, that you hate lies, but I want to know why. Who lied to you? And what was it about? Your reaction is… visceral.”

His exhale is so deep and so swift, it’s audible. “I have an autoimmune condition. My body attacks my blood. It’s serious.”

Shit. If I had to guess one hundred times where he would go, I’d never have started here. I’d assumed a girl. “Okay.”

“My parents didn’t want to worry me, so they lied to me when they got the diagnosis. I didn’t even know I was sick until I was eleven. Years they kept me out of school, or fed me pills, or controlled my behavior through some kind of complicated half-truths. They said they didn’t want me scared, but…”