Page 81 of Total Exposure

He never finished because just then Alexander and Augustine joined us, and drinks were flowing, and we were all talking, and laughing, and you know how it goes.

Why haven’t I fucked her? That’s what he wanted to know.

He asked me again a few days later, but looking back it all started that night. When they took her home and I didn’t join them.

And my answer was, and still would be—if we were still friends, that is—“Because I have the relationship with her that I want.”

I should’ve stuck with that.

Should never’ve let him talk me into it.

Should’ve just walked away.

But of course… I didn’t walk away.

When I’m done writing I leave the book on the countertop for Evangeline to find when she wakes up.

She’s stuck in her own privileged childhood.

I have decided that’s her problem. Her mind didn’t mature with her body. She never developed coping mechanisms as a teenager.

Why?

It’s easy to assume. I mean, she was a child prodigy. Literally born a genius. Celebrated for her talent. Paraded all over the world to perform, applauded by the most important people imaginable.

Maybe never even told no.

That’s the assumption, anyway.

But I’ve learned a thing or two about assumptions over the years. And it’s almost never that simple.

I hold myself up as Exhibit A.

If you were looking at me from a distance, like… say… that sheriff back up in Wyoming, you’d see what everyone sees. Scruffy-faced, thirty-something man with no direction or purpose, who spies on people to make money.

If you were a little closer you might see the trust fund. The exile from the wealthy family. The aimless wandering. The loss.

But you’d have to be really intimate with me to see who I really am. What really happens inside my head. You’d have to be Jordan, for example. Because he’s the only one who knows me.

It’s a secret he’ll keep, I have no doubt. It’s not in his best interest for people to see the real me. Because then they might see the real him.

I ran into Augustine once. About four years ago. Few years after all that other shit happened, so she hated me at the time. She didn’t even know I was there, probably. I had been erased, for lack of a more literal term.

I didn’t say anything to her. Didn’t offer up an explanation. Didn’t defend myself or my actions. Because she wasn’t interested. She threw me back the day we sat in that conference room with our respective lawyers and dissolved our business partnership.

Over.

I was the glue. That was the only thought that swept through my mind that day she pretended I didn’t exist.

I was the fucking glue.

She just never knew it.

Jordan was there too. Smiling in that fucking suit of his.

The only thing that kept me from walking over to him and kicking his ass was the fact that he and Augustine weren’t together. She didn’t even look at him. I mean, she didn’t look at me, either, and he wasn’t the one she hated. That was me.

But it was clear, whatever they had was over. Long time ago.