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“Can I ask a personal question?” he asks, snapping me out of my inappropriate reverie.
I quirk my left human-hair eyebrow wig. “Only if I can ask you two in return.”
His eyes glimmer with amusement. “Traditionally, these things go quid pro quo.”
“I scorn tradition,” I say with mock seriousness. “One personal question for the price of two, final offer.”
“But you will answer anything I ask,” he says. “Truth or Dare rules apply.”
“Deal,” I say and can’t help but feel I might regret it.
“Why did you break up with the book picker-upper?” he asks, his blue eyes narrowing like some truth detection machine.
I was right. I already regret the deal we made. “You mean Bob?”
“If that’s his name,” he says with noticeable distaste. “The person who couldn’t just get himself a new copy of Gödel, Escher, Bach.”
I take a bigger sip of my wine. “I didn’t break up with him. He broke up with me.”
Vlad’s eyes widen—which flashes me back to the other day when he was enjoying himself under my control. “Why would he ever do that?”
The way he puts that question makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside. Except I don’t want to answer that. Not even a little.
He pushes his glasses higher up his nose with one of those lickable fingers. “You want to back out of our quid pro quo?”
I lift my chin. “I already answered your question, so you owe me two answers.”
“You know what I meant to ask.” He picks up his water. “Do you really want to weasel out on a technicality?”
I take yet another sip of wine for bravery. “He thought I was unadventurous.”
Vlad chokes on his water. “Bullshit. You? You’re one of the most daring people I know.”
Whoa. I gape at him. “I am?”
“I’ve seen you do something daring each time we’ve done our testing—and what is that if not adventurous?”
“I guess.” I dubiously survey the nearby tables. “But I haven’t tried the food here.” Or asked him about the perfumed lady.
He waves his hand dismissively. “I bet you could eat it if you wanted to. But why? Food is meant to be enjoyed. If the picker-upper asked you to do something you didn’t feel like doing, that doesn’t make you unadventurous. His labeling you that makes him an asshole, though.”
The waiter brings the food, sparing me from needing to comment on what he said.
He’s not wrong, though. Bob is an asshole. In hindsight, I should’ve broken up with him. But I was busy with my new job at Binary Birch, and I simply didn’t have the mental bandwidth to analyze my relationship. I just kind of went with the flow, even though the sex was at best meh—a situation Bob tried to fix by pushing for ever-more-exotic bedroom acts that I just didn’t feel like doing with him. The final straw was after we came back from Prague, where we’d gone to the succubus show at the strip club—which I’d greatly enjoyed, by the way, due to high production values, topnotch costumes, and great acting. In any case, Bob decided that since I was down for seeing showgirls fist each other on stage, I might be cool with golden showers—and that was a hard no for me. And my hard no pissed off Bob—pun intended—who promptly broke up with me. Though sometimes it seems like he wants me back, because he keeps stopping by my place every once in a while to pick up the few items he left there.
Feeling myself getting riled up all over again—normally, I don’t even like thinking of Bob’s name—I focus on the food in front of me.
It’s the same as last time: yuca and yam fries in bechamel sauce, bluefin tuna fish sticks, quail nuggets, and the fancy cheese quesadillas.
I don’t look too much into Vlad’s selection. As long as it doesn’t crawl from his plate onto mine, I’m happy. In any case, my mind is still churning with unwelcome thoughts of my ex—and more annoyingly, of the mystery perfumed lady.
I really need to do something about the latter before the green monster drives me mad.
“So,” I say when I finish a fish stick and a nugget. “My turn to ask a question.”
Vlad slurps down something I can’t—and don’t want to—identify. “Shoot.”
“Why did your last relationship end?” I ask, pinning him with an intent stare. “Unless… you’re still in it.”
