AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I couldn’t believe this had become my life, these last few weeks or so. Ever since I’d first met Kyra, Jo had been inviting me around a couple of times a week to hang out with the two of them – nothing serious, nothing full-on, just spending some time with the two of them, playing games, cooking dinner, stuff like that. And I...I really liked it.
There was something about the cozy quiet of this apartment that made me feel comfortable, especially when Jo and Kyra were around; Kyra had gotten more and more comfortable around me with every visit, and now, she was challenging me to board games every chance we got. I hadn’t played board games since I had been living with my parents, and it took me back - took me back to those days of being a kid, feeling as though the world was easy and made total sense. The days that, sometimes, I found myself missing, if I was being honest.
Jo came back through once she’d put Kyra to bed, and grabbed the bottle of wine I had brought for us out of the cupboard, pouring us both a generous glass. This had become part of our ritual, too, though nothing more physical had happened between Jo and me since what had gone down in the car. And I wasn’t pushing for anything more, not when this felt as perfect as it did, but I couldn’t help but think it was only a matter of time before we closed that distance between ourselves once more and gave in to the obvious desire there.
"So how was your day?” she asked me, grinning, as she leaned against the kitchen counter and lifted the glass to her lips. I couldn’t help but stare at the way her mouth skimmed across it, the way the liquid teased against her lips, and wish it was my tongue instead.
"Uh, pretty good," I replied, snapping myself back into the moment. I had been working at the other compound across the city, so I hadn’t been seeing as much of her - but honestly, it was probably for the best. I could feel myself getting drawn into her, closer and closer, with every passing day, and spending even more time with her would likely have made that even more difficult to deny.
"How about you?" I asked her. She bit her lip and shrugged.
"You know, the last couple of days have been kind of interesting," she admitted. I raised my eyebrows.
"Oh, yeah?"
"Yeah, I had a really...a really interesting conversation with someone who works at the Flood," she explained. I bristled at once. I got the feeling I knew who this was – Sasha. The only reason she would have avoided giving me his name was if she had been talking to him, because she knew that I wasn’t exactly his biggest fan.
"You did?" I replied, trying to keep my voice neutral. She nodded.
"Yeah, we were talking about...well, they didn’t exactly give it a name, but I guess you would call it...bi-curiosity?" she remarked. I tensed.
"Oh," I muttered.
"We were talking about how hard it is for people to be out and embrace that part of themselves in this line of work," she continued. "How much macho shit there is out there and how difficult it is to look past that..."
"Yeah, that’s how this world works," I replied. My voice was terse, tense. We were skating around the edge of a topic I really didn’t want to have to discuss with her, and I was all too aware of the danger, all too aware of how easy it would have been to slip and blurt something out.
"Don’t you think that’s a shame?" she replied. "That there are probably so many people who can’t live as their true selves because they’re scared of how they’re going to be perceived..."
"It’s worked for a long time," I told her bluntly. "No need to change that."
She frowned at me.
"You really believe that?"
"Yeah, I do," I replied. My head was spinning, but I kept talking, not daring to stop – not daring to let myself give away the truth of what was going through my mind, even for a second.
"So you think that people should just stay in the closet, then," she wondered aloud. "You think they should just hide that part of themselves-"
"If they’re into women as well, I don’t see why it’s a big deal," I shot back. "Why would they need to make a song and dance about it? They can just keep their mouths shut and deal with that in private."
She stared at me, too surprised to speak.
"That’s crazy," she replied. "Why should they have to pretend that part of themselves doesn’t exist? If it’s there, they should-"
"They should keep it to themselves," I fired back. "It’s not like it’s really going to impact their lives."
"How could it not?” she demanded. "How could it not impact their lives? They have to hide a whole part of themselves-"
"Yeah, and they’re better off for it, so they should be glad," I replied. I narrowed my eyes at her.
"It’s Sasha, isn’t it?" I asked her. She paused for a moment – but that pause, that lack of denial, was all that I needed to get to the bottom of this.
"Yeah, that’s what I thought," I muttered, gulping down the wine. Fuck, it pissed me off. Pissed me off that he had gone and talked to her about that, when I was doing my best to keep that shit under wraps. Because I knew how she would see me if she found out. I knew what she would think of me. She might have acted all accepting when it was someone like Sasha, but someone like me, the father of her child, that was going to be a whole damn different story, I was sure of it.
"Why do you say it like that?" she asked me. She sounded defensive, protective of him, almost. Oh, so that was how it was going to be? She was going to stand up for him, when he had acted like a cocky asshole the whole time she had known him?
"Because he’s selfish like that," I replied.
