I shook my head. “I got close once, but she ended up getting a job in Perth.”
“Australia?”
I nodded.
“You didn’t want to go with her?”
I took a sip from my wine. “She didn’t want me to.”
“Oh. Ouch.”
I shrugged. “It’s okay. We just got comfortable with each other. Not in a good way.”
“How so?”
“There had never been a reason to break things off. Brenda was super smart and on paper, we looked perfect for each other.”
“On paper?”
“Yeah, we had similar interests and circle of friends. How we ended up together. We met at a dinner party.”
“How positively adult of you.”
I laughed. “It was very adult. My first truly adult relationship. Not a hookup at a convention or vacation fling.”
“Convention? Just what do you do, Dutch?”
I looked down at my bowl, surprised to see it half empty. It had been a while since food had actually sounded good to me, let alone tasted good. “What do you do?”
She stabbed a potato and nibbled on it. “Keeping secrets?”
I took a fortifying sip of my wine. “My job is boring.”
“Programmer? Game designer?” She picked up her glass.
I shook my head.
She sat back, tapping one finger along the stem of the glass. “Drug buyer?”
I set my glass aside and had another bite of fish. “Only in my youth.”
She snorted, then looked around the room. “You have eclectic taste in reading. Researcher?”
“Closer,” I said after I swallowed.
“Librarian?”
“I thought about going into library sciences, but no.”
She patted Mouse’s head then stood up. He stretched out in her space on the couch, happily snoozing. She took the bowl with her as she went to my bookcases. “Folklore, serial killers, myths, a few legends in here.” She tipped her head to the side to read the spines.
I finished my bowl and set it aside, then leaned forward on the couch and linked my fingers between my knees. She was getting closer to my own books.
I’d hidden them on the lower shelf of the bookcase, not wanting to look at them.
I should have left them in the boxes.
She set her bowl on the shelf and I itched to get up and move it, but she turned with a slim white book in her hand. “Author?”
