Page 8 of Baby for My Ex’s Dad

4

MAXIM

She recovers before I do. It’s cute in a way, insulting in another. The fact that she can speak so soon after means I’m not finished.

I’m flat on my back with my pulse still concluding its business, and beside me, the woman who threw wine at me has already found her voice again. It comes out changed. The nerves from the elevator have burned off, and what’s left is loose, warm, and meandering.

“… so, I told him the fountain was hideous, but he didn’t listen. Neither did the vendor—you should have seen his face when I said it. And then, the ice sculptures that were invoiced were swans but delivered as geese. The invoice said ‘swan-adjacent,’ which should have been my first warning, because nothing good has ever been adjacent, and so what comes off the truck is basically two hundred pounds of frozen goose with attitude, and I’ve a vendor on the phone telling me that from the correct angle⁠—”

“Thea.”

“—from the correct angle it reads as swan, which, no angle exists, I checked, I walked all the way around it⁠—”

“Thea.”

She stops. In the glowing light, her shining green eyes find mine, and there’s no apology anywhere in them. I’ve never seen their equal. They appear as if they’re lit from within, a shade one might call mint. I call it the Light of Venus. When I was a boy, the planet was depicted as green on old science fiction book covers, and here I am, next to two of them.

Two of them paired with a mouth that cannot stop rambling.

Every part of her tells a story, from her glassy cocoa-brown hair to her generously curvy body. The faint strawberry birthmark at the nape of her neck begs to be nibbled and sucked. Each freckle on her shoulders demands the same. Her body speaks to me, none more so than those succulent lips.

I’ve spent years in rooms where every person calculated each syllable before troubling me with it, and this woman narrates ice poultry at one in the morning because the thought arrived and she saw no reason to detain it.

It’s as though her very soul wishes to communicate, but never had the chance.

“You’re not a talker,” she says. “After. Some people are, some people aren’t, it’s fine, I’ll just⁠—”

I put my hand over her mouth.

Her eyes go wide above my fingers. Not with fear. I know what fear looks like at close range, and this isn’t that. This is interest. Beneath my palm, I feel her decide not to bite me.

Instead, she waits.

“I’m not interested in conversation, pet. I say this without insult. The geese were a fine story. But it’s one in the morning, I’ve been awake for thirty hours, and there’s exactly one thing in this city I want to do with what remains of the night, and it doesn’t involve waterfowl.”

She says something into my hand. Muffled, interrogative, two syllables. I lift the palm an inch.

“Then what is it that you do want?”

“Wait here.” I retrieve my box of tricks from my luggage, and when I turn back, she’s pushed up onto her elbows in the ruin of the sheets to watch me, and her attention moves from the small carved box to my face and back, doing math. “Tell me, pet, do you wish to play further?”

Those pouty lips slowly spread into a wary smile as she nods.

I open the box and reach inside. I dangle the tie where she can see it plainly. “Be very sure.”

Her defiant chin comes up. “I don’t say things I’m not sure about. What’s the⁠—”

“Wrists.”

She extends both arms. Just that. No further negotiation, palms up, chin still raised, and I’ve watched hard men take longer to commit to lunch.

“You’re new to this.”

“That wasn’t a question.”

“Tell me.”

She swallows. “Yes… Does that mean we have to stop?”