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“Nothing is wrong.” He dismissed me, again not bothering to glance up. More silence. Another click-click.

Maybe he got what he wanted last night, and now he’s done with me.

I fought the familiar internal battle between my insecurities and basic common sense. It was a real struggle not to imagine the worst.

I’m not my mother. It’s better to ask than assume.

“Look, I understand our arrangement, but do you really need to act so rigid toward me? I mean, we’re not exactly strangers anymore.” I received no answer, just a few more clicks. After several minutes of listening to nothing but his tapping, my patience slowly diminished, and self-doubting instincts began to override all rational thoughts. In the end, conjecture won out. “I’m sorry, but am I interrupting something of vital importance here? Or is it because last night you got your quick fuck, and this is your way of saying sayonara?”

He looked up sharply, eyes piercing through me like knives.

“First of all, you’re not a quick fuck. I don’t want to hear you say anything like that again. Ever,” he spat. “Secondly, you left last night.”

Ohhhh, so that’s what’s got his panties in a bind!

“So, what if I left? I had to work today, and I didn’t have any clothes with me. I had to go.”

And that was the truth. Partially.

“You leave when I say you can leave.”

“Oh, is that how it is? Well, let me tell you—” I started before he abruptly cut me off.

“There were important things that needed to be discussed last night. I only dozed off for a few minutes. That did not entitle you to make an impromptu exit,” he boomed. I felt myself wince. Alexander was not the type to shout, as his quiet authority was enough to get any point across. He must have realized how loudly he was talking because when he began again, his voice had noticeably lowered several decibels. “Did you talk to your roommate last night when you got home?”

“Um…no. She was asleep when I got in. Why?” I asked, completely thrown for a loop by his question.

“That’s one of the things I wished to speak with you about last night. Imagine my surprise when I woke up to find you were gone,” he added with a frown.

“You wanted to talk about Allyson?”

“Not Allyson. My privacy. Remember what I said about keeping my affairs quiet? You cannot tell your roommate about us.”

“It’s going to be sort of hard to hide, Alex. I do live with her after all.”

“I don’t mean about the two of us being together. You can obviously tell her that much, at least. I’m referring to what we do behind closed doors.”

I raised one eyebrow at him in surprise.

If I told Allyson the truth about you, she’d haul my ass to a shrink so fast my head would spin. She would think I had lost my damn mind.

I loved my friend, but I knew she’d never understand. Allyson could not know about Alexander’s naughty bedroom antics.

“Oh, no worries there. I won’t tell Ally,” I quickly assured him. But after I gave him the promise, I immediately felt a small pain of guilt over not being truthful with my best friend.

“Nobody else can know either. I’m very serious about this. I am often in the public eye. What I do—what I like—can be viewed as dirty laundry by most people. I would prefer not to have it aired.”

“Oh, and here I thought I might call the gossip columnist from—” I stopped short when I saw his face pale. “Alex, I’m only kidding. I’m not the kiss and tell type. Even with Ally. My sex life is nobody’s business. You can relax.”

“Don’t joke about this, Krystina.”

I put my hands up in mock surrender.

“No more jokes. I promise.”

He leaned forward on the desk and pressed his forehead against his palms. Shaking his head as if to clear it, he eventually looked back up at me. He seemed calmer, yet there was a certain level of torment in his eyes.

“I’m not one to lose my head like that, Krystina.”