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“I guess I don’t get it,” he said. “I don’t see why you’d want me, not when I was the man slut when we were kids, or when I was taking advantage of Opal, or when I haven’t amounted to anything really. You, on the other hand, you have this whole other life in the city. You’ve been on your own. You’re beautiful and successful and hard working—”

“You’re making me blush,” I interrupted. I was smiling a big smile. “It’s not about the past, Vincent. It’s about now. Ever since you and I made contact again, you’ve shown me, time and time again, that you cared about me. And Damian has only shown me how much he cares about himself. That’s why.”

“I do care about you,” said Vincent. “And I would never take you for granted. And if this works out with us, I’ll be the luckiest man in the world.”

I shut my eyes and my grin widened.

“Come to breakfast with me?” he said.

“Okay,” I said. “You want to go to Panem Hodie again?”

“Yeah, sounds good,” he said. “But my treat, right? If this counts as our first date, I want to actually buy you breakfast.”

“I think I can allow that,” I said. “First date, huh? At what point do we kiss?”

He laughed softly. “Well, I’ve put a shit ton of pressure on that, haven’t I? Now, our first kiss is going to have to be out-of-this-world amazing.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

PANEM HODIE WAS crowded, so we didn’t eat our food there. We got our breakfast sandwiches to go and we went to the building that I now owned. Thinking I owned a building was sort of crazy, I had to admit. Using my keys, I opened the space next to Bistro St. Francis (which wasn’t open for breakfast), the space that Opal had said I should use as an art studio.

I stepped inside and I could see it, this front room full of framed art on the walls for sale, and this room in the back full of easels with canvases set out, each in various states of being finished as I flitted from one to the next, working on whichever one caught my fancy. It sounded idyllic. I hadn’t painted in so long. Besides doodling in the margins during meetings these days, I didn’t draw anymore. How was it that I’d lost touch with this part of myself?

How was it that Opal was giving it back to me, after Opal had taken so very much from me?

Could I ever forgive Opal?

Maybe, I thought, but that would require forgiving Damian.

On the other hand, maybe I could forgive Damian, but what I could not do was take Damian back.

Vincent and I sat down on the floor and had an indoor picnic.

“So, you’re not a hundred percent going to sell?” he said.

“I obviously can’t leave Casey in the lurch,” I said. “She depends on me, and it wouldn’t be fair for me to just quit out of nowhere, uproot myself, and come move to Riverside. But…”

“But it appeals to you,” he said, taking a drink of coffee, smiling at me. “It appeals to me, too. I could work remote with my job, probably. With the money from Cork’s, I could go part time. I could play music again.”

“That sounds amazing,” I said, smiling at him.

“If it works out with us, we could both end up here again,” he said. “We could go in on a cabin together, one on the water. We could have boats, a dock, and we could be grownups who spend our lives like we did when we were teenagers, drinking beer on the river all the time.”

I sighed. “That sounds too good to be true.”

“On the other hand,” said Vincent, “we could get into this with each other and decide we hate each other, and then be stuck owning buildings on the same block and have to see each other daily.”

It could happen, I guess. “I don’t see myself hating you, Vincent.”

“Yeah, it’s hard for me to imagine hating you,” he said. “But you and Damian? I mean, that scent-match stuff is potent.”

“Something about that has changed, actually.” I took a bite of my breakfast sandwich, which had eggs and avocado and chipotle peppers on it. It was delicious.

“What do you mean?”

I chewed and swallowed. “I don’t know, but the last time I saw him, his scent didn’t affect me in the same way, and it didn’t affect him either. He wants me to go to the shaman with him today, and I said no. I don’t want to fix it. I don’t want the scent match back. Being free of it feels like a gift.”

“You don’t think that, um, that…” Vincent coughed. “I mean, you’ve had sex with other men before, and it changed nothing.”