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“Naturally.”
“We had quite the home theater. And we used to screen films down there. My parents were always like children with things like that. So excited to show us the latest big cartoon that could otherwise only be seen in theaters.”
“Well, that is far beyond anything I could’ve imagined.”
“There was one about a woman who dressed as a man to save her country. That had a lot of sword fighting and I liked it. It reminded me... You remind me of that.”
“I have not dressed up as a man,” Morgan said.
“Perhaps not. But you are willing to fight. No matter what. Every step of the way.”
“I think that is one of the nicest compliments anyone has ever given me. Though sometimes I’m tired of fighting.”
Me too.
But the word stuck in his throat. He didn’t have the luxury of being tired of fighting. He didn’t know why he felt that. What was he even fighting for? To atone for the dark and gritty things in the past that he could not make right, no matter how hard he tried.
To do what his grandfather had told him. When there had been no more ice cream and no more Athena. When he’d looked at him with fierce eyes and told him he had to be a man now. Hard. He had to have control. He had to handle things.
It was up to him to make things right.
To live right.
To be the Kamaras man that his grandfather needed him to be.
He just knew that it always felt like a fight. One that he seemed to continually lose. And he was not a man who was given to such things.
He had been a success taking over his family’s business. He had been a success in managing his parents’ spending and excesses, and Alex’s too. But in the end he had not been able to keep Alex safe. So what did it all mean? And what did it all matter?
It was strange how not talking about it, housesitting with Morgan and trying to interact as strangers, brought up things that he tried not to think about any other time.
“We don’t have to fight now,” she said.
She smiled at him, and he realized they hadn’t been eating. They had only been talking.
The dinner that she had made him was truly wonderful. “I don’t know that anyone’s ever made dinner for me before.”
“That’s ridiculous. Don’t you have chefs? People make dinner for you all the time.”
“That’s different,” he said. “They are paid to cook for the family, or for me I suppose in the abstract sense. You just decided to cook for me.”
She ducked her head, and color mounted in her cheeks, and he felt an answering desire rise inside of him. He did not have a name for what it was he wanted. He was reminded yet again of being a child. On that same day he’d gone and gotten the ice cream. And they had gone into an aquarium, and he stood on the other side of the glass staring at the colorful, teeming world of fish. And he had felt like he wanted to step through that glass, for beyond that was a true mystery. Something truly off-limits, something that he could not just be given. And that was how he felt now. As a little boy staring at something brilliant and wild and intangible and knowing that a thick sheet of glass separated him from it, and that even if it were not there, it was not something that he could possess. Not something that he could experience.
She was right there, and yet it felt like she was in another world. Felt like she was apart from him.
He wanted to rage, because he did not like things that were out of his control. He did not like things he could not understand.
And there was something about Morgan that he could not understand. Something about her that he could not touch.
“I wanted to cook for you,” she said. “I wanted to give you something.”
“Why? What have I ever given you?”
“You’re giving me children.” She smiled ruefully. “Sorry. I suppose I’m not doing a very good job of acting like we just met.”
“I don’t care. Enough games. Why would you do this for me? Why do you... Why do you care at all?”
“I don’t know how not to, Constantine. If I did that I never would’ve slept with you.”
