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“Fine. I’ll just leave the mess for you.”
“You’re leaving.”
“We just decided that—”
“We didn’t decide anything,” he muttered. “Don’t go.”
“I wanted… I should have known you were too good to be true.”
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“If someone could accept me, there would have to be… a balance, I guess.”
“Oh, okay, so because Tommy treats you like shit, you can let him be with you, but because I want to help you make positive changes—”
“There’s nochange.”
“Okay, look, I went about this all the wrong way, that’s all,” he said. “If you want to leave, go, but promise me we’re not broken up?”
“No,” she said. “No, just some time to think.”
“What does that even mean?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know, exactly.”
He sank his hands into his hair.
“Are you asking because you want to know if it’s allowed for you to sleep with someone else?” It was a barb.
“No.” He growled it.
“I don’t care what you do, Niles,” she sneered, and then she swept off, rushing down the stairs and away, leaving him alone in the twilight, the river rushing off below, into the horizon, oblivious.
xvi.
VALDEMAR HAD ASKEDAstrid to marry him.
They hadn’t even really been together that long. They started hooking up sometime around Halloween, Niles thought. Nah, before that, because they were at Gorda’s and Mike’s wedding. Even still, it was less than a year. It was crazy.
But Valdi had been married before, so obviously, he was ready to settle down again.
Niles tried not to feel darkly jealous of the orc, but he couldn’t help but feel as if the world was against him. He had tried to do the right thing, but he’d gotten nowhere.
He was cursed. Valdi could have whatever woman he wanted and could get married and Niles—
Of course, on second thought, Valdi’d had a pretty rough life, overall.
Yeah, okay, Valdi deserved happiness, just as a balancing of the scales.
But Niles deserved it, too.
Well, at least he wanted it. Lots of people got good things they didn’t deserve, after all. Why not Niles?
It had been three weeks since he and Dahlia had decided to take some time to think.
And now, he barely saw her. They weren’t at work at the same time much anymore considering her field practicum hours. When they were, she was friendly enough, and he was friendly enough.
One night, they were both at the Meck, and she was having a conversation with Felix about some book he’d read about the Manson family and the CIA. Three other people were at the table, exclaiming loudly that it didn’t make any sense to claim the CIA was experimenting with the Manson family.
