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It’s nice to be provided for.
It’s nice to be taken care of.
It’s nice to relax. Totruly relaxfor the first time in my life.
My fingers drum against the couch.
So, if I don’t need the money, and I won’t use a degree for afull-time job, what does that leave me with?
Toto’s paws twitch, already chasing something through dreamland.
What if… I bite my lip again.
What if I could do some sort of charity work? Whatever that means.
“Why is this so hard?” I whine out loud.
“What’s wrong?” Robert’s voice scares a scream out of me, which sends a no-longer-sleeping Toto into a barking fit.
I’m struggling to sit up. Toto’s sprinting the perimeter of the room looking for danger. And Robert is standing in the entryway to the den, looking amused.
I slap a hand over my heart. “You scared me.”
“And your little dog, too.”
I roll my eyes at what has become his favorite line.
Deciding the threat has been neutralized, Toto picks a new spot on the rug, circles, then drops.
“What has you thinking so hard?” Robert asks, as he lowers his large frame into a chair across the room from me.
Robert is mid-thirties, looks like a cross between a Marine and a grizzly bear, and after the first afternoon together, when we realized he’s just as awkward with women as I am with men, all the weirdness just kinda canceled out.
He’s cool, but he takes his job very seriously, so even though I’d love to spend the day talking to him, I know he’ll only allow himself to sit for five minutes, then it’s back on patrol.
“I’m just trying to figure out what to do with my life.” I grimace as soon as I say it, hearing how lame it sounds.
Robert raises one bushy brow. “A good looking, crazy rich, overly protective man isn’t enough?”
I give him the side eye. “You can’t have him.”
Robert laughs. “Terrifyingisn’t on my list of fantasy husband attributes.”
“Nero isn’t terrifying.”
“Uh-huh, whatever you say.”
“What did you want to be growing up? Was it always… military? Or whatever you call this profession?” It’s probably too personal of a question, but I’m starved for conversation.
“Mostly. Too many GI Joes probably.” He shrugs. “What about you? There had to have been something you wanted to do.”
“Sure. But I think the odds of me becoming a professional ballerina are pretty slim at this point.” My outlandish dreams stopped around the time I turned nine. After that I only dreamed of getting away from home. There were no delusions that I’d become something grand.
Reading my mood, Robert pushes up out of his chair. “Well, existential crises seem like best friend territory, so I’ll head back to work.”
My smile is shaky, and as soon as Robert leaves the room, I let it drop.
Too bad I don’t have a best friend.
