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Rather than answer, Xenia studies me. I notice her fingers digging at her pant leg like she’s stopping them from doing what they’d prefer. Taking her hand, I rest it against my jaw. Her face lights up immediately.
“I really am shallow,” she whispers.
“No harm in that. Come to think of it, there was another woman new to town last year. She had trouble getting her hair salon noticed, so I walked around and shoved her flyers under people’s wipers. I see her sometimes. Don’t really stop to chat,” I explain and then shrug. “But she isn’t pretty like you. If she were, I bet I’d stop.”
Xenia strokes my face and sighs. “I have money. Twenty years of working and saving left me with a nest egg. I could travel or buy a house or start over anywhere.”
“Then why don’t you?”
“I spent so long squirreling away every dollar that spending any of it terrifies me.”
“Where would you travel to?”
“I don’t know. Everywhere. Or nowhere.”
Frowning, I let my calloused fingers stroke her wrist as she pets me. She almost reminds me of Kourtney’s rich girlfriends. They like to pet me, too. Except those women are just marveling at the wild beast in their presence. They’re always impressed when I can form sentences like a real man.
Xenia isn’t watching me like I’m a freak. She’s too sweet on me to think that way.
Right now, with her sweaty body against mine, I can’t come up with any reason we couldn’t work out. Xenia doesn’t have anywhere to go. She might like living in my world.
And no woman’s interested me before.That probably means something.
“If you didn’t have to worry about money, what would you do with your time?”
Xenia’s eyes get a faraway look as if she’s considering all her dreams. Finally, she just mumbles, “I don’t know.”
“I think you do.”
Xenia shakes her head. “Everything sounds good and also like a mistake.”
“It seems to me that you don’t know who you are.”
Xenia stares into my eyes as if I’ve ripped back the last of her protective layers and left her bare. She nods as tears fill her eyes.
“I don’t want you to waste your money to keep my shop open,” she whimpers.
“Because you’re doing that sabotage thing?”
“No because I feel like I’m just grasping at straws with the shop.”
“I don’t know what you want,” I mutter.
“Me, either,” Xenia admits. “But this right here feels good.”
Admiring her gray eyes watching me, I ask, “What do you think happens next?”
“Don’t make me think about anything past right now. Whenever I imagine the future, I’m wrong.”
“When you went on that date with Francis, what did you pretend to do for fun?”
“Read,” she says, smiling at how I knew she wouldn’t be honest with him like she is with me. “I also said I like music. Made it seem like I went to concerts in Vegas.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I was working.”
“If you weren’t working, like, imagine the restaurant had a gas leak and you got the day off, what would you have done?”
