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“You’re being utterly offensive, Paul. I hope you realize that.”
“Telling the truth shouldn’t be construed as offense, Eirene, unless the offended party has something about which she feels guilty.”
She counted to ten. Then she did it again. Then she thought “Oh to hell with it!” and said, “Paul, you’re an asshole, you know that?”
Miracle of miracles, that seemed to shut him up, at least for a few seconds. When he responded, he was ice cold. “I think possibly we need to take a break,” he told her, and Eirene realized that she felt nothing but relief.
“I think that’s a good idea, Paul. But let’s make it a permanent one.”
His tone changed quickly. “It wasn’t my intention… Eirene, I didn’t mean I wanted to break up with you.”
“But that’s what I mean,” she told him. I think it’s for the best. This isn’t working for either of us.”
“But—”
“No hard feelings, Paul. It just wasn’t meant to be.” She stopped short of the “It’s not you, it’s me” line because it really was him. She hadn’t really understood how tiresome Paul was until she met Simon, who had treated her more considerately than Paul ever had.
When she went downstairs, her mother greeted her with a knowing look.
“No, just stop, Mom. It was nothing. Just breakfast.”
“He’s a good boy,” her mother observed.
Simon got back home in time to say good-bye to Athena who was headed back to London. He drove her out to the airstrip and on the way she asked him what was up with Eirene.
“It’s just what I told you. She had a fight with her boyfriend, so we went down to the bar and had a couple of drinks, and then went for a drive.”
“You drove drunk?” Athena was horrified.
“I was drinking club soda. I figured she’d need some moral support, so I was careful.”
“Okay. I approve.”
“What a relief,” he teased.
“So is there something there?”
“What makes you think that?”
“Because while you’re a good guy, you don’t often put that much effort into people you barely know.”
“Barely know? We were formally engaged at birth.”
“No you weren’t!”
Actually it was when we were teenagers, and it wasn’t formal, it was just the families saying, “Wow, those two crazy kids belong together.””
“More like “Wow, these family fortunes belong together,” right?”
“Probably. But you know Mom and Dad have been friends with Thea and Christ forever.”
“It’s a nice family. I’d marry into it.”
He kissed his little sister good-bye and waved her off, but the whole time he was thinking about Eirene. She was a beautiful woman, ravishing in fact. But Simon was curiously ambivalent about her. The blue-black curls that drifted around that perfect face, and the Aegean-blue of her eyes…dazzling, exactly the sort of looks he adored. But she seemed both vulnerable and prickly, and it kept him off balance. It shouldn’t have bothered him, but it did, and it made him want to take care of her even while he felt he really ought to keep his distance. She wasn’t just another party girl, she was a woman he thought he could love, and the thought frightened him.
The whole idea of love frightened him. He had such an amazing example in his parents, but how could he hope to be so lucky? How could Simon imagine finding his soul-mate in a woman who he’d known — though not well — since they were children? It seemed almost wrong, like falling in love with a relative. A close one, he corrected, since distant cousins married all the time.
No, he was certain it was her oppressive beauty that had ensnared him. He’d get over it. He’d grow tired of her and leave her the way he did with every other woman. He’d be callous and she’d have something pithy to say about his going, something that would cut him down to size and make him wonder if he wasn’t making a mistake. She’d hang on to him because she was exactly what he had always hoped for in a woman. She was an equal.
