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“I just like symmetry.” He shrugged, eyeing me as he gulped down half his fresh drink. “Your face is really symmetrical. It’s nice.”
Said face turned bright red. “Th-thanks.”
“How’re your balls?”
I coughed into my drink. “Um, I think, um, they’re… you know. There’s a little bit of unevenness in the way they hang…”
“Do you think a testes tuck is a thing?”
“I have no—Look, I’m—I’m sure your testicles are fine, man,” I said awkwardly.
He sighed. “Yeah, I guess. Hey, can I tell you about my shitty week?”
My shoulders slumped. I resigned myself to whatever the fuck was currently happening, at least until this Axel guy turned up and “wiped my memories” of the whole night. Which probably just meant punching me in the face until I blacked out.
“Sure,” I said weakly.
“Well firstly, this—” He gestured between us vigorously. “—this isn’t the first time Larkin has fucked up this week. On Tuesday he brought me a coffee with despair syrup instead of determined syrup. Oh, sorry. So, you can get these syrups where certain emotions have been extracted from people and then they’re, like, added to sugar syrup to flavour it. Really good on ice cream too. Anyway, I spent the whole day trying not to break down and weep uncontrollably, which was particularly annoying because Tuesday is the day I go through the matches with the wrestlers for the upcoming week.”
“Oh no.” I tried to inject some sympathy into my voice. “That sucks—”
“And oh my god, the wrestlers. They’re like a bunch of muscular, overgrown babies. So demanding. ‘My dressing room isn’t big enough, Holt.’ ‘I’ve run out of eyeshadow, Holt.’ ‘I want a new costume, Holt, because this one makes my ass look flat.’ I don’t even pick their costumes. They do.”
“Well, at least, um, at least you listen to their problems—”
“One of them asked me to hire an acting coach for him so he could ‘hone his craft.’” Holt snorted into his drink. “He’s called the Tasselled Tussler. His ‘craft’ is making his pecs bounce so his nipple tassels spin around. Don’t get me wrong, he’s great at it. It’s mesmerising, honestly.”
“It… sounds it,” I said weakly.
Holt heaved a longsuffering sigh. “And then my mother called yesterday morning, chewing me out once again for not going into the family profession and instead wasting my brain managing a bunch of oiled-up beefcakes in skimpy panties. As if that isn’t the dream.”
“Um, what… what’s the family profession?” I relented and had a deep gulp of rum, because I got the feeling Holt was just getting started.
He snorted, draining his glass. “Psychiatry. Ultimate gig for an empyn. But, like, why the fuck would I want to sit there listening to a bunch of humans whining about their problems when I can get my emotions in other ways? Besides, I don’t want to live on a diet of sadness. Who would? You know?”
Okay, so he was still leaning in hard to that whole, ‘I’m a demon monster that feeds on emotions’ thing. I was just trying to ignore that part, because my options here were listening to his increasingly drunken rambling, or getting tackled by the giant bodyguard if I tried to make a run for it.
Suddenly looking a little sheepish, Holt added, “But, uh, I’ll happily listen to your problems if you want. I mean, you’re listening to mine.”
“I’m okay, I think,” I said quickly.
He pfffed and gestured wildly with his suddenly refilled glass. “Come on. Let it all out… um, what’s your name?”
“Taylor.”
“Let it all out, Taylor. I’m Holt, by the way.”
“I know.” I gave him a slightly nervous smile. “Larkin mentioned it.”
“Look, we’re never gonna see each other again, right?” He gestured between us with his glass, spilling rum on his desk. “You won’t remember this. I’ll make sure to get really, really drunk so I probably won’t remember it either. Let’s share. Let’s say all the shit we never, ever voice out loud. I told you the testicle thing.”
That was true. He had indeed told me the testicle thing.
And honestly… it did sound kinda cathartic. I had no idea how they were actually going to “wipe my memory,” and I was still a little concerned that I might die, but right now?
Fuck it.
Chapter Six
