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“Pierogi?” he suggested. “And company?”
“So this is about you being lonely?”
He shrugged. “It’s not really something I thought about. But now I…I think I might be.”
“You got distracted by the pretty boys,” I told him. “Marcus Aurelius would not be happy with you.”
His eyes were like the river: full of blues and greys and unexpected depths. “I don’t particularly care about Marcus Aurelius right now.”
“Because you care about me?” I asked flatly. “After three days?”
“You’re making more of this than you need to.”
“I’m not good at caring or being cared for.” My fingertips were drumming upon the dinette table; I stilled them with difficulty. “You’ll want things from me I don’t like giving.”
“I haven’t so far.”
“That’s because it’s been no fucking time at all. I’m a bad boyfriend, Leo. And I’m a worse partner.”
“When it’s a bit closer to spring,” he said, “I was thinking of heading to Llangollen. Have you been? It’s meant to be beautiful there. And there’s this aqueduct—the Pontcysyllte—which is the highest navigable aqued—”
“Didn’t you hear what I just said?”
“It’s called the stream in the sky.”
“Leo.”
He sighed. “I heard you.”
We both fell silent. And I tried very hard to ignore how much I hoped he would start talking again. Keep trying to convince me. Not because I thought I could be convinced—the whole idea was ludicrous—but because…
Because I fucking adored how much he wanted me. Even, perhaps especially, if it was misguided that he did.
He rose abruptly enough to startle me. I had grown accustomed to his movements being considered—not graceful, exactly, but certain. “Look.” Except having stood, he seemed to have no idea what to do with himself. He put a cup back on its hook. Wiped the draining board with a cloth. “Look,” he tried again, “do you think I know the slightest thing about love or any of it?”
“Love?” I repeated with a comical hiccough.
“I had boyfriends,” he told the sink. “Because it was expected. Or they were hot, or they flattered me. I don’t think Ilikeda single one of them. And I don’t think they thought much of me either.”
“It must have been so hard on you,” I murmured, “being so terribly rich.”
“I’m not asking for sympathy.” He didn’t raise his voice, but there was an edge to his words. Enough to shut me up. “I’m just trying to explain. I was a tool to my father. And my mother—my mother chose wealth long before I was born.” The draining board received another wipe, even less necessary than the first. “Something I only really understood in prison was that I don’t think anyone has ever actually loved me my entire life.”
Perhaps it was because he sounded so matter-of-fact about it that made me react the way I did. With too much feeling. “Jesus.”
“Well, I wasn’t exactly easy to love.”
“Neither am I. It doesn’t mean people haven’t tried. And”—I surrendered, briefly and only a little grudgingly, to my better nature—“you should have that too.”
He shrugged. “I’m not convinced I’d know what to do with it if I did.”
“Oh, it’s easy. You just take it for granted. Use it as an excuse to treat people badly because you know they won’t retaliate. That kind of thing.”
“I’m not ready for it, Marius.”
“It’s…” I passed my tongue over lips turned to sandpaper. “It can be easier than you think. Sometimes.”
At last Leo turned back to me. He was steady again. Freshly sure of himself. “If you say so. But what you think I’m looking for, I’m not. And what you think I need, I don’t. And you should come with me for no other reason than I think it might be good for both of us.”
