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“She wouldn’t sleep with you, but she went with Iggy.”
“Rode him like a bit-torrent stream. Strung me out like a line of broken code.” He hadn’t thought about Dana and Iggy for a long time. Long enough for it to be fine print in his life. Too long ago to still sting. But it did. He’d never failed at anything he’d worked for, set his heart on, except Dana Masters.
Until now.
“So what, you didn’t bounce back, knock Iggy out and prowl around campus with a neon sign over your head saying, I can keep it up all night, do me?”
“Not helping.” He whacked the blinker on with more force than was necessary. “I did knock Iggy out and then l swore off wasting my time on manipulative chicks and locked myself in the computer lab.”
“For years?”
“It’s not like I was the only one. It’s the jocks that get all the radical action, not the computer geeks. Hey, I was full of ambition and power lifting and angry young man and that keeps you warm at night.”
“Okay, but after college, there was no one who tempted you?”
“You know this conversation, which is a hideous personal embarrassment, has done nothing to deflate my erection. That’s a compliment.”
“You know if you don’t stop driving like we’re in a funeral procession, I will jump you before we get to your apartment.”
“And you wanted me to relax.”
She laughed. “Yeah, I do, because there’s no hurry.”
“For you.” Was it possible for your zipper to do you harm? Cut off vital blood flow. It felt like it was possible. “I’m years behind the action.”
“And why is that again?”
He pushed a breath out. Facing nervous stockholders had been easier. “Because I was busy. I didn’t meet anyone I didn’t work with, which made them off limits, and I was building a business that was all guts and glory, and it took every minute of every day not to lose it. When I got finance, I had a lot of people watching me, waiting for me to screw up and I couldn’t afford the distraction. There was precious little leisure time where I didn’t want to sleep.” He’d had a textbook all work and no play life, and in the leftover space, there was a hollowness that was best not contemplated.
“And did I mention I’m socially awkward and since sex is the most intimate of acts, it simply hasn’t been my go-to.”
“Was it worth it?”
He couldn’t answer that easily, the loss of Plus was too raw and the realization of a life he liked without it, too uncertain. What he’d given up for it loomed large. “Some days I wonder.”
“I understand that.”
“You do?” The apartment building was up ahead. Thirty seconds to safety. So why did his left leg have the shakes?
“I was a competition gymnast. I lived and breathed gymnastics. I just started being busier than a twenty-four hour day younger than you did.”
“How old?”
“Thirteen. I left home, billeted near my coach. I finished school by correspondence.”
“What’s the lifespan of a professional gymnast?”
“Eighteen, absolute tops. That’s when I retired.”
So young. And fuck, how old was she now? Eighteen, still. Nineteen, a decade between them. Holy shit, this couldn’t happen.
The scanner wouldn’t recognize the plate of the hire car, which is why they were stopped in the drive. He had to remember the override code to get the shutter up and all he could think about was Zarley being too young.
“You were retired before I started college.”
“Pretty much.”
He tried typing the code on the pedestal keypad and plugged it in wrongly. “How old are you now?”
