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“Channels aren’t numbered the way they used to be, you know? 1, 2, 3, on and on. Now it’s CineDine 1 and CineDine 2 or The Game Channel and The Game Channel Late Night. I just want a straight-up number. Why is that so hard?”
I sit on the far end of the couch and reach for his popcorn. “Why does it matter?”
“It doesn’t,” he says. “I just want to know how much money he’s wasting. Cable is basically a scam. Only the boomers still have it. Plus, he never even watches television. What does he need 1,349 channels for?”
I whistle. “That’s a lot.”
“And I’m still counting. When would he have time to watch the Travel Channel in French?”
“Never?” I guess. “But I don’t know. Maybe he has a lot of free time. I never actually see him do anything except for work.”
“And you,” Akim says. He stops his channel flipping just long enough to play the pretend drums. “Ba-dum-tss.I’ll be here all night, thank you very much.”
I throw my handful of popcorn at the side of his head. “Asshole.”
“Hey! That is cheddar ranch popcorn. It’s too good to waste and it will stain the sofa.”
I take a bite of the kernels still in my hand and beam in appreciation. “Wow. You weren’t joking. That is really good.”
“Good enough that you’ll forgive me for making that joke about you and Timofey and all the loud lovemaking you did in the—”
“I’ll only forgive you if you shut up right now and never mention it again.”
He pulls an imaginary zipper across his lips and continues his channel flipping.
The word “lovemaking” hangs in the air like a cloud of gnats. I can’t ignore it, as much as I’d like to.
“You have to be capable of love to make love,” I mumble.
Akim partially unzips his lips. “Since you brought it up, am I allowed to speak on it or…?”
“We aren’t speaking aboutthat,” I say, giving him a stern warning look. “But you can talk about him if you want.”
He peeks over at me, eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Do you want to talk abouthim?”
“No!” I blurt on instinct. Then I shrug. “Yes. Maybe. I don’t know.”
I do know. If it wouldn’t put Noelle and Ashley in danger, I’d be upstairs in bed telling them everything right now. But the less they know, the better.
Akim is my only option.
“He’s just so frustrating. I don’t feel like I know what is going on in his head.”
“Some people are easy to read. They’re an open book. Others, like Timofey, are a book that is chained closed, shoved into a safe, and dropped into the deepest part of the ocean.”
I snort. “That about sums him up.”
“But some of us are really good scuba divers. We have all of our qualifications and know how to dive that deep without getting the bends and dying… or getting eaten by a giant squid or something.”
I wave him on. “Enough with the analogy. Get to the good stuff.”
He sighs. “You two are more alike than you know.”
“I highly doubt that. For instance, I have a heart and people in my life who love me without needing to earn a paycheck from me.”
If Timofey were here, he’d contest that point. But Ashley doesn’t get a paycheck from me. She just occasionally needs my entire paycheck to stay out of jail. But that’s different. That’s completely and totally different.
“I was friends with Timofey before he paid me,” Akim says. “I liked him from the moment I met him. Of course, I met him when Emily was there. She had a way of softening him.”
