I squirmed as Devin named the figure he’d promised me and the conditions for earning it. Angel didn’t flicker an eyelid. “Is sex part of the deal?”
I forgot my own awkwardness as I was gifted, for the first time, with the sight of Devin profoundly uncomfortable. “It’s… not out of the question.”
“Right.” Angel produced a pair of glasses and slipped them on. “Well, I think we’ve got enough to go by now.”
“I don’t know why you were so worried about your mother,” I spoke up once we were on the road, with an electronic key to an apartment elsewhere in the city in our possession. An apartment of my own? Well, I probably wouldn’t be able to redecorate or anything, but if I wanted to watch TV all night, play my music loudly… walk around naked… well, it would be very different to being in my parents’ house, that was for sure. “She was surprisingly friendly. Especially given all that weird stuff we had to discuss with her.”
“You’re cute,” said Devin. “You actually think that went well.”
“She agreed to support the whole wedding scheme, didn’t she? Gave me a place to stay? Was there something else we were trying to achieve back there you didn’t bother to let me in on?”
“There are short-term goals here and longer-term goals, Julia. So she decided to give us everything we wanted today, but… in the grander scale of things, she’s going to have her own ideas of what she wants.”
“I think you’re just trying to be all dramatic and make out like your mother is so bad when she’s pretty cool,” I told him. “I could never imagine my parents being that generous, especially if I came to them with a new son-in-law all of a sudden.”
“Yes, I noticed your parents are not fans of your new life direction,” Devin said. “But I suggest you should assume in future that the people you meet have very little in common with your parents and the way they choose to conduct their affairs.”
He stopped the car outside another set of apartment buildings that had the same vibe of hotel luxury as the one his mother lived in. I felt much less nervous walking in knowing there was nobody new to confront at the other end of this journey.
The place the key unlocked was smaller than Angel’s place, but that just made the luxury jump out all the more. The colour scheme was gleaming black and white: sleek, expensive. White couches, black kitchen countertop, black appliances. The single splash of colour came from a painting on one of the white walls, an abstract rainbow splashed onto the unframed canvas. It made a powerful statement.
Devin brought in my little bag of things and a bag of basic groceries he’d stopped to pick up from a cornerstore, shut the door behind him, and moved further into the main room, perfectly matching this world in his suit. As did I, I supposed, dressed for my own funeral.
I realised something then that I hadn’t anticipated: Devin wasn’t planning to just bid me good day and head off into the sunset. He was going to stay here just as he’d stayed with me at my parents’ house… and I had the option of not getting myself drunk tonight.
I was probably in a lot of trouble.
Chapter Eleven
“Am I supposed to believe you are shy?”
I was so startled by Devin’s voice out of nowhere I dropped the capsicum I’d been fidgeting with. It rolled across the bench, and Devin caught it with one hand while he continued dicing its unlucky sibling with the other.
“I guess you wouldn’t,” I admitted, “but if any situation was going to make me feel that way… I mean, we’ve gone from you having me dragged out of bed to trying to cook with me?”
“You’ve got to roll with the challenges life presents you sometimes, Julia,” said Devin, rolling the second capsicum into the path of his knife.
“Are you talking about me here or you?”
“Both of us, for once.” His expression visibly dulled. It struck me then just how much more animated he had become since we had first met. It was just a handful of hours but there was someone behind the mafia man front he was slowly letting me see, whether by choice or unconsciously I did not know.
It actually bothered me to see that man disappearing again. It was messing with my head. Now, my primary thought when I looked at Devin was how smooth he was with that knife, how much damage he could probably do to another human with that thing.
“Can I help?” I asked.
Devin pointed me to a cupboard. “Electric frying pan in there somewhere, oil it up and start piling food in.”
I was a pro at preparing breakfast for myself, but this level of cooking, with cutting things up and heating them and mixing them with oil, was beyond me. How was it that someone whose family had residences just lying around fully-furnished waiting for someone to step in could cook?
I scrambled for something to say to keep him from noticing my fumbling with the cap of the oil bottle. “I… Did your mother teach you to cook?”
So much for a diversion from the situation at hand.
Devin frowned at me as he turned his attention to the chicken he’d purchased earlier. “This isn’t really cooking, Julia. I know it fits the definition for the average individual—or the above-average individual around here—but that is a misconception. This is no more than you could learn to do by reading the instructions off the back of a packet: true culinary art demands time and attention.”
I couldn’t decide if I was more or less afraid that he would be judging me for my inability to pour oil without spilling it on myself. “Whatever you say.”
Devin sighed. “I take it everything you experienced during our restaurant meal last night was completely lost on you.” He stepped over to the frying pan I had prepared with his cutting board of chicken, and put it down fast. “Julia, are you hoping to deep-fry something?”