One Last Time (Loveless Brothers 5)

“It’s all isopods all the time right now,” she says. “I swear, those blind nightmare shrimp are gonna be the death of me.”

“They are,” the man she’s with says, nodding. “One day last week I swear she woke up screaming, isopods!”

Bernadette just laughs.

“Are there too many, or too few?” I ask.

“Yes. Both,” she says. “See, I can’t even answer that question. Did you know that each cave in the region has a slightly different subspecies? Sometimes they’re two hundred feet apart. Different subspecies. Nightmare.”

“I had no idea,” I say, which is certainly true.

Bernadette is a biologist for the Forest Service, and we used to date.

Okay, we didn’t date. We just fucked. We had a thing that lasted a few months. Purely physical, just two people scratching an itch. It ended about two and a half years ago when she met someone she was serious about — this guy, maybe. Our split, if you can even call it that, was perfectly amicable.

I’ve slept around. It’s not a secret.

But let me say this: I’m not a dick about it. I state my intentions upfront. I don’t lie, cheat, or promise something I’m unwilling to give.

I like the game of it. I like the moment of clarity when I realize that a woman’s interested. I like the rush of seeing someone new naked for the first time. I like the ego boost. I like how easy it to get what you want, as long as you don’t want too much.

Or at least, I liked all that once upon a time.

“…whether it even matters if some subspecies goes extinct,” she’s saying. “I mean, of course it matters because of biodiversity and on some level, every critter is precious, but does it really matter?”

“She gets like this when she’s drunk,” the man jokes. “Starts talking about wiping them all out.”

Bernadette laughs, then shakes her head.

“I would never,” she says, just as a hand slides through my elbow. “But keeping track does get exhausting.”

“There you are,” I say, looking down at Delilah. I say it casually, as if she takes my elbow all the time. As if her hand on the other side of my shirt and jacket isn’t suddenly all I can think about.

“Sorry, Georgia got very specific about the streamers,” she says, smiling and rolling her eyes. “And then poor Olivia managed to spell married wrong, and we had to wash it off and start over, you know how these things go. Hi, I’m Delilah.”

Her hand on my arm tightens as she holds the other out, fingers pointed and bladelike.

“Bernadette,” the other woman answers, smiling. “This is my fiancé, Gary.”

“Bernadette works with Levi for the Forest Service,” I explain while they shake hands. “She was just telling me about all the problems with forest shrimp.”

Technically, I’m not lying. Everything I just said is completely true, but the lie-by-omission still feels bad as it settles in the pit of my stomach.

“Is the first problem that there are shrimp in the forest?” Delilah asks, hand still in my arm, laughing politely.

“Shockingly, no,” Bernadette says, and before I know it Delilah and Bernadette are talking about blind freshwater crustaceans who live in caves and how there are both too many and not enough, why it’s important to have a dozen different subspecies, or why they might not be important at all.

When we say goodbye and head in opposite directions, Delilah keeps her hand on my arm.

“Drink?” she asks. “My first few are wearing off and there’s still so much wedding to get through.”

I glance over, through the pseudo-trees and across the ballroom to the stage and the crowd dancing in front of it.

“There is?”

“They haven’t even played the shoe game yet,” she says.

I just look down at her, because I have no idea what she’s talking about.

“Eli didn’t play the shoe game at his courthouse wedding?” she asks, dryly.

“I’m not even sure if this is a euphemism or not,” I tell her.

“Sadly, no,” she says. “The bride and groom interrupt the fun party to sit in chairs, back-to-back, hold each others’ shoes, and then someone asks cute questions like who snores louder? and they hold up that person’s shoe.”

We pause at the bar. Delilah orders something called a Dark and Snowy that comes with part of a tree stuck in the glass. I just get more whiskey.

“How do you score points?” I ask as we keep walking.

“It’s not that kind of game.”

“So how does one person win?”

“Oh, everyone loses.”

We come to a stop in front of one of the tall windows, the old glass wavy, sheer curtains floating gauzily at either side.

“I feel like I’m missing something,” I admit, and Delilah finally laughs. “They answer questions by holding up shoes and no one gets points and no one wins?”

“You got it,” she says, merrily, taking a sip of her cocktail. “That’s it. That’s the whole thing.”