Offensive Behavior
He was an asshole for making her talk about this stuff. “No, it’s the truth. All of us dance at Lucky’s because we’re too scared to apply to a better club, not willing to embrace the sex industry any further than we already do. We’re half pregnant, like you said.”
“Go back to when yo
u retired. What were you doing while you were growing tits and hips?”
“I was lost. I lived gymnastics and a chance at a gold medal from the age of five. When it didn’t happen I didn’t know what to do with myself. I’m still working it out.”
He clacked his teeth together, glass stalled halfway to his mouth. “You were Olympic standard?”
“I made the team.”
“That would mean you went to—”
She shook her head and chased a few cold grains of rice around her plate with her fork. “I didn’t go. I don’t want to talk about this. Your turn.”
“Were you injured? That has to be the huge risk.”
“Your turn. It’s enough to know I didn’t get to go.”
“Why didn’t you go? If it wasn’t an injury, what—?”
She stood up, the stool squeaking on the floor. “Lunch was great. Want to fuck?”
“Zarley.”
“Come on, you know that’s what you want.”
“I know we have fucking great sexual chemistry.” He scrubbed his face with both hands and exhaled in frustration. “But I’m trying to learn this people thing and you’re annoyed because I got in your face about dancing and the end of your sporting career.”
“You don’t approve of my dancing.”
“I never said that. I wonder why you’re not a coach or an official in the gymnastics world.”
“That wasn’t an option.”
“Why not?”
“Fuck off, Reid.”
“I made you angry?”
“That’s a question? No kidding, you’re not good at people.”
“I’ve put you off our thing, haven’t I?”
“We have a sex thing and I’m not ready for it to be a thing where you judge me, or railroad me, refused to listen to me or talk over me to get what you—”
“I am.”
He interrupted her. Unbelievable. “That kind of stuff was my life. Every coach I had. I don’t need it, or want it, anymore and certainly not from a man I’m having a thing with.”
“I want us to be more than a thing.”
She sighed. “You’re high on the sex, in love with the sex, and I’m the sex. That’s great, but it’s not more. You admitted you were confused. I can be your first. Your hot wild time, but I can’t be your girlfriend.”
“Why not?”
Why not, why not? God, she liked him enough, even when he was being an arrogant ass. She’d mastered arrogant ass in her teens, every coach, every official, the occasional host family parent, and maybe their backgrounds weren’t so far apart. But he lived in a very different world and had complication stamped on his forehead, and what exactly did they have after she’d finished his sexual initiation?