Page 35 of The Love Losers

I nod, and we walk to the Jeep.

Anthony pauses by the driver’s door, and my heart starts racing. My foolish loser of a heart.

“Thank you,” he says, watching me. His eyes are so much more animated than they were the other night, in this same bar. They twinkle under the starlight, as if the stars themselves reached down and lent him their shine. Maybe all he needed was for someone to see him.

“For what?” I ask thickly.

“For tonight,” he says, his eyes still fixed to mine.

“You actually enjoyed yourself?”

“You’re right about the bartending, but at least I struck one item off my list. I did something different.” He shocks me by reaching up and running his fingers over the purple streak in my hair. I nearly cringe, because I have the bad habit of sucking on the end of it when I’m overwhelmed, but he doesn’t look disgusted. His eyes are studying me like I’m a painting in the museum his family probably owns.

“Tell me about your plan for the building,” I say, although I regret the words as soon as they leave me, because his eyes go flat again—as if an artist just painted them over with matte gray.

“It’ll never happen.” His voice is hoarse, sad.

“I love things that will never happen. Most of the best things will never happen.”

His mouth hitches upward again, as if it can’t help itself, and for a second my fingers want to rise and trace his lips. To pull the beautiful collar of his shirt toward me so I can see what they taste like. But I’ve become a coward, because I don’t.

“Like a horse turning into a unicorn,” he says, his voice soft but deep, rumbling pleasingly through me.

“That’s one of them,” I agree. “Now, show meyourunicorn.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

ANTHONY

One time, a woman asked me to show her my dick within the first fifteen minutes of our dinner appointment. I’d slept with her friend in high school, it turns out, and rumors of my dick had preceded me.

This happened two weeks ago, actually, at one of the appointments Jake set up for me.

Thank you, Jake.

Her request didn’t excite anything in me except for a desire for the meeting to end. But Rosie’s request…

It feeds an appetite I didn’t realize I had—as if I’ve been starving for years, because I didn’t know what kind of food to eat.

Without thinking about it, I hold my hand out to her. With what seems like an equal lack of consideration, she takes it, her cold fingers weaving through mine, and I immediately wrap them up, wanting to give her my warmth. We start walking around the side of the building.

“It’s big,” she says, her voice breathy as she checks out the side of the warehouse tattooed with graffiti. I can’t help but think of those bright pink condoms tucked into her purse. Did she take them because she was seeking some kind of reaction,or because she’s so certain she’ll never sleep with me that she thinks nothing of flaunting her sex life?

The thought makes me grit my teeth. Up until now, I’d thought jealousy was one more emotion I wasn’t capable of. Because Nina was supposed to be my wife, but I hadn’t felt jealous when I’d found out she was fucking Wilson and probably had been for months. I’d felt betrayed and rejected, but not jealous. Not even angry. I’d felt—

Blank. Stuck in a void with no beginning or end. More statue than man, like Nina had called me when she was feeling particularly petty.

I can feel jealousy, apparently, but I’d prefer to go back to being made of stone.

“Why’s it all empty?” Rosie asks, tugging at my hand.

“It’s not,” I say, bringing myself back as we walk along the trampled weeds at the side of the building. There should be a sidewalk here, lined with the dahlias my mother grows in her garden. There should be more of those oversized windows, looking out at the city lights. “We use it to store stuff for some of the developers we work with here. There’s equipment and building supplies inside.”

The face she pulls makes me laugh.

“Tell me how you really feel.”

“It seems like a waste is all,” she says as we move around the dirty, out-of-date building.

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