Page 47 of Alone With You in the Ether

“True,” she said. “You make an excellent point.”

“Though, we never ruled out the option to renegotiate.”

She nodded, satisfied that he’d been the one to suggest it. “Definitely true. Do you have any opposition to octagons?”

“Not my favorite of the geometric shapes, but they’re certainly not invalid.”

She smiled to herself, flicking her signal to merge onto the highway.

“What should we talk about?” he asked her.

“Personal information,” she said. “Secrets.”

“You know all my secrets.”

She slid him an admonishing glance. “You told meallof your secrets over the span of five conversations?”

He shrugged. “I don’t have a lot of them. Or any, really.”

“Surely you havesome.”

“Is there something specific you want to know?”

Now that he mentioned it, yes.

“Let’s talk about sex,” she suggested neutrally.

He took a sip of tea.

“Okay,” he said. “What do you want to know?”

“Who was the last person you had sex with?”

“A girl who goes to my gym,” he said.

“Did you date, or…?”

He glanced at her, smiling. “Her name is Andrea. She goes by Andie.”

“With an i?”

“An i-e.”

Regan made a face, and he laughed.

“She’s a trainer. We went on two dates, slept together four times. Last time was about three months ago.”

“What went wrong?”

“Nothing,” he said. “She works odd hours, I wasn’t around. Plus it wasn’t really going to go anywhere.”

“Why not?”

“Oddly,” he said with another sidelong glance, “some people seem to have no interest in bees.”

Regan suffered a rush of satisfaction she hurried to suppress.

“Did you tell her about the godless colonies?”

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