Page 81 of Dead Serious with Benefits
“You’ve lost me.”
“And me,” I said as the car moved upward. “Who’s Angela?”
“My ex-girlfriend,” Arlo said with a frown.
Moira gave him a meaningful look. “You know Mom. She means well, but she gets things wrong. Sometimes offensively wrong. Because you were with Angela, she assumed you were bi. Right conclusion, wrong process of getting there.”
“I’m still confused,” I admitted pleasantly, mainly because it was a pleasure to be a part of a conversation that I couldn’t immediately read from start to finish. Sometimes it was nice to be in the dark, where surprises awaited you.
Arlo grunted. “Angela was…isa transwoman. The mistake was allowing Matilda to know that.”
“Oh,” I said in understanding. “So because she was born a he?—”
“She’s still a he in Matilda’s mind to some degree,” Arlo said with a sigh. “Which of course means?—”
“That you must be bi, right? Right! Right conclusion, wrong process,” I said with a nod of understanding.
“I can’t really hold it against her,” Arlo admitted quietly. “Moira is right, Matilda has always been a big-hearted woman who takes in strays from all over and loves them fiercely. But there are just some things her mind has a hard time wrapping around. Angela was welcomed around the family anytime, and Matilda did her absolute best to stick to the proper...phrasing. But in her mind?—”
“Mom is Mom,” Moira said in an exasperated fondness that I’d heard at the bar while she’d been talking to and about her siblings.
“Angela always suspected,” Arlo admitted quietly. “She said she wouldn’t be mad if it were true. Because at the end of the day, Matilda treated her like a person, and who cared if she got some of the details a little wrong?”
“I always liked her; she had a good head on her shoulders, just like you,” Moira said, smiling at Arlo. I watched her expression stiffen, and she glanced at me. “But that was years ago.”
“Is she afraid I’m going to get jealous and it will hurt the possibility of a relationship between us? Or is she worried I’ll get jealous about your ex-girlfriend and not want to give the hotel my money?” I asked Arlo.
“I’m right here,” Moira reminded me, and I grinned at her. “Oh, great, another one.”
“The first one,” Arlo said, giving Moira an affectionate smile. “My entire family is convinced I’m a sad, morbid, lonely man in desperate need of someone to come into my life, sweep me off my feet, and marry me.”
“We do not,” Moira added, but her eyes didn’t linger too long on his when she said it.
I stared at Arlo and smiled, giving him a wink. Mostly because I wanted to say that there was something sad about him, something deep down that I didn’t think he would ever be able to shake. And I wanted to tell him there was nothing wrong with that, that sadness could sometimes be beautiful, if only because it made the bright spots in life so much brighter. And there was a lot of brightness in his life, a brightness he was fully aware of and didn’t shrink away from it. So he could be sad all he wanted because that was just a streak of blue in the swirling mass of colors I was coming to see inside him.
And lonely? Well, what was wrong with that? I’d been lonely for as long as I could remember, even though I was usually surrounded by people. There was nothing wrong with being lonely. There were parts in all of us that were hardly ever seen, let alone touched by another person, and sometimes not at all. And when enough of those parts existed, you tended to feel like an outsider, even when you were included. Sometimes loneliness was just being comfortable by yourself and finding ways to enjoy what you had, sometimes forgetting that ache inside you, and sometimes making friends with it.
But his sister was right there, and I didn’t feel like pouring my guts out in front of her.
Arlo gave me a curious look, and I smiled, shrugging slightly to convey that there was nothing to worry about. It was mainly for the benefit of Moira, who was watching us, though she did a good job of seeming indifferent to the nonverbal conversation between Arlo and me. So good, I wondered just how long she had been working in customer service.
I had already seen her with the mask off while dealing with her siblings, and now I saw the mask slip back into place. Her expression looked like she was staring off into space, distracted by her inner thoughts rather than paying attention to what was around her. Yet she betrayed her interest when her eyes gave little micro flicks toward Arlo or me. So yes, she was good, but she was just as nosy as her siblings.
Right on cue, she looked at Arlo. “Do I want to know what Mason was talking about?”
“About Dom?” Arlo asked, his shoulder sagging a little. “He’s staying with me.”
“I figured, he’s in town and not staying here. Ever since you bought that house, he prefers to stay with you,” she said without a flicker of offense or annoyance.
“He...was witness to something neither of us wished he’d seen,” Arlo explained, and I had to choke back a laugh. He was rarely successful when he tried to downplay or ‘soften’ things. Somehow, his softer explanations made whatever he was talking about seem so much worse than it was.
“Dom saw very little, but I might have made a...compliment that was something he didn’t want to hear,” I explained.
Moira eyed me. “Right. Well, that there is enough for me. I do not want to hear that compliment.”
“Nor do I plan on repeating it,” I told her with an easy smile.
The car came to a stop, and she snorted. “You remind me of my brother, but you have more tact, that’s good.”
