I didn’t know it was possible, but I think I managed an even brighter shade of tomato. “Yeah, I like him. But, I mean, it is what it is,” I said. “He’s a lot older than me. And he’s really famous,” I said, knowing that Grizzie thought I meant Anyan was famous as the artist apparently known as Juan Besonegro.
“So?” Grizzie asked, all combative.
“So, he’s out of my league,” I started, stopping when Grizzie held up both hands, palms facing outward.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, Jane. I saw the way he looks at you. He was staring like he wanted to get right the hell in your league, in front of all of us, at the bar.”
I nodded. “Yeah, I know we’re attracted to each other. And I know it’ll probably go a lot further, and soon. But it’s gotta be different for him. He’s been around, Griz. I’m some girl who fell in love with her high school sweetheart and hasn’t ever left home. I doubt we think the same way about stuff.”
“What do you mean, ‘think the same way about stuff’?”
“I mean…” Pausing to gather my thoughts, I turned around so I could half sit, half lean on our break table.
What did I mean? I realized that I wasn’t entirely sure, so I started talking: “I mean that he’s already lived a lot. He’s probably been in love dozens of times, gone on hundreds of first dates, gotten all dramatic about different people, and then realized he was silly. Eventually, it’s gotta stop, doesn’t it? It all has to get a bit… pointless?” Grizzie made a face, so I pulled back. “Okay, not pointless. But less big, right? I mean, how many times can you fall head over heels in love before you start to wonder if love really exists?”
“Dude, was there a puddle of cynicism waiting on your wrong side of the bed this morning?” Grizzie asked, her expression clearly horrified. “Life is always big. It’s your life.”
But what if you’ve lived a hundred lifetimes? I asked silently, thinking of the preternatural calm of the Alfar. Is it still “life,” then? Or something a lot less lively?
“Take me as an example,” Grizzie was saying. “If you want to talk about life experience, I’ve ratcheted up quite a bit in my time. I’ve done lots of crazy, extreme things. I’ve not only been around the block, but I’ve burned the block down. At least twice.”
I couldn’t help but agree. Grizzie had lived a very crazy life.
“And I’m still enjoying life, Jane. Cuz that’s how I choose to be. I think that you’re mistaking certain people—people who have this ‘been there, done that’ attitude to everything—with people who’ve experienced a lot of stuff. They’re not the same thing. I bet the people who walk around acting like they’ve already done everything twice were walking around like that before they did anything. It’s just who they are. People who want to live? They live.”
Bizarrely enough, the person I thought about as Grizzie finished speaking was Morrigan. She’d convinced everyone she was everything Alfar immortality represented: something cold and detached, like a living zombie.
But Morrigan fooled us all, I thought, realizing that what Grizzie said had a lot of merit. Yeah, Morrigan was clearly a conniving, evil bitch. But while those weren’t the best character traits, they were definitely a choice she made and they were definitely anything but cold and detached. She’d chosen to live as a cheating, murderous, purist monster, but she’d definitely chosen to live.
But that doesn’t mean you, Jane True, can compete with all of Anyan’s life experience, my brain cut in, rather rudely. My libido gave it a raspberry, but it was still too caught up in its own spanking fantasy to formulate any kind of real argument against my pessimistic logic.
“No, I think you’re totally right about what you were saying,” I replied, shaking my head. “I think you’re right about choosing to live versus just living.”
“But?”
“But… that doesn’t change the fact that he’s lived a lot. And I haven’t.”
Grizzie’s wide mouth frowned even more, and she walked toward me until she was perched next to me on the break table, one arm around my waist.
“Are you saying that you think he’s too good for you, Jane True?”
My silence was my only answer.
Grizzie sighed, clearly at a loss. “That’s just… stupid,” she replied, eventually.
I couldn’t help but laugh. Grizzie laughed too, but without a