finally looks away, guilt tightening his face. Something frantic rises in my chest, confusing me. It’s unpleasant and I don’t like it at all, and Luke is the one doing this to me. My Luke. “I don’t like this,” I mutter, pushing out of his clingy, cushiony leather couch to look for my shoes. “I’m going home.”
I should be the one to break up with him. I should be the one to leave, and this may be the right moment to end this so I don’t have to endure any more unpleasant surprises in the future.
“Jane, come on. Let’s talk.”
“No, I need to feed my cat. And you want to change everything.”
“Not everything. It’ll be just like this, every night. Just the same, but in a bigger place, together.”
“No, it won’t. The same won’t be enough.”
“Enough of what?”
“Enough of what you want. You want”—I wave a hand—“something else. Someone else. I’m not going to stick around and watch you yearn for a wife and a baby when what you have is me. That’s stupid.”
I stalk off and he follows me to the table where I left my purse. “I want you, Jane. You know that.”
“I know you want me, but you want more than me too. I won’t give you that. I’m not . . .” I growl, unable to find the right word. I don’t even want to find the right word. None of this is fair. “You know I’m not!” I yell as I yank open the door.
“Not what?”
That scratching, swelling mess of anger inside me gets bigger and climbs into my throat as I lurch through the door. “I’m not a real person!” I scream.
My voice echoes off the ten-foot ceilings of his hallway, banging around on the doors of the other five loft condos up here. I don’t care. I’ll yell it in their faces if they stick their heads out. He doesn’t know I’m a sociopath, but he knows I’m different. He said he liked that, so what the hell does he think he’s pulling here?
“Jane,” Luke calls from behind me as I rush for the stairwell.
“Don’t follow me,” I warn. And he doesn’t. He never pushes me. Or he never did before today.
I race down the metal stairs, clanking my fury out in rapid steps. It doesn’t help.
Why would he do this? Everything has been going fine. Luke and I had a routine, a relationship, and for the first time in my life I’ve been . . . comfortable.
No, that isn’t the right word. I’ve always been satisfied with the life I lead. I’ve always made myself happy, doing exactly what I want to do. Every creature comfort I’ve ever wanted as an adult, I’ve given myself.
But Luke loves me, which is different. And in my own way I love him back. I try, anyway. I give him sex and gifts and attention, because that’s what I have to give. But he needs more. Of course he does. He needs real love to bask in, not this strange mirrored heat I throw.
I knew this day would come, just not like this. I thought I’d be in charge of it. Now Luke is asking more of me when he’s already scraped the shallowest depths of my soul. “Fuck!”
Still cursing, I slam through the stairwell door into the sparse hallway that serves as a lobby to his building. One of his neighbors is getting mail, and she squeaks with alarm and drops everything on the floor as I storm past and out into the night.
If I were a real girl, I’d be excited by Luke’s sudden proposal to cohabitate. My man wants to take it to the next level! He’s ready to settle down!
I’d be looking up real estate websites and planning my dream kitchen. That’s what my best friend, Meg, would have done. But those kinds of dreams destroyed her like they’ve destroyed so many others, so I’m better off. She’s dead. She’s dead because those dreams fell apart and she killed herself, and I’m glad I’ve never felt anything that deeply.
I know I can’t have it all, so I won’t bother trying to fool myself into thinking I can make Luke’s dreams come true.
“Shit,” I growl as I beep my car door open and drop into the seat. My phone buzzes.
Please come back. Let’s talk.
He may as well have typed, Come back so we can feed your fingers to a rabid wolverine, because that sounds like just as much fun.
I thought you’d be at