I didn’t see it then. Honestly, I just saw someone I thought it would be nice to fuck on my last night of freedom. “You look happy now,” he said, and the smile tugged at my lips without my permission.
“Did I not before?”
He ruffled his hair, shook his head. “Not really.”
“The Santa Monica welcome committee.” I sipped my drink, enjoying his gaze on my mouth. “So what, you have like a catch-and-kill policy with tourists?”
“Meaning?”
I raised my voice over the music that was playing. “Do you fuck them?”
He grinned. “Just the ones who ask nicely.”
“What’s got a pretty boy like you drinking whiskey at 3 p.m.?”
“I don’t know,” he said, before considering it a moment longer. “Existential angst.”
I set my elbows on the table in front of me, leaning my chin into my hands and staring over at him, open, almost interested. “Tell me about it.”
He frowned. “I have these invasive thoughts about what it means to be a person,” he said.
“Hmm,” I answered. “Legally speaking, a person is anything that can be subject to legal proceedings. Or, metaphysically, you must be both conscious and self-conscious in order to be a person. A person must be a moral agent, making moral judgments if you want to be philosophical about it. Take your pick.”
He gave me a flicker of a smile. “Fine,” he said. “Let’s focus on the moral one.”
“A bad boy,” I said, sipping my beer. “Got it.”
“A person who questions a lot of the things they put into the world.”
“Sure. No morals under capitalism.”
He shrugged. “A bit more personal than that.” He swallowed, thinking over his words. “You ever wake up in the morning in a sunny hellscape and wonder how you got stuck there?”
“Every day,” I answered.
“I have this job,” he started. Then he shook his head. “I have a work project starting tomorrow. I wonder if I wasn’t involved in this work project if I would be a different kind of person. A better person.”
“What are you, like, a politician or something?”
He snorted. “No.”
I leaned forward to him, a moth to a flame. “A serial killer? Are you going to murder me?” I asked.
“Nah,” he answered easily. “That’s no fun. It’s more interesting for me to make you think you’ll get murdered and see if you want to live or not.”
“Dark,” I said approvingly.
“I watch a lot of horror movies,” he answered. His phone buzzed on the table where his hand was resting next to it, and he didn’t even let his eyes flick to it.
“Nietzsche,” I said. “Nothing you do matters because nothing matters.”
“Things are less complicated that way.” He nodded, taking a long pull of his beer, and I laughed.
“It’s bleak here, isn’t it?” I looked around, slumped back in my seat, at the unassuming bar, the regulars and tourists alike, the passersby. “Los Angeles. Too sunny. I don’t trust places where it doesn’t rain.”
He was studying me in his calculated way. I felt transparent in a way I never did, a wide-open window that I needed to pull the curtain on fast. “I get the feeling you don’t trust much.”
I hated it—being seen. So, I pushed myself forward again, balancing my face in my hands, my elbows pressed into the picnic table between us. “And you’re a brooding single guy with too much money, some sort of weird masochism fetish, and, frankly, an uncalled-for bias against Bud Light.” I couldn’t stop watching him now, eyes flashing in the sun sinking down over the horizon.
“So just your type?” There was the promised fun.
“I don’t know,” I said, drawing the words out slowly, leaning down a hand and pressing my fingers against the picnic table, drawing nonsense shapes. “It doesn’t really matter, does it?”
“No,” he returned. “I guess not.”
I reached out a hand. “I’m Jac,” I told him.
“Henry,” he replied.
“Henry,” I said, taking the pitcher into my hands and downing it. “You want to get out of here?”
He smiled then, the first time it seemed the cloud had completely lifted from his face. “As a matter of fact, I do.”
“Great,” I said. “I’ve been starving myself for three months. I’ll let you buy me pizza.”
2
Curse of Curves
