Fortune by Annabel Joseph (ebook reader for comics TXT) 📕

It felt like a safeword moment, but she didn’t want to give him even that. She opened and took him in her mouth again, barely feeling it, just going through the motions. He was flagging, his hardness abating even as she threw herself into pleasuring him. Mindless technique. Tears rolled like liquid shame down her cheeks.

He made a sharp sound a moment later and pushed her back. He stood up and refastened himself, not looking at her. He went into his bedroom and slammed the door.

She, too, slammed the door on her way out.

* * * * *

Kat went home and pretended nothing had happened. Her mother and father played along and didn’t ask any questions. She feigned exhaustion and went into her old room with her two nieces. She found it impossible to sleep with all the noise and lay awake long past midnight. Somehow she’d thought he would come for her. That he would ring the doorbell, come in, find a private place to apologize to her and ask her to come back.

But no. He didn’t come. She barely slept at all, cycling in and out of short shallow dreams only to come awake with a start and look around for him. She wore her sister’s clothes the next day because her clothes were at his place. She imagined at some point she’d have to slink back and get her things and deal with all that awkwardness.

She missed him.

The next evening her mother knocked on her bedroom door. “No, Mama,” Kat said. “I don’t want to talk.”

“I do not care. We talk. You are sad for him, eh? What has happened? Why did he chase you away? Or…did you run from him?” she asked, astute as ever.

“He was too…he was too…he pushed for too much. Too much commitment. Plus he’s just plain mean.”

“Mean? What way is he mean? He hurt you? I kill him.”

“No. Mama, you don’t understand. Not mean like that. Just…annoying. Just forget it. It’s not important now.”

“Not important, eh?” Her mother scowled at her. “Then why you toss and turn? Why you skulk around with that sad face?”

“How do you know I toss and turn?”

“Mama knows everything. If you are sad without him, you must talk to him and explain how you feel.”

“But I don’t know how I feel. And I don’t really want to talk to him.”

“Hmph. Katyusha, you choose unhappiness.”

“No. I choose freedom and common sense.”

“Freedom to be alone and unhappy. Some common sense, this. Ekh tyi, always you have been this way. Do you know, I invite Dr. Ryan to dinner tonight.”

“Mama!”

“He refused to come. He tell me, ‘I would love to but…’” She looked at Kat in exasperation. “He says to me ‘but,’ ‘but,’ just as you do. ‘But’ this, ‘but’ that. This is too much ‘buts.’ Dr. Ryan, his ‘but’ is sad. I hear it in his voice.”

“Mama, I love you but you’re cuckoo.”

“What is this, ‘cuckoo’?”

“Crazy, weird. Lunatic. I don’t want to see him, Mama. I don’t care if his ‘but’ is sad. Just accept it. We don’t work well together.” The moment she said it, she knew it for a lie. She knew her mother knew too. Her mother could read anything on her face as if it were written there. Kat put her head in her hands. “I don’t even know anymore, Mama. I don’t know why I ran away. I don’t know whose fault it was. I don’t really care.”

Her mama’s fingers ran through her hair, rubbed her shoulders. “Why do you not tell him this? He probably feel the same way right now. Men. They do not know how to say what they feel sometimes. Do you think he is missing you, zaika?”

“No. Yes. I don’t know.”

She didn’t know anything, only that a few moments later she said goodbye to her mama and papa and headed for the door.

* * * * *

Ryan drove home feeling as miserable as the cold, rainy weather. He worked late trying to forget her, to no avail. He wanted her to come back but he understood she might not. He hadn’t folded a crane in two days.

He drove into his neighborhood and continued right through it, turned toward Brighton. He wasn’t going to her house. He was just going to drive around looking at Christmas lights. The holidays were nearly here. His family and friends wanted to know his plans, wanted to invite him to parties and gatherings. For the first time in a long time he didn’t want to go. He had imagined the holidays with her, imagined spending Christmas Eve introducing her to his parents, who would be home from Aruba. He had imagined the fun of spending Christmas Day in the hustle and bustle of Dmitri and Elena’s home. Elena had called him this afternoon and invited him to dinner. He could have gone. Maybe he should have. He had a million questions to ask her, the seer, the fortune-teller. Do we have a future? Is this worth fighting for? He thought perhaps Elena could help him, but in the end he’d begged off with lame excuses and pretended he had a meeting he couldn’t miss. Snow was starting to fall, tiny flurries that depressed him. He found himself idling in front of Kat’s house.

The door swung open. The silhouette of a figure appeared there. He had a silly impulse to hide and an even sillier impulse to sit very still and not be noticed. It wasn’t Kat anyway. It was her mother. She was beckoning him, barely cracking the door open in the cold. When Elena beckoned you obeyed. He turned off the car and walked up the sidewalk. She pulled him inside the door.

“Dr. Ryan.”

“Mrs. Argounov, I know it’s late—”

“Yes, you are too late. She is already going to your house.”

“She is?”

“Yes, she is going back there now.”

He turned immediately to go. Elena drew him back with a hand on his arm.

“Dr. Ryan, I tell you quickly. I have two answers for you.” She