Well Suited (Red Lipstick Coalition #4)(13)

I couldn’t say I didn’t know what it was about him that struck me. I knew every reason and had cataloged each one in detail and in stone. His physique alone was enough to make a heterosexual woman—any heterosexual woman—offer herself up like a filet mignon, stripped and seared and raw in the middle. But when coupled with his quick wit, persistence, and his body chemicals, I was helpless to resist.

Which was the foundation of my problem.

He made me feel reckless. Thoughtless. He robbed me of inhibition and denied me of choice though not by his own design. It was simply a fact that resided in the space between us. The way he kissed me claimed me.

And I wasn’t interested in being claimed. Especially by a man who I’d unwittingly given control.

One night had been enough to push my boundaries into spaces I wasn’t comfortable in. In the moment, it felt like relief, release, and for that moment, I unclenched my grip and let go, and I floated away in the currents of him. But when I’d realized I couldn’t feel the ground beneath my feet, I’d scrambled to find it again.

And that meant staying away from Theodore Bane like a recovering alcoholic stayed away from Wild Turkey—with willpower, longing, and a touch of regret.

What I needed was a relationship built on equality and partnership. Passion had no place in my life because passion was unpredictable.

My parents, for example, were passionate creatures. They were also the most unpredictable humans I’d ever known. They loved each other—anyone could see that with little more than a glance in their direction—but they were also unstable.

Case in point: they had been married and divorced four times.

To each other.

In their defense, they were never hostile. I had never once seen them fight, not in the traditional sense of the word. They would have discussions in voices somehow both firm and soft. My mother would consult her tarot cards and burn red candles and fall asleep with rose quartz on her chest and sandalwood burning on her nightstand. My father hadn’t cut his hair since sometime in the late seventies, and the scent of patchouli clung to him like he exhaled it—the oil used to mask the aroma of cannabis, which he smoked often and in large quantity.

They were gentle, peaceful people who made every decision with their hearts rather than their heads. Mom taught yoga classes. Dad played bass in a cover band. And somehow, their genetic mix had made me. Even though they didn’t understand me, they accepted me with all the grace they contained, which was a lot.

But what they hadn’t given me were the boundaries I so desperately needed. I had no bedtime. I could choose what I wanted for dinner. There were no rules, which, to most kids, would have been some version of heaven.

For me, it was a veritable hell.

So I made my own rules. In bed by ten. Up at six thirty. Meals planned with food groups and nutritional value in mind. If I didn’t wash the sheets, they wouldn’t have been washed. If I didn’t sit Mom down to plan meals and if I didn’t physically accompany her to the grocery store, we would have survived on ramen and kombucha. When I was little, we had.

By the time I was twelve, I had a day planner for their schedules. Because if I didn’t remind them to be where they needed to be, they’d have been incredibly unsuccessful adults.

Honestly, even their small successes were debatable and largely contingent on me.

Alongside the reversal of dynamic, we just didn’t understand each other. I thought they believed me to be just a little different, just a little odd. But to cover their bases, Mom took me to spiritual healers in the hopes they would fix me, make me more like them. Read my tea leaves to search for some truth to connect us when we were so deeply separated. Pulled tarot cards for me regularly, which she took for gospel.

I took them for nothing more than a deck of cards with pretty pictures on them.

I believed in what I could see. In science and fact, not faith. Extreme emotions made me uncomfortable and uneasy, and I avoided them at all costs. My parents had them in abundance, and every time one presented itself, it would deplete my emotional resources. They left me drained, left me feeling tired, left me folding in on myself, retreating into my room with music and a book and the still calmness of my sanctuary. Refused emotion in place of logic. Observed rather than participated.

Emotions were exhausting, and I had no practical use for them.

But Theo inspired extreme emotions in me.

My brow furrowed as I wheeled around another shelf, scanning the spines for my destination. I wondered how sharing space with him would end, knowing I had no control over my brain’s traitorous chemicals beyond keeping a safe distance. If I couldn’t smell him, I wouldn’t want him. It seemed fairly simple. I wondered if some essential oil might help, something potent. Like menthol or maybe something stronger. Like gasoline.

He’d accepted my request to stay uninvolved, and I trusted him to uphold that request. I lived my life within the bounds of rules, and if Theo respected that, everything would be fine. We would cohabitate for the sake of our baby. He and I would provide that stability that I’d always wished for as a child, the structure and dependability of consistency. Because in his way, he seemed much more like me than I’d realized on first glance. We wanted the same things.

Which was why we would make an excellent team.

So long as we kept all the riffraff out of the picture.



That evening, after work, I walked toward the subway, in the direction of the Village where Theo lived, just a few streets away from my place. Well, really, it was Amelia’s place. Her parents had bought it as an investment property when we were in college, gutted and renovated it, and let us all live there for practically nothing.