“I know what it’s like not to be wanted and not to understand why.”
She squinted at him through her fingers. “You? No way. Anybody who likes dudes would hand you their panties.”
He smiled a little on one side of his mouth. “Not all of them. Go ahead. Finish telling me your lies about Francis.”
“This is too hard.”
“Then it’s okay. We’ll put it on hold for a while.”
She started talking again because she couldn’t stop. “And then, after all that happened, I didn’t know what to do. There was this police car hanging around outside my apartment, and they told me to get in. I thought they were going to take me to the police station to give my statement or whatever I was supposed to do to report a crime, but they drove me around and asked me a bunch of questions. Finally, at a stoplight, I opened the car door and got out of their car and called a rideshare. Typical useless civil servants, ya know? Show up too late afterward, ask a bunch of stupid questions, and then nothing happens.”
“That’s odd,” Augustine said, frowning. “Is that how your police investigate a crime?”
“I still don’t know what to do,” she said. “I still had one credit card from before I’d met Francis, so I went to where I work, took out five hundred dollars as a cash advance, and got on the plane to Paris, because what the hell. I had a gym bag in my locker with a change or two of clothes, and I had my passport in my purse because I’d wanted to show it off to my friends at work. Most of them had never seen one in real life.”
Augustine rubbed his thumb over her knuckles, and she clutched his hand more tightly.
“I didn’t realize that I’d have to pay the FlyBNB lady a lot of money because my credit card got declined, because now it’s over its limit. So, here I am, broke in Paris and trying not to be an idiot, but somehow, I’m the same old Dree. I wanted to be different, ya know? I wanted to be someone else. But I’m just as stupid as I’ve always been.”
He caressed the back of her hand with his thumb. “You’re not stupid. Don’t stop believing in love. When you do that, you get desperate, and you can’t stop yourself from doing foolish, self-destructive things.”
That sounded like personal experience.
She opened her fingers a little more and peered at him between them. “Do you want to talk about it?”
He chuckled and pulled back a little, looking down. “It was a long time ago.”
“Did someone hold your hand and tell you not to give up on love?”
He glanced at her from the corners of his eyes. “No.”
At the very least, no matter what else was going on in her life, Dree would trip over her own feet trying to be helpful. She was a sucker like that, too.
So, she took her hand off her snotty nose and bleary eyes, wiped it carefully on her shirt a couple of times to make sure it was dry, and held Augustine’s hand. She looked straight into his dark, fathomless eyes. “Don’t give up on love. You’re a great guy. You rescued me from a mob of creepers, and now you’re sitting here and listening to me blather on about how I screwed up my life. There’s someone out there waiting for a guy like you.”
He didn’t look away, but there was something in the slight bow of his lips and creases at the corners of his eyes that looked wounded. He said, “I don’t think anyone is coming for me.”
“You don’t know that.”
He shrugged and broke their eye contact. “It’s just a feeling, but I’ve had it for a long time. But we’re talking about you.”
“I’m kind of done talking. I’ve reached the end of this stupid, stupid tale. I got conned, and now I’m broke. I probably should be a prostitute, but I don’t think I’m smart enough. Guys would be like, ‘I would gladly pay you Tuesday for a blow job today,’ and I’d be like, ‘Okay, sure!’ Because I’m just that dumb.”
“You’re not dumb.”
“I’m hoping I am. If I’m dumb, I can get smarter.”
“You’ve had some bad breaks.”
She huffed a laugh. “Ya think?”
Augustine tugged his wallet out of his hip pocket again. He grasped all the cash inside and laid it on the counter. “This will get you started.”
Dree glanced at the stack of green and yellow bills. There was even more there than he’d tried to pay her. “Just put that money back in your wallet. I haven’t done anything to earn it.”
“You don’t have to.”
She had been raised not to take charity. Others needed it more. “Yes, I do.”
“I don’t need it. You do.”
“I’ll be fine. I always land on my feet.” She had no idea how she was going to do that.
Augustine said, “It’s nothing but pieces of paper.”
She snorted. “That sounds like someone who’s always had plenty of it. When you haven’t had enough, you know money is precious. It determines what you can eat and how safe the place is where you sleep. You’re rich, aren’t you?”
“I’m comfortable,” he admitted.
“Yeah, that’s something a rich person would say.”
“I was going to pay you for last night. Let’s pretend you didn’t say no.”
He was a nice guy, but Dree was getting a little pissed at him. “I am not a prostitute.”
“As you said, Jesus hung out with prostitutes.”
She rolled her eyes. “Does that make you Jesus Christ?”
Augustine laughed out loud at that, looking up at the stained ceiling. “Now, there’s something no one who knows me has ever accused me of. Some people have called me the very Devil in disguise or an incubus, but no one has ever confused me with the Savior.”
“There are some lines I’m not going to cross, Augustine.”
Yet.
She was going to get more desperate, she knew. When the end of the month
