“I’m sorry, Anna. ‛Ho’ was the only word I could spell,” he says. “You should have seen what I had to work with.”
I shake my head. “You’re unbelievable. You could have spelled ‛O–H.’”
“Maybe.” He grins. “But you look so cute when you’re mad. Come sit with me,” he says, opening the door and ushering me out of the women’s restroom.
“I’m waiting for someone,” I say.
“Until he or she gets here, please sit with me. We need to talk.”
Fine. What choice do I have? If I don’t sit with him, he’ll just send a text and buy Starbucks, and have every chair removed except for the ones at his table.
We sit down together. If he can tell I’m drinking green tea instead of Earl Grey tea, he doesn’t let on.
Earl clears his throat wickedly. “So, Anna, you think that I think you’re a hooker.”
“Your butler seemed to think so,” I say. “Have you paid other girls for sex?”
He sighs. “That’s a very narrow-minded way to look at what I do. It’s not easy to find beautiful women who will LARP with me and let me have my way sexually with them. Do I have to pay them sometimes? Yes.”
“I knew it. I think we’re done here,” I say.
I start to rise out of my chair, but he grabs my wrist. “Please hear me out, Anna.”
I sit back down. “Fine. Talk.”
“I don’t expect you to understand. I’m a complicated man, Anna. I have fifty shames. Some of them you already know, such as my intense mancrush on Tom Cruise or the fact that I shop at Walmart. But I have other secret shameful desires that are more . . . sexual in nature.”
Oh my.
“Like I told you, I’m into kinky, weird games. You haven’t even begun to scratch the surface. Perhaps it’s for the best that you leave me. If paying women for erotically charged role-playing sessions bothers you, you could never handle some of the things I’m into. For what it’s worth, Anna, the LARPers are all in the past now. I quit buying women the moment I met you. I’m a changed man.”
“You’d just rather buy extravagantly expensive things for me instead of throw actual money at me,” I say.
“Exactly,” he says. “Last night was the first time I’ve ever had ‛vanilla’ sex without getting dressed up and doing a role-playing scene. I didn’t have to pretend you were a captive orc princess in order to get off. I don’t know what you’re doing to me, Anna.”
My heart skips a beat. “That’s incredibly romantic,” I say, radiating joy. Maybe things can work out for us after all.
Just then, the door swings open and Kathleen steps into Starbucks. With Jin.
Gulp.
Chapter Sixteen
JIN STANDS OFF TO ONE SIDE behind Kathleen. He can’t seriously be ready for another fight, not after what happened at Eclipse. Earl, for his part, remains seated. He’s always so cool under pressure. But then again, he’s not the one who ended up in the hospital after their last meeting.
“Are you ready to go?” Kathleen says, the anger resonating in her voice. She’s not happy that I’m sitting here with Earl. I can’t blame her. I need to diffuse the situation before any more testicles get crushed.
“I think I need to leave,” I say to Earl.
“I’m not going to try to stop you, Anna,” he says.
Wait—Earl Grey is just going to let me go? Without a fight? It doesn’t sound like him at all. “Can you guys wait in the car? I’ll be right out,” I tell Jin and Kathleen.
“Five minutes,” Jin says. “Let’s go, Kathleen.”
They leave, and I’m alone again with Earl.
“So you would let me walk out of here? What gives?”
“I’m used to it by now,” he says. Oh no. Emo Earl is back. “Everyone in my life leaves me. First, my addict mother. Then my adoptive parents, who abandoned me into foster care. Then Suzy, my girlfriend in the sixth grade, whose parents moved, taking her with them to a faraway school in Cedar Rapids. Then Ken Griffey Jr. left the Mariners in 2000 to play for the Cincinnati Reds. And now you’re leaving me, Anna.”
The sadness is unbearable! His gray puppy-dog eyes are too much. “I don’t want to leave you,” I say.
“Then don’t.”
“But my friends . . .”
He nods. “I need you, Anna. But I’m not going to make you choose between your friends and me. That wouldn’t be fair.”
“Thank you. That’s very generous of you.”
“I can be kind,” he says, “when I want to be.” His smile is back! Oh, how I missed it. He rises from the table and embraces me in a hug. He licks my cheek from my jawline up to my temple, and back down. We kiss passionately, each of us eager for sweet tongue meat. We break our kiss before one of us swallows the other’s tongue. I, for one, have choked enough over the past few days.
“I’ll talk to you later this week,” I say.
“I’ll hump you later this week,” he replies.
The car ride back to Portland takes forever. We ride in silence for a long time, before I finally break the ice. “I’m sorry, guys.”
I’m in the backseat, and Kathleen is driving. Jin is in the front passenger seat. He looks at me in the rearview mirror, and I see the anger in his green eyes. I also see the worry.
“I’m just glad you’re okay,” he says.
“Of course I’m okay,” I say. “How are your . . . um . . .”
“My cojones? My nuts? My wedding tackle?” he says. “Not good. One had to be amputated.”
Oh no! “What will you do?”
“What can I do, Anna? I’m not happy about it, but what’s done is done. I was drunk; I let my anger get the better of me. I strayed from the brony code of friendship and kindness.”
“You did what you thought was right,” I say. “You
