Page 21 of Baby for My Ex's Brother

“Yes, please.”

We end up at a Georgian place with no name outside, where the owner greets us in a language I don’t speak and seats us in the back at a table with a candle in an old jar.

It’s a candle I could improve, but it’s trying.

The restaurant is small. Not small like intimate. Small, like they forgot to build the other half. Six tables. No windows. The lighting is the color of old whiskey, and the walls are exposed brick that someone actually bothered to clean, the mortar still pale between the red. It smells like garlic and rosemary.

No one in this room cares who we are. There’s no Hugo here to distract, which is the part I keep turning over while we order.

“You didn’t have to do this.” The wine comes, and the owner withdraws. “The Hugo portion of the evening ended at the gala. I’d piss him off for free, you know. As a hobby. You don’t owe me dinner.”

“It isn’t payment. The gala had two hundred people in it. This room has nine. I prefer this over that, as a place to spend time with you.”

I’m not used to directness. My romantic history is three years with a man who communicated through implication and withheld approval, and before that, a series of men who treated wanting me as a thing to be admitted under pressure.

Something in my chest goes warm and stupid about Ivan’s intentions. “Okay. Then you should know what you’re spending time with.”

“Enlighten me. I understand you have an uncle you’re close to. Hugo mentioned him.”

“Marty.” I spin my wine glass. The stem is thin enough to snap if I squeeze. I don’t squeeze. “He’s in a throuple. Has been for decades. Aunt Gerty and Uncle Fred. People think it’s a joke when I say it, but it’s just family.”

Ivan doesn’t laugh or ask if I’m serious. He waits. His attention is the kind of thing you can feel, weight and warmth at once. He’s not looking at his phone or scanning the room or thinking about what he’s going to say next.

He’s just listening. It’s disarming.

“Gerty was a porn actress,” I continue. “Popular one, back in the day. Pin-up work too. Fred directed horror movies. Low budget, high cult following. Marty writes gardening books. Surprisingly successful gardening books. Everyone thinks gardening is boring until they figure out they can grow their own food and stick it to capitalism.”

“Three of them,” Ivan says. “For decades. That’s impressive.”

“They’re the happiest people I know. They throw an anniversary party every year, and the neighbors fight over invitations, because they like to keep it small-ish.” I tear a piece of bread. “My sister Star couldn’t handle them. Too weird for her. She wanted normal relatives so badly that she decided the best people in our family wereembarrassing, so she cut them off.”

“And you?”

“I dropped out of college, Marty taught me bookkeeping at his kitchen table, and Gerty and Fred offered to co-sign my business loan because that’s who they are. That’s my whole pedigree. Weird fields, weird family, and one weird shop. I come by all of it honestly.”

He listens the way he listens, fork down. “My mother died when I was nine.”

A record scratch of a sentence if I’ve ever heard one. I lost my mom much more recently than that, and that was hell. I can’t imagine losing her at such a young age. “I’m so sorry, Ivan.”

He nods once. “My father passed me the family business when I was old enough. My family… We’re known here. The owner here has known me since I was a boy. He still overcharges me out of respect.”

“How is that respect?”

I get a smile out of him for that. “Because he knows I can afford it. He overcharges people like me, so he can undercharge people who cannot afford his prices.”

“That’s oddly sweet.”

“Speaking of…” He motions toward the owner, and the dessert menu arrives.

But I have another dessert in mind. This man, this colossus of a man, makes me want to do things I shouldn’t. He’s been like that since the moment we met, and now is no exception.

I reach under the table. Hook my thumbs in the waistband of my panties and slide them down, over my hips, down my thighs, shimmying out of them without much movement. My heart kicks up while I do it, but I’ve committed to this, and there’s no going back now.

My underwear is balled in my palm.

I don’t look at him as I stand to leave. I tuck them into his suit pocket as I pass and keep walking.

The bathroom is single occupancy, thank God. I’ve never done this before, not exactly, but I’ve thought about it. I’ve thought about him. The way he looks at me like I’m the only real thing in the room.