Page 115 of Her Sloth

“They are,” I say with my heart warming. “New York made me forget what I have here.”

“So you’ll be staying here in the future?” she asks.

“I don’t know,” I say. “I didn’t give the future much thought because I was kinda busy surviving a day at a time.”

She caresses my hair for another moment.

“I don’t think I can give up New York,” she says in a sad tone. “But I can never ask you to be there if L.A. is who you are.”

The corners of my mouth tug up.

“What?” she asks, looking down at me.

“So you want a future together?” I ask her.

“I do, but—the distance⁠—“

I push myself up. Flinch slightly as I put weight onto the arm with the burn wounds.

“Four and a half hours,” I say.

“What?” she asks me, completely confused.

“Four and a half hours,” I repeat with a grin. “You think in your world,” I say. “Because that’s what you have always known. But in my world, a private jet flight from L.A. to New York takes four and a half hours. I have enough money to get a nice second residence there.”

“But you gave all your money to Annie⁠—“

“I gave my trust fund to her Nana so she can have a wonderful life there in Italy. I gave up everything that was tied to my father. I made enough with my roles to survive comfortably.”

“Here I was, thinking you’d be selfless,” she says, jokingly.

“Stop condemning money,” I say. “It’s not the root of all evil.”

“It is very much,” she says defiantly.

“Humanity is,” I say. “Money just brings out the true nature.”

She looks at me, half-open mouth, forming words that don’t come.

“I mean it. I have seen it all, people with money, people without. It’s not the money. It’s the desire to do evil. The hunger for more and more, mating with the fear of losing it. It’s not the money; the money is just an accelerator that helps with the connections to get away with all of it.”

“My mother left us when I was eight,” she says. “Met a hot shot broker from Wall Street. She left us and never looked back. Dad worked all day, Jackass and I raised ourselves on the streets. That’s what money does. Making someone leave their kids behind.”

“No,” I say. “Her hunger for more did. It wasn’t money. It was her lusting for more.”

“The same thing.”

“No, it’s not. You can lust for something and decide not to act on it. Like I did all day, because all I want to do is eat your pussy, but I keep myself in check because other things are more important. Things that include learning who you are and giving you the truth you deserve.”

Her cheeks flush as she stares at me with wide eyes and her half-open mouth, about to say something without forming words.

She closes her mouth.

Opens it again.

Closes it again.

I chuckle.