Page 20 of Wasted Lust

I can hear excitement in her voice and all the questions I had a few moments ago are replaced with regret. She’s smart too. Not a genius like Ford, but she’s got her master’s degree in psychology and has a private practice that specializes in treating children with autism-related disorders. She’s always encouraged me to follow my dream of digging up old bones and she’s been my biggest cheerleader from the moment I walked into their house and she became the mother of a teenager at the young age of twenty-four.

I can’t bear to tell her the truth, so even though we are not a family of liars, I lie. “Awesome,” I say through my fake smile. “I passed easily.”

“And the internship?” She’s still breathless, like she’s got all her fingers and toes crossed that I get the one that went to Mike. The one I’ve been talking about for months. “Did you get the one you wanted?”

I can’t lie that much. Maybe I can still go back to the program. Give it a few weeks of soul-searching and figure out where I went wrong in my lack of enthusiasm for anthropology. I could still get back in. But that internship is gone. “No,” I say with genuine disappointment. “I didn’t. Mike did. Mine is still up in the air, but I’m OK with it. He really deserved it.”

“Aww, I’m sorry, Sasha. But you’ll get something great, I just know it.” Her brightness comes back when I agree, and then we talk for several more minutes about Ford’s new show and their Christmas plans. I tell another little lie and say I’m going home with friends.

She accepts that easily. I used to have friends. She has no clue I’ve gotten so antisocial since I moved here. Of course, that’s because she has no idea about the abduction that spurred my melancholy in the first place.

I hang up with a false laugh and promises to come home and see them in the spring when things settle down.

I throw my phone on the bed feeling dirty for lying, as well as ashamed for being ungrateful for the full life I have. The sadness threatens to overtake me, so I get up and go run the water for a bath.

The tears are coming. Today was just too much, and I only allow myself to cry in the tub. I have done this for years. I lock myself away from the world, dip my whole body under the water, and let the tears flow undetected. It feeds my illusion that not a single tear has touched my face since I walked out of that hotel room for the last time. The hotel room where Nick left me but promised to come back. The hotel room where James explained the facts of life.

Not sex.

Loss.

Loss is a fact of life. And he pounded that home good and hard.

But I remember when the dream was fresh. The day Nick walked into my life and promised me the world. Promised me a future filled with his smiling face. Promised me a life with him by my side.

I take off my clothes and step into the tub, waiting for the hot water to pour out of the tap in a waterfall that drowns out the reality outside my house.

My tears are falling for his broken promises the moment I slip under.

There are no lights on in the house even though it’s not even eight PM. But there are never lights on in her house. At least from the outside. She has security shutters that keep the world at bay. I climb the steps a little more nervous than I should be for the circumstances.

I’m not usually a second-guesser. I rewrite the rules all the time. I make demands and expect them to be met. I ask, people give. But being turned down by Sasha Cherlin has affected me in a way that’s new.

For one, she refuses to engage. Most of the time when a woman puts up a wall, I can force her to engage with flirting. It gets the banter going, loosens things up a little, breaks down a few bricks in the wall. So far, Sasha has not done that.

This tells me two things—she is a deliberate person. Not one who reacts out of emotion, but one who calculates and plots her actions. And the reason she has not fucked up and made contact with anyone is because she’s on a course I haven’t yet recognized.

What is that course she’s on? Where is she headed? What was she doing that day I confronted her at the airport?

It occurs to me that I would’ve found out if I had not approached her. But how was I to know Nick wasn’t making contact with her? Everything pointed to it. It felt so… imminent.

I stop in front of her door and hesitate, shifting the bags in my hand to free up a finger to push the doorbell. There’s something else that’s been nagging me since I walked her home earlier as well. Why choose this path of academia? It’s always seemed like a copout to me. A way to prolong an entrance into the real world. A reason to push life away.

What is she hiding from?

She has plenty of reasons to hide from her past. Growing up the way she did would make anyone want to prolong an entrance into society. But I don’t think that’s it. I don’t think it’s Nick, either. I have an idea of what they were to each other, but why join this small world of ambitious nerds, a world she so clearly does not belong in, only to push it all away and cloister herself in this tower of her own making?

It doesn’t add up.

I sigh as I push the doorbell. I can’t hear it, so I’m not even sure it works. But after a few seconds I hear a whirring noise of some well-hidden camera trying to focus. “Sasha?” I ask out loud, knowing full well she is watching me. “Open the door.”

“I’m not interested in your date, Agent Jax. In fact, I’m very busy tonight. You have five seconds to remove yourself from my porch before I call the police.”

I bow my head so she can’t see me smirk, and then look up. “I am the police, Miss Aston.”

“No,” she says calmly from the safety of her intercom. “You’re some kind of rogue agent. I’m not sure. I really haven’t thought about you much over the past few months. But if I wanted to figure you out, if I were interested enough, I would have you all figured out. And you are here under someone’s orders, but I’ll bet they are not legitimate. In fact, you’ve been here far too long. So I’m betting that you had to make contact today for some specific reason. Perhaps you’ve been called back. Perhaps your rogue superior has had enough. Or perhaps there is another lead that you must follow. Either way, I have a feeling that if I just hold out a little bit longer you will disappear as quickly as you came.”

Jesus Christ. She’s a fucking mind-reader too. I straighten my tie to buy me a moment to gather myself, and then say, “Astute observation, Miss Aston. But you’re wrong. I have carte blanche in this case. All the time in the world, in fact.”