I bought things because I wanted them. I bought things I liked and that had meaning to me.
When the poor waiter returned a minute later, he didn’t say anything. He just opened the bottle, poured some into our glasses, and hustled away.
“Why don’t you have an accent?” she asked abruptly, like it had been weighing on her mind.
“I don’t?”
She shook her head and reached for her wine glass. “Not really. Every once in a while you’ll sneak a v into a word that starts with w, but if I didn’t know you were born in Germany, I’d assume you grew up here.”
I touched the stem of the wine glass and rolled it between my fingers. “I don’t know vhat you’re talking about.”
She lifted her eyes to the ceiling and took a drink of the wine. It was obvious she didn’t like it. But she didn’t say anything.
“I’ve lived here full-time since I was eighteen. I consider myself more American than I do German.” When I took a drink of my wine, I realized why she didn’t like it. It tasted like shit. “I suppose my accent feels the same way.”
She took another drink of wine, and this time, she didn’t show any distaste for it. It was like she’d been bracing herself for it. “Why did you let your visa expire?”
I knew she’d have questions. I was surprised by how direct she was with them. I liked that though—preferred it. Set the precedent so when it was my turn to examine her folder and ask questions of my own, she’d hopefully be as forthcoming with me as I was trying to be with her.
“Because this country is as much my home as it is yours,” I answered.
“Not according to the United States government.”
“I think, given our agreement, you can figure out just what I think about that.”
She started to smile, plunging her fingers into her water cup and pulling out a chunk of ice. “Why did you choose me? You must have had hundreds of other interested parties.” She popped the chunk of ice into her mouth. It wasn’t meant to be seductive in the slightest, but she had no idea what she was doing to me as she slowly sucked on that piece of frozen water.
I had to give myself a mental ice bath before I could answer her. “Actually, I had thousands.” When I heard my voice, I cleared my throat. It sounded too low, too much like how I sounded in the bedroom.
“Why me?”
I wondered why she was asking that. Curiosity? Concern? Conversation? “For starters, you lived here in Portland. I didn’t want anyone to uproot from wherever they were and move here.”
“Or, you know, you could have moved to wherever they were.” She shifted the ice to the other side of her mouth, her lips shining from the moisture.
“No, I wouldn’t leave Portland for another person. Fake relationship or real.” My words came out sharper than I’d intended.
“Any other fabulous, totally unselfish reasons why I was the lucky girl?”
Nina’s face stayed the same, but I heard the sarcasm in her voice. God knew I should be able to identify it since that was mostly what she directed my way.
“You were able to put together an email that indicated you hadn’t flunked fourth-grade English, and you didn’t use so many emojis and acronyms that I felt I was actually communicating with said fourth grader.”
She bit down on the ice. “Yeah, I was an overachiever and passed twelfth grade English.”
“I could tell. Although I was actually going to guess that you were an English major. Wrong guess?” I didn’t realize I was taking a sip of the wine before I was swallowing it. I wrestled with another wince and set the glass down. I was too distracted when I was with her. Too out of my goddamned mind.
“Wrong guess.”
“What did you study?” Besides fucking with my mind and busting my balls?
“Nothing.” She lifted her shoulders, staring out the window without really seeming to see anything. “I didn’t go to college.”
I was surprised. She seemed educated. Intelligent. Determined. Not that a person had to attend college to embody those traits, but still. “Why not?”
She was silent, then she opened her mouth, but nothing came out. Instead, she sealed her lips and scooped another chunk of ice out of her glass before . . . dammit . . . she sucked it into her mouth. Next time, I was ordering water with no ice. I already had some sick fascination with her mouth—I did not need her sucking on something two feet in front of me.
“Nina?” My voice was low again.
“It’s all in that encyclopedia you had me fill out. You can read more about it later.”
From the look on her face, I wanted to tear into her biography and devour every word now. She hadn’t gone to college, but from her affect, I could see it was something she regretted. Maybe regret wasn’t the right word, but in another life . . . she would have.
What had kept her from going? A boy? God knew I understood the sacrifices people made in the name of love. Money? I might not have known the extent of her financial troubles, but I knew they were pressing enough to agree to marry someone for money.
Suddenly, I had a deep-seated need to know everything there was to know about this strange woman sitting in front of me. To know every memory she carried around. To witness every experience that had molded and shaped her into this unique creature who seemed like the strongest woman I’d ever known and, at the same time, the most fragile.
“Any other reasons you picked me? Besides the romantic notions of location and grammar?” Her voice drifted through the fog I was lost in.
Feeling this way about her was not what I’d planned on. If I’d known she would draw these kinds of deeply buried emotions from me, I never would have chosen her. Going with someone who lived on the opposite side of the country who spoke in LOLs and BTWs would have been better.
I couldn’t feel for her. I couldn’t.
It had led to my demise before. I couldn’t let it crumble what I’d worked so hard to build.
She was waiting, slipping that chunk of ice around in her mouth and looking at me like she didn’t loathe me as much as she had at the beginning of the night.
I had to make sure she kept her levels of despise high. Since I seemed incapable of being detached, I had to ensure she positively loathed me so that when I lost my head and leaned in, she’d lean away. So that when the time came when I couldn’t restrain myself any longer, all she saw was an arrogant, selfish bastard.