He shook his head. “I don’t really have a personality conducive to long-term relationships.”
“Neither do I, but here we are.” She frowned at him. “And who told you that?”
“Nobody,” he said, “but I have my observations.”
“Mm, it sounds very heteronormative,” she commented, flashing him a glance. “A man who’s allergic to commitment? Groundbreaking.”
“Commitment is fine,” he said. “Theoretically, anyway. But I find I have some difficulty understanding what other people want from me.”
“Even though you’re a genius?”
“I’m not that kind of genius,” he said, “though I imagine you probably are.”
He was obviously deflecting, but she figured that was fair.
“That,” Regan said, “is an odd thing to say. Isn’t it?”
“I just think you have a very clear understanding of how you fit with other people,” Aldo said, adding, “It’s a good thing.”
“Doesn’t sound like it.”
“It doesn’t?”
“Well, you’ve already told me I’m a liar,” she pointed out. “Do you think I’m a fake, too?”
“Do you think you’re a fake?”
She made a face at him. “Not what I asked.”
He smiled.
“I think,” he said, “that the inside of your head must require a specific set of keys.”
“A whole set of them?”
“Oh, almost definitely,” he replied. “I think that, for someone to get close to you, you must have to give them one key at a time. And even then, only one level can be opened at once.”
Interesting. “Which keys in what order?”
“Not sure,” he said. “Your history, I think, is a fairly straightforward key.”
That was fair. “Anything else?”
She glanced at him, but he seemed to be concentrating very hard on something.
“What about sex?” she prompted. “Since that was the previously agreed upon topic.”
“I think,” he ventured, looking a bit strained, “for you, love and sex might be two different keys. Maybe even more than two.”
“More than two?”
“Well, I wouldn’t know,” he said, shrugging. “I don’t have the means to conduct a proper thought experiment.”
She checked, but it wasn’t a come-on. Fact, like anything else. “Missing some variables?”
Another shrug. “It’s just a guess.”
“Well, guesses are accepted currency here,” she said blithely. “Along with theories, vague sensations, and counterfeit bills.”
He tapped his fingers on the paper Starbucks cup. “I think you can be physically involved with someone before you need them,” he said slowly. “And I think you can need them before you love them.”
“And you’re basing that on?”
“Five and a half conversations,” he said.
There was something charming about his certainty.
“You missed one,” she decided to confess. “I can sleep with someone before I want them, actually. And need them before I want them.”
He glanced at her. “Always?”
“Historically, yeah,” she said, “and you know how I feel about history.”
He took a sip of his tea, leaning his head back again.
“What happened to the forgery boyfriend?” he asked.
“Nothing,” Regan said, shrugging. “Not unusual. My relationships have a shelf life of about a year, sometimes two.”
“You prefer being in a relationship?”
She thought about it. “I hadn’t actually considered my preferences before, but yeah, probably. It’s not like I ever look for anyone,” she clarified, tapping her fingers on the steering wheel. “It’s more like they manifest and I fall into it.”
“Is that what happened with Marc?”
“Yeah.”
She had the distinct feeling that anything she said about Marc would be a waste of a conversation.
“Sometimes,” she said, “when I’m with someone else, I get this feeling like I’m asleep.” She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel again, wondering if she could manage to make any sense of that or if she’d only wind up falling into a crevasse of repellant self-pity.
She kept talking anyway. “Sometimes it’s like I’m there, but not really. Not fully. Like part of me is going to wake up a century later and everything will just be totally unidentifiable,” she said with a gloomy laugh. “You know, like Rip Van Winkle or something.”