Talker

sweet, prominent clavicles,
    and his gangly arms and a long, trim waist. It was easy to see a lot
    of that because he wore a fishnet tank top with his ripped jeans.
    Tate had looked at Blaize like he was a last, best hope, called
    “Be good to him, Virginia!” down the hal , and then twitched out of
    the house with a flirty little wave and a hopeful wink, leaving Brian
    to wander into the bedroom in a daze.
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    19

    Virginia looked up from the movie she was watching on his
    laptop and smiled. She was casual y dressed in shorts and a T-
    shirt, and her feet in their little bobby-sox were swinging over her
    bottom as she lay on her stomach across the bed. Her dark hair
    spil ed from a ponytail—she was as sweet a girl as he had ever
    met.
    “Yo, Brian? Your goldfish die?”
    Brian jerked his attention away from the closed door down the
    hall and his worry for Talker. “G oldfish?”
    “Uhm, yeah. You look, you know, a little depressed?”
    Brian shrugged, not sure he could put words to his
    uneasiness. O f course, words weren’t Brian’s thing anyway. “He…
    he didn’t look strong enough,” was what he said, and Virginia
    turned to him, surprised.
    “Strong enough for what?”
    Brian sighed and sat down on the bed next to her. He liked
    touching her—her skin was soft and she enjoyed the simplicity of a
    hand on the smal of her back. That wasn’t why he cared about her,
    though. What he real y liked was her kind soul, quick wit, and
    incredible patience when Brian took his time following that
    quickness with his own methodical brain. Virginia was good people.
    “He needs someone strong,” he said after a moment.
    “Someone he can count on. I don’t think this guy can count on
    himself to brush his own teeth on a regular basis.” He shook his
    head. “Talker can do better.”
    Virginia had grinned gently. “Well, baby, it’s not like he can
    clone you, right?”
    Brian never knew what was in his smile at that moment, but
    Virginia’s expression altered subtly, and she reached up to kiss him
    with hunger. He returned the kiss, and they made love. She started
    Talker | Amy Lane
    20
    out starving, voracious, begging him for passion, and he returned
    with technique. It was what he had.
    Somewhere between the two, it turned into good-bye.
    In the aftermath, they were lying in bed, facing each other, and
    Virginia touched his face. “I would have married you,” she said
    softly, her eyes shiny in the light from the streetlamp outside.
    He frowned. “Are we breaking up?”
    At that moment the front door opened, and they could hear
    Tate moving around in the hal way. He was trying to be stealthy,
    but he failed at it—too much pent-up energy for that. Besides—
    even the racket of his combat boots couldn’t stifle the sound of his
    quiet sniffling.
    Brian straightened up in bed and frowned at Virginia. “O h
    geez… I wonder what happened.”
    “We broke up,” she said quietly, but he scarcely heard her—
    and certainly didn’t credit her. He started searching for his sleep
    shorts and a T-shirt, to go deal with Tate, and Virginia sighed and
    sat up in bed.
    “I’ll be back in a minute,” he mumbled, and one corner of her
    mouth lifted in a faint smile.
    “Won’t be here….”
    She probably said something else, but he was out the door by
    then, and Tate was sitting on the ugly plaid couch, watching a
    F riends rerun on their little living room TV and eating ice cream.
    Brian sighed and grabbed some tissue—if Talker wasn’t careful, he
    was going to get guyliner in the ice cream, and it was Brian’s
    favorite flavor: green.
    “What happened?” he asked softly, handing over the tissue.
    Tate took the tissue and gave Brian the ice cream. Brian took some
    makeup-free bites while Talker was cleaning up his face.
    Talker | Amy Lane
    21

    “It was a big old clusterfucking fight for the bottom,” Tate
    sniffled. “He wanted me to be al alpha and shit, and I… I can’t do
    that. Someone’s got to take charge, someone has to say what goes
    where, and he kept expecting me to do it and I don’t know what I’m
    doing anymore than he does, and next thing I know we’re having
    this big old bitchy fight and he cal ed me a spazz and I just… just
    left. Al he wanted to do was screw, but we couldn’t even get that
    down. I could have even just watched TV or gone to a movie, but
    we had to get into a big ol’ fight on the pitcher’s mound, you know?”
    Brian took a