“Bullshit. Iron Man is only good because he has Jarvis. They should just rename the franchise Jarvis Man because the computer does all the work.”
“Jarvis Man?” I raise a playful brow.
“You know what I mean. Or Jarvis and the Iron Asshat. They could be a team.”
We share an easy laugh and take sips from our glasses. That’s how things feel between us—easy. Uncomplicated with expectations or formalities. We’re just two people who share a mutual love of grilled cheese and superheroes.
“Why only two choices?” I ask as I refill our glasses.
“Huh?”
“When you ask me these little random gems of useless information, it’s only two choices. Mint Chocolate Chip or Rocky Road. Batman or the Iron Asshat.”
“I don’t know.” Ally shrugs and picks at a crust of bread. “I guess, to me… Life is just a series of choices. We try to always make the best ones, but really we’re just settling for the lesser of two evils. Or at least trying to.”
She looks at me and a sad smile touches her lips. I don’t know how to deal with it so I just look down. Coward.
“Is that what you feel you’ve done? Settled for the lesser of two evils?” I don’t elaborate, but she knows what I’m talking about.
“Honestly? I don’t think the choice was ever truly mine to make.”
I know I should just leave it at that, letting her words drift into another, simpler conversation. But, of course, I find myself needing to delve deeper into those turquoise waters. “Why do you say that?”
“There are things expected of me. Things I can only provide by marrying into an influential family and representing them in a certain light.” She turns to me, pinning me with those haunted, ocean irises. “We’re all just trophies. Shiny, plastic, useless trophies. Exciting at first, but we have no real purpose other than attesting to someone else’s grand achievements.”
I tilt my head to one side thoughtfully, my eyes trained on anything but her and those sad eyes. “A diversion—something pretty to distract from the real turmoil festering just beneath the surface.”
She nods but asks, “Is that how you see me?”
I lift my gaze to hers and find her expression filled with genuine curiosity—not anger or hurt. I shake my head. “No. Not you.”
“I had dreams, you know. Goals.” She smiles, but looks down, hiding its brilliance. “Now, I’m no different than them. I’m just like all those other women. Fighting, clinging on to the hope that we could be more than arm candy for business functions or designer incubators. That we could be truly loved for who we are, and not what we represent.”
I don’t respond, letting the words hang in the air until they dissipate under the weight of Ally’s pain. She stands and begins to collect the uneaten food. “It’s late. And you need your beauty sleep,” she winks at me, that carefree smile restored. I help her discard the trash as she takes the dishes to the sink.
“Me? Beauty sleep? What makes you think I care anything about beauty?” I take a washed dish from her and dry it with a towel.
“You’re kidding, right?” she smirks, scrubbing a pan. “You possess beauty like most women possess shoes.”
“Not following you.” And I’m not. I could give a fuck about what’s deemed beautiful by modern society’s standards.
“Well, first of all, look at this place,” she says, waving a wet hand around the room. “This estate is magnificent. Like paradise in the middle of the desert. Seems almost like a mirage.”
I nod my head in agreement. Oasis is my oasis—my refuge. My escape from all the incessant narcissism and fuckery that comes with fortune. I didn’t end up in the middle of the desert—as far away as I could possibly get from my original home in NYC—by accident. Eleven years ago, when I said goodbye to the noise, traffic and permeating scents of piss and diesel fuel, I told myself that I would never, ever look back at my old life with a sense of fondness. A few years after that, I found Oasis, and I knew I was home.
“And then,” she says, turning to me, her cheeks flushed pink, “there’s you.”
I smirk and look down to hide my own blush.
Yeah. I’m fucking blushing.
My entire life, I’ve been told I was strikingly handsome, and I’ve always believed it. Dark hair, cobalt eyes, and naturally tanned skin—I was the good ol’ American Abercrombie prototype. That theory was confirmed soon after puberty when girls constantly defied their daddies and tarnished their good family names by spreading their legs without so much as a wink in their direction. As a kid, I knew about sex, but I wasn’t really interested it. Not until my seventeen-year-old Algebra tutor, Jessica, undressed me and swallowed my thirteen-year-old dick during a lesson on linear equations. It was an act of divine intervention that I passed the class with an A-minus, because I didn’t do much more than study every inch of Jessica’s body that school year.