I’m inside Jake’s mansion. It’s just as idiotically garish as the last time I saw it. There was once a time I swore I’d never set foot in here again, for various reasons I won’t get into. Jake is the type of guy who makes you say stuff like that. But he’s also the type who reminds you never to say never. Here I fucking am again, in this useless dickhead’s dime-store McMansion. But only because I need one of his ships.

Rose is still asleep from the drugs. I put her on that monstrous, overstuffed velvet couch over there. My guy Squarewave is here too. I need his help today, because there’s a lot of cargo to wrangle. He’s wheeling something around on a hand truck. Something about the height of Rose, roughly Rose-shaped, and wrapped in a cloth. I know she’s gonna love it the first time she sees it. But the only way she’ll be able to do that is when she’s awake and looking in a mirror.

Jake owns Skaianet, a company which, among many other things, manufactures spaceships. They do a stiff business selling these rigs, especially with all the new military contracts the Crocker administration has been handing out. If it weren’t for his connection to a good supply of quality starcraft, I’m honestly not sure if I’d even bother stopping by before leaving. I’d have to think about it. Yeah, we’re “friends,” I suppose, but there really isn’t much I have to say to this guy anymore. But as long as I’m here, I have to confess I’ve been mulling over a few choice remarks to let him chew on while I’m gone.

I didn’t tell him I’d be coming. That would be a scene. He’d “prepare” too much. Roll out the red carpet, so to speak. Suggest plans, stammer nervously, throw on something a bit more skin-hugging than usual. I may have already mentioned, but I’m a bit too deft at this for my own good. Doing the thing where I tug at the part of someone’s latent thought process that already knows they adore me. That if someone would just pull the stops from their sense of inhibition, they’d realize they would do anything for me.

Though I could be overselling my methods of persuasion while shortchanging my natural aura of charisma and dashing good looks. Maybe I’m just that fucking charming? There are times when I actually do manage to underestimate my positive qualities, believe it or not.

Normally, corralling Jake’s attention is like greasing up your whole naked body and tackling a shrieking hog on rocket skates. There was always a part of his mind that was conflicted about me—intrigued, titillated, wary. But now he’s just plain obsessed.

That wasn’t really what I was going for, but hey. With political warfare comes collateral damage. It’s harmless enough anyway. It’s not like I gave him a sick scar, or anything that would hurt his value as priceless sexual commodity. The only thing affected was his brain. It’s a bit like if someone hacked a comments section. Who gives a shit?

I glance up the stairs, where he’s standing on the precipice overlooking the foyer. Yeah, he definitely wasn’t expecting company. He’s completely nude, except for a pair of boxers with a pattern of green skulls, pistols, and some shapes that maybe are supposed to be pot leaves.

He blunders down the stairs at top speed, runs over and gives me a huge bro-hug, making my spine pop. God, he’s so fucking strong. I hate that the brief feeling of being crushed by this oaf makes my dick twitch slightly.

He’s gently stroking the side of my arm now, making no effort to disguise his interest in the contours of my muscles. I use that arm to put a hand on his shoulder in an affable way, so that he’s forced to stop.

I nod over in the direction of the couch. Jake’s eyebrows shoot up.

I’m gritting my teeth, focusing on breathing steadily.

He scurries over to a new-money–looking baroque antique cabinet, his ample junk swinging about in his loose boxers free as a jaybird. He opens a small door and rifles through a stack of stray papers and captchalogue cards.

I take it. We’re almost through this dirty little bit of business. I know there’s more, though. There always is with him. In fact, here it comes. I can smell it a mile away. I know exactly what he’s about to say, and the buoyant obliviousness with which he’ll say it.

Jake falls quiet for a moment as his pitiful pea brain struggles to process the shocking information.

He shakes his fist to demonstrate whatever bad point he’s making.

He’s sweating. More nervous than I’ve ever seen him before. Stammering, desperate. I need to be brutally direct with this poor guy. Enough’s enough.

His mouth is hanging open. Not a shred of restraint in his crestfallen posture. But he needs to hear this. All of it.

The tears are starting to come. His composure is breaking. He’s staring intently at my face, as if trying to drink in every precious moment of what he knows in his heart will be the last time we ever see each other. He takes in every drop of light reflecting from my beautiful face. The sculpted cheekbones, the warrior’s eyebrows, the deadly serious yet exquisitely kissable mouth. This is the face he lives for now. A visage that, in mere minutes, will vanish from his life forever. The tears drop. His voice cracks.

I almost burst out laughing, but I manage to control myself.

I glance at a clock on the wall. This needs to end soon. There are a lot of important things still to be done, and this sure isn’t one of them.

He waits a second for a response, but my face doesn’t move a muscle. He won’t dare waste this momentum though. He threw in the penny. Here comes the pound.

He explodes into tears. A sloppy, volcanic eruption of mucus, ugly noises, and the tatters of a bared soul.

He begins slumping to the ground. But I grab his shoulders roughly and lift him up with a violent jerk. I look into his eyes furiously. My glare is incinerating. It halts his infantile wailing like a cranky baby somewhere just got tossed into the vacuum of space. He’s scared. No, terrified. Of being left with no one who truly cares for him. Of the magnitude of his raw, perilously unearthed feelings. But most of all, right here, right now. He’s terrified of ME.

I pull him close with all my strength, flush to my body, wrap my arms around him to cradle the back of his head in my calloused palm, and I kiss him. It’s the softest kiss I’ve ever given. My lips yield in a way that feels to him impossibly, miraculously forgiving. Like cannonballing into a frozen lake only to discover it’s not frozen at all. It’s not even water. It’s a sheet of a thousand layers of silk. It’s a pool of a trillion discrete, tiny, shimmering beads of chilled mercury. It’s the final, gentle exhale of the most beautiful symphony ever played. It’s the soothing, mythically rumored oasis where the satyrs and nymphs once took pleasure and together forged the very concept of comfort we understand today.

It lasts a fleeting moment. Two ticks of the clock over there. Two ticks longer than anyone will ever kiss him like that again. Two ticks longer than he ever deserved.

I move my hands up to his face, and with my palms on his wet cheeks, I gently push his head about six inches away from my face, and say:

Abruptly I turn, and walk to the couch. I pick up Rose, nod at Squarewave. He springs into action, pushing the hand truck out the door. Without looking back, I follow, and slam the door behind me.