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Her friends found him attractive, maybe even dangerous, and he was certain they all wanted to fuck him, especially after Brooke’s conversation with them last night, but they didn’t like him. They couldn’t; it wouldn’t be proper. Still, he saw the way they secretly cut their eyes at him when they didn’t think anyone would notice; disdainful looks ripe with lust. At parties, Brooke talked him up—not in a condescending way—letting her aristocratic friends know that he was brilliant (probably an understatement) and one day, in spite of his unfortunate heritage, he’d conquer the world as the next Bill Gates, Warren Buffett or Mark Zuckerberg.
    Simon never understood her world. High society was a mystery to him. Formal. Pretentious. Status determined by bloodline. He’d never fit into her well-bred world, full of cotillions and society parties, nor would he ever try. He made it clear that if they had any hope of surviving as a couple, she’d have to come down to his level. He thought that would push her away, but his plan didn’t work. She met him on his level and did so without hesitation, spending many nights in his low-rent apartment when she could have been sleeping in the luxury of her canopy bed inside her sorority house, a former plantation house.
    They were such an unlikely couple: the ambitious daughter of a prominent New Orleans surgeon whose life had been handed to her on a silver platter, and the mixed-up, multiracial orphan who had yet to discover the value of his worth or his path in the world. When they first met, volunteering at Habitat for Humanity and building houses for the impoverished, he had to have her. He was drawn to her in a way he couldn’t explain. She was everything he was not. She was the perfect Southern belle. Beautiful. Poised. She was so unlike the fast and loose women whose beds he had stained on many a night. He wanted to possess her, if even for a short time, all the while knowing that whatever they were to share together would have an expiration date. He wasn’t good enough for her and probably never would be. He was too unstable to ever offer her a lifetime of security; he could only give her this momentary pleasure. He knew that if she stayed with him for too long that he’d eventually assassinate the woman she was intended to be and she’d become something else. Bitter. Broken. Full of resentment. Angry at what she had sacrificed to be with him. Even knowing all this didn’t make him want to leave her any time soon. He simply wasn’t ready to let her go. They had some time left, he hoped. In the comfort of her arms she offered him something he had never experienced before—a place to be that was rightly his. He wasn’t ready to let that go. He couldn’t let it go; especially now.
    Though their differences were great, he sincerely wanted to believe in her love for him. He needed to believe in her love so that there would be some justification for his unarticulated love for her. He felt love for her, insofar as he understood what love was. Sometimes, in the depths of the night when he was alone, whatever he felt for her would be so powerful that it drove him to fits. But that word, that magical little word, l-o-v-e, wouldnever escape from his lips. That was a vow he made to himself years ago. Never. Say. The. Word.
    He clicked off the television, climbed out of bed, turned on the stereo and listened to an old blues song belted out by the legendary Koko Taylor. He let her full voice fill the room as he strutted his stuff and flexed naked in front of the floor-length mirror that Brooke had given him as a gift. He considered blues music an art form mastered only by seasoned storytellers. They sang songs he could relate to, songs about pain and hurt and loss and sorrow. Those things he understood. He felt them deep in his soul.
    After he took a morning shower, he checked his phone and saw a text from his boss,