My mother looks at me. I eat the asparagus.
"Miles," she says gently, "Garrett's been asking about your hobbies."
"He hasn't, actually." I smile to take the edge off it. "I don't really have hobbies, Garrett. I work. It's not very interesting."
Garrett laughs, good-natured. "I get it. I'm the same way. Maybe we could grab coffee sometime? Talk shop?"
He's looking at me with this open, hopeful expression, and I want to feel something. I really do. He's a good-looking alpha with a four-bedroom house and a kind smile and he's interested in me, and I should want this. This is what my mother wants for me. This is what omegas are supposed to want—a stable alpha, a nice house, a future. Except my future has a wall in it that I hit every time I try to imagine past a certain point, and no amount of four-bedroom houses is going to fix that.
"Sure," I say, because it's easier than the truth. "That sounds nice."
My mother looks like she might cry from happiness, which makes me feel like shit, but that's not new.
Dinner wraps up with my father paying the check and Garrett shaking my hand again and saying he'll text me. He won't, because I'm going to wait a few days and then send a very polite message about being too busy with the partnership track, and he'll get the hint, and my mother will be disappointed, and we'll do this again in two months with a different alpha.
It's a system. It works.
Outside, the air is cold and bracing and I stand on the sidewalk for a minute just breathing. My mother hugs me goodbye and holds on a beat too long.
"Just give him a chance, sweetheart," she says quietly, close to my ear. "You deserve someone nice."
I don't trust my voice, so I just nod and kiss her cheek and watch them walk to their car. My father raises a hand in a wave without turning around. That's about as emotional as he gets.
I start walking toward the parking garage, and I hear the music before I see the place. It's coming from half a block up—bass-heavy, muffled through the walls, with the door propped open and light spilling onto the sidewalk. There's a neon sign that says REVIVAL in pink and blue, and a small crowd of people outside smoking and laughing, and I can tell immediately from the mixof what's in the air—alpha, omega, cologne, sweet pheromones—what kind of bar this is.
I should keep walking. I always keep walking.
But tonight my feet slow down. There are two omegas near the entrance, younger than me, dressed in something I'd never have the nerve to wear, laughing so hard one of them is doubled over. An alpha couple is sharing a cigarette, leaning into each other. Someone inside shrieks with laughter. Through the open door, I can see a packed dance floor and colored lights, and the smell hits me like a wall—alpha pheromones and omega heat and sweat and alcohol and life. Just life. Messy, loud, uncontrolled life.
I stop.
"Hey." The voice comes from my left. I turn, and there's an alpha leaning against the brick wall next to the entrance. He's tall, dark-skinned, with a shaved head and a loose grin. He's looking at me the way alphas look at omegas outside clubs, appreciative and unhurried. "You coming in?"
"No," I say. "I'm just passing by."
"That's too bad." He pushes off the wall, not crowding me, just shifting closer. He's got nice eyes. Kind. What he gives off is pleasant—cinnamon and something darker underneath. Nothing wrong with it. Nothing wrong with him. "You look like you could use a drink."
"I look like I could use a drink?"
"You look like you just came from something boring and you're trying to talk yourself out of something fun." His grin widens. "Am I close?"
He's close. He's annoyingly close. The worst part is that he's exactly the kind of alpha I'm supposed to want—confident without being aggressive, attractive without being intimidating, someone who would buy me a drink and make me laugh and take me home if I let him, and it would be fine. It would be aperfectly fine night. He smells like cinnamon, and cinnamon is nice, and nice should be enough.
Except all I can think about is that cinnamon isn't pepper and ginger. This alpha's relaxed smile isn't the same as Ray's, and I'm furious at myself for making that comparison, standing on a sidewalk outside a club I'll never go into, thinking about a man who calls mebossto piss me off.
I look at the open door again, and the music swells as someone walks out, and I can feel the warmth from inside on my face, and for one stupid, reckless second I want to go in. I want to be a person who goes to bars on a Tuesday night and lets a hot stranger buy him a drink and dances with his sleeves rolled up and maybe goes home with someone who smells good and doesn't ask about his career or his family or his future.
"I can't," I say.
"Can't, or won't?" He's still smiling. He's not pushy about it. He's just there, and that almost makes it worse, because he's not demanding anything. He's just offering. I'm the one who can't take it.
"Both," I say, and it comes out more honest than I meant it to.
He nods like he gets it, which he doesn't, but it's nice of him to pretend. "Well, if you change your mind, I'll be here."
I walk away before I can change my mind. My shoes click on the sidewalk and the music fades behind me, and I don't look back because if I look back I'll go in, and if I go in I'll have to be someone I don't know how to be anymore.
My apartment is exactly how I left it. Quiet and clean and perfectly organized and so goddamn empty that the sound of my keys hitting the counter seems to echo. I hang up my jacket. Loosen my tie. Stand in my kitchen for a minute staring at nothing.