Page 75 of Moros

“Nothing.” I replied while helping Theodore take his medication. “Why?”

“There’s a party in the square later,” Todd said. “Want to go with me?”

“Um—” I paused to hand Theodore the water. “Sure.”

The moment I answered I realized Khadri had been standing at the backdoor, watching us. Todd smirked but Khadri merely walked over to hunch down beside Theordore to show him something on his phone.

“That is something.” Theodore beamed. “Can you imagine how far technology has come?”

“It’s awesome—but when I was in, I found it hard to depend on that on the battlefield. “Khadri told him. “It wasn’t that I didn’t trust the people I worked with to make sure things worked—but tech glitch, you know? Some of these we had to find manually.”

“How did you find these buried bombs?” Theodore asked.

“One of my people had a dog trained to find them,” he replied.

“A dog?” Theodore cheered. “Ain’t that somethin’?”

“It was amazing to watch them work.” Khadri agreed.

“That is cool.” Theodore laughed. “That is very cool.”

Khadri rose leaving my grandfather to go through the images on his phone and exited the house again through the same back door. I wasn’t sure what to think—and while I wanted to change my mind about going out with Todd that night, I didn’t.

I was never the girl anyone invited anywhere.

This would be my first party—at my age—it was shameful.

As I dressed later that night, after Theodore was in bed, Morgana knocked on the door to the room I’d been using and stuck her head.

“You know you’re making a mistake, don’t you?” Morgana asked, sitting on the side of my bed with a box in her hand.

“With what?”

“You’re going out with the wrong man tonight.” Morgana told me. “I have a feeling you already knew that.”

I blinked at her.

“That’s not how it works.” I explained to her. “I’m going out with the man who asked.”

“Just because he asked, doesn’t make him the right one.”

“I—”

“And when exactly was Khadri supposed to ask?” Morgana asked. “When you were taking romantic walks on the beach with another man? When you were sitting in the back drinking a beer with another man? When you were giggling at something this other man was saying—to him, you’re falling in love with Todd and it’s breaking his heart.”

“Why doesn’t he say so?”

“Are you new?” Morgana wanted to know.

She sighed and made for the door then stopped with her free hand on the knob.

“I know I have no right to give you advice,” Morgana said. “That time has passed, I think. But it doesn’t seem as you know that when a man sees the apple of his eyes happy—a real man let her be happy despite him blowing up the bridge he’s standing on to make that happen. If you go out with Todd tonight, you will lose Khadri. That kind of betrayal very rarely gets forgiven.”

After she left, I thought about it, but a honk outside the house had me grabbing my purse and darting down the stairs, excitement filling my chest.

Khadri was in the kitchen peering into a pot of leftovers and while he looked up, he said nothing. He merely returned his vision to the pot.

I left the house knowing what I was doing was wrong, but I couldn’t turn back now.

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