A throng was gathered around a makeshift stage erected for a giant of a man who was drawing excited exclamations by tossing a scantily clad woman into the air and catching her. Each toss grew more dangerous, as she not only soared higher, but performed more complicated acrobatics, twisting and flipping several times before being caught expertly in the man’s powerful arms. Each successful landing drew a louder round of applause and the renewed clinking of coins in the box set on the edge of the stage.

“Showoffs,” Ludo said good-naturedly.

“You’re just jealous.”

“Of what? His meatball-shaped head? His lack of a neck?”

“He’s probably her lover too. She’s very beautiful, no?”

“I’ve been with many beautiful women.”

“And yet you always seek out the next one, don’t you? I’ve known your kind before. Never satisfied. Always searching for something you’ll never find because it never existed in the first place.” As she said this, she was thinking about the man she’d been with before Farrow. Her first lover. He was charming, too. She’d loved him, or at least thought she had, until she’d caught him in bed with not one, but two, other women. He still had a compartment in her mind, a very small one, but only as a reminder to never leave her heart open to be stabbed again.

“Yes, you know so much about me,” Ludo replied, flicking a glance in her direction.

Despite the sarcasm in his tone, it felt like one of the most serious things he’d said to her yet. For some reason, she felt like she should apologize, but decided against it. She hated apologizing, and if anything, this man owed her a dozen apologies of his own. You’ve always been so adept at justifying your own actions, haven’t you?

Though the chiding question could’ve been something she’d asked herself, it wasn’t. It was something Farrow had once said to her, after he’d asked that their relationship be exclusive and she’d denied him, after spouting some nonsense about her enjoying more than one type of fish.

They hadn’t spoken for a few months after that. And yet, gravity had brought them back together, as it always seemed to.

Her own thoughts betrayed her as fire jumped before her eyes. She flinched back while Ludo’s hand shot across her protectively.

As quickly as it had flared, the fire was swallowed by a dark figure whose teeth gleamed as he smiled, before breathing out a puff of smoke that coated her tongue with bitterness. He drew the stick back out of his mouth, except rather than bearing a flame, it now held a single red rose. “A beautiful flower for a beautiful lady?” he said, his voice heavily accented in the manner of the Wastelanders.