2.11

Dirk sulked from the room, nursing a cut heart. She had been passion, been fire, just yesterday. He didn't (or couldn't) understand what had changed. Once, the back of his hand had been enough to make her gasp and writhe, and now his sweetest words were handed back to him, dissected and poisoned. He slapped a broad palm against the deep mahogany doorframe and let his broad shoulders pull in with envy as her laugh tinkled out across the wide hall behind him. In his favorite dress, at his favorite opera, and surrounded by a cloud of men. Dirk couldn't think of a worse universe to live in.