Free Fated by S G Browne Page A

same—face, hair, skin color, height—so I had to wait a couple of weeks for my custom man suit to arrive. After all, you can’t just buy a man suit off the rack and walk out the door. Not unless you want to make Style ’s annual “Top Ten Immortal Fashion Faux Pas” issue.
    I’m hoping my new man suit gives me the confidence I need to approach Sara. Still, physical appearance alone isn’t going to solve my dilemma. I need to find my center.
    My breath is slow and rhythmic, the only image behind my eyelids that of darkness as my mind floats along, calm and focused, all the sounds of New York City and the fates of its more than eight million inhabitants nothing but muffled static in the background, like the ocean’s roar, soothing and monotonous.
    Naturally, it would be easier to maintain my focus if the object of my dilemma didn’t appear on the rooftop singing “Hot Stuff” by Donna Summer and wearing a brand-new black French-cut bikini.
    When I open my eyes and glance over at her, Sara stops singing and removes her iPod headphones, then opens up her folding beach chair and begins to set up camp. I figure even though I’m invisible I should put on some clothes, just to be proper, when Sara looks my way and says, “Mind if I join you?”
    I forgot to turn on my cloaking again. Not exactly the way I envisioned our official introduction.
    I move to cover up, but she stops me.
    “It’s okay,” she says. “I don’t mind.”
    You think you know everything about a mortal woman and then she doesn’t bat an eye at your naked man suit. Which, by the way, is custom-designed to never lose muscle tone or develop a spare tire. And Ingenuity didn’t skimp on the accessories.
    “I didn’t know they allowed nude sunbathing up here,” she says from about ten feet away.
    “They don’t,” I say, throwing my shirt over my nakedness in spite of her protests. It’s the gentlemanly thing to do. That and she looks really hot in her bathing suit, which is about to cause me to sport some wood.
    She’s looking at me with a quizzical expression. “You look familiar.”
    I still remember our encounter on the subway nearly two months ago like it was yesterday. But then, when you’ve been around for more than two hundred and fifty millennia, seven weeks is kind of like yesterday.
    “I live in apartment twenty fourteen,” I say, hoping that settles it.
    She shakes her head. “No. I haven’t seen you around here. I’m pretty sure of that.”
    “I travel a lot,” I say. Whatever that means. I have no idea what I’m saying.
    Sara’s looking at me the way she did on the subway, her eyes stripping me naked, which doesn’t take much at the moment.
    “No,” she says. “It was someplace else. Someplace around town. Do you work in real estate?”
    I shake my head. “I’m in futures and options.”
    “So you’re a stockbroker?”
    “Sort of.”
    She nods as if that explains everything, then walks toward me. “Sara Griffen,” she says, extending her right hand.
    I take it.
    If watching Sara wash her hands and handle other objects with them was tantalizing, physically touching them is absolutely exhilarating.
    “Fabio,” I say, nearly choking out my name.
    “Really,” she says. She tilts her head and studies me. “You don’t look like a Fabio.”
    “What do I look like?” I say, still holding her hand.
    She stares into my eyes, then shifts her gaze to my perfectly sculpted, hairless torso, then to the rather sizable pup tent rising below my waist. When her attention returns to my face, she’s wearing a playful smile.
    “You look like you could use a hand.”

CHAPTER 14

    The last time I had sex with a mortal woman was on the RMS Titanic , just before it hit the iceberg. Her name was Dorothy Wilde and was she ever. Barely twenty years old and traveling in second class, fated to get hit by a falling safe in Brooklyn less than a week after surviving the disaster, Dorothy taught me things about