I nod, and then realize again they can’t see me. “Okay, I’ll think about it.”
“Great!” he crows. “Talk to you later, Loles.”
My phone gives out three beeps, indicating the call has ended, and I carefully slide it onto the counter.
Oliver crosses his arms over his chest and leans back against the sink. “ ‘Loles’?”
My eyebrows inch up to the roof. “We’re starting with that?”
He laughs, shaking his head slowly. “I’m not sure either of us wants to start with Mars.”
I walk over to the fridge and pull out the bag of coffee beans. “I . . .” I turn, pouring the beans into the grinder, and look up at him helplessly as it loudly pulverizes my coffee. My brain is mush, my heart sags, my lungs seem to have given up and simply shut down.
Turning off the grinder, I say, “I don’t even know what to say. A Martian. An actual Martian. That’s not even a real suggestion, is it? I mean, Razor and all other Bichir evolved in Loop Four from the same earthly material we did, just . . . differently. In an alternate time, under alternate conditions.” I rest both hands on my head, trying not to panic. “The whole point of him, and who he is, is alternate evolution.” I look up into his deep blue eyes. “Here. On Earth. The only reason he cares about Quinn initially and what she’s doing is because Earth is his planet, too. It’s just a different version of it.”
I know Oliver already knows this, but talking it out will unknot something in me.
Either that or completely send me into a spiral.
“You can push back, Lola,” he says. “For what it’s worth, I don’t agree at all with Austin that it’s too complicated a story line.”
“I thought we might be discussing more nuanced changes,” I say, “like having Quinn fight only one attacker in her first fight, or having Razor come to her rescue a little sooner with the Andemys.”
Oliver shrugs, spinning a spoon on the tile countertop. “Yeah, me, too.”
“And a press release?” I shake my head, dumping the grinds into the coffeemaker. “I’m going to hide in the shop today, if that’s okay.”
“I think the shop may be the least hidey place you could find, Lola Love.”
I nod, loving the way he says my name. His o’s are always so wiggly, nothing makes my spirits lift like listening to his voice. “Are you hungry?”
He reaches beneath his shirt to scratch his stomach, and my heart dive-bombs into my feet. “Starving,” he says, shrugging.
I point to a pile of fruit on a platter and reach above the fridge for the cereal, grabbing the Rice Krispies because I know it’s what he wants. He’s already beside me at the fridge getting out the milk.
“I’m in a world where someone sends over social media copy,” I say. “I guess I should start some social media, huh?”
He laughs, peeling a banana. “Let Joe run your Twitter. He’d be good.”
I gape at him. “He’d post dick pics.”
Oliver shrugs as if to say, Like I said, and then pauses, staring back at me.
“What?” I say.
“Nothing.” He nods to the fruit in his hand. “I’m just honestly not sure where I’m supposed to look when I eat a banana. It was a little eye-contacty there for a second. I didn’t want to be suggestive.”
“Especially not after discussing Not-Joe’s dick pics.”
With a grimace, Oliver puts the banana down and pours his cereal. “Hand me a knife?”
I giggle as I grab one, and he rolls his eyes. Every time he says “knife” I can’t help it. It’s one of the only times he’s ever full-on Paul Hogan.
“Do you really think people will recognize me?” I ask, chewing my thumbnail. I can’t even face the idea of Razor as an alien from Mars right now; it’s oddly easier to focus on the publicity side of all this.
Oliver looks up at me, studies my face. I know what he’s thinking when his eyes land on my diamond Marilyn piercing: I’m not very incognito. “Don’t they already, sometimes?”
“Only geeks, and only twice.”
“Well, now more people will.” He says it with such easy calm. Sometimes I want to put him in a cage with a lion and measure his blood pressure.
“That makes me want to vomit, Oliver. Like, I should actually carry a bucket around with me.”
He shakes his head, laughing. “Come on, Lola. You’re being dramatic. You’re so graceful all the time, why do you think it will be hard for you?”
“That’s not true,” I whisper.
He looks up at me, and shakes his head the tiniest bit. “Sometimes I wish I could meet you all over again,” he says, slicing his banana on top of his cereal. “And pay better attention.”
My heart catapults into my throat. “What does that even mean?”
“It means exactly what I just said.” He stirs the bananas into the bowl. “You’re bloody amazing. I want to meet you for the first time again. And I want it to be different, and just us hanging out like this.”
“Over Rice Krispies and coffee rather than on the Vegas Strip?”
He meets my eyes, and I know—I just know—he’s remembering my stumbling proposition. I watch as he searches for the right words. “I’m just talking about a situation where no one feels pressured to—”
“I don’t blame you for what you did that night,” I say. I need to put this moment out of its misery. “It was the right call.”
He holds my eyes for a breath longer before he smiles a little, digging into his food.
I lean against the counter and sip my nectar of the gods and watch him eat. In some ways, he’s built like a stick figure: so long, so lean, loping stride and arms, nothing but sharp angles. But also, he’s strong. Muscle ropes around his biceps, his shoulders. His chest is broad, tapering into a straight waist. I could draw him, I think. I could draw him and I might even surprise myself with what I see.
“What are you thinking about?” he asks through a mouthful of cereal. “You’re staring at me as if you’re surprised I have arms.”
“I was thinking about what it would look like if I drew you.”
I feel my eyes go wide. I definitely didn’t mean to say this out loud, and we both know it. Oliver has gone so still, as still as the blood in my veins. He’s looking at me as if he expects me to elaborate but I can’t. Something shuts off in my brain when I’m nervous, some trapdoor closes.
Minutes pass and all I can hear is my own heartbeat, and the sound of Oliver eating. We’re not strangers to silence, but this one feels pretty heavy.
“Well, do you want to?”
I blink up to his face. “Do I want to what?”
He takes a bite of Rice Krispies, chews, and swallows. “Draw me.”
My heart inflates
inflates
inflates
explodes.
“It’s no big deal, Lola. You’re an artist. And I realize I’m a bit of a demigod.” He winks and then ducks to take another milky bite of cereal.
Do I want to draw him? Hell yes, and real-talk time: I do it all the time. But usually from memory, or at the very least I do it when he doesn’t know what I’m drawing. The idea of having unfettered visual access to that face, those hands, the ropey arms and broad shoulders . . .
“Okay,” I squeak.
He stares at me, giving me a tiny lift of his brow that says, Well? and before I can overthink this, I’m off, running to my bedroom, and digging through my desk for my bigger sketchpad and charcoals. I can hear him in the kitchen, putting his bowl in the sink, running the water to wash it.
My mind is a blender, coherent thoughts are chopped and killed. I have no idea what I’m doing right now but if Oliver wants to be drawn . . . well fuck. I’m going to fill this goddamn book with sketches.
Sprinting back to the living room, I nearly wipe out on the wood floor in my socks and manage to grip the wall just in time to see Oliver with his back to me, looking out the enormous loft windows. He reaches behind his neck and pulls his shirt over his head and off.