I do want to giggle a little.
This is turning out to be the most Oliver answer ever.
“I did,” I tell him while my face definitely does some gymnastics moves. “Bea’s always talking about it with her brothers. She only has one with a fully developed prefrontal cortex so far, and he’s kind of a caveman in other ways, so we’re not sure he’s done. The other two, definitely not.”
“Yeah. That’s why,” he says, then he crunches into his chip.
“Because your own brain wasn’t fully developed?”
“Wouldn’t take a driver who was under thirty either.”
I open my mouth.
Then close it.
“Go on,” he says, sounding more bored and irritated than the smile on his lips and the twinkle in his eyes suggest he is. “Ask it.”
“You never let Margot drive you either?”
“Nope.”
“Never?”
“Never.”
“Even though girls are smarter than boys?”
Another smile. “Yes.”
“But your brain’s been fully developed for a few years now. You could’ve been driving yourself sooner.”
“Every last ounce of brainpower went into saving M2G from bankruptcy.”
“Bankruptcy?”
“It was bad, Daph. It was very, very bad. We weren’t imminently at bankruptcy, but we were close.”
I munch into my own taco while I mull that over. “No wonder you look so old.”
He laughs again, then throws a napkin at me.
“Boring,” I tease. “If you really want to throw something, throw a chip covered in queso.”
He stares at me, his face doing that thing I’ve come to recognize as him consciously fighting his instinctive first reaction. It’s like he’s actively suppressing the urge to tell me to grow up.
But I think he’s doing that for himself.
Not because I called him boring. More likely because he’s spent a lifetime training himself to suppress his lighthearted side, and he recognizes it, and he’s trying to override habit to get back to who he’s supposed to be.
And that makes my heart hurt for him.
He should’ve always been free to be who he is.
He shakes his head, looking off into the distance, and then he frowns. “What—” he starts.
I turn to look at what has him distracted, and that, my friends, is my fatal mistake.
The giggle hits my ear a nanosecond before Oliver’s finger lands in my ear.
