I don’t know that I could tell you if her lips are a different color now, I was utterly lost in the moving shape of them, the way her hair fell over her shoulders, the curve of her neck as she swept it all back up.
Then she blinks expectantly at me, waiting for my answer.
“What?”
“What do mean, ‘what’?”
“I mean, what are you, a cop?” I say; it comes out a little too aggressive toward a girl I’m supposedly trying to flirt with. I try not to visibly cringe, but my teeth are all but welded together to keep from saying anything else stupid.
She crosses her arms and pouts like I’ve personally offended her, and God could she get any hotter, really? The way she narrows her eyebrows at me sends blood rushing away from my brain when I need it most.
“I’m a weather correspondent.”
“Yeah, I know. You’re the reason this whole city loves the Steely-est of all fucking Heels.”
Oh God, stop talking.
Lacey was the first person Steel Heel rescued from a mutant attack. I remember because I was watching her interview one of the experts studying the ooze. The guy had started sweatingprofusely, grabbed a vial of some glowing liquid off his desk, and downed it on camera. He started actively melting onto everything. They got the whole thing on camera, a reel that Channel 6 News edited together and played for fucking months.
Her cheeks redden. She huffs and treats me to a view of her profile. “I don’t, I mean, I think he was pretty popular before that.”
Did I touch a nerve?
I cross my arms, unconsciously matching her posture. “I mean, before he started rescuing you from burning buildings, I only knew him as the CEO who got into arguments with people on the internet all the time.”
“I don’t know about that. I’m not on social media anymore.”
Oh, thank God for that. Maybe she doesn’t know I tried shooting my shot in her DMs like a year ago. It had been a joke back at the base that she was my celebrity crush, for the number of times I turned up the volume when she was on, but the unanswered message had been enough for me to recognize the slim chance I had.
Still, finding out that she now had an ass for the ages may have rekindled my interest, in a purely physical way. Camera angles don’t really show the whole picture, strangely. I bet that the pair of her thighs together are too wide to get through subway turnstiles. Her hips quake when she takes a step, and I’d let them smother me if she’d be so kind. It’s taking everything in my arsenal not to bite my lip and say something stupid, like, “Sit on me, babygirl.”
No, I gotta play it cool. I don’t want to come off like some annoying, overzealous fan. That would be weird.
I stand and turn my back on her, pacing the length of the roof. I feel her gaze on me, the weight of her undivided attention.
“It’s silly, but I’ve got a bit of a crush on you,” she calls out, apropos of nothing.
I nearly lose my footing and slide a few tiles down the roof. Words I would never be prepared for in a million years. I struggle for any kind of coherent response while pulling myself back up to where I was before. “On...me. Me?”
She giggles, and I think my heart melts.
I sink down into a deep crouch on the roof and kick my feet out in front of me, propping my chin up in my palm. “No way.”
She twirls a loose tendril of her hair around her finger. “You’re on my conspiracy board.”
Before I can even ask what she means about that, she pulls up an article on her phone, waving it briefly for me to see the blocks of text, before she reads off the byline. “Who would have thought a creature of the drip would have such a strong sense of justice?”
I slide all the way down the roof, to the very edge, mere feet from her. “Creature of the drip sounds like a coffee snob. They don’t even know me.”
“A few of them are trying to name you. Each reporter wants to be the one to coin it. The Midnight Mutant, the Vile Vigilante. Bat-Thing.”
“Bat-Thing,” I mouth, not willing to repeat it out loud. She giggles at my displeasure, and I can’t help but smile back.
I think I’m being hypnotized, because I can’t remember how I came to be sprawled across the roof trim, leaning over to get even an inch closer to her, clinging to the boundary line.
My tail flicks with just a little too much energy, dangling over the edge. Talking to her makes me giddy. If Vin were here, he’d tell me to stop kicking my feet and making heart-eyes at her.
I don’t know what comes over me, but I offer, “Do you want the honors?”
