“I just—I don’t want you to think I was into such a gross asshat. I’d never go out with someone who says, ‘Yo, O.’” She shudders.
“It doesn’t reflect badly on you—only on him. I mean, it reflects really badly on him. Seriously. What a gross asshat.”
“So gross!” she agrees. “What’s the third thing?”
“The third thing is that I was counting on him getting bored with my nerd speech and leaving, because the truth is without training and practice, it’s pretty much impossible to do martial arts moves with an understanding of physics alone.”
“Well, you sure fooled me.”
We’re in our pajamas in bed after another impossibly expensive delivery order because we barely ate the gala food. I’m messaging Sanjay, Olivia’s editing videos for her YouTube channel, and I know I would be happy finishing off every day like this for the rest of my life. When she looks over at me, I let Sanjay know that I’m done for the night and slide my laptop onto the floor, under the bed. When I turn to her, you’d think from the expression on her face that I just lassoed the moon and handed it to her on a silver platter.
“Thanks,” she says.
“Pleasure. Hey, who is @KennedyOnPointe? Is she a friend of yours?”
Her eyes go wide. “Why?”
“She keeps mentioning and messaging me on Instagram. I think she wants me to repost pictures of her. She’s in your corps, right?”
“Yes,” Olivia says. “But no, she’s not a friend of mine.”
“I’ll block her, then.”
She is trying to suppress a smile. “You don’t have to block her.”
“I’m going to block her. She’s annoying.”
She is no longer trying not to smile. “Yes, she is. She’s the worst!”
“Last thing I need is another annoying ballerina in my life.”
She frowns all of a sudden, leaning in a little closer. “Do you need a Pepper Potts, though?”
“A what? …Oh. Did you talk to Montana?” I ask.
“In the ladies’. She’s a wee bit nuts, would you say?”
“A wee bit. She wasn’t nutsbeforewe started dating.”
“I one thousand percent believe that. I’m significantly less sane now than I was just over a week ago.”
“I have no idea why she thought of me as Tony Stark, though… Because I’m Batman.”
Olivia laughs and rests her chin on my chest as she slides one arm under the pillows that are beneath my head. Her other hand rests on my abs. It’s funny how she started sleeping in the same bed as me here without any discussion. It feels right, though. She’s still wearing the diamond bracelet I gave her, and it’s cold against my skin, but I would buy her enough to cover her entire arm if she asked me to.
“Batman was an orphan…” she says carefully.
“No, Bruce Wayne was orphaned.”
She sighs. Superhero movies were a source of conflict growing up because they were often the ones her brother and I would watch when she wanted to watch dance-competition shows. She always got out-voted when I was there, even though she didn’t think I deserved a vote. She’s studying my face with so much compassion.
“You want me to talk about my parents, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because…in all that time you spent at our house, I never met them,” she says. “I waved to your mom once or twice when she picked you up. Same with your dad. I’m not saying you should resent them, but it seems like you don’t, and I’m just curious about them.”
