“If there was a nuclear disaster and all the animals mutated into giant versions of themselves. In which case you’d just be like, hey, everything is now normal sized.”
“That’s completely not fair. I’m only six-four.”
“Do you really think saying six-four makes you seem less enormous? That’s the tallest I’ve ever known anyone be. I almost searched your shoes last night for lifts.”
“You did, huh?” he asked, and as he spoke she could see he was starting to creep back toward her. By the time his next words were out he was almost at the bed again, because apparently their words were a doorway. They let all kinds of things back in before either of them had even had the chance to think about it. “Well, I hate to disappoint you—but it’s all me.”
“No apple boxes, then?”
“Nope.”
“They don’t CGI you an extra couple of inches?”
“Feel me and see.”
He was close enough to do it now, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to. She did work up the courage, however, to pat the bed beside her. And she was more than glad when he took the invitation—despite his addendum.
“Okay, I’m gonna lie down next to you. But we’ll just take this pillow here and put it between us, so there’s no cause for alarm.”
It was her turn to laugh, this time.
“Because we’ve suddenly transported back to the eleventh century?”
“Yeah. This is, like, courtly love.”
“I see.”
“It’s pure and chaste and most importantly, unthreatening.”
“I don’t think you’re threatening, Bernie,” she said, then immediately wanted to take it back. She hadn’t even meant to say it—the word just popped out of her, as though they were close enough to give out cute epithets. He probably didn’t even remember her calling him Bernard, and for one horrid moment she hung suspended over a pit of complete embarrassment.
But he pulled it back.
“I’ve always wanted a goofy nickname,” he said, and as he did his eyes closed in the same way they had the night before. They drifted shut all slow and sweet, as though he was savoring the very thought of being in that place with someone—a place of safety and warmth and weird desires.
It made her think she might be going mad. That she was just imagining the connection she could feel slowly blooming between them. No one connected that fast, and she was going to prove it. She was going to unearth all the rest of the people he formed immediate bonds with, with a well-timed comment.
“People must have called you cute things before,” she tried.
Then watched as the whole plan nosedived.
“People call me Stark. Like a 1930s newspaper reporter.”
“Well, what about when you were a kid?”
“When I was a kid I spent so much time around important industry people I started to think my first name was ‘you’. ‘Hey, you, stand there.’ ‘Hey, you, you’re blocking the shot.’ ‘Hey, you, get out of the way.’ Even my mom started doing it after a while, which is probably why we don’t talk much anymore.”
She wanted to stop there, she really did. The mom story was bad enough on its own, without adding even more terrible things to the pile. Yet somehow she found herself trying one more time. There had to have been someone else he’d invented names and shared silly jokes with, and all of that stuff.
There had to be.
“But you must have girlfriends who—”
“Girlfriends who what—want me to be a Bernard? Good God, no, that’s never happened before. I had one who thought it was cool to call me Captain Amazing, but I really don’t think that’s the same thing. No, no, people I hang around with would never dream of turning me into some ordinary nerd. I don’t think they’d even understand what makes me so happy when you do.”
“It’s pretty obvious.”
“Toyou.”
