Though she couldn’t focus on that now. He had just said a lot of words. And she had to now destroy all of them before he imagined he had the upper hand. “If shitty opinions were the only thing inspiring me, just knowing the shitty-opinion machine was on the other side of this thing would have me nuking the place from orbit. In fact, I might anyway, considering you’re still acting like I’m a messy disaster who cares too much about everything.”
“You once sank up to your waist in quicksand trying to rescue a rabbit.”
She attempted to throw up a hand. Wobbled, and then drew it back, and settled for just saying how wrong he was getting things. “It wasn’t a rabbit, it was a small deer. And it wasn’t quicksand. It was a completely innocuous-looking mud puddle. That absolutely nobody could have imagined would be dangerous.”
“Well, I managed to see it. And warn you about it, I might add,” he said, just a little sullen about it now. She could see that pouty lower lip a little better beneathhis sloppy mustache, and that meant she had scored a point.
Now to go for the win.
“Because you’re a survival manual made flesh. I feel like you were born in some apocalyptic future and somehow managed to find your way back through time to us. Much to my unending fury at whoever made that possible,” she said.
And got a brief flash of outrage, before he settled into sardonicism.
“So you’d sooner have zombie hordes murder me in some 2050 hellscape.”
“I didn’t sayanythingabout zombie hordes. Or you being murdered.”
“Yeah, but we both know you’re thinking it. And not just because you’d love to see me trampled to death by a million undead beings,” he said, so withering and sure about it that she wanted to shrug his claim off. She wanted to scoff at the idea that he still knew her so well. That there was a familiarity between them, despite how much seething hatred there was in the middle of it.
But she couldn’t.
She understood exactly what he meant.
He had been the only person in her year who’d loved zombie movies as much as her, much to her irritation. If zombie movies were ever mentioned in any lecture, their hands were raised as one. They had both attended a marathon of them once in the screening room at the back of the audiovisual center, and he was the only other person who’d made it through all seven movies.
She remembered waking up to him standing over her, disapprovingly.
He had always hated her love of an excessive amount of movie snacks.
Though she was hardly about to cop to recalling any of that. It already felt like she was being drowned in memories she had long since forced out of her head. She wasn’t about to let him know this was the case. “Why are you still calling them beings and acting like they’d do something that pedestrian to your helpless body? They would pull your guts out through your asshole, Miller. See, this is your whole problem. No apocalyptic imagination at all. It’s why yourDawn of the Deadhomage died on its arse,” she said, and was pleased at herself for it, too.
Her heart only sank when she saw him tilt his head to one side. Flinty eyes suddenly gleaming. “So you’ve been avidly following my career, then,” he said. Like the spectacular ass he was.
“Don’t say it like I’m obsessed with you. It’s what I’ve been hired for.”
“Somehow I doubt taunting me about my failures was in the job description.”
“Nor was climbing a fence to get you ready for this book tour, but here we are,” she said, as she did her best to reposition on said fence. It was starting to dig into her shins and her palms. Plus this vicious back-and-forth wasn’t exactly helping her stay stable. She needed to turn, to sit on it instead.
And she sort of managed.
Her skirt was now too high up her thighs, but she was perched on the fence.
Though it was only after she had that she realized he hadn’t spoken for a long while. Which wouldn’t have meant that much, under most circumstances. He wasn’t a super big talker. He’d once been told off by one of the university librarians for shushing people too much.
But this was anargument.
Withher. Oh, healwayshad words for that.
So what was with the silence?
Then she saw the way he was looking at anything but her and wincing just the tiniest bit, and knew before the words shoved out of him. Almost like a cough, except with syllables and sentences. “Yeah, but I’m not going on any book tour.”
“What do you mean you’re not going? Beck said you had completely and wholeheartedly agreed,” she snapped out, fully expecting some weasel-worded excuse or lie. But instead he snapped back, sharp as anything.
“Yeah, quick question. Did he almost throw up after he did?”
“No. He just went to see if his cat needed letting out.”
