“I’ll still take it as a compliment.”
His hand stroked up and down her back, the way she sometimes stroked Bert. No wonder the dog loved it. Her heartbeat slowed to the rhythm, and everything inside her uncoiled.
Normal, she thought, was as lovely as she’d always imagined.
“Tell me one thing,” he said. “Just one thing about you.It doesn’t have to be important,” he added when she tensed. “It doesn’t have to be a secret. Just anything. It could be your favorite color.”
“I don’t have one, because there are too many. Unless you mean primary colors.”
“Okay, color’s too complicated. When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up? I’ll go first. I wanted to be Wolverine.”
“You wanted to be a wolverine? That’s very strange.”
“Notawolverine. Wolverine—X-Men.”
“Oh. I know who that is. The mutant superhero from the graphic novels and movies.”
“That’s the one.”
“But how could you be him when he already existed and his existence is fictional?”
“I was ten, Abigail.”
“Oh.”
“How about you?”
“I was supposed to be a doctor.”
“Supposed to be?” He waited a moment. “You didn’t want to be a doctor.”
“No.”
“Then you didn’t answer the question. What did you want to be?”
“I was supposed to be a doctor, and thought I’d have to be, so when I was ten, I didn’t think about being anything else. It’s not a good answer. Yours was better.”
“It’s not a competition. Anyway, you can be Storm. She’s hot.”
“Halle Berry’s character from the movies. She’s very beautiful. She controls the weather. But Wolverine doesn’t have sex with her. He has feelings for Jean, the doctor, and she in turn is torn between her feelings for Cyclops and Wolverine.”
“You know your X-Men relationship dynamics.”
“I saw the movie.”
“How many times?”
“Once, several years ago. It was interesting that Wolverine doesn’t remember his past, and his reluctant protectiveinstincts for the girl Rogue added dimension. He’s a good character for a young boy to emulate. The writers seeded a difficult field for Rogue, as her mutation makes it impossible for her to safely touch another person, skin to skin. The scene with her boyfriend in the beginning was very sad.”
“You remember a lot of the details for seeing it once.”
“I have an eidetic memory. I sometimes read books or watch movies a second or third time, but not because I don’t remember them.”
He shifted to look down at her. “There, you told me something. So you keep everything stored up here.” He tapped her temple. “Why isn’t your head a lot bigger?”
She laughed, then stopped, uncertain. “That was a joke?”
“Yeah.” He brushed the hair away from her cheek, touched his lips there. “Have you ever made pancakes?”
