I run an embarrassed hand through my hair, watching her expression as she looks at the drawing more closely. “I don’t think I got the shading quite right on that one,” I can’t help but tell her, because it’s always so awkward to have someone look at my work. I instinctively feel the need to apologize for it.
Nina gives me a look, like she’s on to me and my self-deprecating ways, before turning her concentration back to the page. “He carries a swordanda gun?”
I run another sweep of my hand through my hair, letting out a nervous laugh. This is excruciatingly awkward—having to talk about the drawings I’ve never shown to anybody before. I feel more exposed than when I was in the tiny red underwear a few days ago. “I know that might seem anachronistic, but he’s a time traveler. So he’s an expert on several forms of deadly combat, throughout various time periods and cultures.”
Nina considers this for a moment. “Kind of like a warrior Doctor Who?”
I think I just fell even more in love with her. A grin stretches across my face, unencumbered now by any awkwardness. “Yeah. Exactly. A warrior Doctor Who.”
Nina beams at me, then looks back down at the drawing. “Do you have any more?”
Before I can stop her, she begins flipping the pages—backward, toward my other drawings, instead of forward toward the blank pages. I resist the strong, instinctive urge to snatch the book out of her hands, because Nina is smiling again, and who am I to stand in the way of that?
“This character goes on all kinds of adventures,” she observes as she moves through the pages. She peers up at me through her long dark lashes. “He looks familiar.”
“Yeeaaah.” I draw out the word, trying to gather up my courage before I decide to bite the bullet. “His name is Ryko. He’s sorta based on me.”
Nina pretends to be surprised. “You don’t say.”
I shake my head before continuing, half wincing through my mortification. “Sometimes I daydream about turningGeekOutinto more of an original show. Like, not just replicating the action sequences from other movies and TV shows, but writing my own character and stories.” Seeing the way she nods along, clearly interested, I find myself continuing. “It would still be a show where people could workout with the character in fun, nerdy-inspired ways. But there would be a plot. Side stories. Maybe even a choose-your-own adventure element, where there would be different follow-up videos based on the outcomes the audience chose.”
Even though these ideas have been percolating in my imagination for years, I haven’t told them to anyone before. I’ve never even hinted at them as a possibility. Too late, I realize how much it would crush me if Nina doesn’t like them. Laughing awkwardly, I try to backpedal. “I mean, they’re just dumb daydreams ...”
Nina doesn’t look like she hates the idea, though. She’s nodding thoughtfully. “What other characters would be in the show?”
Oof. That’s a whole other can of worms. “Um ...” I try to stall as she begins flipping through the pages again.
I know the exact moment she reachesthatpage. “Oh,” she says quietly.
Most of the other images have been different ideas for Ryko—adventures he can go on, battles he can fight, costumes he can wear. Most of the images in my sketch pad are pure fantasy, not drawn from anything in real life.
But Princess Annais definitely drew on some familiar inspiration.
My book is full of dozens of sketches of her. Princess Annais, small and graceful and regal and beautiful. So beautiful, with her big dark eyes and her sad, wistful face. In some of my sketches, she’s wearing elegant gowns, pulled entirely from my imagination. Ball gowns for masquerades and dances. Fierce cloaks and crowns for when she is sitting on her throne. Tunics and head scarves for when she is disguising herself as a peasant, moving throughout the city.
And, uh, maybe one where she is wearing very little—nothing but a small, little scrap of fabric, worn like a loincloth, sitting low on her hip bones and just barely skirting the skin at the tops of her thighs. Underneath a headdress of pine needles and leaves and wildflowers, her long dark hair is worn loose and unbound, covering her breasts, but just barely.
“That’s when she goes to live among the forest people,” I stammer to explain. “She has to adopt their customs and cultures for diplomatic reasons ...”
I trail off, because yep, it’s just a thinly veiled excuse I used to justify sketching Nina’s beautiful body. To put to paper the delicate lines and soft curves that have haunted my imagination.
Nina was the girl of my dreams for so long ... and only my dreams. After she stopped coming to Bible study, I truly thought I’d never see her again. So it didn’t feel weird to create a character who bears more than a passing resemblance to her and to draw her again and again and again. I wanted to keep her with me, if only as a figment of my imagination. At the time, it felt like a romantic tribute to the woman I’d loved and lost.
Now that I’m here in the room with her, though, watching her look at these sketches, it kinda feels like I’m a creep who just wanted to draw her practically naked.
I clear my throat, scratching the back of my neck as I scramble to find something to say to justify this. I got nothing. “So. The thing is ...”
Nina surprises me by cutting me off. She is looking at me from underneath her fringe of dark lashes, her head still bowed. “Is this how you see me?” she asks, the ghost of a smile tugging at the corner of her lips.
All elements combined—the tiny smile, the dark and sultry gaze—create a startlingly sexy expression, especially since I was expecting her to be disgusted with me, and it sends my blood thrumming through my veins. “Um,” I stammer, “I mean, yeah. Yes. Not always but definitely sometimes. Yes.”
Yeesh. That was bad. I try to remember the guy who was nicknamed Cassanova for his silver tongue. Some of that sweet-talking ability has to still be there somewhere inside of me. Swallowing, I regroup. “What I mean to say is, when I tried to imagine the most beautiful woman in the world, it was always you. So that’s how I had to draw her.”
One moment Nina is watching me, still clutching my notebook tightly in her hands. The next she’s tackling me, pushing me down so I’m prone on the small bed. Her soft body presses into mine as her fingers tangle in my hair, her warm lips slanting over mine.
Nina. This woman drives me absolutely crazy. You couldn’t picture a more innocent-looking person, with her cardigans and long skirts and the way she barelymakes eye contact. But there’s no slow acceleration with her. It’s zero to one hundred in a matter of seconds, and I’m just the lucky idiot trying to hold on for dear life.
We tangle together, our hands starting out in G-rated places—hers in my hair, mine on her waist—but there’s nothing suitable for young children in the way our bodies seek each other out for as much contact as possible. I don’t want any part of me to not be touching her. Legs, arms, torsos. Her neck. I need to find a way to touch that soft, soft neck?—
