He widens his eyes, chewing on the inside of his cheek with a dry laugh. “Still no.”
“What killed the dinosaurs.” I tip my glass towards the spinosaurus fossil behind him. “Well, not her. We think she lived to an advanced age. Her bones even show signs of arthritis. But there were no signs of instantaneous burial on her.”
“I know that one.” He nods as his smile shifts to a grin. “Asteroid did it.”
“That’s the Alvarez hypothesis.” I wrinkle my nose. “The most widely accepted, but like I said, not the only one.”
Miller jerks his head towards the crowd, a bit of ire rolling down his neck. “What do you think he believes?”
“I’d say he believes the predominantly accepted scientific theory, but I think Scott only believes in himself and his own hubris.”
A laugh, hoarse and rough, like he hasn’t had much reason to use it in a long while, parts Miller’s full lips. His grin spreads, softening the sharp edges of his jaw. “And what do you believe?”
“I can show you,” I offer, tentative. “We have a whole exhibit on it upstairs.”
He studies me, grip tightening on his champagne flute before he brings the delicate glass to a mouth that looks like it would be anything but and tosses the rest of it back.
The column of his throat works with his swallow, and he rolls out his shoulders, suit jacket stretching against the broad range of muscle when he gestures towards the stairs at the opposite end of the atrium. “Lead the way.”
Miller
The champagne does go to her head.
Not the three glasses, but the bottle she grabbed off a drink table pushed against the atrium wall by the stairs.
And not in a bad way, either.
I’ve got no idea what that fucking loser with the stupid glasses and even stupider shoes was talking about.
She should let more things go to her head.
Everything about her gets lighter.
Her movements seemed more fluid, unburdened and assured, when she kicked off her heels and padded across the floor of the museum exhibit on bare feet to grab a wood pointer hung up by the exit.
When her slim fingers moved, all confidence, across a panel on the wall, and a screen flickered to life beside it.
Each time she took a sip from the bottle of champagne, and we passed it back and forth while she flicked through slide after slide, setting the scene for what the world looked like sixty-six million years ago as the Cretaceous Period and Mesozoic Erawere forced to an end. And, for some reason, explaining the difference between something called boreal spring and austral autumn.
“The Chicxulub asteroid hits what’s now the Yucatan Peninsula, and then, in the Cenozoic Era”—she hits the pointer against the wall—“all non-avian dinosaurs are just, poof, gone.”
“Poof,” I repeat through an easy grin, bringing the almost-empty champagne to my mouth.
“Poof,” she echoes again through a resigned nod before a crease digs between her brows. “Not just the non-avian dinosaurs. Poof to almost all tetrapods weighing more than fifty-five pounds.”
“What’s a tetrapod?”
Ren waves vaguely towards the displays and exhibits surrounding us. “Most four-legged things.”
I nod, kicking off the wall where I’ve been watching her move through her demonstration about mass extinction events from millions of years ago, handing her what’s left of the champagne. “So this is your theory, then? You said you’d show me what you believe, and as compelling as this was”—I tip my chin to the picture on the screen of an asteroid engulfed in flames hurtling towards Earth—“I thought you were going to tell me you had a secret theory. Aliens, maybe.”
“I don’t believe in aliens.” She throws me a haughty look. “And you shouldn’t either.”
“But you believe in dinosaurs?”
Her eyes sharpen on me. “Don’t tell me you’re one of those conspiracy theorists who think something that has an enormous body of scientific evidence and decades of evolutionary theory to support it isn’t real?” One finger points towards a displayed triceratops fossil. “I assure you, those bones are very real.”
My grin stretches, jaw almost pinching in pain from how foreign the movement feels. “That’s not what I meant. I mean, itwas sixty-six million years ago. Couldn’t it have been something other than an asteroid?”
