I growled and sighed, but then it was gone, replaced with an old-fashioned movie intro. Part of me wanted to ask Rex to switch the channel back, and when I looked over at him, he was staring at me expectantly, like he was anticipating the question.
“Let’s take a break from it, okay?” he said.
I didn’t want to take a break, but I knew he was right. “Yeah, okay. What’s the movie?”
“The Empire Strikes Back.”
“Perfect.”
And it was. I’d seen it at least twenty times, but it was still a favorite. I used to watch it with Del regularly—enough that we could recite pretty much all the dialogue. Del was particularly fond of the Darth Vader lines. Whenever we watched it, for days afterward, he would randomly break into, “I’m your father, Luke”—which we both knew wasn’t the actual line, but was funny anyway. And when his own dad was being awful, which was most of the time, he’d follow it up with a mordant, “Darth, I wish you really were.”
It was rough humor, but he would laugh his butt off, and I’d join right in.
I smiled at the memory, then felt teary. Taking another slice of pizza, I pretended to watch the film as, despite my best efforts, my mind once again replayed the events of the day. I cringed at the horror of it and scoured my memory for examples of things I should have done differently or better, ways I could have changed the outcome, ways I could have handled the questioning—or my mom—better.
And I wondered why I’d been spared. The fact that I had been was gnawing at me in a way that made me think it would continue to do so for a long time to come.
Judging from his frequent, furtive sidelong glances, I think Rex was mostly distracted with wondering how I was doing.
Periodically, I’d look back at him and say, “I’m okay.”
He’d nod and say, “Good,” then we’d both go back to pretending to watch the movie.
It wasn’t just the day behind us that was on our minds. I think we were both worried about tomorrow, too, the first official day of the week-long convention. After the bombing, tensions would surely be escalated. Howard Wells’s keynote was going to be incendiary to begin with, but who knew how much gasoline he was planning to pour on the fire now.
The credits began rolling up the screen. The movie was over, and I hadn’t even noticed.
I turned to Rex and said, “I think we should still go tomorrow,” just as he turned to me and said, “Maybe we shouldn’t go tomorrow.”
We had a good laugh at that.
“Oh, you do, do you?” Rex said when we stopped, his eyes sparkling in the dim light.
I kissed him, just because, then I said, “Yes. Especially now, it’s important to let the world know that whoever did this, CLAD or whoever, that’s not us, and we’re not going away. And that we lost people, too.”
“It could be dangerous.” Rex worried a lot about things being dangerous. To be fair, he was usually right to be worried.
“It’s a dangerous world, right? We’re protesting to make it less dangerous.”
“I guess we are,” he said, but he didn’t look convinced.
I hadn’t spent the night before.
It felt nice. It felt cozy and domestic, and I loved the idea of sleeping next to Rex. And he didn’t even snore, which could have been a serious problem.
But it was also weird. I wasn’t used to it. I couldn’t sleep the way I usually slept—which apparently involved my arms and legs sprawled in all directions. And even without snoring, Rex kept me awake just by the sound of his breathing, not to mention the occasional mattress tsunami whenever he changed position.
It gave me more time for reliving traumas and stewing in guilt, regret, and second guesses. Good times.
I tossed and turned until two a.m., but I woke up at seven anyway, exhausted but apparently done with sleep. Rex awoke almost immediately, opening his eyes with a soft, surprised snort. He looked vaguely bewildered at first, but he glanced at the clock, and when he looked back at me, his gaze was crystal clear.
“Good morning,” he said with a smile. “How’d you sleep?”
“I slept.”
“Did I snore?”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Well, thank God for that.”
“I already did.”
He laughed. “Do you want a cup of tea?”
“Got any coffee?”
He gave me an awkward, apologetic grin. “Sorry.…I could go out and get some.”
“No, don’t do that,” I said. “I can get some when we go out. I’d love a cup of…tea.” I do love a good cup of tea, but I’d gotten into the habit of having coffee first thing in the morning, and hadn’t realized until that moment how much I’d come to depend on it.
As Rex put the kettle on, I went into the bathroom. I was standing at the sink, realizing I didn’t have any of my stuff, when Rex called through the door, “You can use my toothbrush.”
It was hanging in the toothbrush holder, alone, over a tube of toothpaste. I felt momentarily overwhelmed by the intimacy of it. I mean, we’d been intimate, but sharing a toothbrush was intimate.
But I plucked it up and put some toothpaste on it. “Thanks,” I said as I ran it under the water.
When I came out, Rex was waiting for me with two mugs of tea and a grin on his face. “How’d it go?”
I grinned back, wide enough to show my teeth. “Minty fresh.”
He handed me one of the mugs and I got dressed while he was in the bathroom. He got dressed quickly afterward, and we agreed to get breakfast when we got coffee.
I was sorry to go, sorry to leave our little bubble and go out into the world. But, seeing as it was the first time I’d stayed over, and it had been just about perfect, considering, I kind of also wanted it to end before anything ruined it.
I knew I could count on Rex not to ruin anything, but I was a little less sure about myself.
As we descended the stairwell to the street, I felt not only relieved, but fortified by our time together. And hopefully ready for whatever was next.
EIGHT
We emerged onto the street from the Levline hub under the Convention Center and headed for the protest area. It was at least as hot and way more humid than the day before, but the towers were gray, reflecting the overcast sky. The two groups were cordoned off, facing each other across Market Street. Hostility radiating in waves between them as they glared through a phalanx of cops on bicycles.
We angled left, crossing the street toward the pro-chimera, E4E side.
Rex pointed above us. “Guess they’re expecting a show.” The sky was speckled with police and media drones and copters. Behind them, Wells Tower loomed ominously. I wondered if Howard Wells was up there in his penthouse office, looking down at us like ants or amoebas under a microscope.
As we approached the cordon, I saw a lot of faces, both spliced and not, but I didn’t recognize any of them. They were grim, seething, staring daggers at the H4Hers, who were staring daggers right back.
As we joined the pro-chimera group, Rex exchanged nods with a couple of people I didn’t know. He looked at his watch. “I’m surprised to see so many H4Hers out here. Wells is supposed to be delivering his keynote inside any minute.”