He sounded bored, like conversation was truly beneath him, but that was just Theo. He preferred ancient fictional characters to real-life people, and that probably included his family, but he made an effort for me.
Because I forced him to.
What were we supposed to do for a three-hour flight, though? Just sit insilence? That sounded like pure torture for a mind that worked overtime in self-sabotage.
“Okay, but like, still more dough than you make as a professor,” I pointed out.
Theo ignored me, saying, “And second of all, I’m not sure how you’re sitting there callingmea nerd when you have a LEGO model of the Shire in your living room.”
“And she’sbeautiful.”
My most prized possession.
Well, one of them.
“Oh my God,” Theo grunted and then tugged his hat down over his eyes.
“Did you bring a book to read for the flight?”
“Yeah.” Theo tipped his head so I could barely see the skirt of his gaze as he looked beneath the rims of his stereotypical professor glasses, a goddamn walking cliché in the form oftortoiseshell. “Just figured it would be rude to pull it out while you’re talking to me.”
“I mean, no more rude than that little hat move you just did, and it’s not like that stopped me anyway.”
“Nothing stops you, Sul.”
“That’s not entirely true. The Prozac does help calm things down. And the other one I can never remember the name of.”
“Speaking of your meds, have you adjusted them recently?”
I shook my head. “No. Why?”
“Nothing.” He shrugged. “Thought maybe that would have something to do with…” He gave his fingers a wave in my general direction.
“With my general moodiness and despair over a looming existential crisis?”
“Ah, so I haven’t been imagining things.”
“No.” I clasped my hands neatly together in my lap. “You haven’t.”
I rarely admitted things like that aloud, but there was no point lying to Theo. In almost every way, we were complete and utter opposites, but our brains often crossed each other on lonely paths. He would know, regardless.
Theo took his hat back off and ran a hand through his hair, which was a light brown, similar in color to Noah’s but not quite as long and unruly.
“What’s going on, dude?” His look turned tentative as he readjusted his hat. “You just got that new promotion, you’ve been thinking about getting that bigger apartment, you’re still six foot five. I thought things were going good.”
A humorless laugh slipped out of me, but I nodded. He didn’t say anything that wasn’t true, but the fact of the matter was I didn’t like my job, couldn’t give less of a fuck about my apartment, and was currently wishing I were a few inches shorter. Even in first class, I remained cramped and suffocated. I was crawling out of my skin with awareness of my own body. How big it was. How squished I felt.
“Yeah, yeah,” I said, but Theo’s brows only furrowed.
“You haven’t had any contact with…”
He drifted off, and a hot, sickly feeling washed over me, getting stuck in my vocal cords.
I cleared my throat.
“You can say her name without mortally wounding me, you know.”
Theo grimaced. It was almost apologetic. “I’m not actually convinced that’s true.”
