“Yeah. Uh. About that.”
“It’s okay,” I said with a straight face. “I know it’s hard being dashing and immaculate.”
He groaned and buried his face in his hands. “Of course you saw that.”
“Do you ever go anywhere and not be dashing and immaculate? It must get tiring. You know. With all the dashing.”
“You think I’m dashing?” he asked, dropping his hands, eyebrows arching.
It was suddenly very hard to breathe as I realized he was towering over me and that my penis found that to be very attractive. “What? Just. What? Shut up. With your. Face.” Smooth. Real smooth. “Just quoting your adoring fans.”
“I don’t have fans,” he snapped.
“Wow. Bitchy. And wrong. You do. You have fans. They have clubs. Did you know that? There are actual legitimate Ryan Foxheart Fan Clubs in Verania. They meet and talk about your eyebrows and when it’s better if you part your hair left or right and how fantastic you look when you pose everywhere you go.”
“I don’t pose!” he said like it was the most outrageous thing he’d ever heard.
I pushed myself up off the ground. “First of all, lie. You totally do.” I lowered my voice just a tad to do an extraordinarily accurate impression of him. “Hi, my name is Ryan Foxheart. Oh no! There’s danger afoot! Let me pull out my sword and pose.” I mimed pulling a sword from my side and cocked an eyebrow. “Notice how dashing I am. And immaculate. And today, my hair is parted on the right. Wink.”
“Oh my gods.”
“Spot-on, right?” I thought about putting the sword away, but then I realized there wasn’t one and that I was still posing. I stopped that immediately. “I bet it was like looking in a mirror.”
He was flustered. It was awesome. “No. That’s not even close to what I sound like.”
“But the rest of it, then, huh? I knew it!”
He scowled at me. “You aggravate me.”
“I aggravate everyone. It’s part of my charm.” And this conversation was weird. I didn’t even know why we were having it. Why I was allowing it. I’d sworn to myself to stay far away from Ryan Foxheart until Morgan sent me out again. And yet, I’d left the labs for less than an hour and here he was. It was unnerving.
“I wouldn’t call it charm exactly,” he said.
“Oh? What would you call it?” I asked and thought, Walk away walk away walk away.
He didn’t answer. Instead, he said stiffly, “Todd seems… nice.”
And that was a change of subject I almost couldn’t follow. “Huh?”
“Todd,” he said slowly, as if I was an idiot. “Your fiancé.”
My eyes bulged. “My what now?”
The scowl deepened. “Your future husband. It was all over the news.” He looked angry, and I had no idea why.
“I’m not getting married!”
“Then why would they print that?”
“Because the freedom of press has gone too far in this country? I don’t know!”
“They can’t just print whatever they want!”
Poor, sweet foolish child. “Uh. Yeah. They can. It’s called sensationalism. They were calling you dashing and immaculate!”
“I am dashing and immaculate!”
“Aha!” I cried. “I knew you did that shit on purpose. Oh my gods. That’s so embarrassing for you. My impression was so right it’s not even funny. I am going to tell all your fan clubs.”