“Are you sure you want this?” he asks huskily, and part of me wonders if he’s talking about more than just the drink. Yes, I want all of it. I blink, no, he has to be talking about the alcohol. Stop fantasizing, Lily.
“Why wouldn’t I?”
He licks his lips. Stop doing that. I hold in a breath. “It’s strong,” he says, watching me closely. Too close.
“I can handle it.”
Lo puts the glass in my palm and stays towering over me, the authority something new, something I’m not used to. I kind of want to stand and take control of the situation, but Lo blocks me from setting my feet on the ground.
He tosses back half his glass in one gulp, the liquid sliding down easily. He waits for me to taste mine before he finishes off his own. “What are you waiting for?”
My heart to stop pounding. I take a small sip and cough. Holy hell. I choke into my fist.
“Hey, go easy,” he tells me. “Do you need some water?”
I shake my head and stupidly take another sip to try and help the burn. Instead, that goes down just as rough. He takes the alcohol from my hand and sets it on his nightstand. “No more for you.”
I keep hacking into my fist and curse myself for trying to relax with alcohol. I should have known Lo would concoct something semi-toxic, too potent for any normal, sane human being.
When I settle down, I inhale a deep breath and slouch. “Are you going to sit down?”
“Why does it matter whether I sit or stand?” he asks, not moving one bit.
“You make me nervous.”
“Scared I’ll jump you?” he wonders with a devious smile, still drinking. He finishes off his and has already started on my drink.
Yes. “No.”
“Then I don’t see a problem with me standing here.” His eyes do that thing again, the one where they scan the length of me, as though imagining what I look like bare and wanting.
To ignore him, I examine all of his memorabilia tacked on the walls and set on the shelves. The only time I venture in here is to help wake him up or to make certain he’s not passed out in vomit. I hardly pay attention to the decorations. Some of them only stay here to assemble our mountain of lies.
Framed comics line the wall directly in front of me, hanging above his desk. All Marvel: Avengers, Spider-Man, X-Men, Cable and Thor. The bottom corners are signed from our numerous trips to Comic-Con in San Diego.
Last year, we stopped attending the comic book convention when I slept with Chewbacca, or at least a fan dressed as the Star Wars character—one of my more embarrassing conquests. Lo didn’t have a splendid time either. He drank something Captain America gave him. Turns out the Cap imposter wasn’t too noble, having spiked his booze with roofies. Nerds can be vicious too.
“You remember when you slept with Chewbacca?” Lo must have followed my gaze to the same poster. He heads to his desk to make another glass.
I shoot him a look. “At least I didn’t accept drinks from every masked superhero that approached me.”
“Yeah? Well at least I’m not into bestiality.”
My eyes narrow and I grab a pillow off the bed, chucking it at him with all my might. I would never be into something like that. Gross, gross, gross.
Lo dodges the pillow but it collides with a bottle of bourbon, knocking it over like a bowling pin and toppling it to the floor. Lo’s face darkens in contempt. “Watch it, Lily.” He picks up the bottle, unbroken, and reacts as though I hit his child.
I don’t say I’m sorry. It’s just alcohol. And he has plenty more. When my eyes plant on a shelf by his head, my heart nearly drops. “How long has that photo been there?” I spring from the bed. He should have burned it!
He carefully returns his bottles to a safe location and cranes his neck to see what I’m fussing over. I’m so embarrassed by the photo that I shove him from the desk and spread my arms out, failing at blocking his view since the picture sits above me and he far surpasses my height.
He laughs at my lame attempt and plucks the frame off the shelf with ease. I try to reach for it, but he hoists it high above, teasing me further.
“Toss it out,” I demand, my hands flying to my hips, just so he knows I mean it.
“It goes with the posters,” he muses, his eyes twinkling at the memory that’s encapsulated within the frame.
“Lo,” I whine. He’s right that the photo fits in with the others. Also at Comic-Con, Lo and I stand beside cutouts of Cyclops and Professor X. I adorn nothing more than a pair of latex pants, a shiny black bra, and long plastic blades from my knuckles. I look more confident than I let on, mostly because Lo begged me to stop hiding behind his back. It was his fault I was scantily-clad in the first place. He insisted I join him as his favorite X-Men’s love interest. So he dressed up as Hellion—the young new mutant with telekinesis—in a spandex, red and black suit, and like a good friend, I played the part of X-23 for the day, the female clone of Wolverine.