Wonder Woman: Warbringer (DC Icons #1)(95)

“Hey,” he said.

Well, this isn’t going to be awkward at all. “Hi,” said Alia, making her best effort to sound normal. “How’d you sleep?”

“Good, good. You?”

“Great,” she said, continuing past him toward the falls. Easy. Now you just have to spend a few hours crammed in a car with him. No problem.

She heard a thunk and his footsteps and realized he’d set the water jug down and was jogging to catch up with her. Maybe she could just stick her head underwater and hold her breath until he went away.

“Listen…,” he began.

“Theo, whatever you’re going to say is only going to make it worse. It’s not a big deal. I was thirteen. I had a crush.”

“Because my eyes are golden as a sunset sea?”

For a second Alia was just confused, and then the memory came back to her with gut-clenching clarity. Your eyes are golden as a sunset sea. I could drown in them a thousand times. That horrible letter.

“Oh God,” Alia groaned. “I was hoping you never read it.”

Theo grinned. “I read it.”

“Well, it was a long time ago,” she said with an awkward laugh. “I wrote like ten of those. One was to Zac Efron.”

“Oh.” He actually looked a little disappointed. “That’s too bad. It was pretty much the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”

Alia thought of the string of girls she’d seen with Theo the last few years. “Sure.”

He ran his hand back and forth over his locs. “Do you even remember what you wrote?”

“Not exactly. Every time my brain tries to go back there, I cringe so hard I have to stop or risk an aneurysm.”

Theo looked down at his pointy-toed dress shoes. They were scuffed beyond repair, the houndstooth pattern on their sides nearly hidden by dust. “You said I was smart and that if people didn’t always get my jokes, maybe it was because they couldn’t keep up.”

“I did?” Well, she’d been right about that. Alia remembered how much she’d hated the way Michael picked on Theo, how kids at school had called him weird and goofy. As they’d gotten older, everyone had seemed to realize that Theo’s taste in music and clothes and everything else wasn’t so much weird as interesting. She’d watched girls start to fawn over him and had felt like a disgruntled hipster. I knew he was cool before you did.

“You compared me to a pistol shrimp,” he said.

Alia closed her eyes. “Are you trying to get me to drown myself?”

“No, it was amazing. You said the pistol shrimp was tiny, but it has this claw that can produce a bang—”

“Louder than a jet engine,” said Alia. “Yeah, I remember. I was really into marine biology that year.”

“Right,” said Theo eagerly. “So it makes this bang that can shock big fish or whatever, but you said it survives by being noisy, not by trying to blend in.”

“How do you even remember all that?”

Theo’s grin went lopsided. He jammed his hands into his pockets and bounced once on his heels. “I kept it.”

“Really?”

He shrugged. “It was a good reminder. When things weren’t going great.”

Alia folded her arms. “If it meant so much to you, why didn’t you say anything?”

Theo rolled his eyes. “Because there was a lot of ridiculous kissy stuff, too, and you were thirteen and my best friend’s sister. I thought you might pounce on me in the TV room and ask me to marry you. I mean, there’s half a page dedicated to all the signs that we were soul mates. One of them was we both like ketchup.”

Alia covered her head with her hands. “Stop.”

“Lotta loopy stalker talk, some seriously convoluted metaphors.”

“Okay, that’s enough. Go away and leave me to enjoy my humiliation in peace.”

“But that’s what I’m saying—I’m sorry that note embarrasses you.” She lifted a brow. “Okay, I’m not that sorry, because you’re kind of cute when you’re embarrassed, but that letter meant everything to me. You told me you liked the way I wasn’t like anyone else, and that was really what I needed to hear right then.”

“Then…I guess, you’re welcome?” said Alia, unsure of what else to say. She supposed she could live with a little embarrassment. “But you still have to leave.”

“Why?”

“Because I really need to go.”

“Right, to the spring!”

“No,” she said, cheeks heating. “To go.”

Theo gave her the thumbs-up. “And I’m out.”

He headed back down the path, but when he picked up the water jug, Alia said, “Hey, Theo?”

“Yeah?”

“The night of the party at the Met, how come you complimented everyone but me?”

He grinned. “Because you in that gold dress turned my brain to mush.”

She rolled her eyes. “Right.”

He took a couple of steps, then paused. “Alia?” he called back.

“What, Theo?”

“That night, at the party? You looked like buried treasure.”

—

Alia took her time getting back to the car, mostly because she couldn’t shake the goofy grin from her face, and when she finally returned to the clearing, Diana was pacing and Jason looked suitably grouchy. He opened the Fiat’s door to usher them inside, and Alia was pretty sure that if he’d still had a watch he would have tapped it impatiently.