The Atlas Six (The Atlas 1)

“You’re such a dick, Varona.” She was chewing her thumbnail now. Stupid habit, though he detested the hair-twirling far more. “I hate you,” she added. A gratuitous conversational tic established between them, akin to an ‘um’ or a thoughtful pause.

“Yeah, yeah, understood. So you’re going to do it?”

She finally abandoned a spare inch of pretense, rolling her eyes. “Of course. Assuming Ezra’s fine with it.”

“Jesus. You can’t be serious.”

Every now and then, Libby achieved a look that successfully withered his balls, and this was one of those instances. It was the kind of look that reminded him she’d set him on fire the first time she’d met him without even batting an eye.

He’d like her more if she did it more often.

“I live with him, Varona,” Libby reminded him, as if Nico could possibly forget her absurd selection of Ezra Fowler, their former R.A. and human wet blanket. “I think I should probably tell him if I’m planning to jet off to Alexandria for a year. Or even longer, I guess. Assuming I get initiated, that is,” she said, with an air of unsaid and I will be.

They exchanged a look of agreement that required no translation.

“I mean, you are going to talk about it with Max and Gideon, aren’t you?” Libby prompted him, arching a brow that disappeared once again beneath her bangs. “You guys haven’t been apart for longer than an hour since freshman year.”

“You say that like we’re surgically attached. We have our own lives,” Nico reminded her.

Libby’s brow remained annoyingly lost to the span of her forehead.

“We do,” Nico snapped, and her lips twisted up, doubtful. “And anyway, they’re not up to anything. Max is independently wealthy and Gideon—” He broke off. “Well, you know Gideon.”

She softened at that. “Yeah. Well, um.”

She toyed with her hair. It occurred to Nico, not for the first time, that he should really start playing Libby Rhodes anxiety-habit bingo.

“See you tomorrow,” he said, pausing as they arrived at her block. “Right?”

“Hm? Yeah.” She was thinking about something. “Right, and—”

“Rhodes,” he sighed, and she looked up, frowning. “Look, just don’t… you know. Don’t get all Rhodes about it.”

“That’s not a thing, Varona,” she grumbled.

“It’s absolutely a thing,” he assured her. “Just don’t Rhodes out on this.”

“What the—”

“You know,” he cut in. “Don’t spend all this time like, fretting or whatever. It’s exhausting.”

She set her jaw. “So I’m exhausting now?”

She really was, and how she didn’t already know it remained an eternal mystery. “You’re good, Rhodes,” he reminded her, leaping to cut her off before she got needlessly defensive. “You’re good, okay? Just accept that I wouldn’t bother hating you if you weren’t.”

“Varona, that presumes I care at all what you think.”

“You care what everyone thinks, Rhodes. Especially me.”

“Oh, especially you, really?”

“Yes.” Clearly. “No point denying it.”

She was agitated now, but at least that was an improvement on weak and insecure. “Look, whatever,” she muttered. “Just… see you. Tomorrow, I guess.” She pivoted away, heading up the block.

“Tell Ezra I say ‘sup,’” he called after her. She flipped him off over her shoulder.

All was well, then, or at least the same as it always was.