Crashed (Mason Brothers 2)

“No, it’s a hellish dystopia.”

Nick made a sound between a sigh and a growl. “For fuck’s sake.”

I thought about Tessa, how she’d looked this morning. Tousled and relaxed and beautiful, wearing last night’s clothes. I calmed down a little, and the headache didn’t throb as hard. I took a breath and looked at the panel I was drawing. “Judy!” Lightning Man was shouting.

I picked up the tablet pen and started filling in the hot coals and flames of the underworld. “I don’t think Lightning Man and Judy Gravity should go on a mission,” I said. “I think they should go on a date.”

Nick picked up his notepad. “Judy isn’t Lightning Man’s girlfriend.”

I drew Lightning Man’s tortured expression as he looked for her. “You know, I think she is.”

Nick put down his pad again and looked at me, ignoring Scout, who gazed at him worshipfully. I kept drawing.

“What?” I said finally, my eyes on the screen.

“You got laid,” Nick said.

“I did not.” Technically true. If you followed a very narrow definition of “laid.”

“Fucking hell,” Nick said. “You think I don’t know w

hat Laid Andrew looks like? I saw him enough times.”

“Laid Andrew has no comment,” I said, filling in Lightning Man’s costume. “Neither does Un-Laid Andrew.”

“I want to meet this woman,” Nick said. “Tessa.”

“Are you going to ask if she has honorable intentions toward me?”

“Can you be fucking serious for a minute? This is important.”

I lowered my pen and turned to look at him. He was sitting up on the sofa, scowling at me.

“You don’t think I’m serious?” I said.

“You don’t know this woman,” Nick said. “She just showed up. She could be anyone.”

“Is it your mission to annoy the shit out of me today?” I asked him. “First I have to take a two-hour drive on the highway, and now any woman who likes me is up to something.”

“I didn’t say that.”

The headache was starting again. Nick and I liked to insult each other, but we didn’t fight like this. We usually just sat here, making up stupid stories for comics. That was what we’d done for seven years.

And then Nick had found Evie. And he got married. And now there was Tessa. Everything was fucking changing.

I’d had enough change in my life already. Way too much. Change made everything worse.

“You know what?” I said to Nick. “You’re right. Don’t worry about Tessa. I don’t know how long she’s going to be around.”

“What does that mean?”

I raised my eyebrows. “It means it’s a short-term relationship. You used to be pretty familiar with those.”

He scowled harder.

“We’re not getting married and having babies,” I said. “She’ll bail out after a while. In the meantime, I’m thirty fucking years old and the accident didn’t lower my IQ, so relax.”

Nick opened his mouth, probably to argue some more, but there was a knock on my front door. I checked the security feed. It was Evie. She’d left us to run some errands while we worked, and now she was back. I let her in.