How to Date the Guy You Hate by Julie Kriss Page 0,33
how happy they seemed to be. We talked about high school. We talked about Eden Hills, the places we both knew, the people we both knew. Then the conversation turned to movies, and I discovered she’d never seen an X-Men movie. Not one. So of course I had to explain.
“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” she said, when we had swung past Detroit and were now in the outskirts of Cleveland. “He has claws that come out of his knuckles?”
“Man, do you live in a cave?” I said. “Yes, he does. And it’s awesome.”
“I don’t live in a cave,” she said. “I just never had a boyfriend who takes me to these kinds of movies.”
“That’s BS,” I said. “The last I heard, it was legal for girls to go to these movies alone. I thought chicks liked his muscles.”
“Are they nicer than yours?” she asked, looking me up and down.
I ignored the burn of pleasure I got from that and shook my head. “It’s not the same thing. He’s Wolverine.”
“If you say so,” Megan said, looking back down at her map. “Doesn’t it rip his skin?”
“He has healing powers.”
“Oh, well, that’s convenient.”
“It isn’t convenient. It’s the way he’s made.”
Megan looked up at me again. “Jason, you know he’s not real, right?”
“That’s it,” I said. “You are watching these movies if it’s the last thing I do.”
“All of them?”
“All of them. They’re still making new ones, and you have to watch those too. I’ll be chasing you down the hall of your nursing home if I have to, making you watch X-Men movies.”
She was laughing now. “Okay, okay. I just… never got the appeal.”
“It’s better than reality,” I said. “That’s the appeal. When your life is shitty and stressful, you can just imagine what it would be like to have mutant powers. You could do something big like save the world or defeat your enemies. Or you could just kick some ass. Dean and I used to watch them while we were deployed. We’ve seen them all dozens of times. I think those movies saved my sanity.”
She went quiet then, looking out the window, the map in her lap. I could see the perfect line of her neck, her skin where it disappeared into the vee of her snug t-shirt, the slopes of her breasts. I had to fight to keep my eyes on the road.
“So it was hard, then?” she asked, still looking out the window. “Those years in the Marines?”
“It was…” I searched for the words. “It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I mean, it was brutal. There was the physical part, which was tough and relentless—you just had to push through, endure. And once we were deployed, there was the stress and the boredom and the homesickness and the rest of it.” I shrugged. “If I’d known going in even a fraction of what it would be like, I would have chickened out. But I didn’t. And neither did Dean.”
I owed my best friend for that. He’d joined because I had, because he was worried I’d get myself hurt. We’d both been young and stupid, with no idea what was ahead of us. We’d been through thick and thin together, and Dean had paid for it with a bout of depression and anxiety that had nearly paralyzed him and sent him back into civilian life. I’d followed him out of the Marines, because I was done with it. I’d felt like it was more important to be with my friend than to stay where I wasn’t doing any good anymore.
“It was harder on you than you let on, wasn’t it?” Megan asked. She was looking at me now. “You give off this vibe since you came home that it was no big deal, but it had an effect on you.”
“No one wants to hear that shit,” I said. “I mean, my mother is already worried that I’m a depressed alcoholic.”
Megan’s jaw dropped. “What?”
“Because I smell like alcohol all the time, and I sleep late every day.”
“But that’s because of your job.” She paused. “You did tell her about your job, right?”
“I have now. But there’s no way I’m talking to her about how the Marines messed with me. I’ll just shut up and deal, thanks.”
Her jaw went hard, and she looked out the window again. “I’ve changed my mind,” she said. “You’re right. Superhero powers sound really good. Healing, kicking ass. I’m in.”
“He’s not a superhero,” I corrected her. “Wolverine is a mutant.”
“What?”
“He’s a mutant,” I