Sliced Bread 2: The Greatest Thing Since Sliced Bread

Woke up this morning and Ron was sitting on the other couch eating Sugar Smacks and drinking Coke. "Hey," he said when he saw my eyes were open. "Wanna hear my news?"

"Sure," I said, pulling myself upright.

"Linnet and I are engaged."

Does not compute. "What--to be married?"

How the hell does that work? The Twinkie-eating Don Juan is marrying the shapeshifting political alterna-chick? How is this a viable relationship?

I guess I was mulling that over too long because Ron said, "Yeah, why? There's, uh... no problem with Linnet, is there?"

I knew that tone of voice. Ron was trying to be subtle. And in this case it meant that Linnet had told Ron about how she was a superhero (and good for her, I guess), and Ron was trying to figure out if I knew. "No, no problem. It's just, you know, Ron getting married? No way!"

He grinned. "Yeah, I know. So you like her?"

Do I like Linnet? God, there's a hard question. I'd like her a lot better if I didn't have to deal with her. "I do, actually. She's cool."

"I gotta say, I wasn't expecting to get married either. But she's just so great. She isn't like anybody else. I just feel really lucky, and... I don't know, I wanted to keep going with that. Oh, and by the way, I haven't heard the word 'congratulations' come out of your mouth yet."

"Oh. Oops. Congratulations. Sorry, I'm kind of out of it. Cassie and I broke up last night."

"Christ, really? And here I am being all happy in front of you. I suck. What happened?"

"Bridge Out."

He winced. "Ah, hell. God, I'm sorry. That's terrible. How are you doing?"

"You know. Bad, but familiar bad. I know my way out of this territory. I'm gonna play a lot of Minesweeper and in two weeks I'll be fine."

I wish I could ask him how he's dealing with the whole superhero thing. I would ask him if I could do it without giving up Cassie's secret identity and my association with Greyghost. Does it just not bother him? How deeply has he thought about it? Do Linnet and Cassie have the same attitude toward it?

Not that this information would do me any good now.

Back to Minesweeper.