“The Spider-Man side of you is the coolest thing ever. And now I can definitely never tell you who I am.”

“What?! Why?”

“Because there’s nothing awesome like this hidden in my closets. My Spider-Man parts are just sad little family skeletons.”

“I’ll let you see the panels for the next five chapters early if you tell me who you are.”

“Ugh . . . that’s so not fair. You’re cheating.”

“I’m just playing all my cards. That’s different than cheating.”

“Eliot?”

“Yeah?”

“You’re not dreaming that I’m secretly Gigi Hadid or something, right?”

“Gigi who?”

“She’s a supermodel.”

“You’re asking if I’m assuming that you’re secretly rich and famous?”

“I don’t know. It’s just this whole thing with us kind of lives in a fantasyland, and I’m wondering if somewhere in your mind you’re also thinking of me as, you know, a fantasy.”

“JD, considering I’ve never met any famous supermodels, I’ve definitely crossed that possibility off my list.”

“Okay.”

“. . . I mean, are you asking what I picture when I imagine you?”

“. . .”

“. . .”

“I guess so.”

“I picture a she-blob.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Well, I don’t know what you look like. So I just picture this, like, shadow person. Average height, average size. And sometimes when I’m bored, I add Marge Simpson hair.”

“You’re being serious right now?”

“Completely! And every morning before work I put you in a Camaro in my brain and send you off into the sunset so I don’t spend the whole day trying to solve the mystery of who you are.”

“If that webcomic weren’t proof of how vivid your imagination was, I probably wouldn’t believe this.”

“Hey! That’s a good idea. Hold on.”

“What am I waiting for?”

“I’m going to draw what you look like in my head. And then I’ll take a picture and send it to you.”

“Didn’t you just say that you picture me as a she-blob?”

“Kinda, yeah.”

“Well, I’m pretty sure I can picture that already, but sure, knock yourself out.”

“Keep talking to me while I draw.”

“Okay.”

“. . .”

“. . .”

“JD?”

“Yeah?”

“The important part of the sentence ‘Keep talking to me while I draw’ was the ‘talking’ part.”

“Oh. Right. Um . . . what have you been up to over the past few days?”

“Well, tons of work. I just finished this big design project for my main client.”

“Do you like being a freelancer?”

“I love it. I have to be my own boss. I liked the whole job security thing when I was on staff at my old company, but having to follow a bunch of someone else’s—seemingly arbitrary—rules made the job about a gazillion times harder for me.”