Okay, enough of this. Enough. “You’ve been ignoring my calls. And you’re still in bed!”

He stopped studying his own body and brought his eyes back to the camera. “Did we have an appointment? Were we supposed to meet this morning?” He scratched the back of his head, which made his biceps, triceps, shoulders, and pecs flex in one choreographed swoop, and it made his tousled bedhead worse.

Who actually scratched the back of their head when they thought hard? Bad actors, that’s who.

Put on a damn shirt!

She could not—would not!—be auntie enough to say it again. “First, it’s past noon. So, if we were supposed to meet this morning, it’s already too late. Second, responsible adults don’t wake up in the middle of the day. Third, responsible adults don’t smear chocolate into their teeth after they’ve cleaned them. It kind of defeats the purpose of the act of teeth brushing.” They also don’t call women while shirtless. Unless of course they thought of the women as not being women. “And finally, you don’t steal a friend’s work. It’s just not something you do.”

“Oof,” he said, his tone miffed. “Say less.”

“Can we not speak Gen Z please? I don’t know what that means.”

He laughed in the most self-satisfied way. “You’re so intense in the morning, Knightlina. Which side of the bed did you wake up on?”

“I don’t remember. It was seven hours ago!” She made every effort not to raise her voice. “Because it’s a Monday morning and I have a job.” That involved bettering thousands of lives.

Instead of getting out of bed, he sank back into his fluffy white pillows. “You sound bitter. It’s not a good look.”

“Wow, are you about to ask me to smile more?”

He reached over—making all sorts of parts flex and stretch beneath glossy skin again—and he must’ve pressed a button to raise the blinds, because when he settled back into those bright white pillows, columns of sunshine fell across his still-in-bed face and made the stubble on his perfectly square jaw glisten. Of course even his facial hair would grow out shiny.

“As a committed feminist, I resent that accusation,” he said lazily. “It’s a gorgeous thing when you smile, but you should smile only when you damn well feel like it. What I meant was you’re the smartest, most selfless person I know, and bitterness is at odds with your true nature.” He sounded like India Dashwood and it got on Naina’s last nerve.

“Stop trying to be charming. I’ve known you since you were in diapers. The point is: I will not let you steal my funding. Not when I’ve worked decades for it. Not when you don’t even have a project to fund.”