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while, unsure of what he’d gotten himself into. Hanging out at her apartment, working, watching a movie. He hoped she didn’t get the impression this would be a date. He didn’t need that kind of complication as they headed into this partnership. Plus, as much as he liked Reese, she was all wrong for him.

Chapter 4
    R eese was nervous about Adam coming over. She’d had plenty of friends at her apartment over the years, both guys and girls. She’d even had boyfriends spend the night. But having Adam in her home was strange. Their relationship was so undefined. Were they friends? Partners? He was right when he’d pointed out that they had a hard time getting along, but even their disagreements were fun.
    Having him here would change who they were. He would know more about her than she knew about him. She didn’t like that. He texted that he’d be there around eight and offered to bring dinner. He’d supply the burgers and she had the beer. She also had plenty of junk food to fuel their creativity for the night.
    She had roughly five weeks before she launched her campaign. By that time, she needed to have at least part of the anthology done; illustrations would make the sales. Take out a few days for the holidays, and they would have maybe a month of work time and both she and Adam still had classes.
    Depending on how well tonight went, they might just be able to pull some late nights to get things moving. She tossed a blanket over the couch to cover the worst of its age. When the doorbell rang, she took one last look around to make sure she hadn’t left her underwear on the floor, or anything equally embarrassing, then ran down the stairs to let Adam in.
    She swung the door open and said, “Sorry. The buzzer’s broken. I’m upstairs.” She turned and led the way back into her apartment.
    Adam followed her through and set the bag of food on the coffee table. She locked up and asked, “You want a beer or pop?”
    â€œWhatever you’re having.” He shucked his jacket and hung it on the overloaded coatrack. “You want me to take my shoes off?”
    â€œDoesn’t matter. I like to be barefoot, but it’s not a requirement.” She snagged two bottles of beer from the fridge and joined him at the couch.
    Adam unpacked the food and asked, “How much did you get done this week?”
    â€œStory?”
    He nodded. “Or paper.”
    â€œLyrid’s origin is done, but not broken into panels. I’m finding that’s hard to do. Trying to find the right place to break things, how much to fit in each panel, deciding which panels should be bigger because they’re more involved.” She sat on the floor and crossed her legs. “Your story is done too.”
    â€œMy story?”
    â€œYour superhero. I still don’t have a name, but I’m working on it. You’d be surprised how many names are already used in comics. Everything I came up with I had to toss because Marvel or DC had already used it. That doesn’t even touch the smaller pubs like Dark Horse. Google was not kind to me this week.”
    Adam settled back on the couch with a burger in his lap and said nothing. So she continued, “His is a story of redemption. He’s badass, a felon, always in trouble. Then, one night, he does the unthinkable. He gets his girlfriend killed.” She bit into her burger and let Adam digest that part of the story.
    â€œOuch.” Adam narrowed his eyes as he took another bite. “But I like an anti-hero.”
    â€œTotally!” She took another hasty bite and continued, “So while he’s in prison, he saves some dude’s ass—literally and figuratively. And he likes it. He starts to think that if he does enough acts like that, he can make up for all the bad he’s done. When he gets out, he takes a menial job, because how many choices does a guy like him have? Whatever that job is, it puts