“I know it sounds crazy, but it’s…” Jane shrugged. “It’s different. Thor’s different. Everything he does and says is sincere. We spent nights awake just talking until I couldn’t keep my eyes open.” She sighed, and smiled a bit. “I care about him, yeah. And he cares about me. He really cares about me. I don’t think any guy on Earth could care as much as he does.”
It sounded silly, but it was true. Thor was an entirely different sort of person. “He’s something else. And I can definitely introduce you to him. He loves people.” She grinned. “He might crush your bones with a hug, but that’s about it.” She chuckled.
Summer grinned back. “Oh, well, you know me and big guys. I may be short, but I can hold my own.” Glancing down into her own open palm, she added, “I guess I could always try to set him on fire if it’s annoying.”
And a flame licked up from her hand.
“Woah!” Jane jumped a bit out of reflex, pulling her hand back and staring at Summer’s, before she relaxed. “Oh, right. Super hero… thing. I forgot.” She ran a hand through her hair, shaking her head. It was still crazy. “How does that all even work? I mean… how did you realize you had it? When did it start?” Obviously it had been after high school, right?
Summer snickered. “Okay, I did that on purpose. Sorry.” She closed her hand, and the flame disappeared. “Remember how I used to be able to tell how people were feeling, back then? It … got worse. It actually started to be physically painful. I, um, it almost drove me into convulsions for a while.”
She rubbed her hands together, staring at them, before picking up another doughnut. “To this day, I swear to you, I don’t remember how I figured out how to fix it. I just … called fire, one day. And the pain stopped. It was like … I burned off the foreign emotions. Literally.”
Summer didn’t look at Jane, and her voice fell a little. “For what I just did, with you — sorry about that, by the way — I don’t have to burn it off. But it’s a balance — I take too much in, and I have to call fire, or there’s pain. It has to go somewhere.”
“I figured I might as well try to do something good with it.”