Alien Romance, the daily comic strip

[gs_silva]

"So, you wanna... get a beer later?" Alex asks Ren as they continue walking through campus from yesterday.

"I don't drink," Ren replies, frowning. He's a self-proclaimed teetotaler. That's a whole story. "Sorry, Alex."

"No problem. We could go for coffee," says Alex.

"I don't dr--" Ren hesitates and kinda grins at Alex, realizing how difficult he sounds and trying a more agreeable tack. "How 'bout pizza? Trattoria is near my digs."

"Pizza? Already?!" Alex looks doubtful. "Kinda moving fast."

"Just a suggestion," Ren says.

"Let's do it! See you at, 6 maybe?" Alex is moving down another path now, turning around to shout his decision at Ren.

Ren grins over his shoulder. "Sure!" And then smirks slightly to himself as he hears Alex exclaim, "Haha! Wow!" behind him.

***

Ren is in for a couple of surprises, I think! But don't worry; I won't be following any tired old tropes. You know me and tropes! While I'm not afraid of them, I like to play with them. I don't follow tropes; tropes follow me.

***

Should I go into the teetotaler thing here? We've recently learned that Ren and his family are Quakers. That's not strictly true. They have a family history of being Quakers, and if anyone asks Ren while he's in the mood to talk about it, he'll claim to be one presently. But they've had some drama with the Quaker community in their area. Among the problems that came up was that Ren's brother Sig, who is 17 years older than Ren, enlisted in the US Army and didn't put 'Society of Friends' on his papers, so he got sent into combat. Their parents were furious, but Sig held his ground, and later came back with PTSD. And developed first a drinking habit, then a heroin habit. In fact, he brought the heroin market to the community.

We only catch a glimpse of Sig in the graphic novel; he's in the background at Ren's house at Christmas. We spend more time with Sig's son Jordan, who is close in age to Ren and who even comes to France for the wedding later. So there's been a lot of healing, rehab, and mending fences by then. It's not perfect. Sig appears a lot more in the flashback scenes I've done, because he was a looming presence in Ren and Maurice's childhood.

And that's why Ren doesn't drink.

That doesn't cover the coffee problem, though. That's not so dramatic. Ren just doesn't like coffee.