Love, Theoretically

Iwear black jeans.

A cute sweater.

Ankle boots.

I leave my hair down. Then I pull it up in a bun. Then I let it down again. Then I braid it.

Then I leave it down.

I haven’t told Cece where I’m going, because she’s not home, and I’m physically unable to send her a text explaining that:

I.

Am.

Going.

Out.

WithJackSmithTurner.

Maybe. I’m still not positive that the reason he wants to see me is not to stealthily substitute my insulin with Frappuccino. Maybe I should make a safety call—make the investigators’ job easier when they find my corpse in a swamp. But the car is already there when I get downstairs, and I simply slip into the passenger seat.

The cabin smells like leather, Jack, and bad ideas. I should say something. Hi, how are you? Did you have a good week? Favorite Teletubby? Off-year elections thoughts? I’ve done this a million times—gone out with people. A million fake dates. Then why? Why? Why can’t I . . . Why?

“I think,” he drawls, “I just heard your head explode.”

I turn to him. He’s handsome in a near-painful way, and my head is still in mid-explosion.

“Want to go back up?” The smile. Uneven. Amused. All-knowing. “Try this another day?”

I shake my head before I change my mind. “I want to do this now.” I swallow. Face straight ahead. “I think.”

He starts the engine. “Look at you.”

“Look at me?”

He puts his hand on the headrest of the seat to back out of the spot. His fingers brush against my hair, soft, distracted.

“Yeah. Look at you, telling the truth.”

•   •   •

“Two friends are in town for a conference,” he tells me, “and another friend is hosting a small get-together. I figured with witnesses you’d be more . . . relaxed.”

He’s probably right, but also: “I don’t want to intrude.”

“I’d love for you to meet them.”

Is it a good idea, hanging out when his friends are around? I’m probably very lame in comparison. I’m just not that entertaining—not at my best, and definitely not with Jack, who so far has gotten my worst. “Are all your friends scientists?” I ask.

“Some.” A pause. “Jesus. I can’t think of one who isn’t.”

I nod. It’s truly hard to expand one’s social circle. Academics become friends, hang out, and above all sleep almost exclusively with other academics. Because academia is a bit like the Olympic Village—sans opening ceremony with condom distribution.

We park in front of a narrow brownstone, and after ringing the bell at a yellow door, he turns to me. “Hey.”

I turn, too. Under his coat he’s wearing jeans and a dark henley, and he’s big and attractive, and it occurs to me for the first time in years that nights in which people go out together—not all nights, but some nights, maybe several nights—don’t just end with a hug and good night.

I shiver.

“Honesty,” he reminds me. “You don’t need to impress anyone. No need for the usual party tricks.”

I smile. “I was going to carve a recorder out of a carrot and play it for your friends.”

He gives me a long look, like I’m the single most charming person he’s ever met. “Not gonna lie, that’d be pretty cool.”

Even before I knew about his mother, Jack always seemed to me like a lone wolf, set apart from the rest of the Smiths. It’s instantly clear, though, that his friend group is his chosen family. There are over fifteen people in the house, and not only are they all delighted to see him, they welcome me just as warmly. The single exception: Andrea, Jack’s MIT colleague. She stares at me like a vaguely displeased gargoyle, probably feeling awkward about the fact that I didn’t get the job.

“Beer?” Sunny, the engineer who owns the house, asks. She’s a dark-haired ball of energy. “Wine?”

I’m ready to spend the rest of the night holding a drink I don’t want just to avoid looking out of place, but Jack says, “I’ll have one. Elsie doesn’t drink.”

I never told him, but of course he knows. “Anything else, then? Water? Soda? OJ? Maple syrup?” Sunny frowns into her fridge. “Milk?”

“Whole?” Jack asks.

“Two percent.”

“Keep your white water.”

“You spoiled little Smith brat, raised with unpasteurized emu tit juice.” She punches his arm. “Remember when Caitie was pumping and kept her bottles in the fridge of the student lounge?”

“And Kroll used it.”

“For his coffee.” Sunny shakes her head. “Good times.”

Jack has friends, inside jokes that go back a decade, and a whole group of smart, kind people who tease him because they care about him, and . . . I’m not sure what to do with this piece of information, aside from being mind-numbingly fascinated. I briefly wonder if they know about the article Jack wrote, whether they support him, what their opinion of theoretical physics is, and then force my brain to shut up for once. I should learn how to have fun at some point in my life.

One of the people visiting town is a biologist from Stanford. He’s as tall as Jack—an impossibility, I thought, especially within the nerd community.

“This is Adam,” Jack says after they shake hands warmly, in that affectionate but understated way of men who like each other a lot but will probably never openly admit it. Adam looks like he might be a few years older. Dark. Frowny. Intimidating, though the beautiful girl next to him looks anything but intimidated. “And this is—”

She takes a step forward and enfolds Jack in a tight hug. “Jack!”

He hugs her back with a smile. “Hey, Ol. Nice to see you’re still putting up with this guy—thank you for your service. Elsie, this is Olive Smith—no relation to my terrible family, lucky her. She’s Adam’s . . . Adam, is she still your fiancée?”

Adam nods with a mildly irritated expression.

Jack grins. “Haven’t picked a date yet?”

“She has not,” Adam whines. Sternly, though.

“Ol. Put him out of his misery.”

“At twenty-eight? What am I, a child bride?” Olive looks between me and Jack. “Have you guys picked a date?”

I wish to die on the spot. I wish to melt into the sweet respite of nothingness. “Oh, we . . .” I glance at Jack, hoping he’ll come to my rescue. He just gives me a look halfway between pleased and amused, holds my eyes, and says, “Not yet.” I step closer to pinch him hard in the ribs. He stops me with a hand on my wrist and a delighted smile.

“How did you and Adam meet?” I ask him in a desperate attempt to change the subject.

“In undergrad I did a summer internship at Harvard, in the lab where Adam was a Ph.D. student.”

“He ran the worst Southern blot I’ve ever seen,” Adam says.

“It was a rough three months. I was gently discouraged from going into biophysics. Then a few years later I moved to Pasadena, and he was in Palo Alto, and we started hanging out. Hiked our way around California. And then he introduced me to Olive when . . . Ol, how did you and Adam meet again?” he asks with the tone of someone who knows the answer full well.

She grins. “Why, Jack, Adam was a tenured professor. And I was but a lowly student.”

“Graduate student,” Adam interjects, speaking to me. “And not my student.”

“But in his department,” Olive adds impishly. “It was all very, very scandalous.”

Jack smiles. “You should sell the movie rights, Ol.”

“I’m hoping for a Netflix miniseries. Something sexy like Bridgerton, you know?”

It’s clearly a bit Jack and Olive do a lot. Adam lets out a long-suffering sigh. “Anyway.” He changes the topic. “How are you, Jack?”

“Very entertained.”

Jack and Adam are somewhere north of circumstantial friends. In a couple of minutes they are absorbed in conversation, talking about people, things, places I’m not familiar with. Olive and I gravitate toward each other, sitting on the couch while all around us Jack’s friends laugh and joke and embody the epitome of successful adulthood.

“Do you also not know anyone else and feel like the dumbest person in the room?” she whispers at me.

I nod. Everyone here is a bit older, and I try not to imagine the academic positions they might have. “What do you do?” I ask Olive.

“Cancer biology. Just finished the first year of my postdoc. I’m probably going on the job market in the next couple.” She makes a face, sipping on her beer.

“Are you planning on staying in California?”

“Would be nice, since my friends are there. But honestly, academic jobs are so rare, it’ll be hard enough to make sure Adam and I are in the same city.”

“Do you have a plan?”

She shakes her head. “The good thing is, Adam has grants. We’re hoping that whatever institution wants me will take a look at the money and decide that we can be a package deal. But if they don’t . . .” She shrugs. “We might have to negotiate a spousal hire.”

I smile. “Then you’ll set a date?”

She leans closer with a surreptitious expression. Her skin is 90 percent freckles, and I’ve known her for five minutes, but I want to be her friend. “I’ve set it already. We’re getting married in April. During spring break. Adam just doesn’t know it yet.”

“How does that work?”

“So, he’s into nature. Hiking, that stuff. I’m taking him to Yosemite, where a park ranger will marry us in a quick and painless ceremony. Then it’s just going to be the two of us for a week. And the bears, I guess. Oh God, I hope the bears don’t eat us.” She shrugs the thought away. “Anyway, Adam doesn’t love people, and we can always have a party later, but this . . . I think this is the kind of wedding he wants. The one we’re meant to have.”

I picture Olive and Adam, alone, trekking hand in hand under the ponderosa pines. It’s not difficult. “Why don’t you just tell him?”

“I should, right?” She laughs softly. “I just . . . I was in a pretty bad place when I met him. He did so much—still does, always taking care of me, and I . . . I want to take care of him for once, you know? Make him feel like I’ve got him.”

I nod and then stare down at my empty palms.

When I really let go, I imagine that you let me take care of you, too.

“Have you and Jack been together for a while?” Olive asks, and I look up at her. I can tell that the Elsie she wants would say yes. That she loves Jack very much and likes the thought of someone who’ll take care of him. But.

Honesty.

For a second, I picture myself blurting out the entire story: how I fake-dated Greg, then met Jack, then met Jonathan. But I doubt Olive is familiar with the concept of fake dating, so I sanitize my version. “This is the first time, actually.”

It feels weird to say the opposite of what someone wants. And it feels downright horrible when Olive’s response is a disappointed “Oh.”

I swallow. “I’m sorry—”

“No, no.” She smiles, reassuring. “I’m sorry about earlier. Asking if you’re getting married.”

I shake my head. “We’re just . . . getting to know each other.”

“That’s great. It’s nice to hear that he’s over his I Don’t Date, Let Me Set Boundaries and Make It Clear That This Is Just About Sex phase.” Her impression of Jack sounds more like Vin Diesel, but it has me thinking: I have no idea what Jack wants from me. Olive is the second person to mention how important boundaries are to him. He hasn’t set any, but he also said that he was attracted to me, and . . .

If what Jack wanted from me was sex . . . what then?

Honestly, no clue. I don’t have much experience. Not because I ever bought into the idea that sex is something precious, but because it felt like a means to an end, a way to ensure that the person I was with was pleased with me. Sex never happened because of any attraction I experienced, but that’s okay: maybe I never craved it, but I also never minded it. Because it wasn’t for me.

With Jack, though . . . something’s different. Perhaps because he sees more of me than anyone ever has. I find myself thinking about last Sunday by the car, over and over. Tethered on the edge of a kiss that might not come, tense, heated, spellbound.

There might be something here. Or it might be nothing. What’s certain is that I’m more curious than ever. If something were to happen, it would be for me.

“Did you guys meet at work?” Olive asks.

“Kind of. I’m a physicist, too. Though I’m an adjunct.”

“Ouch.”

I laugh. “Yeah.”

“You like teaching?”

“Nope. Lots of high-def pictures of butt rashes that are too deadly for people to come to class. Sifting through those doesn’t leave time for research.”

She laughs, too. “I bet. I did not like TA’ing. It’s nice being a postdoc—none of the bullshit of being a grad student, none of the responsibility of being a faculty member. Just research.”

“Sounds like a dream.”

She gives me a surprised look. “You didn’t do a postdoc?”

“There weren’t any positions. But my Ph.D. advisor says it’s for the best. I’ll move to a faculty position earlier.”

“But do you want to move to faculty earlier?”

“It’s . . . complicated. But I trust him. I owe him a lot, so . . .” I sigh.

Olive scans my face, large eyes assessing, and then says, “In my experience, we all want to trust our mentors, but they don’t always have our best interests in mind.”

“In what way?”

“Just . . .” She chews on her lower lip, pensive. “Academia is so hierarchical, you know? There are all these people who have power over you, who are supposed to guide you and help you become the best possible scientist, but . . . sometimes they don’t know what’s best. Sometimes they don’t care. Sometimes they have their own agenda.” Her expression darkens. “Sometimes they’re total shitbuckets who deserve to step on a pitchfork and die.”

I wonder what happened to her. I even open my mouth to ask, but Adam turns to us, as if feeling the shift in her mood. “Olive, do you have pictures of the tux Holden bought for his wedding? Jack won’t believe it’s sequined.”

Olive brightens. “It’s totally sequined, and it’s amazing.”

We end up chatting, first the four of us and then others, too, for what feels like minutes but turns out to be hours. While Andrea is telling the story of how her advisor showed up completely sloshed at her thesis defense and started offering digestive cookies to the rest of the committee, the cushion next to mine dips and I hear, “Everything okay?”

It’s Jack. Murmuring in my ear, arm resting behind me on the back of the couch. He’s surprisingly close, but I don’t pull back. “Your friends are fun.”

“I figured you’d like them more than me.”

“I kind of do.” I smile, thinking about Millicent, Greg, Olive. Thinking that he has great taste in people. And then notice something on my thigh: a small pouch of almonds. “What’s this?”

“Glycemic level control.” His mouth quirks. “Or you can faint on me. Since it’s a hobby of yours.”

“Did you steal these from Sunny’s cupboard?”

He gives me a look. “I shared an office with her for years, and she once left a urine sample for her doctor on her desk.” He stares at my lips while I laugh silently. “I’m not going through her cupboards.”

I shake my head. Out of the corner of my eye, I notice Olive and Adam looking at me—no, at us, in a way I cannot quite understand. I focus on my almonds, then go in search of a trash can for the wrapper, and . . .

“Elsie?”

Georgina Sepulveda is in the kitchen, beautiful and kick-ass. She’s tall—I didn’t fully grasp how tall when Jack was nearby, dwarfing her.

“So glad you’re here. I’ve been wanting to talk to you, but Jack was the usual shitlet and refused to give me your number.” She rolls her eyes. “At first I thought he didn’t have it and just didn’t want to admit it. But you’re here, which means he was just hoarding it. Like a dragon. God, I knew he’d be like this when he found someone. You and I should become best friends just to spite him.” Her smile is wide and warm, and it’s instantly, violently, mortifyingly present in my mind that the last time we met, I acted like a toddler with little bitch disorder.

“I . . .” I look around like an idiot, in search of . . . what? A teleprompter? This is mortally embarrassing. “I didn’t know you were here.”

“Just got here. Faculty meeting ran late for no reason—the entire thing could be summarized in two fifteen-second TikToks.” She shrugs, moving closer. I clutch my almond wrapper like it’s a terry cloth monkey.

“Georgina—”

“George, please. Georgina is my mother. And my grandmother. My great-grandmother, too, probably. We should invest in a baby names book.”

“Oh.” I clear my throat. My contributions to this conversation are priceless. “Jack’s in there, if you—”

“I know. Like I could miss him when he’s standing next to Adam Carlsen. They’re the Mount Rushmore of STEM academia. Anyway—will you have lunch with me next week? I want to chat with you, but not in Sunny’s home.” She shudders. “I can’t be in here without thinking of the urine sample.”

Professionally, my life sucks a bit. Psychologically, I’m not, as some would say, “healthy.” Musically, I should hire a tuba to follow me around. But on the upside, I’ve been killing it in the lunch invite department.

“You want to chat with me,” I repeat. Just to be sure.

“Yes. Partly because Jack is my closest friend, and it would bug him if I stole you from him even just a bit. But mostly because the last time we met, I acted like a total bitch, and I want to make it up to you.”

What? “No, no, I’m the one who ran away like a lunatic. My first reaction to finding out that you’d gotten the job was unforgivable and incredibly messed up. I acted like a bitch—”

“Yes, you totally did.” George’s smile is triumphant. “To make it up to me, you will let me take you out for lunch.”

“That’s . . .” I slow-blink. “Very well played.”

“Thank you.” She dusts nonexistent specks off her shoulder, and I laugh.

“I see why Jack likes you so much.”

“I see why Jack likes you more.” Her smile softens. “Next Wednesday okay?”

I nod. “Sounds great.”

Jack and I leave a few minutes later. I exchange numbers with Olive, and Sunny hugs me goodbye while Jack is getting the car, whispering that any urine sample rumors I might have heard have been greatly exaggerated. She also swears that if Jack and I break up, she’ll side with me, because she already likes me more.

I laugh on the doorstep. “It makes me feel guilty for stealing your almonds.”

“Oh, they must be someone else’s. No nuts in this house—they’re, like, so gross.”

In the car, I’m contemplating the idea that Jack researched, bought, and packed a diabetes-friendly snack just for me when he asks, “Where to for dinner?”

“Oh.” Something happy and surprised flips in my chest at the idea of the night not being over yet. “I like everything.”

He merges into traffic. “Excellent. Some of my favorite stuff is everything. Now tell me what you want to eat.”

I look at his near-perfect profile. He hasn’t shaved in the last couple of days, looks a bit tired. I wonder if he’s been up and about since morning. If he hasn’t had anything since lunch. He’s huge, probably always ravenous. Simple stuff, big portions.

“Burgers,” I say.

He gives me a Nice try look. “Yes, Elsie, I do like burgers. That wasn’t the question, though.”

I scowl. How does he do this? How does he always—

“Want me to pull over so you can get out and stomp your foot a bit?”

I growl. Judging from the smile, he absolutely hears me.

Okay—what do I want? Well, cheese. I’m always in the mood for cheese. But cheese is not really a meal, and the places where it might be are usually too fancy, and—

“Say it,” he orders.

“What?”

“What you’re thinking.”

“I’m not—”

“Say it.”

“Really, I’m—”

“Say it.”

“Cheese,” I almost yell. Shocking myself.

Jack smiles, satisfied. “I know just the place.”

•   •   •

“You’re joking.”

“Nope.”

“We can’t—not here.”

“Why?”

“Because . . .”

Jack waits for me to finish the sentence. When I’m unable to, the ever-present lower-back hand nudges me inside the cozy heat of the restaurant.

Of Miel.

“This seems sadistic,” I point out, “even for you.”

“You underestimated me, then.”

“Two?” The hostess greets us, chirpy. “Would you prefer a table or a booth?”

Jack looks at me like we’re a drug cartel and I’m the ringleader who needs to sign off on any decision. Dammit, this honesty business is hard. Okay, so not the booth—Jack’s legs are skyscraper long, so he’d probably hate it. But tables are less private, which he also might hate—

He leans into my ear. “Stop building observational models about what you think I’ll like, and just be honest about—”

“Booth,” I grunt out. The hostess makes an obvious mental note to tell our waiter that I’m a weirdo, but her “If you’ll follow me” is impeccable.

“Excellent choice,” Jack murmurs while we weave toward the table, and all I can think of is that Two-Weeks-Ago-Elsie, bright-eyed and future-hopeful, sat in this very restaurant across from Jack and contemplated slipping under the table to power-drill his kneecaps. Tonight-Elsie gapes at him as he tells the waitress, “I’ll have your craft beer. And she’ll have the cheese board.”

I lift my eyebrow. “What happened to me asking for what I want?”

“The cheese board is what you want.”

It is. But. “How can you be so sure?”

“Ikagawa ordered it the other night. I saw the way you looked at it.”

“How’s that?”

“Like people look at porn.”

Laughter bubbles out of me. “Okay, you want me to be honest? I’m going to be honest.”

“Go for it.”

“Brutally honest.” I take a deep breath. Maybe it’s the booth, but it almost feels like we’re alone in his apartment again. Just the two of us. Intimate. “Sometimes, when I can’t sleep because I’m nervous, I look up cheese on Google Images and I just . . . scroll. I scroll infinitely. And I feel peace.”

“That’s nothing.” God, his dimple. “George’s entire YouTube history is pimple-popping videos.”

I snort a laugh into my water. “By the way—she mentioned you wouldn’t give her my number.”

Jack’s beer arrives. His tongue pushes against the inside of his cheek. “I had a very disturbing mental image.”

“What mental image?”

“Of George reminding me daily for the next few decades that she got to take out the girl I liked before I ever did.”

I laugh, picturing her starting her maid of honor speech with “Webster’s Dictionary defines sloppy seconds as . . .” Then I realize who the bride would be in the wedding, and my face is suddenly cooked medium rare. Whoa.

“You look like that again.”

“Like what?”

“Worried.” He searches for words, like he’s not sure himself. “Vigilant. Overthinking.”

I play with the cloth napkin. “How can you always tell what’s in my head?”

“Same way you can tell what’s in everyone’s head.”

I frown. “I just look. Try to pay attention to what people want.”

“That’s what I do. Except that I don’t care much about most people, but I can’t stop paying attention to you.” He shrugs. There is something so utterly, disarmingly honest about him. “So I look.”

Is it really that simple? Is that what’s happening here? “What am I thinking now?”

“You have questions.”

I laugh. “That was a softball.”

“It was. Just ask the questions.”

“They’re kind of . . .” I exhale a laugh. “They’re not really just-casually-getting-to-know-each-other questions. They’re not . . . normal.”

“You’re not a normal person,” he says, in a way that feels like the opposite of an insult. “And I’d rather you ask than overthink.”

I close my fingers around his glass, feeling the condensation pool in my palm. Then I pull my hand back into my lap, wet, cold.

Okay. “Back at Monica’s place, you said that you don’t date. And Olive told me the same . . .”

He laughs. “Olive?”

“We may have touched on your love life.” I flush.

“Ah. Olive.” He nods. “She and Adam are . . . I think she wants others to have what they have.”

I nod. I’ve known her for two hours, but it’s the impression I got.

“It’s not a hard and fast rule—no commitment, no dating, no feeding past midnight. I haven’t sworn it off because love is a capitalist construct or some bullshit like that.” He shrugs. “But when I was younger, I was in a couple of relationships where the interest didn’t match up, and . . . It’s better to be up-front. So no one gets hurt.”

“I see.” I picture a boy being told by his mother that he’s not her son anymore. Then growing up to hate the idea of telling a woman that she’s not his girlfriend anymore. It makes sense, this determination of his. It also makes my heart heavy.

“What about you?” he asks.

“Me?”

“Do you date?”

I smile. “For a living.”

“Right. How did that start?”

“Oh.” I go back to tracing patterns on the glass. “In college. It’s kind of a depressing story. Does not pair well with cheese.” I let out a nervous laugh, hoping he’ll laugh, too.

Instead he asks, “Why depressing?”

Honesty. Honesty. It’s a thing that I can probably manage. “Because . . . I didn’t know.”

“You didn’t know you were dating someone?”

“No.” I swallow. “I didn’t know it was fake.”

His attention shifts. Still on me, still focused, but more cautious. Gentle. Land mine territory. “You didn’t.”

I’ve never spoken aloud about what happened, not even with Cece, because . . . I’m still not sure how it could have happened to me. It’s been years, and it still doesn’t feel like my story. I’ve always been so guarded. So careful-footed. And when I stumbled, I didn’t just skin a knee. I fell facedown and knocked out all my teeth.

“When I was a sophomore, this guy I knew moved abroad. The place he rented was cheap, so I took over his rent. That’s how I met J.J. He was the roommate.” I push the glass away. “I’d seen him around the Physics Department, and I thought he was an okay guy. Though he was planning on becoming an experimentalist.”

“Should have tipped you off.”

I laugh. “We spent almost one entire year politely ignoring each other. Ideal roommate situation. Then he broke up with his girlfriend.” I sigh. “It was messy. Twenty-year-old messy, you know? There were still feelings, but she’d met someone else, and . . . All I know is that a couple weeks later she came over to pick up her stuff, and she found J.J. and me having dinner together while watching something on TV. She went ballistic. She was so jealous, which was hilarious, since J.J. and I were sitting ten feet apart and I was having chickpeas—officially the least romantic food. But that’s how J.J. got the idea that we should pretend to be together so she’d get even more jealous and . . . I don’t know, race through Boston Logan to confess her undying love? It was a fuzzy plan. But I said yes, because . . .”

“Because you weren’t any better than you are now at saying no?”

“Hey—no personal callouts.” He smiles, and I continue. “We started the ruse, and . . . we didn’t just fake it on campus, when she was around. He told everyone—his friends, my friends. And in my defense, which—maybe I have none, but we didn’t talk much about the fact that it was fake. He brought me home to his parents for the holidays, we studied together, he taught me how to play Go.”

Jack nods slowly. “How quickly did you get better than him?”

“Very to extremely. But I pretended I didn’t, because he hated losing. He hated not feeling like the smartest person in the room, but he was good at hiding it. He was charming in public. But in private the insecurities came out, and . . .”

“Not so charming?”

“Not really. He was self-centered, but . . . you have to understand, I’d never had lots of friends. I was always the wallflower, trying not to get noticed, but all of a sudden I was at the center of someone’s universe. We were together all the time. First just a few weeks, then six months. He started kissing me in private, too. Then more than kissing. Then he wanted to have sex.”

“Did you?”

My mouth is dry. “Yeah. I did it.”

“No—did you want to?”

“I . . . I didn’t not want to.” I trace my finger against the tablecloth. “Mostly, I wanted him to have a version of me he could enjoy.”

Jack’s eyes close, and I’m suddenly afraid of what I’ll find when he opens them. Disgust. Pity, maybe. Judgment. But no: it’s just that deep brown, the slice of color, and a bunch of other things I cannot recognize.

“It was Elsie and J.J. Everyone said how beautiful a couple we were, and I settled into that. I read the Dune books because they were his favorites. I told myself Dream Theater was good. I did his laundry. Cut my hair short because he liked bobs. I felt powerful, like I’d cracked how to be a social human being. I’d learned how to make people want me.” I wet my lips. “Then his ex asked him to get back together.”

Jack’s jaw tenses. His neck tightens. “And he said that you had to go, because your relationship was fake.”

I nod. “I wasn’t even sure if I had the right to be hurt. It was just . . . confusing.”

“Were you in love with him?”

I let out a small laugh and shake my head. “Not at all. And it should have made it better, right? That I didn’t lose the love of my life, that he was just some guy I only liked because I knew how to please him. But then I realized why it hit me so bad.” I have to stop. Take a deep breath. “I’d tried so hard. Given my all to be the perfect Elsie he wanted, and . . .” It almost hurts too much to say it.

“You gave him a perfect version of you, and he still didn’t want you,” Jack says prosaically. Almost detached. Like I’m a gravitational singularity that can be explained, cataloged, predicted. I’m momentarily stunned by how right he is. Then I’m surprised that I’m even surprised.

“And what you took away from it was that you had to try harder.”

I nod. “Pretty much.” The tray of cheese arrives, but my stomach is sealed. “J.J.’s girlfriend wouldn’t allow me to live in the apartment. And because the contract was in J.J.’s name, I had to move out. I didn’t really have anywhere left to go, and . . . I’ll spare you the details, but it was a mess. I missed tests, assignments. Didn’t get enough credits to stay on my scholarship. My junior-year grades were shit—and the first thing on the transcripts I sent in for grad school applications. I’d wanted to become a physicist for a decade, and because of some . . . some guy who sucked at Go, I almost didn’t.” I force myself to reach for a piece of fontina, because—fuck J.J. It’s delicious in my mouth. Rich and smooth, sweet and pungent. It makes me forget that I nearly bawled like a four-year-old in the middle of a fancy fusion restaurant. “But my mentor saved me.”

Jack tenses. “Your mentor.”

I nod, picking another cube. “Laurendeau.” The guy whose career Jack accidentally ruined. I’m trying not to think about it—Jack’s article, or what Dr. L. would say if he knew that I’m here with him. It seems like a good use of my well-honed compartmentalization skills. “He saw through the bad grades and the rec letters that said I was flaky. Told me I had potential. Accepted me into grad school. Everything I’ve accomplished, I owe to him.”

Jack scans my face for a long time. Then he exhales slowly and nods once, as if coming to an arduous decision. “Elsie—”

“My turn to ask a question,” I interrupt. I’m done talking about J.J. and Dr. L. “Since we’re on the topic.”

Jack hesitates, like he’s not ready to let go of the subject. “What is it?”

“Olive also said something else. That when you do go out with women, it’s usually to . . .” I can’t bring myself to utter the words. But it doesn’t matter, because Jack looks like he knows exactly what I want to say. I point back and forth between us. “Is that what you want?”

He doesn’t answer immediately. Instead he studies me, stern, unreadable, impenetrable as he hasn’t been in a while. And then, after a long beat of choosing words carefully, he slowly says, “You and I won’t be having sex—”

“You guys ready to order?” The waitress interrupts us.

We don’t go back to the topic. And I wonder why the knot of relief in my belly feels so much like disappointment.