The restrooms are across the restaurant, at the end of a long, dimly lit hallway decorated with ficus and monochrome pictures of Paris. I left the table first and should have a considerable advantage, but Jack catches up with me in a handful of steps, without even the grace to look winded.
I brace for him to say something devious and offensive. It’ll be my excuse to trip him—who needs sex when you can watch Jack Smith face-plant on the floor? But he remains silent. Strolls by my side, grossly unconcerned, like he doesn’t have a worry on his mind. One of his power plays, Monica said earlier, and I grit my teeth, wishing I had some power to bring to the playground. If I get this job, I’m going to make his life impossible: put his science equipment in Jell-O, cut my nails on his desk, lick the rim of his cup when I have a cold, sprinkle tacks on his—
End of the hallway. He opens the door on the left—men’s restroom—and I head to the right—ladies’. Free from this pain, finally. Except that I make a crucial mistake: I turn around for one last resentful glance, and Jack’s standing there. With a waiting expression.
Holding the restroom’s door open.
I exhale a low, confused laugh. Is this an invitation? To the men’s restroom? To . . . to what, sit on the urinals for tea and hors d’oeuvres? Is he bananas?
No. I am bananas. Because for reasons that warrant a brain scan and comprehensive neuropsychological evaluations, I take him up on it. I barely glance around to make sure that an MIT chancellor is not coming down the hallway, and step inside.
The bathroom’s deserted—no one around to witness my lunacy. The place stinks, like someone dipped their post-gym crotch in a bucket of citrus disinfectant. There’s the pitter-patter of a dripping faucet, and my reflection in the full-body mirror is a lie: the slender woman in the sheath dress is too flustered, too livid, too red to be mild Elsie Hannaway of the accommodating ways.
I turn around. Jack lingers by the door, as ever studying, appraising, vivisectioning me. I start a mental countdown. Five. Four. When I reach one, I’m going to explain the situation. In a calm, dignified tone. Tell him it’s a misunderstanding. Three. Two.
“Congratulations,” he says.
Uh?
“On your Ph.D.”
“W-what?”
“A noteworthy accomplishment,” he continues, serious, calm, “given that less than twenty-four hours ago you weren’t even working on one.”
I exhale deeply. “Listen, it’s not what you—”
“Will you be leaving your post at the library, or are you planning on a dual career? I’d be worried for your schedule, but I hear that theoretical physics often consists of staring into the void and jotting down the occasional mathematical symbol—”
“I—no. That’s not what theoretical physics is about and—” I screw my eyes shut. Calm down. Be reasonable. This can be fixed with a simple conversation. “Jack, I’m not a librarian.”
His eyes widen in playacted surprise. “No way.”
“I am a physicist. I got my Ph.D. about a year ago.”
His expression hardens. He steps closer, and I feel like a garden gnome. “And I assume Greg has no idea.”
“He does. I—” Wait. No. I never told Greg about my Ph.D.—because it was irrelevant. “Well, okay. He doesn’t know, but that’s only because—”
“You’ve been lying to him.”
I’m taken aback. “Lying?”
“You’re playing a twisted game with my brother, pretending to be someone you’re not. I don’t know why, but if you think I’m going to let you continue—”
“What? No. This isn’t . . .” I can’t believe that the conclusion he’s come to is that I’m catfishing Greg. As if. “I care about Greg.”
“Is that why you hide things from him?”
“I don’t!”
“What about when you passed out in my arms and begged me not to tell him?”
I wince. “It was not in your arms, just near your arms, and that was—I didn’t want to bother him!”
“What about the fact that you didn’t know he was about to go on a trip.” Jack is icily, uncompromisingly furious at the idea of me mistreating his brother. “You don’t seem to care what his job entails. What his problems are. What his life is.”
“Neither does the rest of your family!”
“True.” He scowls. “But irrelevant.”
I almost run a hand down my face before remembering Cece’s Ruin your makeup and I’ll skewer you like a shish kebab. God, I’m going to have to explain to Jack the concept of fake dating. He won’t believe it’s a real thing—men with nice baritones and hints of tattoos and perfectly scruffy five-o’clock shadows are just not the target demographic of Faux. Jack probably has legions of women standing in line for the opportunity to partner-stretch hamstrings with him—let alone real date. And what are the chances he won’t use my side gig against me during the interview? Subzero kelvin. “Listen, I know it looks like I’m lying to Greg, but I’m not. I can explain.”
“Can you?”
“Yes. I’m a—” My brain stutters, then freezes as something occurs to me: if I told Jack about the fake dating, I’d be outing not just myself, but also Greg.
Yes, Jack and Greg are close. No, Greg did not tell Jack about Faux, and it’s not my place to do so. I could avoid saying why Greg has decided to hire me, but would that matter? Jack would know that Greg is hiding something. That there’s something to prod, to investigate, and . . .
“It’s just—I don’t know how my family would take it.” Greg rubs his palm in his eye, looking like he could use a deep-tissue massage and forty hours of sleep. “They might be complete assholes about it or be great or try to be nice and instead end up being massively invasive and . . . I’d rather not tell them, for now. I’d rather they not know that there’s something to tell.”
I can hear Greg’s words as I glance up. Jack’s dark eyes are stern. Expectant. Inflexible.
I’d rather lick the urinals than tell this guy any of my secrets. “Actually, I can’t explain, but—”
Two voices—male laughter, loafer steps right outside the bathroom. We both wheel around to the entrance.
“Someone’s coming,” I say unnecessarily. Shit. What if it’s someone from our party? I shoot Jack a panicked look, fully expecting to find him gloating. Instead his face takes on an urgent, calculating look, and things I do not expect happen.
His huge hand lifts. Splays across the small of my back. Pushes me toward the closest stall. He wants to hide me?
“What are you—”
“Go,” he orders.
“No! I can’t just—”
I must hesitate too long, because Jack’s hands close around my waist. He lifts me effortlessly, like I weigh less than a Higgs boson, and carries me inside the stall, depositing my feet on the rim of the toilet. My brain blanks—no thoughts, head empty—and I don’t have the faintest idea what’s going on. What is he—
The stall door closes.
The bathroom door opens.
Two men enter, discussing quantum advantage. “—scale the error correction by the number of qubits?”
“You don’t. Scaled-up system behavior is erratic. How do you account for that?”
Shit. Shit, shit—
“Calm down,” Jack murmurs against the shell of my ear, like he knows that I’m on the verge of popping an aneurysm.
“They’re from the MIT table,” I whisper under my breath.
“Shh.” His giant paws tighten around me, as if to contain me and my panic. They span my waist. Our size difference sits somewhere between absurd and obscene. “Settle down.”
I feel dizzy. “Why am I standing on the toilet?”
“I figured you’d rather Dr. Pereira and Dr. Crowley keep on chatting about superpolynomial speedups and not see your heels under the stall. Was I wrong?”
I close my eyes, mortified. This is not my life. I’m a discerning scientist with insightful opinions on spintronic tech, not this blighted creature clinging to Jonathan Smith-Turner’s shoulders on top of a latrine.
Oh, who am I kidding? This is exactly my brand. Improbable. Cringeworthy. Botched.
“Settle down,” Jack repeats, gruffly reassuring. We’re way too close. I want his breath to be garlic and sauerkraut, but it’s vaguely minty and pleasantly warm. I want his skin to smell ridiculous, like mango tanning mousse, but all my nose picks up on is nice, clean, good. I want his grip to be creepy and knee-in-the-groin worthy, but it’s just what I need to avoid slipping in the toilet. “Stop fidgeting.”
“I’m not—” Pereira and Crowley are still talking physics—can’t believe all the fuss with the quantum Hadamard transform—with the added background of a stream trickling. Oh God, they’re peeing. I’m eavesdropping on one of the world’s foremost solar neutrinos scholars peeing. I can’t come back from this, can I?
“Elsie.” Jack’s lips graze my cheekbone. “Calm down. They’ll leave as soon as they’re done, and you can go back to the table. Laugh at Volkov’s puns till he votes for you. Tell a few more lies.”
“I’m not lying.” I pull back, and our eyes are at the same level. The slice of blue in the deep brown is icy, weird, beautiful. “I can’t explain, but this is . . . not the way you think it is. It’s . . . different.”
“From what?”
“From the way you think it is.”
He nods. Our noses nearly brush together. “That was remarkably articulate.”
I roll my eyes.