“I don’t know.” I sit on the edge of the mattress, gripping the soft comforter. “I don’t believe so, no.” I ponder. “I like simple, straightforward romance stories with dramatic characters and improbably high stakes,” I add, surprising myself a little. I didn’t know this before putting it into words, and I feel like Jack has beaten me to some part of myself. Again. “Also, I like to imagine Alice and Bella ending up together after the movie is over.”
“I see.” As ever, he files away. Then he pulls something that looks like sweats and a tee from under his pillow and heads for the door. “If you change your mind or get cold, just look around. You’ll find something to wear.”
“Are you giving me permission to rummage around your bedroom? Like you have nothing to hide?”
He lifts one eyebrow. “What would I hide?”
“I don’t know.” I shrug. “A giant tentacle dildo. Viagra. A diary with a pink locket.”
“None of that would be worth hiding,” he says, the most quietly confident man in the entire world. “I’ll be downstairs if you need anything, okay?” The door closes with a soft click, and I’m right here.
In Jack Smith-Turner’s bedroom.
Alone with his pillows and his CERN wall art and probably the desiccated livers of twelve theorists. Plus, a whole lot of falling snow.
I quickly update Cece on the shit show that’s my life, then slide under the covers on what I hope isn’t Jack’s side, groaning in pleasure.
I have a really firm mattress. Great for spinal health.
He sure does, and it’s perfect. I immediately relax, enveloped by the comforter and a nice, dark scent that I’m not ready to admit is Jack’s. I could stay here forever. Barricade myself. Never face the consequences of my own failures.
Cece replies (This is so weird??? But good night???), and I notice that my battery is at 12 percent. I glance around for a charger, find none, then notice the nightstand. Jack gave me permission, right? So I open the drawer, bracing myself for . . . I don’t know. Cock rings. Thumbs. A copy of Atlas Shrugged. But the inside is surprisingly mundane: tissues, pens, keys, a flashlight with a few batteries, coins, and a white piece of paper that I cannot resist picking up.
It’s a photo. A Polaroid. Blurry, with a Go board and a handful of people clustered around it. Only one face is fully in focus. A girl with brown hair and even features who frowns at the camera and—
Me. It’s me.
The photo was taken at Millicent Smith’s birthday party. A game ends in a draw; Izzy yells at people to smile; all the Smiths turn toward her.
Except for the tallest. Who keeps looking at me, only at me, a faint smile on his lips.
“Oh,” I say softly. To whom, I don’t know.
I lean back against the pillow, staring at the picture pinched between my fingers. Lights still on, contemplating the fact that my furrowed brow resides in Jack’s nightstand, I drift off in a handful of seconds and dream of nothing.
* * *
? ? ?
When I wake up, the alarm clock says 3:46 a.m., and my first conscious thought is that I didn’t get the job.
I failed.
It happened.
I’m in the worst-case scenario.
The scene of me finding out from George runs on a loop in my brain for several minutes, each replay spotlighting a different mortifying detail.
I ran away in the middle of a conversation like a child.
I left my closest friend alone in a snowstorm.
I said terrible, unfair things.
I don’t make the decision to prowl downstairs, but once I’m there, I know it’s where I need to be. The lamps are off and the snow is still falling, but enough light comes from the street to make out the contours of the place. Of Jack, who lies on his back on the sectional, a thin blanket draped over his lower half. His eyes are closed, but he’s not asleep. Not sure how, but I know it. And he knows that I know it, because when I step closer, he doesn’t move, doesn’t open his eyes, but he does ask, “Do you need something?” His voice is scratchy, like he did sleep at some point.
“No,” I lie. Which, of course, he knows. He knows everything.
“Want me to bring you up some water?”
“No. I . . .” I’m awake, but not fully. Because I kneel beside the couch, my head just inches from his, and ask, “I . . . Can I tell you something?” His eyes finally open. He looks at me, and my hair is probably a mess, I am surely a mess, but I need to say this. “I don’t . . . What I said about George getting the job because she’s your girlfriend. Or friend. Because of some weird political intrigue—it was unfair of me. Despicable. And I don’t believe it. And I just—it was awful of me to—”
“Elsie.” His tone is even and deep. “Hey. It’s okay. You already apologized.”
He doesn’t get it. “I know, but of all the things that happened today, it seems like the shittiest. And I cannot control any of this—not my career tanking, not whether I’m going to have health insurance or make rent—but I . . . I can control the way I react. So I’m sorry I said it. About George. And about you. And . . . people do it to me all the time. In the last year of my Ph.D., I got this stupid award. When I walked into the student lounge the following day, other students were saying that it was only because I was a woman, and . . . I felt like total shit, and I really didn’t think they were right, but for a second I wasn’t sure, for a second they made me doubt myself, and I just—I don’t want to be like them. I—”
“Hey.” Jack shifts and then does something I don’t fully understand. He—
Oh.
Somehow, he pulls me up. And somehow, I’m on the couch. Lying on the couch. Next to him. My head nestles under his chin, his arms surround mine, our thighs tangle together. I open my mouth to say something like What the hell? or Oh my God or ?!??, but nothing comes out.
Instead, I burrow deeper.
“Assholes,” he says.
I’m still asleep. This is a dream. A nightmare. A blend. “Who?”
“The people who didn’t like you winning the Forbes award.” How does he know that’s the award I was talking about? “You should report them.”
“For what?” I ask against his throat. He’s warm and smells nice. Like sleep. Like clean. Like he could easily change my sink, save kittens stuck in a tree, extinguish a fire. “For being dicks?”
“Yes. Though HR would call it sexual discrimination and building a hostile work environment.”
“It’s not that simple,” I mumble.
“It should be.” His chin brushes my hair every time he speaks, and I remember trying to mention what happened to Dr. L. The way he commiserated with me but also said that it would be better if I just forgot it happened and focused my energies on physics.
“What would you do if your students said something like that?”
“I’d make sure they can never have a career in physics.”
The words vibrate from his skin through mine, and I know he means it. I don’t have a single doubt. And that’s how I start crying again, like a stupid Versailles fountain, and how his hold on me tightens, legs twisting further with mine. His fingers twine in the hair at my nape and press me deeper into him, shielding me from the cold and everything that’s bad.
“I just . . .” I sniffle. “I really wanted a chance to finish my molecular theory of two-dimensional liquid crystals.”
“I know.” His lips press against my hair. Maybe on purpose. “We’ll figure out a way.”
There is no we, I think. And Jack says, “Not yet, no,” with a small sigh that lifts his big chest. “It’ll be fine, Elsie. I promise.”
He cannot. Promise, that is. There are no reliable sources, no known quantities. We’re in a sea of measurement uncertainty. “Maybe this rejection will be my supervillain origin story.”
He chuckles. “It won’t.”
“How do you know?”
“Because this is not your character arc, Elsie. More like a . . . character bump.”
I laugh wetly against his Adam’s apple. I need to go back upstairs. I’ve never slept with anyone, never even considered it. I can’t control what I do at night—what if I move too much or snore or take up too much space? A cover hog is the Elsie no one wants. But with Jack I have nothing to lose, right? We’re past all that. “I can’t believe I woke you up at four and you didn’t murder me.”
“Why would I murder you?”
“Because. It’s late.”
“Nah. I’m kind of into it.” He yawns against the crown of my hair.
“You’ll really enjoy the thrill of frequent nighttime urination as a senior citizen, then.”
“It’s not that.” I think he might be about to conk out. “This . . . It fits nicely in a bunch of really weird fantasies I have about you.”
I remember the picture in his nightstand. His earnest face in Greg’s apartment. I’m breathing the same air as Jack Smith, but I don’t feel scared or unsafe.
Just comforted, really. Warm and so sleepy.
“Do these fantasies involve giant tentacle dildos?” I’m yawning, too. Fading fast.
“Of course.” I can hear his wry smile. “Way more outlandish stuff, too.”
“Milkmaid role-play?”
“Wilder.”
“It’s furries, isn’t it?”
“You wish.”
“You have to tell me, or I’ll picture necrophilia and dismemberment.”
“In my weird fantasies, Elsie . . .” He shifts me till our curves and angles match up. Perfectly. “In my fantasies, you allow me to keep an eye on you.” I feel his lips at my temple. “And when I really let go, I imagine that you let me take care of you, too.”
It does sound outlandish. “Why?”