“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.