Love, Theoretically

Irun one block.

One and a half.

Two.

Snowflakes stick to my skin. My lungs burn. My pod catches on the waistband of my leggings, and yet it feels good.

I’m no athlete. I’ve only ever run for the bus and passing PE grades, but this is nicely all-consuming. I focus on the slap of my boots against the sidewalk, the oxygen that’s never quite enough, the taste of iron in the back of my throat. My thigh muscles clench, protest, but the feeling of getting away makes up for it. The snow thickens, forming a tunnel, a cocoon to tune everything else out. I’m making my way through a wormhole to a separate point in space-time. A different timeline, in which I’m not a failure, I won’t spend one more year without healthcare and the money to live like a fucking human being, I won’t disappoint my mentor and my friend and—

Fingers close around my wrist. I lose my balance. Stumble. Fall on my face—no, not quite. Something stops me. Strong hands on my waist straighten me, set me on my heels, and then Jack is towering in front of me, the colossus of everything that’s wrong in my life. I want to scratch my nails down his face and see him in as much pain as I am in right now.

I could. We’re virtually alone. Hundreds of feet away from Cece and George—

Shit. I just ran away from them like I’m fucking bananas. Like I’m an entire fruit salad.

“You weren’t supposed to find out like that,” he says, barely winded. I cannot breathe. Fuck this shit—I’m never exercising again. “She has no idea you were the other candidate. You were supposed to be notified on Monday—”

“Fuck you,” I spit out.

Jack is taken aback, and so am I. Did not expect for that to come out of my mouth, but in desperatio veritas. We share a second of surprise, then he collects himself. “It was never going to be you, Elsie.” His tone is not unkind, but it’s not compassionate, either. Like he knows I could take neither. “Volkov and his team were never going to vote for you, because—”

I walk around him, but he grabs my wrist.

“—because it was never a fair competition. I told you that George would get the job—”

“It was just posturing!”

“It was not. I told you as much as I could without divulging confidential information. This entire search was mishandled, and making you aware of who the other candidate was was a huge misstep on Monica’s part—”

“Well, clearly I had no clue who George really was.”

He exhales. “Elsie.” A flake settles on his cheekbone, right under the slice of blue. It instantly melts. “Elsie, you never stood a chance.”

“I hate you.”

“That’s fine. Hate me. But know this: it was a bad-faith interview.” He takes a step closer. His warmth makes the chill bearable, and I hate him for it. “Elsie. I am sorry.”

“Bullshit.”

“Elsie—”

“Do you even realize what this means for me? For you it’s—it’s The Hunger Games, The Academe Edition, but this is my lousy future and everything I’ve worked toward for my entire adult life. I needed that job.”

“I know.”

“No, you don’t know.” I press my hands against his chest and push him away. He doesn’t budge, which makes me explosively mad. “You don’t know what it feels like to have a chronic condition and no health insurance! To have to be perfect, to have to be on all the time because everyone around you expects you to be! And it’s pretty fucking hard to be perfect when you’re working fifteen-hour days for no money at a job you hate! You’re not experiencing any of that, so you don’t fucking know how I—”

“You’re terrified. You’re overwhelmed. The job market is at its worst, and you don’t know if there’ll be openings next year. Believe me, I can relate—”

“Oh really? You can relate? With your long and arduous trek into STEM academia as a white, wealthy man?”

He leans forward. His hand closes around my upper arm. “Do you think I’m happy about this?”

“You got exactly what you wanted!”

“I did.” His face hardens. “And a bunch of things I did not want, too.”

“Oh yeah? Like what? Humiliating another theoretical physicist? Installing your girlfriend down the hall so you can get laid between classes—”

“Enough.”

I recoil. His voice is harsh, and it gives just enough pause to process the words that just tumbled out of me.

Oh God. Oh my God. I know Georgina Sepulveda. I know her work. I know how incredibly shitty academia has always been to me, a woman in physics, and I just did the same to another woman in physics. A woman in physics whom I’ve admired for years.

What the hell did I just do? Who the fuck is this person inside me? “I’m so sorry.” My hand flies to my mouth to muffle a sob. “I—I’m so, so sorry. It’s not even true. None of it. I’ve read her articles. She’s amazing and—”

“It’s okay.” Jack’s expression is back to soft. Like I’m not the protocluster of all assholes.

“No.” I shake my head. “No, she doesn’t deserve any of it, and—fuck. Fuck.” My throat burns with guilt and something that feels a lot like shame. My cheeks are icy and wet. Very wet. I press the heels of my palms into my eyes, but the tears keep coming.

“Elsie, it’s okay. You have every right to be upset—”

“No. It’s not okay. I’m being unreasonable and none of this is Georgina’s fault, and as terrible as you are, it’s not your fault, either. I’m the one who fucked up the interview, and—” Another sob. He heard this time. No way he didn’t. “You shouldn’t let me talk to you like this.”

He is silent for a moment. Then I feel him take a step closer. He doesn’t touch me, but his coat brushes against mine, a muted, swishing sound.

“I like it, actually.”

I look up. There’s a faint smile on his lips. “You like being yelled at?”

“I like to see you. When you’re not trying to be someone else.”

I’m actually hiccuping, like a three-year-old with a bruised elbow at the monkey bars. I bite the inside of my cheek to make it stop, but it’s a lost battle. Like my entire stupid life. “I can’t imagine why.”

“I like rare occurrences.”

I need to leave. I can’t stand here, shivering, being snowed on in the middle of the sidewalk. With Jonathan Smith-Turner. Bawling like I’m on an onion farm. But crying my heart out and thoroughly humiliating myself in front of a professional rival takes up all my energy, which means I can’t leave.

“It’s cold,” he says, like he’s reading my mind. “I live five minutes from here.” I sniffle, unsure how to answer. Bully for you? But then he adds, “Come over.” I must have shown some kind of reaction, because he continues, “Not for anything you’re thinking. Come over so I can warm you up. I want to explain what happened with the search.”

“No. I—” I’m not . . . No.

“I’ll answer your questions. Tell you exactly what happened.”

“I can’t—”

His hand comes up to cup the back of my head, like he wants to make sure that our eyes are locked for this. That we understand each other. “Elsie, if I let you go right now, you’re just going to replay the whole interview in your head and reach the misguided conclusion that it’s your fault you didn’t get the job. And you’re never going to let me talk to you again.” His expression is painfully honest. How does he know all this stuff about me? I don’t even know it.

“Maybe I’ll just blame it on you.” I sniffle.

He huffs out a laugh. “There she is.”

“I’m sorry. I know you want to help, but I just—I can’t talk now. I’m crying.”

“That’s fine.”

“No, it’s not fine. Because I almost never cry”—a sob—“which m-means that I have no idea how to stop.”

“Then you can cry forever.”

“No. I d-don’t want to cry. And I left Cece b-behind. And I need to tell Dr. L. that I didn’t get the job. And you need to let Georgina k-know where you are. And I’m f-fucking freezing. I hate this city, and I hate being a physicist, and I hate Volkov’s stupid p-puns, and—”

His arms are wool and iron around me. Perfectly warm, perfectly solid. It’s several more moments of crying before I realize that he has pulled me against him. That this is a hug. His lips, dry and warm, press against my forehead as though he cares, as though all he wants is to comfort me. Low murmurs warm my frozen skin, soft sounds that I cannot immediately decipher.

“Shh. It’s okay, Elsie. It’s going to be fine.”

I want to believe him. I want to sink into him more than I’ve ever wanted anything else. I want to bury my face in his black coat and make it my own personal wormhole. Instead I keep crying huge, silent tears, curl my fingers into the fabric of his sleeve, and hold on tight.

This, this is the worst. My lowest yet. And not only is Jack Smith-Turner witnessing it, I also don’t have it in me to mind too much.

So when he says, “Let me get you warm. Let me do this one thing for you,” and his hand slides down to take mine, I allow him to guide me wherever he wants.