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Miles hops up onto his bed while I take the chair again, propping my feet against the bed frame. “There was some wallowing, I won’t lie. And then some librarying.” He gives me a sheepish half smile. “Somehow, it didn’t feel right without you there.”
“Who could make fun of scientists’ dirty names the way I can?”
“Julian Schwinger is not a dirty—okay, I hear it.”
When he asks me the same question, I tell him about bonding with Lucie. “And I, um, confronted him. The guy from the ice-cream truck. The one who—who did those things after prom.”
Miles’s jaw tightens. “How… did that go?”
“Terribly. It made me feel worse,” I say, trying to forget about the way Cole just turned and walked away. “I know I have to let it all go. But it’s going to take time.”
“You don’t have to do anything,” he says, softer. “You feel however you feel about it, for however long you need to.”
“I—you’re right. Thank you.” I stare down at the bandage he applied so delicately. “I’m sorry about what I did in your mom’s class,” I say, wanting a completely clean slate. “That was shitty.”
“And are we going to talk about that cape?”
“I was going through something, okay?” I say. “When we went to Vancouver—it was a good birthday, though, right? Before everything happened?”
“My best almost nineteenth birthday.”
“Good.” The newspaper on the other side of his desk catches my eye. The reason I’m here. But I have plenty of time to tell him about Dr. Devereux. For now, I want to pretend none of that exists. “Miles?” I say, cursing the way my voice sounds. High-pitched and uncertain, completely unlike the cool, collected kind of voice I want to have. The words in my head might as well be physics equations. ΔB/ΔM = ???2 “How would you feel about watching a little Pride and Prejudice?”
He grins. “Firth or Macfadyen?”
“Dealer’s choice,” I say, and I shouldn’t feel a rush of satisfaction when he picks the 2005 version, elevating his laptop with a few textbooks and tilting it toward us. We settle on his bed together, exchanging half smiles as we stretch our legs, and when his knee settles against mine, I know I won’t be able to focus on the movie.
The force of all the want thrumming inside my body is too heady, too much. It’s an awful thing, wanting to be wanted, and it’s led me down plenty of questionable paths. And yet I never stop wanting.
I don’t want to feel lonely tonight, even if it only lasts for a couple more hours, so I settle for a desire I know I can satisfy: being next to someone who’s made it okay for me to slip out of my armor.
For better or for worse, Miles has become that person.
DAY TWENTY-SEVEN
Chapter 33
THE TINY COASTAL TOWN OF Astoria, Oregon (population: just under ten thousand), looks like it was pulled from a fairy tale, a place where the Pacific Ocean spreads salt into the air and quaint, colorful homes dot the hillsides. It took us four and a half hours to get here even though it should have taken three, mainly because we got coffee before we left, which I drank too fast and as a result needed to pee at two rest stops in varying states of cleanliness.
My brain has started doing Bad Things involving Miles. While he sipped his coffee at a slower, more reasonable pace, I imagined kissing away the foam on his upper lip instead of saying You’ve got something right there. I imagined leaning over and whispering in his ear to take the next exit, where we’d park in a secluded forest. I’d climb over the console into his lap, rake my hands through his hair again, drop my mouth to the space where his neck meets his shoulder, and breathe him in.
I imagined how he’d react to all of this, the shy scientist wanting to repeat everything to make sure the results matched the first time.
Because the problem is, now that we’ve reconciled, every inch of him has become impossibly attractive to me. Knuckles. Elbows. The hollow of his throat. It’s extremely inconvenient and altogether alarming, especially because I have no idea whether he still has feelings for me after all we’ve been through.
So when we pull up to the squat yellow house and Miles yanks the parking brake, it sparks something not entirely unpleasant in my belly. I am really truly gone if the sight of Miles engaging the parking brake is hot.
The house only looks a little out of place on this block of Victorian-style homes. There are solar panels on the roof, and the fence is swirled with neon paint to look like a galaxy. The lawn is overgrown but not untidy, filled with plants and flowers that remind me of UW’s rooftop garden. Clay gnomes are nestled throughout, and as we get closer, I can see that a couple of them are holding test tubes, others magnifying glasses, and one has a teeny telescope pointed at the sky.
An older white woman is sitting on the front porch in worn jeans and a lavender tunic, a newspaper in her lap.
Miles and I approach cautiously. Aside from a handful of questions we lobbed back and forth during the drive, we haven’t exactly scripted this out.
“Dr. Devereux?” Miles asks. We’re at the edge of her property, where a pebbled driveway meets the sidewalk. Careful not to intrude.
“Yes?” She doesn’t glance up from her copy of the Astoria Bee. A slight breeze catches her hair, piled on top of her head in a haphazard gray bun.
“My name is Miles, and this is my friend Barrett. We’re students from the University of Washington.”
