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A Jack-free space.
I’ll probably never see him again. Why would I? The circles we move in are a Venn diagram with little overlap. Maybe we’ll meet at a physics conference two years down the road, when I’m still an adjunct teaching forty classes a week and he’s workshopping his Nobel lecture. But my arrangement with Greg is likely over, which means that this is it. The last time I’ll see Jack. This man, this maddening, impossible, space-taking man who seems to know me despite all that I do tonotbe known, will be gone from my life.
I should be eager to go back to simpler times, when I used to spend zero hours a week in his company and my brain wasn’t made of guacamole, but... what awaste. What a surprisingly terrifying perspective.
And that’s why I stop him with a tug on the sleeve of his coat. Why I open my mouth and say with no forethought, no premeditation, and a lot of reckless panic, “Youcantakemeout.”
It comes out with no pauses or intonation, just a bunch of sounds smooshed together. Which Jack, judging by the knot between his brows, did not understand.
I clear my throat. Take a deep breath. “If you still want to. And if it’s okay with Greg. You can take me out.”
Jack just stares, motionless, reactionless, for way too long. “Take you out... in the mob way?”
“No. No! That’s not at all what I—” I blush. I’m cold and tired and my head hurts and I have no idea what I’m doing and why won’t heunderstand? “I can come toyourplace. I can takeyouout.”
He nods. Slowly. “In the mob way.”
“No, I—” I notice it, the amused gleam in his eyes, like he knowsexactlywhat I’m trying to say. I press my lips together, because I don’t want to encourage him, I don’t want to smile, but I’m about to. “I hate you.”
“Sure you do.”
“Why is everything so difficult with you?”
“I like to keep you on your toes.”
“Listen—let’s hang out,” I say. This feels foolhardy. Ill advised. Exciting. “Just... try. See what happens. Would that be okay?”
“It would,” he says after a brief pause. “Under one condition.”
I frown. “Making demands already?”
“Always.” His mouth twitches, but he’s back to his opaque self. “If we do this... when you’re with me, I need you to be honest. No pretending you’re someone else. No trying to be whatever you think it is that I want. You say what you think. And when you can’t, at least let yourself think it. No lies, Elsie.” His jaw sets. “Just you.”
I nod. And then I realize that I have no idea how to do that, and I laugh, a little sad, a lot terrified. “I can try.”
He nods. “That’s enough for now.”
“You should be honest, too,” I add. “No lies on your end, either.”
“I don’t lie often,” he says simply. Hearing it makes me think of what Millicent said about his past, and my heart clenches. I’ve seen Jack being brutally, needlessly honest. Lying, not so much. “And I can’t see myself lying to you.”
“You don’t even know me.”
“I don’t,” he admits. He studies my face for several moments, like he cannot stop on the cover or the first page, like he needs to read the whole book every time. Then he leans into me, and the icy chill of the morning melts away in his heat. My eyes catch on his cheekbones. The line of his jaw, so sharp it could cut a heart. His lips are full and upturned, a start of that lopsided smile of his that makes me angry and weak-kneed, and...
He bends to murmur in the shell of my ear, “I’d like to, though.” My hairs rise, my spine coils like a silent bowstring, and for the first time in my entire life I’m thinking of kisses, of skin, of waking with Jack this morning, of his hand between my shoulder blades, of the ink on his arm, of his lips, which look full and soft, and he hasn’t shaved in a while and he smellsgoodand—
A click. Behind me. Jack straightens and pulls the passenger door open. That tension inside me is still buzzing. I feel almost dizzy.
“Get in,” he orders, low and hoarse and maybe not really to me.
I slide into the seat, and it sinks in that this might be real. Happeningoutsidemy head.
Me, taking a shot at beingmyself.
16
FUNDAMENTAL FORCES
