I can hear Greg’s words as I glance up. Jack’s dark eyes are stern. Expectant. Inflexible.

I’d rather lick the urinals than tell this guy any of my secrets. “Actually, I can’t explain, but—”

Two voices—male laughter, loafer steps right outside the bathroom. We both wheel around to the entrance.

“Someone’s coming,” I say unnecessarily. Shit. What if it’s someone from our party? I shoot Jack a panicked look, fully expecting to find him gloating. Instead his face takes on an urgent, calculating look, and things I do not expect happen.

His huge hand lifts. Splays across the small of my back. Pushes me toward the closest stall. He wants to hide me?

“What are you—”

“Go,” he orders.

“No! I can’t just—”

I must hesitate too long, because Jack’s hands close around my waist. He lifts me effortlessly, like I weigh less than a Higgs boson, and carries me inside the stall, depositing my feet on the rim of the toilet. My brain blanks—no thoughts, head empty—and I don’t have the faintest idea what’s going on. What is he—

The stall door closes.

The bathroom door opens.

Two men enter, discussing quantum advantage. “—scale the error correction by the number of qubits?”

“You don’t. Scaled-up system behavior is erratic. How do you account for that?”

Shit. Shit, shit—

“Calm down,” Jack murmurs against the shell of my ear, like he knows that I’m on the verge of popping an aneurysm.

“They’re from the MIT table,” I whisper under my breath.

“Shh.” His giant paws tighten around me, as if to contain me and my panic. They span my waist. Our size difference sits somewhere between absurd and obscene. “Settle down.”

I feel dizzy. “Why am I standing on the toilet?”

“I figured you’d rather Dr. Pereira and Dr. Crowley keep on chatting about superpolynomial speedups and not see your heels under the stall. Was I wrong?”

I close my eyes, mortified. This is not my life. I’m a discerning scientist with insightful opinions on spintronic tech, not this blighted creature clinging to Jonathan Smith-Turner’s shoulders on top of a latrine.

Oh, who am I kidding? This is exactly my brand. Improbable. Cringeworthy. Botched.

“Settle down,” Jack repeats, gruffly reassuring. We’re way too close. I want his breath to be garlic and sauerkraut, but it’s vaguely minty and pleasantly warm. I want his skin to smell ridiculous, like mango tanning mousse, but all my nose picks up on is nice, clean, good. I want his grip to be creepy and knee-in-the-groin worthy, but it’s just what I need to avoid slipping in the toilet. “Stop fidgeting.”

“I’m not—” Pereira and Crowley are still talking physics—can’t believe all the fuss with the quantum Hadamard transform—with the added background of a stream trickling. Oh God, they’re peeing. I’m eavesdropping on one of the world’s foremost solar neutrinos scholars peeing. I can’t come back from this, can I?

“Elsie.” Jack’s lips graze my cheekbone. “Calm down. They’ll leave as soon as they’re done, and you can go back to the table. Laugh at Volkov’s puns till he votes for you. Tell a few more lies.”

“I’m not lying.” I pull back, and our eyes are at the same level. The slice of blue in the deep brown is icy, weird, beautiful. “I can’t explain, but this is . . . not the way you think it is. It’s . . . different.”

“From what?”

“From the way you think it is.”

He nods. Our noses nearly brush together. “That was remarkably articulate.”

I roll my eyes.

“Monica will love to hear about your secret librarian identity—”

“No!” I barely keep my voice down. “Please, just call Greg before you talk to Monica. He’ll explain.”

“Convenient, given that I can’t get in touch with him while he’s on his retreat, and he won’t be back until your interview is over.”

Shit. I’d forgotten about Woodacre. “There must be a way to reach him. Can you tell him it’s an emergency? That, um, he left his porch light on? You need his alarm code to go turn it off. Save the environment.”

“No.”

“Please. At least—”

“No.”

“You’re being absolutely unreasonable. All I ask is that you—”

“—do you think about the girl? Hannaway, right?” one of the urinal voices asks. We both instantly tune in.

A mistake, clearly.

“CV’s real good. Her two-dimensional liquid crystals theories . . . good stuff.”

“I remember reading her paper last year. I was very impressed. Had no idea she was that junior.”

“Right? Makes you wonder how much of it is her mentor’s.” A vague hum of agreement that has my hands tightening around the balls of Jack’s shoulders. None, I want to scream. It was my model. “She’s young and beautiful. Which means that she’ll get pregnant in a couple of years, and we’ll have to teach her courses.”

It’s like a punch in the sternum, to the point that I almost slip butt-first into the toilet. Jack stops me with a hand between my shoulder blades, arm contracting around my waist. He’s frowning like he’s as disgusted as I am. Though he’s not. He can’t be, because Pereira, or maybe Crowley, adds:

“Doesn’t matter. I’m voting for Jack’s candidate. He’s got influence, and he hates theorists.”

“He does? Oh, yeah. Can’t believe I forgot that article he wrote.”

“It was brutal, man. And hilarious. Wouldn’t want to be on his bad side.”

A hand dryer goes off, muffling the rest. Jack’s still holding me, eyes on mine, foreheads near touching. My nails dig into his chest—made of some granite-Kevlar blend, engineered by a task force of experimentalists to exude heat. He’s a sentient weighted blanket, and I—

I hate him.

I’ve never hated anybody: not J.J. Not the Film Appreciation 101 professor who nearly failed me for saying that Twilight is an unrecognized masterpiece. Not even my brother Lucas, who had me convinced that I was adopted for over six months. I’m mild mannered, adaptable, unobtrusive. I get along with people: I give them what they want, and all I ask in return is that they not actively dislike me.

But Jack Smith. Jonathan Fucking Smith Fucking Turner. He’s been hostile and unpleasant and suspicious since the day we met. He has shat upon my field and destroyed my mentor, and now stands between me and my dreams. For that, he lost the privilege that I afford every human being: to deal with the Elsie he wants.

The Elsie he’s going to get is the one I care to give him. And she’s pissed.

“I want this job, Jack,” I hiss over the hand dryer. I actually need this job, but—semantics.

“I know you do, Elsie.” His voice is low pitched and rumbly. “But I want someone else to get it.”

“I know. Jack.”

“Then it seems like we’re at an impasse. Elsie.” He articulates my name slowly, carefully. I’m going to lean forward and bite his stupid lips bloody.

No, I won’t, because I’m better than that.

Or am I?

“You do not want to come at me,” I hiss.

“Oh, Elsie.” His hands on me are incongruously gentle, and yet we’re on the verge of the academic equivalent of nuclear warfare. “I think it’s exactly what I want.”

The dryer turns off into silence and saves me from committing aggravated assault. “They left,” I say. “Let me go.”

His mouth twitches, but he deposits me on the floor in some ludicrous reverse–Dirty Dancing move. His hands on my waist linger, but as soon as they leave me I’m scampering out of the stall, heels clicking on the tiles. I nearly lose my balance. With Jack’s scent out of my nose, the stench of the place hits me anew.

“Talk to Monica if you want to,” I bluff, turning back to him. “You’ll see the good it does you.”

“Oh, I will.” He’s clearly about to smile, like the angrier I get, the more amused he becomes. A never-ending vicious cycle that can end only in me holding his head in the toilet bowl.