“Are you bored?” he asks, with his stupid, beautiful voice.

“No.” I smile, murderously pleasant. “You?”

He doesn’t answer. “I believe we’re meant to use this time to interview.”

“You seemed busy. Didn’t want to interfere.”

“I was replying to an urgent email.” I doubt it. I think he was writing the next great American novel. Making a grocery list. Messing with me. “We’re supposed to get to know each other better, Elsie.” My name. Again. From his lips. That tone, timbre, inflection. “How am I to make a decision on your hiring otherwise?”

Everyone knows exactly where you stand when it comes to my hiring. I almost say it, but I don’t want a repeat of last night in the bathroom. I don’t want to lose control. I can be calm, even in the face of Jack’s portentous dickishness. “What would you like to talk about?”

“I bet we can find something. Blood type? First pet? Favorite color?”

“If you’re trying to hack my online banking security questions, you should know there isn’t much to steal.”

His mouth quirks, and I think something nonsensical: I’d hate him less if he weren’t so handsome. Even less if he were as charming as a morgue. And even even less if I could read him, just a little. “If you’d rather use the time to rest, feel free.”

“Thank you. I’m not tired.”

“Really? It seems tiresome, being you.”

I frown. “Tiresome?”

“It can’t be easy”—he taps his finger lightly against the edge of the desk—“this thing you’re always doing.”

This thing I—what does he mean? He’s not referring to . . . He doesn’t know about the APE. About the different Elsies. “I’m not sure what you’re talking about.”

He nods affably, like I said exactly what he expected me to, and disappointed him in the process. He doesn’t break eye contact, and as usual, I feel he’s stripped a layer of skin off me. Naked, in the worst possible way. I find myself adjusting the hem of my skirt—which is already at a perfectly acceptable length. It was fine this morning in Dr. L.’s office. It was fine on a yoga ball. Why do I feel weird now? “Relax, then. My grads tell me that chair is quite comfortable.”

“Is Cole one of your grads?”

“Cole is, I believe, Volkov’s.” He must notice my surprise, because he adds, “But I wouldn’t worry. The Feynman sex quote really had him.”

The way he says it (Feynman sex quote), all perfect vowels and hard consonants, makes me hot and cold and wanting to look away. Which I stubbornly refuse to do. “This is a comfortable chair.” I lean back, mimicking his pose. I’m not intimidated. You’re not intimidated. We’re both unintimidated.

“I slept in it once, after a forty-eight-hour experiment.”

“I’m not going to fall asleep.”

“You could.”

“Yeah. And you could take out a permanent marker and scribble something on my forehead.”

His head tilts. “What would I scribble?”

I shrug. “ ‘Do not hire’? ‘Albert Einstein sux’? ‘I hate theorists’?”

He steeples his hands. “Is this what you think? That I hate theorists?” He finds me amusing. Or boring. Or pitiful. Or a mix. I wish I could tell, but I shall die in ignorance.

“Your students sure seem to.”

“And you think I’m the reason?” He sounds genuinely puzzled by that. The audacity.

“Who else?”

He shrugs. “You’re discounting a simpler explanation: students interested in experimental physics are both more likely to have preconceived notions about theory and more likely to choose to take a class taught by me. Correlation does not equal causation.”

“Of course.” I smile politely. I’m calm. Still calm. “I’m sure the fact that someone they look up to—you—notoriously hates theorists has no impact on their view of the discipline.”

“Do I?” His head tilts. “Notoriously hate theorists? I regularly collaborate with them. Respect their work. Admire several.”

“Name one.”

“You.” He pins me with his stupid, hyper-seeing look. “You are very impressive, Elsie.”

My stomach flips, even though I know he’s lying. I just . . . didn’t expect this specific lie. “I doubt you know anything about my work.”

“I’ve read every word you’ve written.” He looks serious, but he must be mocking me.

What do I do? Mock back. “Did you enjoy my middle school diary?”

A hint of a crinkle appears at the corners of his eyes. “It was a little Justin Bieber heavy.”

“You broke into the wrong childhood bedroom—I was all about Bill Nye.”

His mouth twitches. “One of the popular kids, were you?”

“Not to brag, but I also played the tuba in the marching band.”

“Lots of competition, I bet.” He has a dimple. Only one. Ugh.

“Tons. But I had an in. Through the D&D Club.”

His laugh is soft. Relaxed. Lopsided. Different from the unyielding expression I’ve come to expect from him. Even more breaking news: I’m smiling, too. Yikes.

“I bet you weren’t half as cool,” I say, pressing my lips together, assessing him. The broad shoulders. The strange, striking eyes. The casual confidence of someone who was never picked anything but first during PE. Jack was no marching tuba. “You held the heads of people like me in the toilet bowl. Occupied the janitor’s closet with the cheerleaders.”

“We mathletes often do,” he murmurs, a little cryptic. “Your models are elegant and grounded. It’s clear that you have a very intuitive grasp of particle kinetics, and your theories on the transitions to spherulitic structures are fascinating. Your 2021 paper in the Annals, in particular.”

My eyebrow lifts. I don’t believe for a second that anything he’s saying is true. “I’m surprised you read the Annals.”

He laughs once, silent. “Because it’s too advanced for me?”

“Because of what you’ve done to Christophe Laurendeau.”

The detached nothingness of his expression slips. Morphs into something harsh. “Christophe Laurendeau.”

“Not a familiar name? He was the editor of the Annals when you pulled your stunt. And, more recently, my mentor.” Jack’s eyes widen into something that looks beautifully, unexpectedly like shock. Splendid. I exploit my advantage by leaning forward in the seat, resist the temptation to adjust the hem of my skirt, and say, “No theorist has forgotten about the article. It might have been fifteen years ago, but—”

Wait. Something doesn’t add up.

Jack’s three years older than Greg, which makes him about five years older than me. Thirty-two or thirty-three. Except that . . .

I study him narrowly. “The hoax article came out when I was in middle school. You must have been . . .”

“Seventeen.”

I shrink back in the chair. Was he some sort of wunderkind? “Were you already doing your Ph.D.?”

“I was in high school.”

“Then why—how does one submit a paper to a higher education journal at seventeen?”

He shrugs, and whatever emotion he was showing a minute ago has been reabsorbed into the customary blank wall. “I didn’t know there were age limits.”

“No, but most seventeen-year-olds were too busy begging for hall passes or rereading Twilight—”

“Twilight and Bill Nye, huh?”

“—to focus on cloak-and-dagger ploys that involved writing offensive, unethical parody articles whose only purpose is to deceive hardworking scholars and slander an entire discipline.” I end the sentence practically yelling, nails clawing the armrests.

Okay. Maybe I’m not super calm. Maybe I could use some deep breaths. De-escalate. How does one de-escalate? I don’t know. I’m usually already de-escalated. Unless Jack’s around, that is. Jack, who’s sitting there, relaxed, all-knowing. Punchable.

I close my eyes and think of my happy place. A warm beach somewhere. No one is fair haired and massive. Cheese is heavily featured.

“You know what puzzles me?” Jack asks.