I failed.

It happened.

I’m in the worst-case scenario.

The scene of me finding out from George runs on a loop in my brain for several minutes, each replay spotlighting a different mortifying detail.

I ran away in the middle of a conversation like a child.

I left my closest friend alone in a snowstorm.

I said terrible, unfair things.

I don’t make the decision to prowl downstairs, but once I’m there, I know it’s where I need to be. The lamps are off and the snow is still falling, but enough light comes from the street to make out the contours of the place. Of Jack, who lies on his back on the sectional, a thin blanket draped over his lower half. His eyes are closed, but he’s not asleep. Not sure how, but I know it. And he knows that I know it, because when I step closer, he doesn’t move, doesn’t open his eyes, but he does ask, “Do you need something?” His voice is scratchy, like he did sleep at some point.

“No,” I lie. Which, of course, he knows. He knows everything.

“Want me to bring you up some water?”

“No. I . . .” I’m awake, but not fully. Because I kneel beside the couch, my head just inches from his, and ask, “I . . . Can I tell you something?” His eyes finally open. He looks at me, and my hair is probably a mess, I am surely a mess, but I need to say this. “I don’t . . . What I said about George getting the job because she’s your girlfriend. Or friend. Because of some weird political intrigue—it was unfair of me. Despicable. And I don’t believe it. And I just—it was awful of me to—”

“Elsie.” His tone is even and deep. “Hey. It’s okay. You already apologized.”

He doesn’t get it. “I know, but of all the things that happened today, it seems like the shittiest. And I cannot control any of this—not my career tanking, not whether I’m going to have health insurance or make rent—but I . . . I can control the way I react. So I’m sorry I said it. About George. And about you. And . . . people do it to me all the time. In the last year of my Ph.D., I got this stupid award. When I walked into the student lounge the following day, other students were saying that it was only because I was a woman, and . . . I felt like total shit, and I really didn’t think they were right, but for a second I wasn’t sure, for a second they made me doubt myself, and I just—I don’t want to be like them. I—”

“Hey.” Jack shifts and then does something I don’t fully understand. He—

Oh.

Somehow, he pulls me up. And somehow, I’m on the couch. Lying on the couch. Next to him. My head nestles under his chin, his arms surround mine, our thighs tangle together. I open my mouth to say something like What the hell? or Oh my God or ?!??, but nothing comes out.

Instead, I burrow deeper.

“Assholes,” he says.

I’m still asleep. This is a dream. A nightmare. A blend. “Who?”

“The people who didn’t like you winning the Forbes award.” How does he know that’s the award I was talking about? “You should report them.”

“For what?” I ask against his throat. He’s warm and smells nice. Like sleep. Like clean. Like he could easily change my sink, save kittens stuck in a tree, extinguish a fire. “For being dicks?”

“Yes. Though HR would call it sexual discrimination and building a hostile work environment.”

“It’s not that simple,” I mumble.

“It should be.” His chin brushes my hair every time he speaks, and I remember trying to mention what happened to Dr. L. The way he commiserated with me but also said that it would be better if I just forgot it happened and focused my energies on physics.

“What would you do if your students said something like that?”

“I’d make sure they can never have a career in physics.”

The words vibrate from his skin through mine, and I know he means it. I don’t have a single doubt. And that’s how I start crying again, like a stupid Versailles fountain, and how his hold on me tightens, legs twisting further with mine. His fingers twine in the hair at my nape and press me deeper into him, shielding me from the cold and everything that’s bad.

“I just . . .” I sniffle. “I really wanted a chance to finish my molecular theory of two-dimensional liquid crystals.”

“I know.” His lips press against my hair. Maybe on purpose. “We’ll figure out a way.”

There is no we, I think. And Jack says, “Not yet, no,” with a small sigh that lifts his big chest. “It’ll be fine, Elsie. I promise.”

He cannot. Promise, that is. There are no reliable sources, no known quantities. We’re in a sea of measurement uncertainty. “Maybe this rejection will be my supervillain origin story.”

He chuckles. “It won’t.”

“How do you know?”

“Because this is not your character arc, Elsie. More like a . . . character bump.”

I laugh wetly against his Adam’s apple. I need to go back upstairs. I’ve never slept with anyone, never even considered it. I can’t control what I do at night—what if I move too much or snore or take up too much space? A cover hog is the Elsie no one wants. But with Jack I have nothing to lose, right? We’re past all that. “I can’t believe I woke you up at four and you didn’t murder me.”

“Why would I murder you?”

“Because. It’s late.”

“Nah. I’m kind of into it.” He yawns against the crown of my hair.

“You’ll really enjoy the thrill of frequent nighttime urination as a senior citizen, then.”

“It’s not that.” I think he might be about to conk out. “This . . . It fits nicely in a bunch of really weird fantasies I have about you.”

I remember the picture in his nightstand. His earnest face in Greg’s apartment. I’m breathing the same air as Jack Smith, but I don’t feel scared or unsafe.

Just comforted, really. Warm and so sleepy.

“Do these fantasies involve giant tentacle dildos?” I’m yawning, too. Fading fast.

“Of course.” I can hear his wry smile. “Way more outlandish stuff, too.”

“Milkmaid role-play?”

“Wilder.”

“It’s furries, isn’t it?”

“You wish.”

“You have to tell me, or I’ll picture necrophilia and dismemberment.”

“In my weird fantasies, Elsie . . .” He shifts me till our curves and angles match up. Perfectly. “In my fantasies, you allow me to keep an eye on you.” I feel his lips at my temple. “And when I really let go, I imagine that you let me take care of you, too.”

It does sound outlandish. “Why?”

“Because in my head, no one has done it before.”

I fall asleep huddled in the curve of Jack’s throat, wondering whether he might be right.

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There are no curtains, and I wake up first.

The morning light is blinding white, as painful as a million naked mole rats gnawing at my eyeballs. Judging from the slow, rhythmic breath chuffing against the back of my neck, it’s something Jack has gotten used to.

I feel rested. Warm and cozy. At some point in the night I must have turned around in his arms, because my back is pressed against his chest. His hand is under my shirt, splayed flat against my belly, fingers brushing my pod, but not in a creepy, sexual way. He’s just trying to keep me close so that we both fit under the thin blanket. It should feel like being spooned by a piranha, but it somehow works, and . . .

Maybe it is a bit sexual. Because there’s something very hot, very, very hard, very, very, very big pressing against my ass.

Jack probably needs to pee. Don’t men get hard in the mornings when they need to go to the bathroom? It’s a pee erection. A peerection. Yup.

Still, I should leave.

I try to slip out from under Jack’s massive biceps, but he resists in his sleep. My heart races when he hums something into my nape, fingers gripping my hip. That hard thing pushes into me, trying to nestle farther between the cheeks of my ass, and I gasp.