Jack doesn’t respond. His pause feels a little longer than normal. “Her work was on semiconductors.”

My eyes widen. It’s not my field, but I know a bit about it, because it’s one of the topics my mentor works on. I wonder if I read Jack’s mom’s papers years ago without even realizing it. An invisible string, tying us together. “Good stuff?”

“Very solid, yes.”

“I bet she was great. I mean, she was a theoretical physicist.”

“True. On the other hand, she did marry my dad.”

“Good point. Maybe he used to be more . . . engaged with his surroundings?”

“Maybe. Maybe she needed a green card? Or the Smith money.”

“She was a grad student. It’s a move I can respect.”

“For sure.” His smile is fond. And has me asking, “Do you miss her?”

A long pause. “I don’t think you can miss someone you’ve never met, but . . .” He organizes his thoughts. Orders his feelings. “It’s easy to look at how dysfunctional my family is and laugh it off now that I have my own life. But when I was in my teens, there were times when things got really bad at home. And I’d read her diaries and think that maybe if she’d been around, everything could have been . . .” His throat works. “But she wasn’t.”

I’ve felt out of place my entire life, and nothing anyone ever said made me feel any less so. So I stay silent and just lean forward, hide my face in Jack’s throat, press a kiss to his Adam’s apple right as it moves. His hand comes up to cup my head, keep it there, and I feel him turn to the screen again. Bella’s pregnancy complications are getting alien-like, and he groans into my hair.

“Elsie. I can’t watch this.”

“But it’s the best part. The emotional roller coaster of her transformation. The inappropriate Jacob plotline. Her face when she drinks blood.”

“No way.”

“Fine. You may amuse yourself otherwise. But stay close, because you’re a space heater disguised as an organic life-form.”

“Perfect.” He lifts me like I’m a pliant little thing, flips us around, braces himself over me. I can only watch him in confusion while he lowers himself down my body with a concentrated frown between his brows and then lifts my hoodie as though . . .

Is he . . .

He’s not . . .

Is he actually?

“What are you doing?”

“You told me to amuse myself.”

I sit up on my elbows. “I meant take another nap, or do today’s Wordle—”

“Just watch your movie, Elsie.”

“But—”

He takes my hips within his hands and holds me like I’m a precious artifact, at once firm and gentle. His kisses between my legs are long, savoring, messy, slow licks that have me arching up against the couch and trembling into his mouth. There is something shameless about this—the way he enjoys it, the sounds he makes, the fact that he seems to go away at moments, like he does this for his pleasure more than for my own.

“Oh,” I say, clawing my nails into his scalp. His arms wrap around my thighs, palms holding my knees open, and for a while I manage to swallow down the begging, moaning sounds in my throat. Then no more. “Oh. Oh, Jack” and I come once, then once again, then some more, and then his shirt is off and he’s above and inside me, patient thrusts as he kisses me endlessly and tells me how beautiful I am, how much he loves this. Breathless laughter against my gasps as he reminds me of when I was afraid that this wouldn’t be good between us—that this resplendent, life-altering, unearthly sort of pleasure might not be enough.

“It was cute,” he rasps in my ear, “how you thought that fucking you once would make me want to fuck you less.”

I cling to the sweaty muscles of his back, feel my entire body shake, and when he orders, “Eyes on me,” my lids flutter open and we both come. The pressure in my belly and chest is heavy, overwhelming, delicious, and my nails sink into his shoulders as the evening becomes night.

“Second time we do this with Twilight in the background,” he says.

“I can’t believe we missed the part when Bella beats up Jacob.”

“Jesus, Elsie, what is this movie?”

The room is pitch black except for the glow of the TV. I laugh into Jack’s skin, and it feels just like coming home.

•   •   •

He won’t let me leave. Though, to be fair, I’m not trying very hard.

“I have class at eight a.m. tomorrow.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“At Boston University.”

“Still doesn’t matter.”

“I need to get to my place, get dressed, pick up my stuff, take the bus—”

“I’ll drive you.”

“Drive me where?”

“Anywhere.”

I’m sitting on the counter while he chops carrots for the soup I’m craving. The recipe is pulled up on his phone, a bright-red ad for a couples’ cooking class blinking at us from the counter. “You’d have to wake up at, like, six. I cannot ask you to do that.”

He sets down the knife and comes to stand between my legs. Even like this, he’s taller than me. I’m trying to resent him for that, but my heart has grown a million sizes in the span of the last seven days. It’s about to float away into the sky.

“You don’t have to ask.” He kisses the tip of my nose, then my mouth, then my nose again. “Because I’m offering.”

My heart swells some more. I’m running out of space. “What if I say no?”

“Don’t do that. Okay?” I break into a smile, and his hand slides under my hoodie and up my waist.

I love this. Just as much as I thought I hated him. And Jack’s right: this is going fast—too fast, maybe. But I wonder if certain relationships are living proof of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle: their position and their velocity simply cannot both be measured at the same time, not even in theory. And right now I’m too busy savoring where we are to consider anything else.

“What?” he asks.

I shake my head. “Just thinking.”

“Thinking of . . . ?”

“You know, during my interview, I was picturing how it would be if I got the job. Working with you. And I had these painstakingly intricate fantasies.”

His interest is piqued. “Did I pack you sandwiches in a Twilight lunch box?”

I laugh. “Oh, no.”

“Were you wearing that red dress from Miel, and I bent you—”

“No.” I can still blush—amazing. “It was mostly me harassing you into quitting in disgrace.”

“I see.” He looks intrigued. “What were you going to do?”

“Oh, you know. Jell-O your office supplies. Spread the rumor that you poop in the urinals. Frame you for white-collar crimes. Those kinds of things.” His expression is delighted. “I mean . . . I could still do it.”

“You could.”

“Some would say I should.”

“Some would.” He kisses the corner of my smile. “Maybe next year,” he says, and it sounds low and hopeful, a promise nestled inside it, and I realize that I’d love to accept George’s offer because I want to work with her, because I want to dedicate my brainpower to liquid crystals, because I want to not spend eleven-fifteenths of my time commuting between campuses, and because I want to have enough money to surprise Cece with little hats for her ugly, murderous quill-nugget. But this man, who was going to be the absolute worst part of my dream job, might still turn out to be the thing I want the most.

To no one’s surprise, I end up staying. And because of what happens on the following day, it turns out to be a pretty good decision.

OceanofPDF.com

I get Dr. L.’s email—Unfortunately, I am out of town this week, but let us meet next Monday—before a Physics 101 student ambushes me to tell me about this super-cool movie he just watched and ask me if one could theoretically invert time (damn you, Christopher Nolan), and after one of my chairs calls me to let me know that yes, there is an opening for me next year, but adjuncts will take a pay cut because of something something taxes, something something the dean, something something the exploitation of non-tenure-track faculty members is the backbone of the capitalist model of academia.