Maria has a brother and a grandmother. Maria told me off; when I texted Em minutes later, she snapped at me and said she wasn’t in the mood to comfort me.
The clues land with a nauseating churn in my stomach. Maria was drunk, and Em had a hangover. Em is transgender, and Maria is…tall.
Maria is Em. Em is Maria. Shit.
I look up at her. Her hair is loose, and the breeze picks up. Wind catches little wisps of her perfectly styled hair, letting it swirl in perfection over her shoulder.
Maria is Em.
A second fact slots into place. There is no way I can tell her what I’ve just discovered. Em would never forgive me if she knew who I was, and I don’t want to lose Em. I can’t lose Em.
But what am I supposed to do? My accent will give me away the moment we talk on the phone. Which we are supposed to do in four hours. I could invent an emergency, put her off—but I’ve been shoving her away all this time. She’ll never forgive me if I do it again.
My mind jumps from lie to stupid lie, each worse than the last.
I can’t tell Em who I am. I can’t. I listen to the click of her shoes. Watch the swish of her hips. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. It’s even worse than I thought. Maria is wearing her fuck-off shoes tonight, and I know exactly why. They’re for me.
I could look up the exact conversation we had about them, except I don’t have to because I have it memorized. I know what they mean. You wish you could get with this.
A third fact follows in logical progression. I will ruin everything if I tell her. I suddenly understand exactly why Maria snapped at me about her brother in the beginning. Why she told me I would never understand.
Of course she did. Of course she would. I know, I know, what he means to her now. He bought me a bus ticket.
Maria is Em. She has always been Em, and I never saw her. I couldn’t see past the bullshit I’d made up about her to see her in the first place, and that means that I can’t tell her. I knew I was in the wrong last November. Now I understand exactly how wrong I was. I thought, before, that we could have been friends.
Now? Now I accept how pale that realization is compared to reality. If we hadn’t managed to hate each other first, Em would have been it for me. I failed to see her on every conceivable level. How do I admit that?
I’m going to lose her. We’re stuck in some kind of strange attractor, drifting impossibly far apart every time we get close. I don’t see any way out.
The road bends. Up ahead, the security gate lies.
Fact four rises out of my circling mental state. I can’t not tell her. Not telling her would be a lie of the most epic proportions. If she ever found out…
Would she have to find out?
No, whispers some stupid part of my brain. No, she doesn’t. And if she ever does, you could play dumb. Say you didn’t realize it either.
I stop walking. It takes her a few steps to notice that she can’t hear me behind her. She stops. She’s breathing heavily; there’s a faint sheen to her forehead, and she gives me a delighted smile.
“Can’t take the pace? Don’t worry. We can wait until you’ve recovered.” Her voice is saccharine.
“You know,” I say stupidly, “I’ve just realized that…”
Oh, fuck how even to end that sentence?
“That actually,” I hear myself say foolishly, “we get along really well.”
She frowns at me. She tilts her head. “Are you having a stroke?”
“No,” I say. “I mean it. Yes, we argue all the time. But…um…sometimes, arguing…”
She rolls her eyes. “Jay, I know you’ve been staring at my ass for fifteen minutes, but you know you can’t finish that sentence in any way that makes sense. I know the difference between arguing for fun and arguing because someone doesn’t respect me. Just take me to my brother’s seminar, okay?”
That hurts. It hurts because it’s true. I can’t tell her. I can’t. We continue on. I sign her in as a visitor. We continue on up toward Gabe’s office.
I’ve made up my mind not to say anything. I haven’t figured anything else out; I just know I can’t tell her. I need time to untangle everything. A week, maybe, and I’ll know how to handle this. A month…
Except last night, my conscience whispers, you didn’t want to hurt her.
I stop again. The wind brings with it a wild, sweet smell. From up here, we can see the Bay spread before us, a glittering expanse crossed by bridges. The San Francisco skyline is hazy just beyond. The grounds nearby are covered with half-wild dry grass and browning bushes.
It’s a beautiful place, and when Maria turns to look at me, her hands going to her hips, I’m aware for the first time of how beautiful she is.
I’ve always known that she was hot. It’s not like I could turn off my unconscious appraisal. But it was a heat I rejected. Maria Lopez was always someone else’s version of hot. Those heels. Those long legs. Those slight curves. The dark wings of eyeliner framing her eyes; the plummy shade of her lips. The brown of her skin almost glows in the evening sunlight.
“What?” she demands.
Here’s the thing: Some problems are only hard because you’re in the wrong basis set. If I start with the assumption that I don’t want to hurt her, this is easy. Really easy.
Fuck if she ever found out. Fuck I might lose her. This is easy. It’s actually the easiest thing in the world.
I have to tell her. I have to lose her, no matter how much it hurts. Because Em doesn’t deserve my lying to her.
There is no good way to start. I have no plan. So the first thing that comes out of my mouth is… “I’ve committed a classic mistake.”
“What?” She crosses her arms and turns to face me, her voice a little more querulous.
I shake my head. “It’s such a sophomore-level physics error I’m pissed at myself.”
“Are you okay?” She takes a step toward me.
I meet her eyes. They’re warm and golden-brown, and now that I’m this close, I can see that her skin isn’t flawless. There’s a smattering of freckles spreading from her nose to her cheeks. Foundation doesn’t quite cover them. I don’t know why I’ve never noticed them before.
“We’re not quantum entangled,” I tell her. “Never attribute quantum properties to macroscopic objects. There’s always a classical explanation. Always.”
She glances at her watch, then heaves a sigh. “Fine. I know scientists. We have about five minutes. Do you need to write down whatever it is you’ve just figured out, or can it wait until we get into the seminar room?”
I am painfully aware that I’m mishandling this, but I have no experience admitting to my worst enemy that I’ve been secretly in love with her alter ego. So I say the next idiot thing that pops into my head. “Your middle name is Camilla. Of course it is.”
She looks at me suspiciously. “How did you know that?”
“Because your initials are MCL.”
She stills all of a sudden, stiffening into a statue. The wind catches her hair and tosses it over her shoulder. A part of my mind makes a note: This is what Maria looks like when she’s scared. For this moment, she’s probably as scared as I am. It feels like forever that we stare into each other’s eyes.
“Yes,” she finally says. “My initials are MCL. Are you trying to tell me something?”
“Em.” My voice drops. “I’m trying to say that actually, we get along really well.”
She makes a choked sound in her throat. “No.”
My gaze flicks down her legs. Those fucking shoes. I could kiss her for those shoes.
Her eyes follow mine. She sees her shoes. I can hear her intake of breath.
“No,” she says again. Her hands shake at her side; she presses them together.
Funny. You can put someone in a box and not know them at all. I’m proud of being a girl, Maria told me at that dinner with her brother months ago. It’s not an insult.
I wasn’t wrong about her. I just was so far from right that I’ve managed to punch mysel
f in the stomach. Everything I’ve said to her, every dismissive thought I’ve had, plays back in my head. I wasn’t mistaken about who she was. I was just an ass. Such a complete ass.
“I’m sorry,” I say. I feel sick.
“I’m sorry.” Her voice is shaking. She looks around wildly, her gaze latching on to the building where her brother is supposed to give his talk. Her attention shifts down the road, toward the molecular foundry along the ridge of the hill. “I’m sorry, but I can’t do this right now.”
I don’t know what to say. How to say it. What to do. But she turns and starts walking away from her brother’s office, and… Fuck.
I follow after her. “Maria. I can’t let you walk away from me.”
She turns back. “That’s such bullshit. Give me one good reason.”
I’m more than half in love with her. She’s become one of the most important people in my life. Right now, I want to tell her it will be all right.
I’m pretty sure it won’t be all right.
“It’s not bullshit.” I sigh. “I signed you into a government lab. I’m responsible for you. I’m not allowed to let you wander off.”
She looks at me in silent entreaty. She looks down at her hands. Then she shakes her head and starts laughing.
“Oh my god,” she says. “We are so fucked.”
* * *
MARIA
* * *
We are so fucked. I’m upset, and I don’t have the space to be upset.
I walk into the room where my brother is giving the seminar. I smile at him. Give him a hug. Say “yes” to some question that he puts to me. I have no idea what he actually says, but yes appears to be the appropriate answer, because he smiles back and goes to the lectern at the front.
I slip into a seat.
Jay follows me into the room. I don’t want to look at him. I don’t want to think about him. I don’t want to see him out of the corner of my eye. I don’t want the image of him to start merging with A.
Jay doesn’t sit near me. I hate that he knows I need space. I’m also glad he knows it. I don’t look at him as Gabe is introduced. I refuse to acknowledge his existence as the lights dim and the room takes on the eerie glow of projected slides.
I finally look in his direction after ten minutes. He’s watching Gabe’s slides, dropping a few notes on a pad of paper. In the darkened room, he fades into the background until nothing is left but the glitter of his eyes.
He looks my way. Our eyes meet.
Nobody should look good by the harsh light of reflected PowerPoint, but Jay may be the exception. The blue-tinged light sharpens his features, exaggerating them, making his eyes seem deeper, his nose just a little more cruel.
I look away. My stomach churns. I plaster my hand to my thighs, as if I’m holding myself in place. I wait, carefully, for my heart to slow. For my pulse to stop racing. Then I look back.
My emotions are tattered shreds—impossible to make out, flapping in a brisk wind that only I can feel. I wish I’d never met Jay. That he didn’t know my brother. That I got to call him tonight. We could exchange names and photos and flirt outrageously. We could meet for coffee.
I wish I could have told Tina about him piece by piece. The dark expressive slash of his eyebrows. Those lips. His fucking accent, back when I hadn’t had four months to associate it with condescending bullshit. His features are clouded by ugly memories.
Concentrated asinine obtuseness burns twelve times hotter. Does it ever.
He looks at me again. Our eyes hold.
He doesn’t hide the fact he’s looking at me. I wonder if he’s remembering what I said to him.
I don’t want to think about my part in our ongoing war, even though I’m absolutely certain I’ve had one.
Em, I’m pretty much in love with you.
I flinch away from him.
Over the space of the next half-hour, as I listen to my brother make goofy jokes about laser plasma accelerators and semiconductors, I manage to think myself sick.
Jay knows about my blog. He knows about high school. He knows about my grandmother, soup…
Fuck. I’m on the verge of tears, and I don’t want to cry in the same room with him. He might comfort me. I might let him.
My brother finishes his talk. The lights come on. Jay asks a question—he obviously hasn’t had his entire world rearranged, if he can think of questions—and I sit in place, trying to smile and be supportive.
Calculating the moment I can escape.
Alas. I go to say my good-byes to Gabe as he’s packing up his laptop. He’s talking to a white-haired man excitedly about beam requests and something something something—I can normally translate his science, but I can’t concentrate tonight. Gabe turns to me before I can vanish.
“Sorry, Maria,” he says. “Another ten minutes, and we’ll head to the restaurant. Jay, where are we going again?”
Jay looks over at me. Our eyes hold a third time. I can’t imagine swallowing a bite of food. Fuck. Apparently, when I agreed to hang out with Gabe after his seminar, I agreed to have dinner with Jay.
I can’t right now. I just can’t. I exhale. “Actually, I’m not feeling well. I was thinking of just going home.”
“Are you sure?” Gabe’s too distracted to catch my distress. Or maybe he thinks I’m really just not feeling well.
I nod. “I’m sure.”
“Well, thanks for coming. We’ll catch up soon, okay?”
I escape as swiftly as I can, sliding through the door, out into the hall.
My heels echo on the tile, and now that I’m looking down, I realize this is the worst part. My shoes were supposed to be my safety. My emotional armor. And what did they do? They gave me away.
My phone buzzes as I’m standing in front of the elevator.
Slowly, I pull it out.
It’s from him. Actual Physicist. A.
Who am I trying to fool? It’s from Jay.
He’s sent me three emoji: Heart. Soup. Shoes.
God, it hurts. I look up to see him stepping out of the door. He looks at me. He doesn’t say anything.
He doesn’t come near me. He just stands outside the door and…looks.
“I know,” I call down the hall. “You signed me into a government lab. You can’t let me wander around.”
He doesn’t say anything.
I look down at my phone. This was, we agreed, emoji for “hold me.”
Virtual hugs are better than physical ones. They don’t impinge on my space. I don’t have to accept them. I can imagine them in a bubble, isolated in the cold vacuum of my heart.
He’s watching me from down the hall. He is, and he isn’t, A.
A. and Jay were both driven. But A. made jokes at his own expense, while Jay was serious. A. was vulnerable, and Jay…
Shit. I look at him standing in the hallway, watching me.
I can’t pretend they’re different people. They aren’t. And if A. was vulnerable…
Slowly, I turn and walk back to him. Each step feels like my feet are dragging through mud. He doesn’t take his eyes off me. He doesn’t say anything. He just watches.
“I’m guessing you like me about as much as I liked you,” I say.
“Which you?” he asks. Then he exhales. “No. I’m pretty sure I like Em more than she likes me.” He looks away. “I’m also sure the same holds true for Maria.” He wipes a hand over his face.
I swallow and look away. I don’t want to feel empathy for him. In a way, the fact that I’m thinking of him feels like the biggest betrayal of all. He made me like him. Even now, I’m already dissecting the things he said. The things he did. I’m beginning to understand.
I don’t want to understand why he hurt me. I just want to remember that he did.
I exhale. “You’re probably as upset as I am.”
He shakes his head. “I was pretty terrible to you. But Em, I didn’t want to hurt you and I did. I feel like such shit right now.”
I look over at him. He t
old me once that he was laser-like, and right now, I can feel the force of his concentrated, unwavering attention. I feel naked.
I am both unreasonably glad that he feels like shit and sorry, because I don’t want him to feel badly.
“Can I give Actual Physicist a hug without giving Jay one?”
“I’m pretty sure we’re the same person.”
“Shut up,” I tell him. “Fuck. I need a week.” I bite my lip. “I can’t even tell Gabe what’s wrong because he doesn’t know about my blog.”
“He doesn’t know about your blog? I thought you two were tight.”
I make a face. “We are. It’s just… Never mind.” I look over at him. In these shoes, I’m just a little taller than he is. He’s close enough that I can make out his eyelashes as individual lines. I can see a little dark spot on his cheek. If we’d never met, we’d be talking on the phone tonight. I’m so mad that I lost that chance, and mad is the easiest emotion to grapple with at the moment. Anger is simple. It has an object, a reason.
If I’m angry, I won’t have to sort out anything else.
But I look into his eyes one last time, and I can’t even give myself the gift of simple emotion.
Last night he told me about his brother. I told him about my parents.
“Fine.” My voice sounds flat and low. “I think I need you to hold me anyway.”
And he does. His arms come around me, not hard, but gentle, gathering me to him. And I’m hugging him back with all the feelings I haven’t acknowledged—interest, affection, and a feeling of sad, hollow loss.
My arms sneak around his waist. I lean my cheek into his neck and breathe in the scent of him. I can’t classify it. It just smells like…him.
I’m aware of his every breath. Of the feel of his shirt against my fingers. The feel of muscles beneath fabric. The rise of his chest, the whisper of wind as he exhales.