“I didn’t tell him because I assumed we were going to break up in a few months,” I say quietly. “You guys are friends. I didn’t want to make things awkward for you.”
He folds his arms. “Why would you think we were going to break up, though?”
“Why wouldn’t we? I lose people I care about all the time.”
For a moment, he just looks at me. I can hear the sound of his breath—a little too loud for a slow walk. I don’t make a list for him. I don’t have to.
He knows it already.
Here’s the thing. It’s been more than twelve years since I got on a bus headed to San Francisco. I’ve spent half my life understanding, over and over, that my parents only wanted to love the me they’d made up in their minds, not the me I was.
They’ve been mostly good years. I have family that loves me: a brother and a grandmother. I have friends who are closer than my parents ever could be. I have job options. I’m a month from a degree, and…
And somehow, all I can think of right now is arguing with my mother. Trying to tell her what I wanted. Having it dismissed as selfish.
I exhale. My stomach is cramping. My parents aren’t here. I’m okay, but there’s some shit I’m going to carry forever. This will not last is engraved on my heart.
“Oh,” Jay says in a low voice. “It’s a hiding place. That’s what you want. I get it. It’s okay.”
It shouldn’t be okay. It can’t be okay. But his arms come around me.
“It’s okay,” he says again. “I should have known.”
“Shut up,” I say, because my eyes are stinging. “It’s not okay. It’s stupid. It was a long time ago.”
I don’t know how to process kind words and caresses. I remember what it’s like to get the hope knocked out of me. I can only pretend to tell myself that this time it will be different. Different is not how the world works. Caring too much gets me hurt, and I definitely care too much.
The more rational I can make things sound, the better. Lay it out with game theory; build a model of disease transmission. Put the end of the world in numbers, and estimate the risk. If I can do that, maybe one day I’ll get rid of the fear that I’ll lose everything.
Childhood scars are not susceptible to computer models. They don’t go away, no matter how small the risk.
The more I care about someone, the more I worry.
He takes my face in his hands. “Hey.”
“I’m fine.” I’m trembling. “It’s stupid.”
He touches my nose. “It’s not stupid. You’re not stupid.”
“It was so long ago. And it wasn’t everyone. I should be over this by now.”
“Hey.” His voice is gentle. “It’s okay. What helps?”
I breathe. I think. “Here’s the thing about the apocalypse. It’s always about bad things that haven’t happened to me yet. And it’s weird. Thinking about good things happening to me freaks me out. Thinking about terrible things? It makes me feel better.” I feel naked admitting that.
“So, earthquakes?”
I shut my eyes. “I drafted a post about supercolliders and temporal rifts today. Want me to tell you about it?”
He doesn’t laugh at me, and I was kind of expecting that he would. He takes my hand. “Well.” His voice drops a few notes. “There’s that. Let’s see if there’s anything else that works, too.”
* * *
JAY
* * *
“I thought ‘anything else that works’ was a euphemism,” Maria says, one hand on her hip.
So, fine. There may be a reason why she would think it was a euphemism. We’re in my bedroom. We held hands the entire walk home, and by the end, “holding hands” meant “touching each other all over.”
We’ve been making out for the last fifteen minutes, enough that every nerve of mine is on point. Ready for more.
That’s why I asked to see her post on temporal rifts.
“What?” I ask. “You thought it was a more polite version of ‘nice shoes, wanna fuck?’”
She glances at me. There’s no heat in her expression, though; she’s barely holding back a grin. She points to her bare toes. “No shoes.”
I shrug. “Hey. That does it for me.”
“Well, then, in that case—”
“Nope.” I fold my arms. “You promised me mayhem and a temporal rift. Give me details. Temporal rift to where?”
“When, more like. And the answer is the cretaceous period.”
“Ah.” I waggle an eyebrow at her. “Ye olde velociraptor invasion. Excellent.”
“I don’t think you can call it ‘ye olde velociraptor invasion’ if there’s never been one before.”
Here’s the thing about Maria—I can tell I shook her up earlier. And she’s right. When she’s feeling shaky, it helps her to talk about something as silly as a ridiculous way to end the world. I wonder idly if I could plot her mood over the last years by her blogposts. I suspect I could.
“Ye olde refers to the source of the velociraptor,” I explain. “Old velociraptors come from the cretaceous. Gosh-darned newfangled velociraptors”—I give this phase as close to a Southern twang as I can manage, which is not very close—“are the ones created by humans out of bioengineered hubris.”
She sits back on the bed. Her mouth quirks as she considers this distinction that I just now made up. “Well. That’s a surprisingly reasonable explanation.”
“So?” I beckon. “Let me see.”
She sighs. “Okay, but if we’re gonna talk temporal rifts, I want tea. Want me to make you some while you read?”
“Sure. Whatever you find that’s not caffeinated is fine.”
She opens her laptop and types in her password. “The document’s in front. I’ll be right back.”
I open her laptop.
The document isn’t in front. Her web browser is; she was looking up some resources on temporal paradox. I smile and minimize the window.
Her blogpost still isn’t in front. What I see next is a spreadsheet. She’s told me about this spreadsheet before; it’s her job search spreadsheet.
Last I heard, there was one place she was waiting to hear from before she made a decision. Last I heard, she had an offer from a smaller firm in the East Bay, and a bigger one in San Francisco. She’d turned down the place in Sacramento, which is why that line is highlighted in gray.
The thing she didn’t tell me was that she had an offer in New York.
I belatedly realize—after I’ve seen the name of the job, after I’ve read the pros and cons and seen the salary line that is three times larger than the San Francisco offer—that I’m violating her privacy. If she wanted me to know all the details, she would have told me.
Of course that leaves one burning question: Why didn’t she want me to know?
I close the spreadsheet and start reading about temporal rifts.
Funny, how I can put my mind on autopilot. I can think about what she’s written in some isolated chamber of my brain while the rest of me concentrates on something else.
I leave a note in the margin: My back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests this will take more energy than the sun will produce in its lifetime. Explain? My heart’s not really in the nitpicking.
I can hear her in the kitchen—the click of closing cabinets, the low whistle of my teakettle as water slowly comes to a boil.
Hey, Em, I imagine saying when she comes back. You want to tell me about this job?
I can’t see that turning out well. What would I be accusing her of, anyway? Keeping back information she has a perfect right not to tell me? And I know why she’s doing it. She told me she needs places to hide. This is hers. If she needs it, she needs it. I’m not going to be a dick about it.
That doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt.
I was in a half-serious relationship back when I was a postdoc at Harvard. To be specific, the serious half was Dave—in other words, the half that was not me. He wanted us to talk about coordinating our job searches. I
didn’t want to.
We had almost as many months of sniping sarcasm as we had good times. At the time, I was annoyed and frustrated. Who plans their entire life around someone you’ve only been dating a couple of months?
Not Maria, apparently.
I want her to. Oh, I want her to. But I shouldn’t even know about that line I saw on her spreadsheet. If I asked her, I even know what she would say. She needs to have a place to hide, in case this goes wrong, and if that’s New York, then she can have New York.
Still. She assumes this will end, and I want to be her enough.
I frown at her laptop, then close it.
I can hear her putting things away in the kitchen.
It’s not a surprise that I’m more into Em than she is into me. Hell, she told me why just tonight. Good things freak her out.
She comes into the room, juggling two mugs and coasters. “Blueberry okay?”
I jump up and help her arrange the mugs. “It’s fine.”
She gets in bed, and I follow. She snuggles up next to me and opens her laptop. “Okay, so you took a look. What did you—oh.” She reads my note. “Okay, let me think.”
I can’t make her fall in love with me. I can’t make her trust me. Her forehead wrinkles as she ponders, and I reach out and smooth the furrows with my thumb.
But I know Em. She needs space and time, and crowding her close won’t help matters. I can swallow that little sting that demands to know why and how.
I can’t make Em trust me, but I can trust her. She’ll give me the why and how when she’s ready. And maybe, one day, I’ll be enough.
“Okay,” she says. “What about this?”
We hash out an alternate temporal rift—forty minutes for two lines in her post—and when we’re done, I slide my arm around her.
She looks up at me. “Hey.”
“Hey, yourself.”
“What is it?” she asks.
I shake my head. “Just thinking that I’m going to miss you next week.”
“You have a conference and a week with your coauthor,” Maria says. “You won’t have time to miss me.”
I sigh. “And I haven’t left yet, so…” I let my gaze linger on her. “In the meantime, I was wondering. Nice velociraptor invasion. Wanna fuck?”
Apparently, I’ve managed to hide how I feel. Because she smiles, long and slow. “I thought you’d never ask.”
* * *
MARIA
* * *
I’m at lunch with Anj the next day, and she’s ecstatic.
“It’s all done but the super-picky formatting.”
“Congratulations.”
“And the defense, but whatever.” She waves this off. “It’s just a formality. Part of the hazing ritual, yada yada yada. Nobody actually fails their dissertation defense these days.”
“Well, congratulations. Any thoughts on jobs?”
Anj gives me a perplexed look.
“Never mind,” I say. “I forgot that salaries don’t apply to you.”
She blinks for a moment, as if she still doesn’t understand. Then she goes on. “I’m having a party,” she says. “You’re invited. You and that new boyfriend you keep ditching me for.”
“Ugh.” I make a face. “Once. I ditched you for him once.”
“It’s Sunday,” Anj says, “and it’s a costume party.”
“Oh, no.”
“Oh, yes! It’s a chicken-or-shark costume party. Come as one or the other.”
I stare at her in annoyed dismay. “Anj, I’m not dressing up as a chicken, not even for your dissertation party. I’m really sorry. I’m just not.”
“Of course you aren’t,” Anj says with a smile. “You’re coming as a shark.”
Because I love sharks so much. Arguing with Anj is hopeless. I bite my lip.
“Are you bringing what’s-his-name?”
“Jay,” I say. “And no. He’s going to be in Melbourne. Science stuff.”
“Okay,” she says. “Then I’ll see you there.”
After lunch, I’m already thinking of excuses to make to her when my phone rings. One glance at my caller ID, and I’m rushing to answer.
“Nana! Are you done with your trial?”
“Yes. Sort of.”
“Sort of?”
“I spent the jury deliberations drafting a response to the expected motion for judgment notwithstanding the verdict,” she says, “which I expect them to file in five days or so. But we won. For now.”
“Yay!” I grin. “How long do you need to sleep?”
“Couple days. But come Saturday I may be temporarily human again. Come over?”
“Of course! We can celebrate your survival!”
“Urgh.” She snorts. “Right now, I feel like ass…phalt.”
“It’s okay, Nana. You can say you feel like ass.”
“I feel like a disgusting, tarry substance with potholes,” she replies, “but I’ll bounce back.”
“Well, call me when you wake up, Sleeping Beauty.”
No, I tell myself. It’s probably for the best that Jay is out of town for a week. I can tell Nana about him and figure out how to avoid costumes.
It’s probably for the best.
* * *
It’s probably for the best, I tell myself the next afternoon, after seeing Jay leave for the airport, because if I’ve neglected anyone, it’s Tina.
She’s had a rough couple of weeks herself.
We’re sitting around, just like old times. I’m working on a blogpost. She’s doing a problem set. And we only have a couple of months left as roommates, which is something I still have to discuss with her. But before we get there…
“Okay,” I say to Tina, “so what sort of biological creature could I create with 3D-bioprinting if rodents won’t work. Spiders?”
“What is this?” She shakes her head. “Ask Tina about bizarre bioprinting applications day?”
I sigh patiently. “I have to ask you about bioprinting. You said your boss would get a kick if bioLogica ended up in my blog.”
Tina rolls her eyes. “He’s not my boss. A, I don’t work there right now. B, he doesn’t really work there, either. Paul’s an aging retired genius who doesn’t even live in the US. He has crazy ideas that they asked me to test over the summer.”
I look at her. “You’re upset.”
She sighs. “Not really. It’s just an Adam Reynolds thing. He’s acting weird and I don’t know why. I should just outright ask him if he’s on drugs again.” She frowns. “And that’ll go over great with Blake.”
I do not envy her her boyfriend’s family, that’s for damned sure. I try to think of something positive to say. But while I’m fumbling to be supportive, my phone rings. It’s my grandmother. She must have finally woken up.
“Hold on,” I say. “I have to get this.”
I answer.
“Hey, Maria.” The sound of Nana’s voice is familiar. The background noise—something like a PA system announcing something unintelligible—is not.
“Hey, Nana. Are you awake already?”
“So.” She sighs. “About that. I don’t want to freak you out, but…”
Her long pause is already freaking me out.
“I kind of went down to Saint Francis.”
“You did what?” Saint Francis is the hospital near her house. My hands feel suddenly cold.
“Don’t freak out,” she tells me.
I’m freaking out. My hands feel unsteady.
“It’s not a big deal,” she continues. “I saw a doctor about it yesterday. It’s just a little thing with my kidneys. They want to keep me in the hospital for a couple of days, but—”
“They’re keeping you in the hospital?” I glance over at Tina.
Her mouth rounds in shock. Her eyes widen. Oh, no, she mouths. She stands up and puts an arm around me. My world seems to collapse to a couple of senses—the sound of Nana’s voice on the phone, the feel of Tina’s hand rubbing my back.
“I know,??
? Nana says, sounding annoyed. “It’s so stupid. It’s just because I can’t keep these stupid antibiotics down.” She makes it sound like an inconvenience, like she left her keys at a coffee shop. “Also,” she adds thoughtfully, “it might be because they think I’m stubborn. Maybe I didn’t come in when I first realized there was blood in my urine.”
“Nana.” I say the word in absolute horror. “What are you doing?”
“Sitting here bored with an IV drip,” she answers dryly.
“Fine.” I stand up. “Good. I’m coming in, okay? Is there anything you need?”
“A bottle of wine.”
I exhale. “That’s going to interact with your antibiotics.”
“Where’s your sense of humor?”
“I seem to have left it somewhere around the word hospital. Maybe kidney.”
“Be that way.” She sighs. “If I’m not getting any alcohol out of you, stop by my house and get my Kindle.”
“Okay.” I’m glad to have something to do.
“And my cell phone charger.”
“Sure.”
“And my laptop.” She sounds more hopeful as she says this. “I want to look over that response—”
“Nana, aren’t you supposed to be resting?”
“I’m surrounded by doctors. If I’m going to collapse from overwork, I couldn’t be in a better spot.”
She’s not helping. I can’t tell from her tone if it’s really serious and she’s downplaying it, or if it’s as minor as she claims.
Either is possible.
I look up at the ceiling. “You’re freaking me out. Will you please take care of yourself?”
“Oh, fine,” she says with bad grace. “I’ll behave.”
“I’ll be there,” I say. I’m already fumbling for my keys and my purse. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
25
MARIA
The BART across the Bay seems to take forever. It’s rush hour, and it’s standing room only all the way here. Between calling Gabe and ransacking Nana’s apartment for her electronics, a small eternity passes before I arrive at the hospital.