“There’s nojustabout it. When we ran into each other on my first day, I was starstruck. And it’s probably good for my ego that you went to CERN right afterward. You might’ve been unbearable about my… academic… crush.”
“I want to say I would’ve, yes. But honestly? I probably would’ve avoided you. I wouldn’t have thought that someone like you would be interested in me talking. Despite my—uh, genius at public debate.”
So maybe they really had needed their three years, and everything from Pandora’s box that had happened during them.
“Well, then for the sake of giving you something to talk about,” she raised her eyes and her smile again, “I’m glad my initials ended up on yourNature Physicsform. Look at the data: if I hadn’t made that error and if you hadn’t retaliated, if we hadn’t clashed over funding, publications, and lab time so that we debated the merits of our research areas for the Secretary of Energy, and if we hadn’t been forced to collaborate on SVLAC’s quantum gravity project—just imagine the travesty for science! We never would’ve detected evidence of naturally occurring Hawking radiation.”
“Or the synchronized scale of quantum units and electron hops in black hole models.”
“Except that one of these discoveries is much more important—”
“Which one? There’s solid evidence to supportmy—”
“God, yes.” Erin grinned against the laughing outrage on Ethan’s mouth. “Talk data to me.”
SIX MONTHS LATER
Erin Monaghan
“You want rosemary for the potatoes, right?” Stretching onto her toes, a ratty sleep shirt riding up her bare thighs, Erin craned her neck over Grant’s pot on the windowsill above the kitchen sink. She plucked a sprig and crushed it between her palms, inhaling the sharp, fresh fragrance while she swayed to the Beatles’ “All You Need Is Love” playing on the radio. “He’s much happier in this eastern light. He’s putting out new shoots, even in the winter.”
“Yes, please.” Ethan tapped his spatula against a sizzling cast iron pan on the stovetop and pinched the rosemary from her palm to sprinkle over their egg-and-potato scramble.
She passed him their plates. “We could have Martina and Tomasz over for dinner to use up more of the harvest. Garlic artichokes or penne pasta in a lemon goat cheese sauce would both be good with rosemary. But we’d need to clear some space around the table. Find the other chairs, too.”
“There’s one in the bathroom.” He dropped a nubbin of scramble into Bunsen’s bowl as he stepped over a box of kitchen utensils, then threaded past the golden retriever and through a neat maze of packing material to a dining nook set between the kitchen and living room.
“Right. I was standing on it to hang the shower curtain.” Nodding at a cluster of printed panels from PhD Comics, XKCD, and a sudoku sheet tacked on the refrigerator, she grabbed a carton of oat milk, snagged a takeout box of cream cheese danishes from the Palo Alto Cafe off the counter, and followed him to the table, where a pair of steaming mugs were waiting. “What about the other chair?”
“By the front door. There’s mail on it. New address confirmations and coupons.”
“Changing locations already generates so much waste. Adding flyers that no one wants to the mix is just rude.” But she smiled while she propped up her feet on a crate of art supplies and took her first sip of milky coffee.
They’d moved into an older rental on Waverley Street in Palo Alto’s Midtown neighborhood just last weekend. Its bathroom tiles clashed between 1950s Pepto Bismol pink and 1970s avocado green, the dishwasher didn’t work, and the second bedroom had no closet. It was perfect.
They already had plans to convert the spare room into a studio and office, where she’d write and he’d alternately draw or fill orders from Bannister’s website. They’d hang Erin’s posters and her framed paper abstract (itwasa trophy) beside Ethan’s SVLAC beam tree, “Hunger,” and his other original pieces—black and white, but also a few newer drawings inked in the blues, reds, and golds of their afternoons spent running along Crissy Field East Beach by the Golden Gate Bridge—over dents in the living room’s drywall. They’d clean up the yard—maybe put Grant in the ground and build a bicycle shed—and she didn’t mind flicking soapy water at Ethan while they did the dishes, even if it meant that they got distracted… very,verydistracted… and left their plates to soak overnight…
“Ready?” Ethan plonked a bottle onto the table between their plates: Trader Joe’s Habanero Hot Sauce. Right. They’d picked up the spiciest condiment available during their recent trip to the grocery store. Now it was time to test their metal against the Scoville Scale. And against each other, obviously.
Good:she was hungry.
“Yes.” Licking her lips, she reduced the volume on the radio, then reached for the oat milk carton and stared him down while she poured out a tall glass for him. She added just a splash in her own glass. She nodded at the habanero sauce and their jigger, tucked her loose hair behind her ears, and picked up her fork. “Areyou?”
He returned her stare, measuring sauce into the stainless steel cup and then dolloping equal portions onto their respective breakfast plates. She tried not to wince at the amount. He noticed her cringe, of course. His grin widened. “You can still—”
“No stalling.” She set the stopwatch on her phone. Then she took a bite: eggs, potatoes, rosemary, and olive oil in a cocoon of warm, smoky flavor. She pushed aside her oat milk to plant her elbows on the table and continued to hold his gaze. The seconds ticked up on her screen. She bit into her danish before lifting her fork again, swallowing, smiling, confident—and the warmth exploded. No warning, no gradual escalation from glow to heat to inferno, just a pleasant tingle and then suddenly a combustion on a cosmic scale, numbing the roof of her mouth, burning her cheeks—
She dropped her fork. And hiccupped.
“Ah!” Ethan laughed. Or choked. Tears glazed his eyes as he gulped through his own pained mouthful. “It j-just—”
“—and all at—hic—once—”
“Milk?”
She exhaled another fiery wheeze, sweating and coughing but undeterred, laughing back at him. “Y-you first.”
“No. I’m f—” But he couldn’t finish his sentence.
