“You were the—hic—one who mentioned—”
Groaning, he waved her off to brace his palms against the tabletop. Bunsen whined and nudged his arm. “Ugh, no—buddy, you don’t want this—”
Her stopwatch showed that they’d been suffering for thirty-two seconds. Maybe if she lasted a whole minute without crying off, she could claim victory? She swallowed and swallowed, begging the time to tick faster while Bunsen continued to nose at Ethan’s flannel pajama bottoms. When she’d counted forty-eight excruciating moments, however, a video call from Martina chimed onto her screen.
“Thank God.” She flashed her phone at Ethan through her sweat and tears. “Incoming—”
“Marti—? Better—hic—answer her.”
“T-truce?”
“—yes.” He inhaled his oat milk with a grateful gasp.
Erin didn’t protest when he filled up the splash in her glass to the brim. The heat dissipated from her scorched tongue, her hiccups subsiding by degrees while she drank. The relief was too sweet for principled defiance. This time, at least. She wiped her mouth and caught Martina’s call on the last ring.
“Morning, Mar—”
“You’re crying.” Martina ignored her wave and greeting. She crossed her arms. “What did you do this time?”
“Uh.” She dabbed at her cheeks with a napkin from their stash of takeout utensils, sniffing against the residual burn in her nose. “We had that new Trader Joe’s hot sauce with breakfast. We were seeing who could tolerate it for the longest time, and things got a little—”
“—heated.” Still red-faced, Ethan angled himself into the video frame with their evil habanero bottle, then shifted over to wrap a distracting forearm around Erin’s waist, fingers tracing the freckles on her stomach and the scalloped hem of her starry bralette through her shirt. “Hi, Martina.”
Martina rolled her eyes. “I was right about both of you all along. You really are two of the stupidest, stubbornest smart people I know.”
“Wait—you know people who are more stupid, stubborn, and smart than we are?” Instantly refocused, Erin pivoted in her seat to trade affronted looks with Ethan. “We have competition!”
“Oh myGod… Before this goes off the rails, I have a question for you.”
“We weren’t going to go off the—”
“You absolutely were. So: can we reschedule today’s Pilates class and dress shopping to next weekend? I had a shift change in the hutch operator schedule, and there’s also a Menlo Park city council meeting about a new dog park ordinance.”
“Bunsen says yes, of course.” She patted the golden retriever with her free hand; the other was creeping up Ethan’s neck, twisting and tugging lightly at his overgrown hair. “I’ll see if Kai and Ashley are free for coffee. Anyhow, there’s plenty of time before Chase and Isabel’s wedding.”
“Next summer. Too soon,” from Ethan.
“You’ll be begging for the date when you see the piece I’ve picked out for her, though,” Martina told him. “If your jaw isn’t on the floor—ifeveryone’sjaws aren’t on the floor—”
“Martina. What are you—”
“It’s gorgeous, and you can even make your entrance on a bicycle if you want to. So you’ll love it.Jaw, floor.”
“Hmm.” Ethan leaned into Erin’s paralyzed touch on his neck while she tried and failed to find a retort for Martina’s sass. “You could wear this shirt you have on now, and you’d still have everyone staring. Because you’ll be there with me. And… you’reyou.”
Martina’s next eyeroll was almost audible. She might as well have been mouthingpopcorn. “Right. Anyway—Ethan, how’s NASA Ames? If you can share any top-secret information.”
“Different from SVLAC.” He propped Erin’s phone against the oat milk carton and handed his empty plate to her, which she stacked on hers and ferried to the sink, out of Bunsen’s covetous reach. The retriever followed her into the kitchen and sat on her feet. “Most of my work involves quantum computing for the Hermes II project. The shuttles and probes are projected to reach the Moon, and eventually beyond Mars. They could even enter orbit around Jupiter in the next century. Of course, anything I do now will be prehistoric by that time and my department can’t publish our research because the technicalities are classified, but I like it. The work is interesting, even if it’s not quantum units and holometers. I might still go back to that field someday and I have ideas for improvements to the instrument and its integration with Erin’s federal research, but for now, I just… it’s good to take some distance from it. To recalibrate. To breathe. And I can do that at NASA. Like I said, the work is interesting—but more importantly, the people are good.”
“There’s that adage about leaving managers, not jobs, right? I’m glad it’s going well—but only Dr. Ethan Meyer would consider NASA a sabbatical. Next question’s for Erin, though: are any of these classified technicalities showing up in your latest story? Anonymized, of course.”
“I might have sneaked a look at some calculations over his shoulder.” Unrepentant, she squirted soap onto her sponge. “I have to take what I can get, since I can’t barge into his office anymore for sabotage and secret-stealing. The commute to Moffett Federal Airfield is just too far.”
“Isn’t that in Mountain View?”
“Too far,” she repeated with a sarcastic, rueful sigh. “He used to be just across the hall.”
“Now you never see him.”
