The rapid scratch of a pen, the hiss of curses, a paperweight or book flung against the wall—
Thud!
Harsh, shallow breathing in the silence.
Someone else was still here, too.
She was in his doorway before she even knew she’d moved.
Ethan Meyer was slumped at his desk. His head rested in his hands, fingers kneading his forehead and tugging at his hair. Scraps of graph paper littered the floor around him, fanning out beside an overturned calendar that he must’ve thrown at the door. His breath hitched and his shoulders shuddered. His eyelids were pinched closed.
She didn’t mean to speak. She wouldn’t have. But when her own breath caught with an unexpected twist in her chest, he jerked up, eyes opening—black, wilder than his hair.
One jagged inhale. Then—
“Please go,” he said.
Simple, quiet words.
Please.
Not even a demand.
Please go. Toneless. And all at once… suddenly… she had nothing to say. So she went, and she left her triumph behind with him.
11
12:01 a.m.
Ethan’s watch read a minute past midnight by the time he hauled himself up from his desk. Bunsen was waiting, and his neighbors—faceless, nameless, but not deaf—would complain if the golden retriever started howling. Oxfords crunching in the litter on his office floor, he knelt in the narrow space between his chair and the wall and began to collect the screwed-up notes and documents, disposing of shredded research reports and sudoku graphs, hands moving mechanically to restore order.
He didn’t remember causing this chaos. He didn’t remember where the hours after his rush from Maiman Auditorium had gone, either. But he remembered Erin Monaghan murmuring to the Director of the United States Office of Science during his talk, remembered her leer at the microphone—
—remembered Chase sauntering up to his booth at a sixth grade science fair, asking why he’d transformed cow’s milk into plastic instead of using soy or almond milk, since he claimed to care so much about animal welfare, leaving his eleven-year-old self struggling to articulate the difference between vegetarianism and veganism in front of his classmates and his teacher, the merits of his project forgotten in his anxiety—
—remembered Dr. Kramer’s frown as the audience visibly lost interest in his scientifically sound but halting discourse, aware of his failure as a public speaker but helpless to course-correct himself under the hot, bright glow of the projector beam, the catastrophe only worsening when his rival chimed in with her glib simplification of the laws and fields of physics—
—kept seeing her in his doorway, barefoot with her shoes dangling in her hand, her loosened hair gilded by lamplight, triumphant—
Paper tore between his fingers, slicing the web of skin beside his thumb.
“Ah!”
He lobbed the offending sheet away. It was a sudoku grid, one of the fifty or so that he’d failed at tonight in his fugue. If she were here, Forster would likely have something clever to say about insults and injuries. He didn’t.
He’d won his challenge with her this morning, but he’d lost the day.
The data was clear on that.
His phone was also clear: no new texts from her. Maybe she was still at her office, too.I have a major work event, she’d written.
There were other notifications on his screen, though.
Karen Meyer had messaged to ask his suit size for Chase’s wedding party.
Could he get a year-long research placement somewhere in Siberia without cell service? Or on an oil rig in Antarctica? Then at least he wouldn’t have to attend that simpering celebration from hell.
Szymanski had also messaged, offering a brief commendation for the good parts of his talk.
