Ethan
Just want to know if you’re all right.
He waited.
8:22 p.m.
Still nothing. No delivery, no response.
Well, he could ask every woman in the Wine Room if she wrote science fiction under the pseudonym Forster, couldn’t he? No, not without Bunsen as his wingman. Or he could stand up on his bench and shout her name. Then Erin Monaghan would certainly notice—something. Or he could keep waiting.
8:34 p.m.
A third Malbec arrived from the bartender. He poured it out the window into a potted plant.
8:40 p.m.
9:00 p.m.
He waited more than two hours before pushing his way through the rowdy, thickening crowd to the exit. Only when he emerged onto the sidewalk did he catch sight of the far side of the Wine Room.
Erin was there.
Seated under the opposite windows with a depleted bottle of Chardonnay and a hummus platter, head bent in conversation with her friend, she didn’t notice him outside.
But he saw her: achiaroscurofigure in the warm, noisy glow. He saw the damp flush on her cheeks.
She’d been crying.
Which evened their score again, after Friday’s fiasco in front of the Department of Energy officials—and then that even worse moment in his office. Didn’t it? Maybe the Malbec’s depressive chemicals were lingering in his bloodstream, however, because as he watched Erin wipe her cheeks with a napkin before reaching for the sediment at the bottom of her bottle, Dr. Kramer’s voice in his head was quiet, and the pitch through his stomach wasn’t triumph. She looked… tired.
Yes, that was a safe analysis.
Tired.
As for the knot clenching under his ribs while he drove back to Redwood City—it didn’t feel like it, but that had to be tiredness, too.
13
Her phone spent a full thirteen hours and eight minutes in a bag of rice before its screen flickered back to life on Sunday afternoon.
Battery at 0%
Erin exhaled and smiled at the warning. “Thank God.”
Closing her laptop on the day’s STEMinist Online header posts, tossing asideThis Is How You Lose the Time War, she took her device to the kitchen and shook it over the sink, then rushed back to her desk to charge it, just missing Kai as her roommate exited the bathroom while toweling off her cropped turquoise undercut.
“Erin, you okay?”
“Oh—yeah, fine.”
“Ashley and I are getting a late brunch at Cafe Borrone, if you want to come.”
“Sure, but maybe another time?”
She waved her phone in explanation as her bedroom door shut behind her. Then she plugged in her charging cable. While Kai called out her readiness to Ashley, she watched the battery bar turn to a buffering green. Of course, it would take at least an hour for her device to reach a full charge, the cafe near Kepler’s Books did a delicious banana pancake stack, and it might’ve been nice to catch up with her roommates for a bit… But eating before running the hills on the Stanford Dish trail was a recipe for nausea. Plus—her phone. She watched the charging icon, tapping her nails against the screen, against her cheek, against her jittering leg, waiting for it to edge back to functionality.
“You’re sure you don’t want to come, Erin?” with a knock from Ashley.
