“Aaron.” Darkness glittered in his gaze, and her stomach answered with vertigo when he repeated, “Erin.”
“H-how…”
Data.
A few reddish hairs stuck to his jeans below the knees: affectionate canine detritus. Almost invisible, a speck of color under his left thumbnail was ink. The evidence answered her question.
“Bannister.”
A jerk of his chin, a hitch of his inhale.
“…oh.”
Just that, becauseForster, Bannister—what more was there to say? What morecouldshe say? What could she say besides everything, which was impossible, because this…thiswas impossible—so she just blinked back at him, one hand still on the door, the other contracting over and over into a fist, pulsing with the rapid rush of her heart, until—
Click.
Now it was the exterior door into the West Experimental Hall that opened as a badge swiped past the scanner. Arriving to run a data collection cycle for the Relativistic Mechanics group’s binary pulsar study, it was Sandra O’Connor-Young and Leah Haddad who found them locked together this time, not on an operator desk but staring, immobile and silent and impossible,impossible—and really, which situation was worse?
“Dr. Monaghan? And… Dr. Meyer?”
Popcorn.
“I… I’m j-just leaving.”
The muscles in her cheeks were too tense for a casual greeting and a smile. Leaving Ethan in the vestibule, she shouldered past her colleagues as they moved into the hall and groped for her bicycle, bumping its tires down a short flight of external stairs, the helmet dangling from her handlebars banging into the railing. She swung her leg over the seat. Her metal-capped boot slipped off its pedal, leaving her straddling the top tube bar, stupidly flat-footed.
“Erin,” again. He’d followed her outside.
She singed her fingers on the sun-heated plastic of her chin clip. “What?”
“Are you…” His boots crunched into a film of industrial grit on the steps. Then, of all the things he could’ve asked: “Can you ride home safely?”
Thank God—because his doubt steadied her like nothing else.
Rallied her.
“Really?” The hot, familiar prickle of her frustration was so much better than the shiver in her stomach under his unnerving focus—the focus she’d wanted from him,demandedfrom him, but now? “I’ve been making this ride for over three years. I’ve never had one collision, not even with an autonomous car—”
“I wasn’t—”
“—or is this your clue that I should check my tire pressure again? I could ride through commute traffic into Palo Alto with a flat, and I’d still get there first!” She snapped her helmet clip.
“Get where first?” Somehow, his hands were on her handlebars.
“Salt & Straw.Obviously.” She glanced down to nudge his grip off the rubber sheathing, but the angle must’ve tilted her face into the lowering sun, because heat tingled over her cheeks again at the reminder that fleece-wearing Ethan Meyer had Bannister’s ink under his nails, and—fuck.“If… if you let go before they run out of my habanero flavor.”
“You’re still going?”
She swallowed. “Well, it’s… it’s about ninety-five degrees out here, so—”
“Fahrenheit, Celsius, or kelvin?”
But again:Thank God.
“Take a wild guess.” She wrestled her handlebars free. Maybe she could run over his foot like she’d done with a scooter outside the Science and Public Support building. Bunsen might appreciate the residual turkey feces that her tires would smear across his boot—
—because Bunsen was not only Bannister’s dog, but Ethan Meyer’s, too.
