She pivoted her wheels toward the parking lot. She told him over her shoulder, “It’s hot. I’m getting ice cream. That was my plan for tonight—and I’m not changing it just because of you.”
He nodded.
“Don’t say anything about me being tardy, either. We’re both already late,” and she pushed off from the pavement.
Friday’s traffic along Sand Hill Road was heinous. Bumper to bumper between a Tesla and the wheezing sensors of an autonomous sedan at the Santa Cruz Avenue light, Ethan drummed his fingers on his steering wheel and eyed a pack of cyclists in branded athletic gear speeding past in their lane. Erin wasn’t in the crowd, but she might’ve already coasted down the hill from SVLAC, breezing by him where he sat in a gridlocked crush of honking cars at the intersection.
She wouldn’t wait for him.
Not that he’d expected her to.
She was Forster, but she was also Erin Monaghan.
God, she wasForster.
Standing there in the control room, arguing at him about materials and cables while he tried not look at her, tried not to answer her, tried not to breathe her in, because if he did for even a moment then she’d read the data in his body like she read her LIGO exports:overheated skin, rapid pulse, pupils enlarged, messenger bag clutched over his jeans—and she’d see how desperately he was still fighting the effect of her fingers brushing his throat—
Fuck. Fuck!
He shifted forward to crank up his air conditioning. Wincing, shifting his belt again like a teenager, he glanced into his rearview mirror.
Her nails on his neck.Her mouth under his.
Forster.Erin.
He’d kissed her.
…fuck.
He needed more time to make sense of that data than even Silicon Valley’s traffic could loan him. Structuring an analysis from Dr. Kramer’s error-riddled exports would be trivial by comparison. His supervisor’s fury over anotherNature Physicsfiasco would be easier to manage than tonight’s meeting at Salt & Straw, too. Not going, though?Not an option.Despite this certainty, however, his breathing began to accelerate—because it was Chase who was suave in these situations, Chase who’d know how to act and what to say, never him—but… Erin and Forster already knew about Bunsen. What if he drove to Redwood City first to fetch his retriever before he arrived at the creamery? He could swerve through another cyclist mob into Sand Hill’s turn lane, then take Alpine Road onto the northbound Junipero Serra Freeway.
He could.
HeneededBunsen.
But when he inspected his mirrors and reached to flick on his signal, his blind spot didn’t show empty pavement. No:shewas there, speeding down the hill, a perfect proof of Bernoulli and Euler’s conservation of angular momentum on her bicycle, her braid whipping behind her, just where he least expected her.
Blindsiding him again.
She didn’t see him.
And he… he didn’t turn. Fortunately, the traffic cleared by the time he reached Palm Drive. He didn’t slow to flip a middle finger to the majestic, iconic view of Stanford’s Oval and the Rodin sculptures fronting its Main Quad, but zipped across the El Camino Real overpass and into the City Hall parking garage, then threaded through the lively Friday crowds and musical buskers near the Wine Room on Ramona Street. A right turn onto University Avenue brought him to the line outside Salt & Straw.
Face to face with Erin again.
Well—almost.
Despite having already discussed their choices of ice cream, she was studying a sandwich board listing the creamery’s seasonal flavors with such intense concentration that she didn’t see his approach. She’d unraveled her braid and pulled her hair back into a regular ponytail, but now tiny kinks and waves fractured its usual straight length—something undone, something private exposed. Her cheeks were flushed under the twinkling evening lights embellishing the trunks of University Avenue’s trees, either from the pace of her ride or with her determination not to notice his arrival. He was three feet from her board.
He pulled out his phone.
Ethan
I’m here.
Swish: the noise of an activating lightsaber. Erin’s eyes darted away from the ingredient list for a vegan salted caramel and okara cupcake flavor. She didn’t reach into her back pocket for her own phone, though.
Had she given him a custom text tone?
