Page 90 of Not in Love

“Really?” He kissed my cheek, open-mouthed. “You moving in. You, quitting your job so we can do this twenty times a day. Me, retiring to service you full-time. Us, fucking around for the rest of our lives. Does it really not sound like a fantastic idea?”

My heart jolted. Yes, it said. Yes. I just wanted to be with him. Was it so bad? Florence didn’t have to know. No one did. Just the two of us.

“Don’t say no, Rue,” he murmured. A low, heartfelt appeal. “Don’t do this to us.”

I didn’t let myself think about it. “Okay.”

His smile could have powered the entire city. “Okay.”

“Okay,” I repeated, and we were both laughing silently in each other’s mouths, and then kissing, and I thought that maybe, if perfect moments existed, this could be one of them.

I disengaged from him, hiked over the console, fumbled my leggings back up my hips. I let out something that sounded disturbingly like a giggle, but my body was still buzzing, thanking me for the best twenty minutes of its life. And Eli was still looking at me like I contained the entire universe.

I leaned against the headrest while he cleaned himself up, and then began putting back all the papers that had fallen out of the glove compartment. “I’m sorry,” I said. “Next time you have to show your registration you’re going to have a real hard time . . .”

I stopped when my eyes fell on a familiar name.

Kline.

It was an oddly formatted stack of papers, covered in plastic. Eli muttered something about tossing the condom and folded out of the car, but I kept on reading.

RULE 202 PROCEEDINGS IN AID OF

INVESTIGATION OF CLAIMS AGAINST KLINE INC.

Oral deposition of Florence Carolina Kline.

I turned the page. APPEARANCES, the new header read. FOR HARKNESS LP, ELI KILLGORE. I turned another, and another, and then more, until the text resembled something like a movie script. A list of Qs and As.

Q. Very well. And, Dr. Kline, when did you first meet the founders of Harkness?

A. I don’t see why this matters.

Q. Could you please answer anyway?

A. I’m not sure I remember. I probably met them all at different times, anyway.

Q. As far as you can recall?

A. I guess I first met Dr. Oka when she interviewed to become a postdoc in my lab, about twelve years ago. It would have been a phone call, because at the time she lived in Ithaca, and then we met in person when she moved to work with me. I believe I met Conor Harkness around the same time, when he enrolled in the PhD program at UT.

Q. You taught at UT at the time?

A. Correct.

Q. And Eli Killgore?

A. He was the last to arrive, so I must have met him . . .

Q. About a year later?

A. Yes, that sounds correct.

Q. Is it correct to say that you served as a mentor to all three of them?

A. Yes, it is.

“Rue?”

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