Page 110 of Betting on the Brainiac

“Sorry, didn’t catch that,” Ruby says.

I lift it enough to repeat myself. “Did you know that you can figure out someone is the one without even kissing him?”

I expect her to squeal or congratulate me, but there’s only silence. I pull the pillow off to look at her.

“No,” she says. “You’ve always been right about this one. It’s the kiss. Thatiswhy people write songs about it.”

“Except I haven’t kissed Oliver. But saying I like him is an understatement.”

“That’s big,” Ruby says. “Are you freaked out?”

I consider this before I sit up and look at her. “No. I’ve been running from it for a few weeks.” The day with the focus mitt. That’s when some part of me recognized it, and the rest of me tried to shove the knowing aside. “But I do know, Ruby. What I don’t know is what to do about it. He’s not happy with me right now because I was a jerk this morning.”

“Only this morning?” Ruby asks, innocently.

“Shut up, Ruby-Roo. You don’t know everything.”

“I know how you fix it. Go sit in front of his bedroom door until he talks to you. Then apologize. Works pretty well.” She nudges my foot with hers.

“I know it seems like it would be that easy, but it isn’t. Because I’ll say sorry, and he’ll accept it. We’ll be good again.” I can hear the defeat in my voice.

“But . . . ?”

“But we screwed everything up by getting married. We’re doing that stuck-in-a-cabin-in-a-snowstorm thing, and nothing will ever be real.”

“Explain.”

“Stuck in a cabin,” I repeat. “Like in the Christmas movies when a couple that’s not a couple gets stuck in a cabin, and it forces them to get along, and basic human biology kicks in and their genes are like ‘we are a thing now because of science,’ and they kiss, and after four days they know they love each other, and they get rescued, and the end.”

“I’m with you so far.”

I lean forward and poke the mattress to make my point. “The next hour of that movie is when you see that being snowed in made them develop Stockholm syndrome, and when they’re out there in the real world with other choices, they remember why they didn’t like the other person in the first place. They aren’t in love, they do not run the town apple festival together, and it’s a year in the future, and whichever one is from the big city stays there instead of risking the awkwardness of running into each other in the small town, and too bad for Granny, who doesn’t get to see her city grandkid, and then she dies, and now the city person is coming back to the small town for the funeral.”

“Did Granny die because the grandkid didn’t come see her?” Sami asks from the doorway.

“Probably,” I tell her. “Laugh if you want to, but I snowed in Oliver.”

Sami, half smiling, calls down the stairs. “Ava? Can you come up here? Madison has raised the subject of genes and biology.”

The soft thump of Ava’s footsteps sounds on the stairs. She pauses in the doorway to peer in, then pushes Sami ahead of her, and they climb on my bed.

“Catch me up,” Ava says.

Ruby does, concluding with, “I think Oliver is stranded in a snowstorm?”

“Let the metaphor specialist handle this,” Sami says. “Oliver is into you, Madi.”

“It’s all over his face,” Ava agrees. “That’s a scientific observation because I’m a scientist, so you can’t argue.”

“Dude’s got it bad,” Joey agrees from the doorway.

“Go away, Joey,” Ruby tells her brother.

Ava sighs but nods. “How about you go collect a droplet of standing water? I’ll look at it with you when we’re done.”

Joey snorts and disappears, goes down a couple of stairs, pauses, and comes back up. “Do I use a dropper for that?”

“Yes, honey,” Ava says, and Joey disappears again.

---