Page 39 of Conspiracies and Chemistry

18

The World Ended in 2012

From Barry Wright’s manifesto:

An experiment gone wrong at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in 2012 created a black hole that engulfed the earth and ended reality. No one noticed.

TESSA

It didn’t happen often, but I could admit when I’d been wrong. And this trip, the worst-thought-out, most impulsive thing I’d done in a while had gone off the rails in a spectacular explosion.

I used to be spontaneous. Back in my Red Rover days, after we accomplished a milestone, I used to take everyone out to one of those party places—the ones that felt like Chuck E. Cheese but for adults—or host smaller celebrations in the San Francisco penthouse. All I needed was a stack of pizzas, beer, and a playlist on the sound system. A last-minute trip for the executive team to Park City? Sure, Harry, and I’ll pay for the whole thing.

I’d forgotten about Vegas, though. A hundred fifty thousand rooms filled up quickly when the weather was crap in most of the country and there was a convention in town. Too busy anticipating the look of shock on Oliver’s face, I’d forgotten to call the hotel, and now I was paying for it.

Having to rely on someone else was the worst.

I stepped into Oliver’s hotel room and blinked. This wasn’t the suite of a company founder who made a very comfortable salary and had to be sitting on stock options worth millions. It was a small hotel room—with one bed.

It was a king-size bed, to be fair. But that was it. The bed, a desk with a more-stylish-than-comfortable task chair, a dresser, and an upholstered chair in the corner next to a lamp. For reading, I guessed, but who read in Vegas?

I peered around him for a second room, but the only other doors were obviously a closet and a bathroom.

I looked up at him. His Adam’s apple bobbed. His jaw squared like he was clenching his teeth as he stared at that one bed. It was a very different expression from the one he’d worn at dinner. That one was soft, admiring, open. Dangerously so.

I liked this one better. I read it as resolve. We were finally going to get this annoying, confusing sexual tension out of the way. We’d do it here in the king-size bed. The sex would be okay. No one as repressed and risk averse as Oliver would be passionate. In the morning, we’d admit it was a mistake and move on. More than one night, especially with someone I worked with, was how disasters happened. I’d learned that with Harry.

After we had sex, Oliver would hate me even more than he had when I’d joined Discovery. And hate was a lot more productive than its opposite.

“Okay.” I dropped my bag on the carpet. “Let’s do this.”

19

Aerobic

Aerobic:Refers to a process or condition requiring or occurring in the presence of free oxygen.

OLIVER

The door shut with a clunk. Tragically, the magic of Vegas hadn’t conjured a second bed into my hotel room. Plus, it somehow seemed more compact than when I’d left it this morning. Tessa was much smaller than me, but her presence took up at least half of the room. And although I carefully avoided her gaze, I could feel it pressing into me.

“Okay, let’s do this,” she said.

I ripped my stare off the white pillows. “Do what?” I wasnotimagining what her hair would look like spread across them.

“Come on. I’m going to shower, then we’re going to get past this.”

“Getpastthis?” My voice came out as a prepubescent squeak. I cleared my throat. “Get past what? How?”

“Don’t be dense. This.” She waved between us like she could see the invisible fingers of my obsession, the ones that wanted to touch her everywhere. “And by fucking, of course.”

It was all wrong. The captivation I felt for her wasn’t something to be flushed out of my body like a juice cleanse. It was something that, if she felt it too, I wanted to explore. Slowly. Cautiously. Then passionately. I sucked in a breath, but there wasn’t enough oxygen in the room. Not with herhere.

“‘This’”—I pressed a hand to my thudding heart—“isn’t something we can resolve by sleeping together.”

She stared at my hand on my chest. “Sure it is. Isn’t that why you insisted I share youronebed?”

“No. No! I was…I was being nice.We’re colleagues. We haven’t so much as kissed. Or held hands.”

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