Page 1 of Love and the Laws of Motion
Chapter One
There was only one thing about Brooklyn that Livie Romano didn’t love: there were never any stars out at night.Most of the time, when you looked up, you saw...nothing.Just a flat rust-colored glow as the streetlights reflected off the clouds.The light pollution was so powerful that it managed to blot out the entirety of the universe overhead, which was saying something.
The first time she’d seen stars—actual stars, not the random sighting of Venus that managed to puncture New York’s omnipresent glow—she’d been six.Vacations had been nearly nonexistent when they were kids.There was always too much work at the family bar and too little money.But one year Uncle Vincent had rented a cabin upstate on Lake George and invited them up for the weekend.Her parents—that was back when her mother was still alive—had piled the kids into the family car and off they went.
The first night, her sisters and cousins had shrieked and laughed as they chased fireflies in the woods.Livie had wandered to the end of the dock, lay down on the worn wood, still warm from the day’s sun, and stared up at the sky, at the overwhelming sight of thousands of stars.Even the Milky Way was visible—a magical, cloudy sweep across the sky, looking just like it did in books.It was like peeking into a world that had been hidden in plain sight all her life—a world that stretched into infinity.
These days, as she pursued her PhD in astrophysics, she was no longer dependent on a clear night sky.She stargazed through computers, with a telescope orbiting thousands of miles above tiny earthbound complications like clouds and light pollution.But there was still something special about just looking up and seeing the stars, silently burning away for millennia.
Livie glanced up when she reached the street corner.Nothing but a low-hanging wall of clouds tonight.You’d hardly even know the universe was up there.But it was, waiting for her with its mysteries to be unraveled, if only she could figure out how.
She dropped her eyes from the blank sky to a more comforting glow—the golden light of the front window of Romano’s Bar, and the electric Michelob sign that was older than she was.Just like the Milky Way, Romano’s lights seemed to burn on for eons.
The poorly oiled hinges on the front door shrieked to announce her as she entered.Her older sister, Gemma, glanced up from a stack of credit card receipts.
“Livie, you’re ten minutes late.Were you mugged?Kidnapped?Did you fall into an open manhole?You’re never late.”
She hurried across the bar and ducked under the pass-through, banging her elbow on the edge of the bar as she did.“Sorry, slow train.”She hated being late, and anything less than ten minutes early counted as late.
“Ugh, don’t get me started on the MTA,” her younger sister, Jessica, growled from behind her laptop.
“What are you doing here, Jess?I thought I was covering Dad tonight.”
“You are.I’m filing the quarterly taxes.”
Thank God Jess handled that odious task.Gemma was hopeless at math and Livie hated accounting.She could use numbers to explain the bending of time and space, but forget about finance.
“How was the first day of classes?”Gemma asked.“You’re teaching this semester, right?”
“Campus opened this week, but classes don’t officially start until next week.My section of Astronomy 200 starts next Tuesday.”
Hard to say who was less enthusiastic about starting classes, Livie or her incoming students.Standing up in front of a room full of undergrads was her worst nightmare come to life.But since it was required as part of her grad student stipend, she was just going to have to suck it up and do her best to avoid eye contact.
“Why were you at school all day if there were no classes?”
Livie turned to face her sisters with a triumphant smile.“Because I have big news.”
Jess and Gemma both looked up expectantly.Livie had been bursting to share this with someone—anyone—since she’d left campus an hour ago.And the fact was, she didn’t have many people besides her sisters to share good news with.
“We got the Skylight grant.Well, Finch got the grant.Which, since I’m working on her research for my dissertation, is likemegetting the grant.”
Jess grinned.“That’s awesome, Livie!”
“The what grant?You’re getting money?”
“I told you about it, Gem.”
“Livie, I love you, but you know I don’t understand half of what you tell me.”Gem waved her hand, miming information flying over her head.Livie wished she wouldn’t do that—that flippant dismissal of her lack of education.Gemma might not have gone to college like her younger sisters, but she was one of the smartest people Livie knew.
“Professor Finch—”
“Your thesis advisor,” Gemma said.“See?I remember some things!”
“Anyway, Janet applied for this big grant from Skylight last year.You know, the telecommunications company?”
“I remember you helped her with the grant application,” Jess said.“It took you forever.”
“Thanks for proofreading it, by the way.”
