Page 122 of Dream Mates
“Please. Maybe we can all have pizza tomorrow night or something,” I said. “I’ve never met another gamma.”
“Your pack supports your work?” someone else asked, eying my ring from Wes.
“Absolutely. The whole reason why I’m here is because one of my alphas knew that I wanted to see the particle cutter at PIIP, so he arranged for us to come.” I smiled shyly.
Someone put her hand to her heart. “That’s so sweet.”
“Any food? I’m starving.” A young woman rushed in and pulled up the chair. “Thank you so much for letting me know it was free. I can’t believe someone paid for all our tickets. Someone has a rich alpha.” She grinned.
Everyone else laughed.
“What?” She looked around and I realized it was Inara, the one yesterday that had given me the tea.
“Yeah, I guess that, too.” I chuckled. “I’m Grace. You’re Inara right? You’re a fellow at PIIP? Dr. Harlowe says that you’re presenting tomorrow.”
“Oh, it’s you. You toured PIIP yesterday.” She smiled. “Dr. Harlowe told you about me?”
“She did.” I jerked my head over to the snack table. “Get some food before it’s gone.”
The students told me all about the work and studies. Just being around people like this made me miss my cohort. Where were they all now?
Inara kept staring at me, it was a little weird.
I caught her eye. “Do I have food in my teeth?”
“Um, sorry,” she blustered. “It’s weird, but do you, um, have a–”
Oh. “Sorry, no but my dad’s not a chemistry professor.”
She shook her head. “Actually, I was going to ask if your brother’s in engineering school at Natty. You look just like him. But his dadisa chemistry professor.”
“No, I don’t.” I shook my head, belly twinging. Someone else who looked like me?But then there were only so many variations in the universe.
“Creed’s my best friend from undergrad. He’s the one who encouraged me to apply to PIIP.” Smiling shyly, she pulled up a picture on her phone.
I took a look at the smiling blond young man, with blue eyes. Who lookedabsurdlylike me, only his eyes were bluer.
Shit. Had I actually found this dimension’s Grace? Who was called something else? And adude.Creed. Also, a virtue name.
Engineering? I’d always found Wes’ engineering talk interesting and it did use a lot of math. Creed was younger thanme, but my mom had also had me when she was in her early twenties.
Mind. Blown.
“That’s why I was staring at you when you toured PIIP,” she said, passing the phone around to the others who echoed her sentiments. “I was going to ask you, but Dr. Harlowe intimidates me. Then you were with Spencer Thanukos, and well…”
“He’s actually really nice,” I assured.
“Creed’s taking the train down tomorrow to see my presentation and to hang out in the bar and see if he can make any contacts. He’s graduating in a couple of weeks and looking for a job.” She ducked her head. “Okay, he’s hoping to get some sort of fellowship at Compass BioTek, but he hadn’t heard yet and figured a little networking wouldn’t go amiss after I told him there was a whole battalion of you here.”
“Is he close by? I can get him into the Compass BioTek party tonight.” I sort of wanted to meet this dimension’s me. Hopefully it wouldn’t cause an incursion or some other anomaly. If that’s even what he was. Geneticswereweird. It was probably just a coincidence.
As long as I didn’t meet this dimension’s version of my mother. If there even was such a thing. Yeah. That probably wouldn’t go well. Especially if she was kind.
Inara shook her head. “He’s not leaving until morning. But I’ll introduce you to him tomorrow.”
“Canwego to the party? Is the food better?” Russ laughed.
“Yeah, we can all blow this and go get better food,” I replied.
