Page 29 of Hold Me (Cyclone 2)

We are so fucked. I’m upset, and I don’t have the space to be upset.

I walk into the room where my brother is giving the seminar. I smile at him. Give him a hug. Say “yes” to some question that he puts to me. I have no idea what he actually says, but yes appears to be the appropriate answer, because he smiles back and goes to the lectern at the front.

I slip into a seat.

Jay follows me into the room. I don’t want to look at him. I don’t want to think about him. I don’t want to see him out of the corner of my eye. I don’t want the image of him to start merging with A.

Jay doesn’t sit near me. I hate that he knows I need space. I’m also glad he knows it. I don’t look at him as Gabe is introduced. I refuse to acknowledge his existence as the lights dim and the room takes on the eerie glow of projected slides.

I finally look in his direction after ten minutes. He’s watching Gabe’s slides, dropping a few notes on a pad of paper. In the darkened room, he fades into the background until nothing is left but the glitter of his eyes.

He looks my way. Our eyes meet.

Nobody should look good by the harsh light of reflected PowerPoint, but Jay may be the exception. The blue-tinged light sharpens his features, exaggerating them, making his eyes seem deeper, his nose just a little more cruel.

I look away. My stomach churns. I plaster my hand to my thighs, as if I’m holding myself in place. I wait, carefully, for my heart to slow. For my pulse to stop racing. Then I look back.

My emotions are tattered shreds—impossible to make out, flapping in a brisk wind that only I can feel. I wish I’d never met Jay. That he didn’t know my brother. That I got to call him tonight. We could exchange names and photos and flirt outrageously. We could meet for coffee.

I wish I could have told Tina about him piece by piece. The dark expressive slash of his eyebrows. Those lips. His fucking accent, back when I hadn’t had four months to associate it with condescending bullshit. His features are clouded by ugly memories.

Concentrated asinine obtuseness burns twelve times hotter. Does it ever.

He looks at me again. Our eyes hold.

He doesn’t hide the fact he’s looking at me. I wonder if he’s remembering what I said to him.

I don’t want to think about my part in our ongoing war, even though I’m absolutely certain I’ve had one.

Em, I’m pretty much in love with you.

I flinch away from him.

Over the space of the next half-hour, as I listen to my brother make goofy jokes about laser plasma accelerators and semiconductors, I manage to think myself sick.

Jay knows about my blog. He knows about high school. He knows about my grandmother, soup…

Fuck. I’m on the verge of tears, and I don’t want to cry in the same room with him. He might comfort me. I might let him.

My brother finishes his talk. The lights come on. Jay asks a question—he obviously hasn’t had his entire world rearranged, if he can think of questions—and I sit in place, trying to smile and be supportive.

Calculating the moment I can escape.

Alas. I go to say my good-byes to Gabe as he’s packing up his laptop. He’s talking to a white-haired man excitedly about beam requests and something something something—I can normally translate his science, but I can’t concentrate tonight. Gabe turns to me before I can vanish.

“Sorry, Maria,” he says. “Another ten minutes, and we’ll head to the restaurant. Jay, where are we going again?”

Jay looks over at me. Our eyes hold a third time. I can’t imagine swallowing a bite of food. Fuck. Apparently, when I agreed to hang out with Gabe after his seminar, I agreed to have dinner with Jay.

I can’t right now. I just can’t. I exhale. “Actually, I’m not feeling well. I was thinking of just going home.”

“Are you sure?” Gabe’s too distracted to catch my distress. Or maybe he thinks I’m really just not feeling well.

I nod. “I’m sure.”

“Well, thanks for coming. We’ll catch up soon, okay?”

I escape as swiftly as I can, sliding through the door, out into the hall.

My heels echo on the tile, and now that I’m looking down, I realize this is the worst part. My shoes were supposed to be my safety. My emotional armor. And what did they do? They gave me away.

My phone buzzes as I’m standing in front of the elevator.

Slowly, I pull it out.

It’s from him. Actual Physicist. A.

Who am I trying to fool? It’s from Jay.

He’s sent me three emoji: Heart. Soup. Shoes.

God, it hurts. I look up to see him stepping out of the door. He looks at me. He doesn’t say anything.

He doesn’t come near me. He just stands outside the door and…looks.

“I know,” I call down the hall. “You signed me into a government lab. You can’t let me wander around.”

He doesn’t say anything.

I look down at my phone. This was, we agreed, emoji for “hold me.”

Virtual hugs are better than physical ones. They don’t impinge on my space. I don’t have to accept them. I can imagine them in a bubble, isolated in the cold vacuum of my heart.

He’s watching me from down the hall. He is, and he isn’t, A.

A. and Jay were both driven. But A. made jokes at his own expense, while Jay was serious. A. was vulnerable, and Jay…

Shit. I look at him standing in the hallway, watching me.

I can’t pretend they’re different people. They aren’t. And if A. was vulnerable…

Slowly, I turn and walk back to him. Each step feels like my feet are dragging through mud. He doesn’t take his eyes off me. He doesn’t say anything. He just watches.

“I’m guessing you like me about as much as I liked you,” I say.

“Which you?” he asks. Then he exhales. “No. I’m pretty sure I like Em more than she likes me.” He looks away. “I’m also sure the same holds true for Maria.” He wipes a hand over his face.

I swallow and look away. I don’t want to feel empathy for him. In a way, the fact that I’m thinking of him feels like the biggest betrayal of all. He made me like him. Even now, I’m already dissecting the things he said. The things he did. I’m beginning to understand.

I don’t want to understand why he hurt me. I just want to remember that he did.

I exhale. “You’re probably as upset as I am.”

He shakes his head. “I was pretty terrible to you. But Em, I didn’t want to hurt you and I did. I feel like such shit right now.”

I look over at him. He t

old me once that he was laser-like, and right now, I can feel the force of his concentrated, unwavering attention. I feel naked.

I am both unreasonably glad that he feels like shit and sorry, because I don’t want him to feel badly.

“Can I give Actual Physicist a hug without giving Jay one?”

“I’m pretty sure we’re the same person.”

“Shut up,” I tell him. “Fuck. I need a week.” I bite my lip. “I can’t even tell Gabe what’s wrong because he doesn’t know about my blog.”

“He doesn’t know about your blog? I thought you two were tight.”

I make a face. “We are. It’s just… Never mind.” I look over at him. In these shoes, I’m just a little taller than he is. He’s close enough that I can make out his eyelashes as individual lines. I can see a little dark spot on his cheek. If we’d never met, we’d be talking on the phone tonight. I’m so mad that I lost that chance, and mad is the easiest emotion to grapple with at the moment. Anger is simple. It has an object, a reason.

If I’m angry, I won’t have to sort out anything else.

But I look into his eyes one last time, and I can’t even give myself the gift of simple emotion.

Last night he told me about his brother. I told him about my parents.

“Fine.” My voice sounds flat and low. “I think I need you to hold me anyway.”

And he does. His arms come around me, not hard, but gentle, gathering me to him. And I’m hugging him back with all the feelings I haven’t acknowledged—interest, affection, and a feeling of sad, hollow loss.

My arms sneak around his waist. I lean my cheek into his neck and breathe in the scent of him. I can’t classify it. It just smells like…him.

I’m aware of his every breath. Of the feel of his shirt against my fingers. The feel of muscles beneath fabric. The rise of his chest, the whisper of wind as he exhales.

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