Chapter 11 Centripetal Force #3
“Sadly, yeah.” I bite my lower lip. “Do you think he told Monica about my alternative academic career yet?”
“He won’t.”
“How can you be sure?”
“After you left, I . . . followed up with him.” Jack’s features are a bland mask. Unreadable as ever. “You’ll be fine.”
“How do you know?”
“Trust me.”
I have no idea what that means. I want to ask, but his tone sounds final, and anyway . . . “Shouldn’t you want Austin to tell Monica? So George will get the job? And you guys can bro out in the MIT restroom? Do aromatherapy together and discuss who has the biggest Hadron Collider?”
“George will get the job anyway. And we won’t be doing that.” A wild dimple appears.
“Everyone knows yours is larger, anyway.” His eyebrow cocks and I turn to the coatrack. Shit, did I say that out loud? “I can’t believe your mom refused to pick Greg up for a mani. What a jerk.”
“She’s not.”
“She totally is a jerk. Come on, who—”
“I meant, she’s not my mother. And she wouldn’t appreciate you saying otherwise.”
“Okay, edgelord. That’s a bit dramatic. We all have issues with our parents, but—”
“Caroline is not my mother. Not biologically, nor in any other way.”
I turn back to him. “What?”
“My mother is dead. Greg is my half brother.”
I stare at him for a long stretch. Then I close my eyes. “Fuck.”
“Fuck?”
“Fuck.” I scratch my head. “I just hate it when I act like an asshole without even wanting to.”
He laughs. “Don’t worry. Like you said, she’s a jerk. Dad’s no better.”
“Still, I’m sorry about your mom. I didn’t know.”
“I’m not surprised.” He shrugs in his impossibly tight Suffolk hoodie. “No one talks about her.”
“That explains it, though.”
“Explains what?”
“Why Greg’s such a sweetheart and you . . .”
Dimple: on. “And me?”
I look away, flushing. “Nothing. Anyway.” I rummage in my coat pockets for my phone. “Greg’s settled down, so I’m going to call an Uber—”
“So,” Jack asks conversationally, “what came first?”
I look up. “Uh?”
“The fake-girlfriend enterprise?” He sounds genuinely curious. “Or the myriad of different Elsies you impersonate? Was it on-the-job training, or had you been . . . modifying yourself before?”
“I don’t—” Oh, there’s no point in arguing with him. Not when he’s not even wrong. “Listen, now that we’ve ascertained that I’m not some gold digger threatening the Smith gene pool, could you stop?”
“Stop . . . ?”
“This weird”—I gesticulate between us—“anthropological character study of me. Fine, you got me. I want people to like me, and I give them the me they want. I enjoy getting along with others. Gasp. Report me to the authenticity police for aiding and abetting.”
“It’s easier like that, isn’t it?”
“What is?”
“Never showing anyone who you really are.” He watches me calmly.
Patiently. In the soft light of the apartment, his eyes are dark all around.
Sometimes I hear a car running, but the traffic here is not nearly as loud as at my own apartment.
“That way if something goes wrong, if someone rejects you, then it’s not about you, is it?
When you’re yourself, that’s when you’re exposed.
Vulnerable. But if you hold back . . . Losing a game’s always painful, but knowing that you haven’t played your best hand makes it bearable. ”
I hide my fist behind my back, clenching it tight at the unsolicited psychoanalysis. My nails bite into my palm. “Bold of you to assume that the real me is my best hand.”
That stupid, crooked half smile is back. “Foolish of you to think it isn’t.”
“Come, now.” I force myself to smile sweetly. “We both know you’re only mad because I’ve never been the Elsie you wanted.”
“Is that so?” He looks like he was put on this stringed plane of reality as an omniscient entity. I’m angry, and he needs to stop talking like he understands.
“It’s your own damn fault, Jack.”
“Why?”
“Because you”—I point my finger in his face—“don’t give me anything. Everyone else does. Something to latch on to, something I can use to be the person they want. But you’re not putting out signals. And that’s why you’re not getting the VIP treatment like everyone else. So quit whining, please.”
“I see.” His hand, warm and calloused, closes around my wrist and pulls my index finger from his face down to his chest. He covers the back of my hand with his palm, and what the hell is he—?
“Have you considered that maybe you’re already the way I want you to be? That maybe there are no signals because nothing needs to be changed?”
I scoff. Here he is, the Jack I’ve come to know and loathe. “Right. Sure.”
“Once again,” he says, tone oddly gentle, “what happened to you, Elsie?”
“Seriously? What happened to—” My hand is still under his.
I lift my chin, bringing our faces that much closer.
“This is what happened to me, Jack: a little over six months ago, I go meet my date’s family for the first time.
And maybe we aren’t really together, but you know what?
It doesn’t matter. What matters is that since the very start, my date’s brother is an absolute prick.
He keeps staring at me like I’m Ginger Spice crashing the royal wedding.
He asks his brother questions about me because he thinks I’m inferior and unworthy.
He acts unfriendly and suspicious whenever I’m around.
I think we can both agree that given the opportunity, he’d want to change the shit out of me. ”
The last part comes out more aggressively than I meant, but—whatever.
I’m mad now, growing exponentially madder as I watch Jack nod slowly, as though considering my words.
“Well, that’s an interpretation.” Heat radiates through me from his grip.
It warms my belly, licks up my spine, reminds me how close we’ve somehow gravitated.
“It’s facts,” I hiss.
“You’re a physicist, Elsie. You should know better than to throw around the word fact when quantum mechanics exists.”
“What’s your interpretation, then?”
He says nothing for a long moment, as if collecting his thoughts or deciding whether I’m worth his words. Then something shifts. The air in the room becomes thicker. His Adam’s apple bobs, his eyes fix on mine, and he starts talking.
“A little over six months ago, I go to a family birthday expecting the usual night of misery. I’m only there for my brother, because I can count on two fingers the relatives I care about, and he’s one of them.
We usually stick together, but this dinner is different.
My brother brings a date. A woman he’s never spoken about—weird, since we talk nearly every day.
The family, especially his mom, are thrilled.
” Jack’s grip on my hand shifts. Softens.
My fingers are still on his chest, half-pressed against his heart.
My own has begun to thump in a hesitant, bracing way.