Chapter 23 Freezing Point #2
“Elsie.” A quarter of Andrea appears in my field of view. Just her smile, small and private, pointed up at Jack. “Does she know that you despise people like her?”
“Andy, are you drunk?”
“A bit.” She laughs nervously. “Aren’t you? Elsie must be rubbing off. She must be a great lay, if you fucked over Pereira and Crowley for her. I guess she’s hot, in a bland way—”
“They fucked over themselves. And you should go back to the others,” Jack says firmly. “You’re more than a bit drunk if you think telling someone that their girlfriend is bland is a good idea.”
“She’s not your girlfriend.”
“She is if she wants to be. She can be my damn wife if she wants to be.” Jack’s losing his usual cool. For all his commanding presence, he’s rarely truly irritated, and Andrea knows this, too. There’s a fracture on her face, masked by another weak laugh that hurts my ears.
“A theorist, Jack? You having a slow year?”
“Are you serious—”
“You lost to her at Go,” she says, petulant even as she tries to keep her tone light. I should be offended by what she’s saying, but something’s stopping me. Something heartbreaking. “You never lose at Go. You said you’d never lose at Go.”
“I never said that.” Whatever I recognized in her tone, Jack did, too. His voice softens.
“I bet you lost on purpose. If that’s how bad you want her—”
“She won it fair and square.” They’re talking about something else altogether. Something that has nothing to do with Go or anything that happened tonight. She cares about him deeply, I realize. More than that. “Even if I had lost to her on purpose—it has nothing to do with you.”
“I think it does.”
“Andy.” He sighs. “I’ve been honest about how I feel. You said you understood—”
“Jesus, Jack. She’s a theorist.”
“She’s a better scientist than you or I will ever be. You’re hurt, and I’m trying to cut you some slack, but you’re way over the line—”
“Why are you her champion now? You’re you and—she makes up stuff. Is it because you’re sleeping with her?”
“It’s because I know her work.”
“But you’ve been saying shit about people like her for fifteen years. You’re the entire reason her field was discredited—you ruined careers, Jack. And now you’re telling me she is the person you’re willing to feel something for?”
“That’s it,” Jack orders. “I’m done.”
“You—”
“I’m serious. We can talk about this when you’re sober. But you need to give me some space before I say something I regret.”
“If—”
“Andy.”
A second later, Andrea appears in the hallway, eyes shining with tears. She looks at me for a painful, uncomfortable moment, then moves past without a word. I press my shoulders against the wall, trying to stop the centrifuge in my brain.
Does she know that you despise people like her?
He doesn’t despise me. Does he? No. Honesty, right? No, Jack doesn’t despise me.
But it’s not surprising that Andrea would believe that. It’s exactly where I believed he stood, approximately two meltdowns in his apartment ago. He’s Jonathan Smith-Turner. What he did to theoretical physics one and a half decades ago is in the Library of Congress and has a Wikipedia entry.
“What are you doing?” George says, appearing in the hallway.
“Oh, nothing. Just . . . looking at this art.” I point to a flower painting to my right.
“Do you want it? My wife made it with her ex at one of those paint-and-sip things. I’ve been trying to get rid of it.”
I laugh shakily. “Um, maybe next time.”
She enters the living room and I go to Jack, who’s staring out the window, back stiff and muscles coiled.
“Grumpy because you lost?” I ask, even though I know he’s not. I just want to watch the tension leave his body. Because maybe it’ll leave mine, too.
“Elsie.”
I heard you, I should say. Do you really despise—
You said “girlfriend”—
What did she mean, when—
But there’s no time. He leans forward, hands around my neck, and kisses me deep for a long time. People walk by, make jokes, give us looks, but he doesn’t stop. I don’t want him to, either.
“Everything okay?” I ask when he pulls back.
He looks away. Grabs his bottle from the counter and drains what’s left. “Want to leave?”
“Yeah. Sure.”
The ride to my place is quiet. I feel cold everywhere except on my knee—where Jack’s hand rests, his grip just a bit tighter than casual. I’m not sure why I invite him upstairs. Maybe I know what needs to happen. Maybe I’m just trying to hold on to him, to prolong that point of contact.
Cece’s not home, probably out on Faux business, and I’m vaguely relieved.
Our place is messy, because the last time we cleaned was when Mrs. Tuttle came over to convince us that the green stuff on the wall was totally paint, totally not mold.
I try to see the apartment through Jack’s eyes, but to his credit he doesn’t act too Smith about the conditions I live in.
Instead, he does something so Jack, my chest almost explodes with it: he picks up the top of the credenza like it weighs nothing.
His biceps strain against the flannel as he puts it where it belongs, perfectly centered on the bottom part.
Three seconds. For something Cece and I have been putting off for three years.
“Nice place,” he says, dusting off his hands on his jeans.
I laugh softly. “It’s not.”
He leans against the table where I’ve worked, eaten, laughed, cried for the past seven years. “Then you really should move in with me.”
I laugh again. I should thank him for the credenza. It’s just . . .
“I wasn’t joking. This place is . . .” There’s a bug, belly-up on the floor. “Don’t those live in tropical areas?”
“Mmm. Our working theory is that this place is a 4D nexus where multiple climate regions exist at once and . . . Were you serious? About moving in?”
He shrugs. “Would save you money.”
“Pretty sure half of your rent is more expensive than half of this.”
“I don’t rent. So you wouldn’t have to pay me. I don’t care about that.”
Right. He doesn’t care about money. Because he has money. “I can’t leave Cece,” I say lightly. “Want to take her in, too?”
“I have an extra room.”
I snort. And then realize the look he’s giving me.
Like he’s serious serious. And waiting for an answer.
“I can’t move in with you,” I tell him. “We’re not even . . .” We’re not even what? I look away. I feel like total shit, and I cannot understand if he’s joking, though he must be, but he looks weirdly earnest, and . . .
A few steps over the cheap vinyl and he’s standing right in front of me. I’m trapped between him and the kitchen sink, and strong fingers come up to my chin, angle it back.
“I think we are.”
My heart trembles. That blue slice cuts into me like a knife, and what comes out of me is “Andrea wouldn’t agree.” I didn’t mean to bring her up. In fact, I actively meant to avoid the topic forever. But I guess this honesty thing is a little addictive.
Jack closes his eyes and swears softly under his breath. “You heard her.”
“I . . .” I free my chin, and he understands that I need space. He takes a step back, but I still cannot breathe. “I didn’t mean to. I . . .” I exhale. “Yes, I did.”
Jack sighs. “I’m sorry. I’ll talk to her when she’s calmed down.”
I nod, and it should be the end of it—a resolution, nicely wrapped. Instead I hear myself ask, “What about Crowley and Pereira? And Cole. And the rest of your students. Will you talk to them, too?”
His lips press together, expression shifting to something opaque. Like he’s bracing for something. “What is this, Elsie?”
All of a sudden, the million balls that have been lazily rolling around in the back of my head for the past two weeks are bouncing against my skull.
And they hurt. “Do you know what the problem is? That these people—they admire you. They really, really like you. Your students, your colleagues, your friends. They all want to please you. And for most of them, pleasing you means showing that they dislike what you dislike. And just like that, everything goes back to that Annals article.”
He exhales. “Elsie—”
“To be fair, I did the same.” I begin pacing around the kitchen.
“I like you so much, I’ve been avoiding thinking about it for as long as I could.
And to give you credit, you’re good at letting me forget.
You never feel like the person who wrote it, which makes it easy to pretend that you didn’t exist before I met you, that your past actions don’t matter.
But what Andrea said today . . . I owe it to my mentor to remember.
I can’t forget that Laurendeau was the editor of the Annals at the time.
That he was censured. And . . .” I feel the same mix of anger and embarrassment I always do when I think about what happened.
“The thing is, Jack . . . you go through life with your man-with-money confidence, never second-guessing your actions. But there were lots of unintentional victims to what you did—”
“Laurendeau wasn’t that,” he says flatly.
“Yes, he was. His career was hugely impacted by—”
“He wasn’t unintentional.”
“He . . .” I stop pacing. The words don’t immediately sink in. And when they do, I’m still left confused. “What?”
Jack wets his lips. “Laurendeau was the target.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I wrote the article because I wanted Laurendeau’s career to be over.” His throat moves. “It was everything else that was unintentional.”
My mind spins a million circles, then halts abruptly. “Everything else?”
“I didn’t want to become the poster boy for the rift between theorists and experimentalists.
” He throws up one hand, impatient. For a moment I sense hesitation, but his eyes harden, stubborn in a way that’s almost .
. . young. Seventeen again. “I wasn’t making a statement.
All I wanted was Laurendeau out of physics—and I failed, clearly.
Since after screwing over my mother, he’s been busy fucking up the life of the single person I’ve ever been in love with. ”
What did he . . . His mother? The single person he . . .
“I—”