Chapter Twenty-Three Keely
Chapter Twenty-Three
Keely
Keely’s foot bounced wildly under the table. Today, Tuesday, was the first day of her tentative truce with Max. They were going to “work together.” Whatever that meant.
They’d managed to make it back to campus okay this past weekend. He didn’t leave her stranded, even though she had to pee twice and they stopped for food once. He didn’t “accidentally” drop her fries or loosen the lid of her drink.
She was still half convinced it was all an elaborate ruse, that he was planning a bait and switch. That had to have been why, when Max appeared in her line of vision with a Q-branded coffee in his hand, her heartbeat spiked.
His mouth was set in a firm line. “Why the hell do you study in what is essentially the library’s attic? There are so many open tables on the first floor.” He handed over the coffee, then set the shaker bottle, hanging from his pinkie, on the table before thrusting his hands in his pocket.
She frowned. “Did you get a—?”
He pulled his hand free, revealing not one but two paper straws. “In case you don’t finish mainlining your drink before it disintegrates.” He pulled out the chair across from her and sat down.
Even she didn’t possess that much forethought. Keely unwrapped one straw and stabbed it in. “I like this spot because it’s quiet.” She eyed him through her lashes. “I can’t hear myself think down there.”
He wore normal athletic gear in his signature dark, brooding colors. A flush to his cheeks gave him more life than she was used to. It was how he’d looked after his race. And in the locker room.
“You came from physiotherapy?” she said, shutting down the recurring thought of pleasure-filled Max.
He nodded, pulling his laptop from his backpack. “I go twice a week.” He slung his bag in the open chair, and his face returned to its hard set.
“Are you still working through the injury from the trials?” Why couldn’t she stop asking questions? And why did she keep holding her breath, waiting for his answer?
“It’s routine after an in-event accident.
” He uncapped his protein smoothie, and when Keely eyed it warily, he pulled it closer.
“Guided stretching, making sure none of my tendons are too tight or too loose. Checking the cartilage, that sort of thing. Coach has me keeping an eye on it. It makes the idea of hurdles. . .” He glared down at his hands—or maybe his legs.
“Not something I’ve been focusing on lately. ”
“Does it hurt?”
His shrug was too tight. “I’m used to it.”
That wasn’t an answer.
She took a sip of coffee. The slightly burnt caramel, double espresso, and oat milk made her serotonin soar. Keely blinked. “How did you do this?”
“What?” he said, too casually to not actually know what she was talking about.
“Max,” she said through an incredulous laugh. He’d gotten her go-to coffee order exactly right.
“I took a guess,” he insisted.
She gave him a flat look.
He opened his laptop. “I asked the guy for your usual, alright?” He chicken-pecked around on his keyboard. “I figure you’re there enough, they’d know your order by name. I had to get on your good side if you’re going to help me with this assignment.”
Right. He wouldn’t get her coffee order exactly right and bring her extra straws just because they’d had a few charged moments.
She flipped to a fresh page in her Miscellaneous notebook and uncapped her pen, a neutral black. Fitting for him. “What’s the assignment? You said it’s for your motor development class?”
Max dipped his chin. “We’re given a profile of a child at three different stages of their life, plus stressors and outside factors, and asked to diagnose them.
” He flipped through his singular notebook, pages sticking out and dog-eared seemingly at random, until he found what he was looking for and spun it around.
She skimmed the page. “You’re basically playing The Sims for a class assignment.”
“No wonder I’m struggling. I’m not much of a video game guy.” He ran a hand through his hair, and she swore she heard it, the friction of his rough palm over the silky strands. She remembered that hand on her hip, searing through her shirt.
Remembered it in her dreams, in other, more interesting places.
She cleared her throat, focusing on the page until the words blurred. “What’s snagging you?”
She’d caught him mid-drink, his throat bobbing, jaw working as he munched on a chunk of. . . banana? She picked at a dried-on bit still clinging to her keyboard and waited.
“It feels pass/fail,” he said, then swiped his tongue over the corner of his mouth.
“Life or death. I know it’s an assignment, but I can’t get past the thought that these cases are based in reality.
They wouldn’t be asking if it weren’t important for us to know, and there’s a lot of pressure to get it right. ” He scratched his neck.
Keely drew three small boxes, one at the top, middle, and bottom of the page, along with three smaller boxes beneath each. “I have to do this with my thesis sometimes when the picture gets too big. It helps to compartmentalize.” A few scribbled words later, she showed him the notebook.
“A checklist,” he drolled. “And in black. My favorite color. Thank you so much.”
“Write the scenarios in the big boxes, and your possible courses of action in the smaller ones. They’ll be your basis for or against your argument.”
He tapped a finger against the page, and she felt it at the base of her neck. She shivered and grabbed her sweatshirt.
“Why three boxes?” he said, watching her.
“There’s space for more if you need it. It’s similar to how we do lab work. You write all possible and expected outcomes, plus what happens if you don’t intervene at all, and compare that to your actual results. Which you won’t have, but the framework is the same.”
Max furrowed his brow, running his top teeth slowly over his bottom lip. “And if I get it wrong?”
“Then it’s only wrong on that one paper.” She nodded at the notebook. “I’ve got dozens more.”
Drumming his fingers across the page, Max nodded resolutely, picked up the pen, and got to work. She forced herself to focus on her own screen.
She had the email with Max’s essay pulled up, but she couldn’t bring herself to open it. What if there really was no hope for hers? She’d rescued her own critiqued essay from Dr. Goff yesterday, and there was so much red, Keely still saw the slashes whenever she blinked.
She couldn’t exactly read his essay with him here, could she? What if she wanted to punch him in the face after she finished?
So she switched to checking AMU’s Olympiad email, responding to enquiries and clearing spam. Across from her, Max worked diligently, his tongue poking from the corner of his mouth.
Keely saved another email she hadn’t meant to delete. She couldn’t focus when he was here.
She couldn’t really focus when he wasn’t here, either, so it was most likely a Keely problem. Maybe Zoey would have a solution.
Keely typed out a text to her: does coffee stop having an effect after a certain point? my usual is no longer working!!!
She deleted the entire thing and instead sent: will you be home later?
The message displayed read instantly, but no typing bubbles appeared.
Keely’s coffee was half gone when Max pushed the notebook back to her side of the table. “Like this?”
Warmth spread through her chest as she read over his first case. “Makes sense to me,” she said. “Now do it two more times.”
Hours later, after Keely had wrapped up with Max and sent him on his way with actionable steps for his assignment, she made her way to the lab to work on her thesis. She still hadn’t gotten a response from Zoey.
Her latest line of research was aimed at speeding up the reaction to caffeine for her test case, which metabolized caffeine at the “average” rate of three to five hours.
She’d seen promising results last week by introducing an extra dose of L-theanine, but that already existed on the market, and if it worked, Keely would know about it by now.
Evening caffeine in hand (a double-bag serving of black tea from the Q, less potent than the drink Max brought her earlier), she settled in at her station and pulled her thesis notebook from her bag.
Her most recent equations stared back at her, swimming on the page, and the stress of this compounded with the stress from her parents, her moving boxes from home shoved in the corner of her otherwise spotless bedroom here.
Max’s essay, which still sat unread in her inbox, and Zoey’s non-reply.
The words on the page blurred, and she rubbed at her eyes. Think, Keely.
She wanted to make the body metabolize the caffeine faster, and safely, without an adrenaline crash or nasty side effects. It couldn’t be that difficult, could it?
What did she know, at the foundation? The core.
Atoms. Cells.
All life, Keely’s included, boiled down to atoms and cells. Her problems—with the scholarship and Max and her parents—would never be bigger than those.
So she focused there now.
Caffeine woke someone up by blocking adenosine receptors, the parts of the brain that made you tired.
It worked a little like a hangover, she now knew, in that there was nothing that dulled the effects of caffeine but time.
Some scientists believed boosting the body’s metabolism made a difference, though research was still inconclusive.
Same thing with drinking a lot of water, though that had more merit.
She doodled a water molecule in the margin of her notebook, the positive and negative ions coded in blue and red. How did the human body produce water?
Hydration, diet, exercise. . .
Max exercised. That was becoming increasingly clear.
He didn’t matter right now, though. She only had, at max (no pun intended), one slot available per day for him, and he’d already used it up.
Zoey would know what specific parts of Keely’s brain were pinging with the thoughts of Max’s exercise routine. Why things seemed better when he was around.
Better again whenever Max ran his hands all over her.
Better and worse, when he took them off.
It was close to eleven when Keely gave up for the night, trudging home. Her nose tickled, and she made a note in her phone to renew her prescription for allergy medicine. This spring was going to be a doozy, if the blooming flowers she passed were any indication.
The apartment was dark when she pushed her front door open, which surprised her. Zoey was usually still awake.
Keely padded down the hall and knocked on Zoey’s door when she saw light shining underneath.
“Zoey,” Keely whined. “I need you. I was helping Max study earlier and now I can’t study because I keep thinking about Max. What part of my brain is broken?”
“I’m sorry, Keel.” Her voice was strained. “I’m working on the fundraiser.”
She frowned at the door. A large wooden “Z” stared back at her, hand painted to mimic the musculoskeletal system. Keely had a matching “K” on her door, painted with a detailed model of DNA. “Oh. Do you want help?”
Zoey hesitated. “Maybe this weekend. I’m almost done for the night, anyway.” The door still didn’t open. “And I know you’re busy.”
Keely’s eyelids grew heavy, like her body was rebelling at the very thought of doing more work tonight. “Not too busy for you,” she said, then yawned.
“Okay,” Zoey said on a laugh, and nothing else.
Later, when Keely dragged herself to the bathroom to brush her teeth before bed, Zoey was still up, working in her room.
She’d never texted Keely back.
The wall between them was more than physical. Keely fell asleep facing it, frowning.
At least Max would be at the shelter on Sunday. And maybe she’d see him before then, for another study session.
She was looking forward to it.
Even if she didn’t know why.