15. Binary Fission #2
Time collapsed. At some point I ran samples in the secure lab and cleaned up after myself with military precision, mostly because I knew the next person to use the space would be me again, and if I left a mess, it would just be my own future self who suffered.
I liked to think of it as a recursive act of kindness.
All day, I’d been stalling. And now, in the darkness of Tara’s back seat, I was still stalling.
Waiting for me at the end of this ride was an uncomfortable conversation about feelings— great, yay feelings —and a new, likely jarring, shift in my reality.
I’d never met anyone who embraced sudden shifts in reality without some instinctive resistance and at least a little crankiness.
Tara pulled up to the curb outside Andreas’s building. She didn’t immediately reach for the locks or say goodbye. Instead, she turned around, elbow draped over the back of her seat, and looked at me with a subtle intensity.
“You okay?” she asked.
“Sure,” I said, then, after a beat, “I’ve been worse.”
She laughed, low and genuine. “Want me to walk you up?”
“No,” I said, then caught myself. “Yes. Wait—no, I’m fine. I’ve been here before.”
She nodded, studying me. “Okay,” she said, but didn’t move to start the car again. “Text me if you need anything. I’ll be in the garage across the street until ten.”
I gave her a thumbs-up, but my hand trembled so badly I had to turn it into a wave. I fumbled the handle, stepped out, and closed the door with a gentleness that sounded like an apology.
At the entrance, the doorman clocked me immediately. He gave a curt nod, then opened the door before I could even raise a hand in greeting.
“Good evening, Ms. Jarlston,” he said. The way he pronounced my name was clinical, almost like it was a password. “Welcome home.”
I wanted to correct him—explain that I wasn’t really “home,” I was just “here,” and only because of a paperwork anomaly and a series of questionable life choices. Instead, I nodded, mumbled a thank-you, and walked through the vestibule.
The last time I’d been here, Andreas held my hand, and I remembered the exact pressure of his palm and the scent of his coat, and how it made me feel weirdly exposed and helpless.
I shook the memory loose and marched to the elevator, punched in the code Andreas had given me, and rode in silence to the penthouse.
I made a game of staring at my own reflection in the mirrored walls, trying to will my face into something more serenely composed and less emotionally constipated.
When I stepped out, the hallway was empty. I hovered outside the apartment door for a full minute, rehearsing different greetings in my head, then finally raised my hand to ring the bell.
The door opened before I could touch it.
Standing in the doorway was a tall, broad-shouldered guy with pale blond hair and blue eyes so bright they were legit alarming.
He wore mesh basketball shorts and a slightly sweat-dampened long-sleeved T-shirt, and looked like he’d stepped straight out of Prep-School Quarterly (not a real newspaper as far as I knew; but if it existed, this guy would be their spokesperson, founder, and president).
I blinked, taking an involuntary step backward. “Uh, hi?”
The man smiled, a tiny curve of his lips. “You must be Samantha?” His accent was subtle, American Southern.
“That’s me,” I said. “Who’s asking?”
He stepped aside, and gestured for me to come in. “Roman. A friend of Andreas’s.”
From somewhere deep in the apartment, a female voice with a faint British-sounding accent called out, “He’s not a friend. They’re archrivals.”
My eyebrows nearly shot off my forehead. Roman gave me a small, conspiratorial smile, then leaned in to stage-whisper, “We’re not actually rivals. But the internet thinks we are.”
A woman appeared at the end of the entryway, drying her hands on a towel.
She was petite and sharp-boned, with thick, long black hair pulled into a high ponytail and a beauty mark perfectly placed below her right eye.
She wore black yoga pants and a gray exercise shirt.
Even in casual wear, she radiated a kind of intimidating composure that made me instantly want to look up and listen to her TED Talk. Assuming she had a TED Talk.
“Hi.” She offered her pale hand. “I’m Jackie Cheng.”
I shook it. Her grip was precise, not too firm, not too soft.
“Nice to meet you,” I said a bit robotically, only because I’d already been overwhelmed prior to entering the apartment. And now, suddenly faced with unexpected people , my nerves were fraying.
Jackie held on to my hand a beat longer than necessary, then pulled me into the apartment with a smooth, practiced motion. “Come in, Andreas is in the shower. We just got back from the gym. Roman insisted we had to squeeze in one last session before his curfew.”
“Curfew?” I repeated, not sure if I was missing a joke.
Roman nodded. “I have to check in with my host family at ten sharp, or they send out the search party.” He said it with a straight face, so it was either true or a level of deadpan I could only aspire to.
Jackie rolled her eyes. “He’s in town for a few days, doing a chess camp with the local kids. They treat him like he’s a big celebrity or something.”
“I’m not a celebrity,” Roman grumbled.
Jackie ignored him and steered me into the living area. “Sit down. Want some water? Juice? I think there’s kombucha, but it’s homemade.”
I perched on the edge of the couch. “Water’s good, thanks.” After I said the words, I marveled at the fact that this woman had just offered me something to drink in the apartment where I was now currently living. Ahhhh! New realities suck!
Roman sat at the far end of the sofa, angled toward me but not so close as to invade my space. He watched me with a kind of directness I found both flattering and disorienting.
Jackie disappeared into the kitchen, then called back, “How was your day, Samantha?”
I thought about the hours spent hiding in the biology building, the way my stomach had twisted all day in anticipation of this very moment, only to find Andreas’s friends welcoming me instead of my fake fiancé.
“Uneventful,” I said. “How about you? Did you, uh, have a nice day?”
Look at me, chitchatting like a chitchatter. Would wonders never cease?
Jackie returned with three glasses of water, handed one to me, one to Roman, and kept the third. “You work in genetics, right? PhD candidate?”
“Yes,” I said, surprised she knew so much about me. “Final year. Or it should be.”
Roman sipped his water, then asked, “What is your dissertation about?”
I blinked at the question, thrown by how sincerely interested he sounded. “Uhh. Well, originally, it was epigenetic markers of stress inheritance in CRISPR-edited lines of drosophila.”
Jackie made a face of pure delight. “Ooh, I love fruit fly people. They’re always the most dramatic at conferences. Nothing like a five-millimeter bug to turn a scientist into a gladiator.”
I found myself laughing even though her words confused me. “I’m not sure what that means. But, um, I changed my focus after one year. My dissertation is now on bioremediation of ocean plastics via genetically modified microbes.”
“Oh. Cool. Isn’t the island of trash in the Pacific Ocean larger than Texas? Or is that a made-up fact? Where did I read that?” Jackie pointed her gaze at Roman. “He’s the real scientist here. Chess is just his side-hustle.”
Roman’s mouth tugged up on one side. “I’m not a scientist. But I do like puzzles.”
Jackie rolled her eyes, like his statement was a shared joke. I decided I liked Jackie a lot, and Roman maybe even more, but in a way that was less “be friends” and more “he’s interesting to observe.”
“So”—Jackie sunk into the armchair across from me—“do couples in America typically move in together only after getting engaged?”
My mouth went dry, her question catching me off guard. For some reason, I felt wholly unprepared to discuss the American societal norms surrounding engagements.
Roman bailed me out. “There’s no such thing as typical in the USA. Some folks wait until marriage to move in together, some wait ’til engagement. Some move in without ever planning to get married at all.”
Jackie nodded, absorbing this information, then glanced at me. Perhaps she misread my wide eyes as confusion because she explained, “I’m from Singapore. We sometimes have marriage requirements surrounding housing. Or rather, before applying for a flat. Sorry. I was just curious.”
Roman grinned, a tiny flash of teeth. “Jackie travels a lot, but doesn’t get out much.”
She wrinkled her nose at him. “This is my first time to the USA and I don’t want to take for granted that American television is indicative of reality.”
“It’s not,” both Roman and I said in unison, then the three of us shared a grin, with Roman adding, “Especially—ironically—reality television. Reality television is less reflective of American society than most scripted TV.”
“What a relief,” Jackie chuckled.
Feeling myself relax a bit, I took another sip of water and floundered for an acceptable subject to discuss with Andreas’s friends even as curiosity swelled within me. I surmised that Roman and Andreas competed against each other in tournaments and were colleagues. But how did Jackie fit in?
Before I could figure out how to frame the question casually rather than blurt out, How do you know Andreas? Are you good friends? How long have you known each other? Did you date? Jackie glanced at her watch, then abruptly stood up.
“Shoot, we have to run. Roman’s curfew is real. And I have an online match at eleven.”
Roman also stood and turned to me with a small smile. “It was nice meeting you, Samantha.”
“You, too.” I set my water glass on a coaster and straightened from the couch, wondering if I should walk them out.
I should, right? Technically, I live here. It would be polite.