Chapter 2
chapter
two
SHAY
A month before the graveyard.
“Willing to do anything—”
“Don’t say that!” I said, reaching for my phone.
My sister, Lilith aka Lithie, threw it across the room and out of my reach. A tan, muscular hand with a tattooed, thin-line depiction of the Milky Way’s orbits shot up and pulled it out of the air.
My best friend, colleague, and pain in the ass—Eames Avery.
“Hmm…” Eames settled back into a velvet pink sofa, a look of faux seriousness sparkling in his hazel eyes. “Looking for a shadow daddy with a monster cock.”
A tall woman with silky dark skin and even silkier charcoal curls leaned over his chair. Enter my other best friend, colleague, and pain in the ass—Olivia Kitt.
“No, no,” Olly said, brown eyes glimmering.
“That’s not enough. Our girl likes it dark.
Think of the book she chose this week.” With her arms slung over the back of Eames’s chair, Olly’s face scrunched in concentration at my phone.
It was as if she were trying to decipher residual noise in the cosmic microwave background and not setting up my dating profile.
“She wants to be chased through a graveyard and have a knife—”
I stood up and snatched the phone back. “I regret telling you this.”
Every few days, and sometimes sooner, the three of us got together to discuss our favorite book.
We made book-themed cocktails and, if one of us was feeling particularly generous, matching food.
From cowboys to aliens to fucked-up boys in college to the grade A yearners, our book club was all about smut.
And yeah, this month I’d chosen something dark.
Rather, pitch-black.
I’d heard every argument about why dark romance was terrible and the worst thing to happen to feminism since low-rise jeans, but what could I say? I liked the darker stuff.
I loved an obsessive, possessive man with bloody knuckles and bloodier secrets. Maybe because they always seemed the most fearless when it came to the girl. They didn’t give a shit what demons she had or what skeletons were in her closet—they just wanted her.
As someone who’d grown up with her fair share of demons and skeletons, there was something intoxicating about that.
Cosmically, dark has more gravity than light. The light is drawn to the dark. So, really, I’m just going with the flow of the universe.
Today, however, there was something more interesting to discuss than the newest book boyfriend. Like the fact that I, Shay Adder, monogamy junkie whose entire dating life consisted of one romantic partner, was now making a kink-specific dating profile and seeking a no-strings-attached arrangement.
“You suck,” I said.
Olly gave me a half shrug—sorry not sorry.
Olivia “Olly” Kitt and I met in grad school.
We’d done the same doctoral program and landed similar positions at the same lab.
We started work together when our now boss, Jenna Fowler, began conducting the largest spectroscopic survey ever conducted—analyzing light from an unprecedented number of stars and galaxies.
A few months later, we met Eames, a doctoral student studying the age of the universe.
For Olly and Eames, researchers in early-universe physics, Jenna Fowler’s lab was a dream job.
While Utah didn’t have a dedicated lab for my field of interest, there was a natural harmonious overlap between those studying the age of the universe and those like me trying to decipher the what and why of dark matter.
Because you couldn’t map the universe without dark matter.
“Listen, my love, you need us,” my sister said. “You got your doctorate in, like, the universe—”
“Exploring viable dark matter candidates beyond the standard model,” I corrected, reaching for a slice of pizza.
The cheesy triangles looked a little at odds on my grandmother’s floral antique china—the only silverware and plates my sister allowed us to use, because “Of course I’m going to use it.
What, should I put it in storage until I die and continue the sisterhood of traveling china that never gets used? ”
“Right, you got your doctorate in that, and I got mine in dick.”
As hilarious as my sister was, she’d actually gotten her doctorate in criminal psychology.
She was as much of a nerd, if not more so, than I.
Three days a week, she lived out in the Utah desert, working at a supermax prison, trying to understand and rehabilitate the world’s worst criminals.
Mass murderers. Terrorists. Serial rapists. Mafia kingpins.
“I did my undergrad in that,” Eames mused.
“We need to do something about your profile,” my sister continued. “You’re not even in the photo. It’s just…” My sister leaned over my shoulder, squinting. “A dot?”
“That’s not a dot,” I said, mildly indignant, “that’s the Bullet Cluster.” They all shared a look. Despite the fact that I was certain they knew what it was, I felt the need to explain. “It’s proof dark matter exists.”
“Honey,” Eames said, face pinched.
Insecurity crept hot up my spine. I had no idea what I was doing.
The number of times I’d started a bio, deleted it, and started it again had to be measured with scientific notation.
I didn’t know how to be sexy. All my photos were with my sister’s cat or random things like sunsets and weird-looking bugs.
I had planned on keeping this new development to myself, but then I made the mistake of telling them after one too many cocktails. Now here we were.
“This was a mistake,” I said. “I can’t even go on a date. I…I…” I looked for an excuse. “I need to shave,” I ended, somewhat weakly.
My sister made a face. “Is it going to take more than a day to shave?”
“Maybe,” I snapped defensively. “There’s a bush situation, like 2008 White House.”
Eames whistled low. “That’s a bad bush.”
“Why not that photo of you in Mexico?” Olly asked, changing the subject. “The one in your skimpy pink polka-dot bikini.”
“You mean when Graham proposed to me?” I asked. “That feels blasphemous.”
She rolled her eyes. “It’s not like you’re still together.”
“Oh, I know,” Eames said. “Do the one of you at the pole class Lithie taught.”
Because in addition to being a brilliant psychologist, my sister moonlit as an exotic dancer for a high-end members-only club.
Lithie was the opposite of me in every way.
I was short and soft, she was tall and lithe.
I was reserved, she was outgoing. I’d had one sexual experience, she’d had them all.
I inherited our father’s honey-blond hair, she inherited our mother’s dark brown.
We’d both inherited our mother’s wild, curly hair and brown eyes.
My eyes leaned toward dark chocolate, while hers were brighter, like citrine.
“I can’t do that one,” I said to Eames.
My first impression couldn’t be me upside down on a pole, one leg in the air.
People might think that I had experience.
They might get expectations.
“I’ll find you something,” Lithie said, and grabbed my phone, smacking me away when I reached to grab it back. “I won’t post anything without approval.”
A loud, staccato synth of a Britney Spears song sounded—“Oops!…I Did It Again.” Eames’s alarm, because he used Britney for everything and didn’t get the memo it was 2026—not 2006, when custom ringtones and alarms were still a thing.
“More food!” Eames stood up.
Olly and Eames lived in an apartment across from my sister and me, which was great, because our oven was used as storage, either for clothing, books, or Lithie’s condoms.
Eames left the door open as he went to their apartment.
“Here!” Lithie said. “This one.”
“That one?” I frowned.
“You look like you just got fucked,” my sister explained.
It was the day after a book retreat. We’d been up all night drinking, so my lips had that swollen lack-of-sleep quality. My eyes were smudged with eyeliner I hadn’t removed. My long blonde hair had air-dried, the curls messy and slightly unkempt. Freckles visible.
I shook my head, taking back my phone wordlessly.
“Let’s talk about the book,” I said, changing the subject.
“No one wants to talk about that.” Eames came back into the apartment, carrying piping-hot Big Mac wonton cups—something he’d seen on TikTok and wanted to make. “It’s faux meat, of course, for our little vegetarian.” He gave me, the little vegetarian, a look as he set the tray down.
“He’s right.” Olly reached for a themed cocktail. Black charcoal with vodka and lemon and edible glitter. It looked like a galaxy, or maybe the morality of the hero.
“I don’t want to talk about the book,” Lithie said. “I want to talk about how my sister went from prude to joining a kink site.”
“I’m not a prude,” I said.
It wasn’t that I wanted to be like this.
Clearly I had a lot of fantasies—hence smut book club.
But dating was always difficult for me. I didn’t date as a teenager because, at fifteen, I was diagnosed with a chronic illness, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome.
So when most people my age were giving their first hand job, I was going to the hospital and getting my first ultrasound.
And instead of decorating my graduation cap with them, I graduated into another lifelong illness—chronic fatigue syndrome.
I was starting to think I’d never meet someone, and then I met Graham.
“Are you sure you want this?” my sister asked, dark eyes sharp like a dagger. “You don’t need to go from the kiddie pool to the Mariana Trench overnight. You could, you know, use Hinge or something and find a relationship.”
That was the thing—I couldn’t do a relationship. After Graham, I vowed to wait a conservative eighty years before doing anything romantic.
I’d picked the app out specifically because it was less about dating and more about kinks and no strings attached. Graham had never wanted to indulge in my fantasies. Instead, he’d suggested I go to therapy.
Lithie, Olly, and Eames stared at me expectantly.
“Fine. Fuck.”
Nerves dissipated, and a cool sort of calm washed over me as I typed out my bio. Here I could be whoever the fuck I wanted. Not sick. Not broken.
I turned my phone toward them so they could see the profile. “I’m officially on the market.”
I used the photo my sister recommended.
But I kept the Bullet Cluster as photo two. I didn’t want to fuck someone who didn’t get the significance of that, anyway.