Love, Theoretically
: Chapter 3

Iblink stupidly—one, two, seven times.

Then I blink again, for good measure.

Why is Jack here, brushing snow off his parka, shrinking the entrance to half its size with his overgrown shoulders? Is it keto night at Miel? Did he get lost on his way to a calisthenics convention?

I’m debating whether to ignore him or briefly wave at him when Monica says, “You’re late.” She sounds chiding. And she looks a lot like she’s talking to Jack, who checks his wristwatch (a wristwatch, in this year of our lord) and calmly replies, “I was in the lab. Must have lost track of time.”

“I had to pry him off the optical tweezers,” the blonde next to him—Andrea?—butts in.

Monica all but rolls her eyes. I glance back and forth between them, disoriented. Does Jack know Monica? Are they SoulCycle buddies? What’s he late for?

“Since you’re finally gracing us with your presence, this is Dr. Elsie Hannaway, one of the candidates for the faculty position. Elsie, this is Dr. Andrea Albritton, an associate professor in the department. And Dr. Jonathan Smith-Turner, the head of the MIT Physics Institute.”

I almost look around. I almost scan the restaurant in search of the elusive Jonathan Smith-Turner. But then I don’t, because Jack is staring down at me, looking exactly how I feel.

Confused. Puzzled. Concerned for Monica’s mental health.

“You’ve got it wrong,” he tells her with that good voice he has, shaking his head, amused. “Elsie’s not a . . .”

He trails off, and his demeanor switches: the amusement dissolves. Something twitches in his ridiculous superhero jaw. The frown between his eyes deepens into a W—for What the everloving fuck? I can only assume.

Jack Smith’s always stubbornly, peculiarly unreadable, but right now I can safely guess that he’s pissed. He wants to curse me. Slaughter me. Feast on the tender marrow of my bones.

Though he does none of that. His expression switches again, this time to a polite blank as he offers his hand. I have no choice but to shake it.

“Dr. Hannaway,” he says, voice rich and disturbingly familiar. His skin is Boston-in-January-with-no-gloves cold. Calloused. Scary. “Thank you for your interest in MIT.”

“Dr. Turner,” I manage around the catch in my throat.

“Smith-Turner.” The correction is a punch in the sternum. This can’t be. Jack Smith and Jonathan Smith-Turner cannot be—

“But call me Jack.”

—the same person.

“Dr. Hannaway goes by Elsie, Jonathan,” Monica says archly.

Jack ignores her tone. “Elsie,” he says, like he’s trying it out for the first time. Like he didn’t use my name just last night, over the sole game of Go I haven’t won in years.

Shit.

I wait for one of us to acknowledge that we already know each other—in vain. My mouth remains closed. His, too. Brown eyes stay on mine, and I feel as pinned as an exotic dragonfly.

This is wrong. Jack Smith is a PE teacher. Greg told me so when we met at that coffee shop to plan our backstory. Right?

“And I have a brother. Older. Three years,” Greg says, setting down his mug. “I won’t tell him that I hired you, but he’s great, unlike . . . well, my other relatives.”

I nod, typing Brother in my Notes app. Close, I add. “May I have his name and something about him?”

“Something about Jack?”

“That I can bring up when we meet? Something like ‘Greg talks about you all the time. You’re a hippotherapist, right? And you love soap carving! How lovely that you met your spouse while climbing Machu Picchu.’ ”

Greg shakes his head. “Jack’s not married.”

“Any partners?”

“No. He doesn’t really date.”

My eyebrow lifts at Greg, who immediately shakes his head.

“Not like me. He . . . has friends, women that he . . . But he’s very clear about not being interested in relationships.”

I nod. Type Stud? Yikes. “Your mother doesn’t hound him about settling down like she does you?”

“It’s complicated.” Greg’s expression is almost guilty. “But no. Mom doesn’t really care what he does. Let’s see, something about Jack.” He drums his fingers. “He comes across as a bit rough around the edges, like he doesn’t care about anything but his job, but—he’s nice. Kind. For instance, he was the only person who showed up for my Jesus Christ Superstar recital back in high school.” He sighs. “I played Peter.”

“The only person in your family?”

“The only person in the audience. Did lots of clapping.” Greg shrugs. “And he’s freakishly smart. Likes board games. Recently moved back to Boston from California.”

“What’s his job?”

“He teaches. Phys—”

A loud sound from a nearby table makes us start. A toddler, slamming her fist on the table, yelling at her mom, “Not banana—cookie!”

“Sweetie, you’ve been sick.”

“I’m not sick. I—” Suddenly, there’s a puddle of vomit on the front of her shirt.

Greg and I exchange a look before he continues, “Also, um . . . he plays sports with his friends. Stuff like that.”

I nod and write down, PE teacher. Monopoly? Gym bro? Not the target. Nonissue.

Until now.

Suddenly, Jonathan Jack Jesus Christ Superstar Smith-Turner, who plays board games and teaches something that starts with phys- and is most definitely not physical education, is a big fucking issue.

Impossible. Insane. I must be on Punk’d. General relativity was right: I’ve time-traveled back to the early 2000s. A camera crew and Uncle Paul are hiding behind that pretentious potted fern in the corner. The interview was a setup. My entire life is a joke.

“Hey, Jack,” Volkov asks from behind me, all sharp, eastern European sounds, “with great power comes . . . ?”

“Great current squared times resistance,” Jack murmurs, eyes planted on me. I shiver hot and cold while everyone else laughs. As usual, Jack is inaccessible; I have no idea what’s happening in his brain. As usual, I feel like he’s skinning me like a clementine, seeing all my squishy, secret, hidden bits.

How hard will Cece murder me if I puke all over her dress?

“MIT party?” The hostess smiles. “Let me show you to your table.”

I turn around clumsily, as if wading through water. My brain won’t stop flipping its fins. So Jack’s a physicist—bad. An experimentalist—bad. The experimentalist—bad. He wants to hire some George dude—bad. He knows me as a librarian his brother’s dating—bad. He never liked me—bad. He thinks I made up my Ph.D.—badder—and am conning MIT into hiring me—baddest.

“Don’t let him get to you,” Monica whispers in my ear.

“W-what?”

“The way Jonathan was looking at you, like you’re trying to smuggle a full bottle of shampoo through TSA—definitely one of his power plays. Ignore him.”

Shit—what if he narcs me out to Monica? To Volkov? Oh God, am I going to have to explain to my future colleagues about my side gig? About Faux? I bet filet mignon goes great with anecdotes of that debt collector who threatened to shatter my kneecaps. “Okay.” I smile weakly. I’m in deep shit—ten feet under, I estimate.

No, fifteen. Rapidly digging when Monica notices that I’m sitting far from Volkov and says, “There’s a terrible draft here. Can someone switch with me? Elsie, would you mind?”

Musical chairs ensue. She maneuvers until I’m between her and Volkov. Excellent. Less excellent? Jack, right across from me. He’s folding himself in his chair, twice as broad as the experimentalist riffling through the menu next to him. He stares like he’s about to deseed me like a pomegranate.

I try to think about a single way this interview could have started less auspiciously, and come up empty-handed. Maybe if Godzilla stepped into Miel and started grazing on the orchid centerpiece.

I glance toward the entrance. Is Godzilla about to—

“Where are you currently, Elsie?”

I whip my head to Jack. His gaze is on me and only me, like we’re alone in the restaurant. In Boston. In the Virgo galaxy supercluster. “I . . . don’t understand the question.”

“Your workplace. If you currently work.”

My cheeks heat. “I teach at UMass Boston, Emerson, and Boston University.”

“Ah.” He stuffs entire worlds in that single sound—none of which I care to visit. “Remind me, is UMass ranked as a Research One institution?”

My nostrils flare. I remember what my mom always says (You look like a piglet when you do that) and make a conscious effort to relax. “Research Two.”

Jack nods like he didn’t already know and takes a carefree sip of his water. I wonder what would happen if I kicked him under the table.

“You really must move to a Research One institution, Dr. Hannaway.” Volkov gives me a look of fatherly concern. “There’s simply no comparison. More resources. More funds.”

You don’t say. “Yes, Dr. Volkov.”

“And are you on tenure track, Elsie?” Jack asks.

“An adjunct.” I am totally going to kick him. In the nuts. It’s the only acceptable use of my foot.

“I am so jealous of adjuncts,” Volkov murmurs distractedly, staring at the entrée page. “They have mobility. Flexibility. Keeps you young at heart.”

I paste a smile on my face. “So much flexibility.” Offering to forward him the biweekly op-eds the Atlantic runs on how we are the underclass of academia seems rude, so I silently wish him an unpassable kidney stone.

“And where did you get your Ph.D.?” Jack asks.

“Northeastern.”

“Northeastern, huh?” He nods, pensive. “Great school. A friend used to be there.”

“Oh. In the Physics Department?”

“No. Library Science.”

A rush of heat sweeps over me. Does he mean—

“Jonathan, I emailed you Dr. Hannaway’s CV and several of her publications,” Monica says sweetly. “Did you not receive them?”

“Perhaps they got flagged as spam.” He doesn’t take his eyes off me. “My apologies, Dr. Hannaway.” He crosses his arms over his chest and leans back, preparing to study me at his leisure. He’s wearing a dark-green henley in this fancy-ass restaurant. Underdressed, again, like his entire brand is Instagram lumbersexual and he can’t risk being spotted wearing business casual. “Do you have any siblings?”

Where the hell is he going with this? “Two.”

“Sisters?”

“No.”

“Odd. You look uncannily similar to someone my brother used to date. I believe her name was . . .” He taps his finger on the table. “Pity I can’t recall.”

I flush, looking around shiftily. Most people are too busy deciding what to order with department funds to pay attention. I bury my face in the menu and take a deep breath. Ignore Jack Smith. Jack Turner. Jack Smith-Turner. Do not go on a rampage and stab him with your salad fork.

Actually, what I need is to explain to him the situation. That I’m not a con artist. Get him off my case. Yes, I need to—

“Jack, how’s the ferroelectric nematic experiment going?” someone asks from the other end of the table.

“Great. So great, I’ve been considering a leave of absence.” He makes a show of tapping his chin. “A couple of years backpacking, maybe.”

Volkov laughs. “No luck, then?”

“Nope.” His brow furrows. “We’re doing something wrong. Can’t figure out what, though. How’s Russia this time of year, Sasha?”

More people chuckle. “If you feel you must leave us, who are we to stop you?” Monica mutters. I scowl into the salads page: Jack has no business going from total asshole to charmingly self-deprecating.

“Things will turn around, Jack. You know that experimental physics is . . . experi-meant to be hard.” Volkov snickers at his own joke. “Theoretical physics, too. Doesn’t it sometimes make you . . . theory-eyed, Dr. Hannaway?”

Laugh, I order myself. Be charming. Be convivial. Top of your game. “It sure does.”

“Good one,” Jack says. “Sasha, have you heard the one about Schrödinger’s girlfriend?”

Volkov rubs his hands. “No, do tell!”

“It’s my favorite. Schrödinger’s girlfriend is simultaneously a librarian and a theoretical—”

I snap my menu shut, embarrassment and anger pounding up my spine. Am I having a rage stroke? Is my nose bleeding? “Excuse me for a moment.” I stand, forcing myself to smile at Monica and Volkov. I need air. I need to regroup. I need a second to think about this mess of a situation without Jack jabbing at me. “I, um, petted a dog earlier. I’ll wash my hands and be right back.”

Volkov seems pleased at my sudden concern with hygiene. “Yes, yes, good idea. Lather safe than sorry.” He guffaws like he’s on nitrous oxide. I love a good pun; I really do. But not when my one chance at financial freedom is being sabotaged by my fake boyfriend’s evil brother.

I’m several feet away when Jack’s voice makes my stomach twist. “You know, I petted a cat. I think I’ll join Dr. Hannaway.”

The restrooms are across the restaurant, at the end of a long, dimly lit hallway decorated with ficus and monochrome pictures of Paris. I left the table first and should have a considerable advantage, but Jack catches up with me in a handful of steps, without even the grace to look winded.

I brace for him to say something devious and offensive. It’ll be my excuse to trip him—who needs sex when you can watch Jack Smith face-plant on the floor? But he remains silent. Strolls by my side, grossly unconcerned, like he doesn’t have a worry on his mind. One of his power plays, Monica said earlier, and I grit my teeth, wishing I had some power to bring to the playground. If I get this job, I’m going to make his life impossible: put his science equipment in Jell-O, cut my nails on his desk, lick the rim of his cup when I have a cold, sprinkle tacks on his—

End of the hallway. He opens the door on the left—men’s restroom—and I head to the right—ladies’. Free from this pain, finally. Except that I make a crucial mistake: I turn around for one last resentful glance, and Jack’s standing there. With a waiting expression.

Holding the restroom’s door open.

I exhale a low, confused laugh. Is this an invitation? To the men’s restroom? To . . . to what, sit on the urinals for tea and hors d’oeuvres? Is he bananas?

No. I am bananas. Because for reasons that warrant a brain scan and comprehensive neuropsychological evaluations, I take him up on it. I barely glance around to make sure that an MIT chancellor is not coming down the hallway, and step inside.

The bathroom’s deserted—no one around to witness my lunacy. The place stinks, like someone dipped their post-gym crotch in a bucket of citrus disinfectant. There’s the pitter-patter of a dripping faucet, and my reflection in the full-body mirror is a lie: the slender woman in the sheath dress is too flustered, too livid, too red to be mild Elsie Hannaway of the accommodating ways.

I turn around. Jack lingers by the door, as ever studying, appraising, vivisectioning me. I start a mental countdown. Five. Four. When I reach one, I’m going to explain the situation. In a calm, dignified tone. Tell him it’s a misunderstanding. Three. Two.

“Congratulations,” he says.

Uh?

“On your Ph.D.”

“W-what?”

“A noteworthy accomplishment,” he continues, serious, calm, “given that less than twenty-four hours ago you weren’t even working on one.”

I exhale deeply. “Listen, it’s not what you—”

“Will you be leaving your post at the library, or are you planning on a dual career? I’d be worried for your schedule, but I hear that theoretical physics often consists of staring into the void and jotting down the occasional mathematical symbol—”

“I—no. That’s not what theoretical physics is about and—” I screw my eyes shut. Calm down. Be reasonable. This can be fixed with a simple conversation. “Jack, I’m not a librarian.”

His eyes widen in playacted surprise. “No way.”

“I am a physicist. I got my Ph.D. about a year ago.”

His expression hardens. He steps closer, and I feel like a garden gnome. “And I assume Greg has no idea.”

“He does. I—” Wait. No. I never told Greg about my Ph.D.—because it was irrelevant. “Well, okay. He doesn’t know, but that’s only because—”

“You’ve been lying to him.”

I’m taken aback. “Lying?”

“You’re playing a twisted game with my brother, pretending to be someone you’re not. I don’t know why, but if you think I’m going to let you continue—”

“What? No. This isn’t . . .” I can’t believe that the conclusion he’s come to is that I’m catfishing Greg. As if. “I care about Greg.”

“Is that why you hide things from him?”

“I don’t!”

“What about when you passed out in my arms and begged me not to tell him?”

I wince. “It was not in your arms, just near your arms, and that was—I didn’t want to bother him!”

“What about the fact that you didn’t know he was about to go on a trip.” Jack is icily, uncompromisingly furious at the idea of me mistreating his brother. “You don’t seem to care what his job entails. What his problems are. What his life is.”

“Neither does the rest of your family!”

“True.” He scowls. “But irrelevant.”

I almost run a hand down my face before remembering Cece’s Ruin your makeup and I’ll skewer you like a shish kebab. God, I’m going to have to explain to Jack the concept of fake dating. He won’t believe it’s a real thing—men with nice baritones and hints of tattoos and perfectly scruffy five-o’clock shadows are just not the target demographic of Faux. Jack probably has legions of women standing in line for the opportunity to partner-stretch hamstrings with him—let alone real date. And what are the chances he won’t use my side gig against me during the interview? Subzero kelvin. “Listen, I know it looks like I’m lying to Greg, but I’m not. I can explain.”

“Can you?”

“Yes. I’m a—” My brain stutters, then freezes as something occurs to me: if I told Jack about the fake dating, I’d be outing not just myself, but also Greg.

Yes, Jack and Greg are close. No, Greg did not tell Jack about Faux, and it’s not my place to do so. I could avoid saying why Greg has decided to hire me, but would that matter? Jack would know that Greg is hiding something. That there’s something to prod, to investigate, and . . .

“It’s just—I don’t know how my family would take it.” Greg rubs his palm in his eye, looking like he could use a deep-tissue massage and forty hours of sleep. “They might be complete assholes about it or be great or try to be nice and instead end up being massively invasive and . . . I’d rather not tell them, for now. I’d rather they not know that there’s something to tell.”

I can hear Greg’s words as I glance up. Jack’s dark eyes are stern. Expectant. Inflexible.

I’d rather lick the urinals than tell this guy any of my secrets. “Actually, I can’t explain, but—”

Two voices—male laughter, loafer steps right outside the bathroom. We both wheel around to the entrance.

“Someone’s coming,” I say unnecessarily. Shit. What if it’s someone from our party? I shoot Jack a panicked look, fully expecting to replace him gloating. Instead his face takes on an urgent, calculating look, and things I do not expect happen.

His huge hand lifts. Splays across the small of my back. Pushes me toward the closest stall. He wants to hide me?

“What are you—”

“Go,” he orders.

“No! I can’t just—”

I must hesitate too long, because Jack’s hands close around my waist. He lifts me effortlessly, like I weigh less than a Higgs boson, and carries me inside the stall, depositing my feet on the rim of the toilet. My brain blanks—no thoughts, head empty—and I don’t have the faintest idea what’s going on. What is he—

The stall door closes.

The bathroom door opens.

Two men enter, discussing quantum advantage. “—scale the error correction by the number of qubits?”

“You don’t. Scaled-up system behavior is erratic. How do you account for that?”

Shit. Shit, shit—

“Calm down,” Jack murmurs against the shell of my ear, like he knows that I’m on the verge of popping an aneurysm.

“They’re from the MIT table,” I whisper under my breath.

“Shh.” His giant paws tighten around me, as if to contain me and my panic. They span my waist. Our size difference sits somewhere between absurd and obscene. “Settle down.”

I feel dizzy. “Why am I standing on the toilet?”

“I figured you’d rather Dr. Pereira and Dr. Crowley keep on chatting about superpolynomial speedups and not see your heels under the stall. Was I wrong?”

I close my eyes, mortified. This is not my life. I’m a discerning scientist with insightful opinions on spintronic tech, not this blighted creature clinging to Jonathan Smith-Turner’s shoulders on top of a latrine.

Oh, who am I kidding? This is exactly my brand. Improbable. Cringeworthy. Botched.

“Settle down,” Jack repeats, gruffly reassuring. We’re way too close. I want his breath to be garlic and sauerkraut, but it’s vaguely minty and pleasantly warm. I want his skin to smell ridiculous, like mango tanning mousse, but all my nose picks up on is nice, clean, good. I want his grip to be creepy and knee-in-the-groin worthy, but it’s just what I need to avoid slipping in the toilet. “Stop fidgeting.”

“I’m not—” Pereira and Crowley are still talking physics—can’t believe all the fuss with the quantum Hadamard transform—with the added background of a stream trickling. Oh God, they’re peeing. I’m eavesdropping on one of the world’s foremost solar neutrinos scholars peeing. I can’t come back from this, can I?

“Elsie.” Jack’s lips graze my cheekbone. “Calm down. They’ll leave as soon as they’re done, and you can go back to the table. Laugh at Volkov’s puns till he votes for you. Tell a few more lies.”

“I’m not lying.” I pull back, and our eyes are at the same level. The slice of blue in the deep brown is icy, weird, beautiful. “I can’t explain, but this is . . . not the way you think it is. It’s . . . different.”

“From what?”

“From the way you think it is.”

He nods. Our noses nearly brush together. “That was remarkably articulate.”

I roll my eyes.

“Monica will love to hear about your secret librarian identity—”

“No!” I barely keep my voice down. “Please, just call Greg before you talk to Monica. He’ll explain.”

“Convenient, given that I can’t get in touch with him while he’s on his retreat, and he won’t be back until your interview is over.”

Shit. I’d forgotten about Woodacre. “There must be a way to reach him. Can you tell him it’s an emergency? That, um, he left his porch light on? You need his alarm code to go turn it off. Save the environment.”

“No.”

“Please. At least—”

“No.”

“You’re being absolutely unreasonable. All I ask is that you—”

“—do you think about the girl? Hannaway, right?” one of the urinal voices asks. We both instantly tune in.

A mistake, clearly.

“CV’s real good. Her two-dimensional liquid crystals theories . . . good stuff.”

“I remember reading her paper last year. I was very impressed. Had no idea she was that junior.”

“Right? Makes you wonder how much of it is her mentor’s.” A vague hum of agreement that has my hands tightening around the balls of Jack’s shoulders. None, I want to scream. It was my model. “She’s young and beautiful. Which means that she’ll get pregnant in a couple of years, and we’ll have to teach her courses.”

It’s like a punch in the sternum, to the point that I almost slip butt-first into the toilet. Jack stops me with a hand between my shoulder blades, arm contracting around my waist. He’s frowning like he’s as disgusted as I am. Though he’s not. He can’t be, because Pereira, or maybe Crowley, adds:

“Doesn’t matter. I’m voting for Jack’s candidate. He’s got influence, and he hates theorists.”

“He does? Oh, yeah. Can’t believe I forgot that article he wrote.”

“It was brutal, man. And hilarious. Wouldn’t want to be on his bad side.”

A hand dryer goes off, muffling the rest. Jack’s still holding me, eyes on mine, foreheads near touching. My nails dig into his chest—made of some granite-Kevlar blend, engineered by a task force of experimentalists to exude heat. He’s a sentient weighted blanket, and I—

I hate him.

I’ve never hated anybody: not J.J. Not the Film Appreciation 101 professor who nearly failed me for saying that Twilight is an unrecognized masterpiece. Not even my brother Lucas, who had me convinced that I was adopted for over six months. I’m mild mannered, adaptable, unobtrusive. I get along with people: I give them what they want, and all I ask in return is that they not actively dislike me.

But Jack Smith. Jonathan Fucking Smith Fucking Turner. He’s been hostile and unpleasant and suspicious since the day we met. He has shat upon my field and destroyed my mentor, and now stands between me and my dreams. For that, he lost the privilege that I afford every human being: to deal with the Elsie he wants.

The Elsie he’s going to get is the one I care to give him. And she’s pissed.

“I want this job, Jack,” I hiss over the hand dryer. I actually need this job, but—semantics.

“I know you do, Elsie.” His voice is low pitched and rumbly. “But I want someone else to get it.”

“I know. Jack.”

“Then it seems like we’re at an impasse. Elsie.” He articulates my name slowly, carefully. I’m going to lean forward and bite his stupid lips bloody.

No, I won’t, because I’m better than that.

Or am I?

“You do not want to come at me,” I hiss.

“Oh, Elsie.” His hands on me are incongruously gentle, and yet we’re on the verge of the academic equivalent of nuclear warfare. “I think it’s exactly what I want.”

The dryer turns off into silence and saves me from committing aggravated assault. “They left,” I say. “Let me go.”

His mouth twitches, but he deposits me on the floor in some ludicrous reverse–Dirty Dancing move. His hands on my waist linger, but as soon as they leave me I’m scampering out of the stall, heels clicking on the tiles. I nearly lose my balance. With Jack’s scent out of my nose, the stench of the place hits me anew.

“Talk to Monica if you want to,” I bluff, turning back to him. “You’ll see the good it does you.”

“Oh, I will.” He’s clearly about to smile, like the angrier I get, the more amused he becomes. A never-ending vicious cycle that can end only in me holding his head in the toilet bowl.

“It’s my word against the word of the guy with a decade-long agenda against theorists, after all.”

He shrugs. “Maybe. Or maybe it’s a physicist’s word against a librarian’s.”

I scoff and stalk to the entrance, suddenly confident in my stilt shoes, determined not to be in his presence a second longer. But when I reach the door, something ticks inside me. I whip my head back to Jack, who’s standing there like K2, studying me with an interested frown, like I’m an exotic caterpillar about to pupate.

God, I hope he has itchy, purulent ass acne for the rest of his natural life. “I know you have despised me since the very first moment we met,” I spit out.

He bites the inside of his cheek. “You do?”

“Yes. And you know what? It doesn’t matter if you hated me at first sight, because I’ve hated you long before we ever met. I hated you the first time I heard your name. I hated you when I was twelve and read what you’d done in Scientific American. I’ve hated you harder, I’ve hated you longer, and I’ve hated you for better reasons.”

Jack doesn’t look so amused anymore. This is new to me—talking to others like the me I really am. It’s new and different and weird, and I freaking love it.

“I’m really good at hating you, Jack, so here’s what I’m going to do: not only am I going to get this job, but when we’re colleagues at MIT, I’m going to make sure that you have to look at me every day and wish that I were George. I’m going to make you regret every single little jab. And I’m going to single-handedly make your life so hard that you’ll regret taking on me, and Monica, and theoretical physics, until you cry in your office every morning and finally apologize to the scientific community for what you did.”

He is really not amused now. “Is that so?” he asks. Cold. Cutting.

This time I’m the one to smile. “You bet, Jonathan.”

I open the door. Leave the restroom.

And I don’t glance at him for the rest of the evening.