Not in Love

RUE

Meals were always tricky business for me, but none more than breakfast on days in which I planned to be in the lab for several hours. I couldn’t skip eating, not if I wanted to avoid feeling like I’d pass out around midday. And yet, those days also tended to start very early in the morning, which meant a significant risk of oversleeping. Which meant no time for a sit-down meal.

Which meant a lot of fucking misery.

A normal person would have bought a snack at the vending machine or packed a sandwich. But I wasn’t normal, not when it came to food: eating quickly, eating standing up, eating on the go, it all triggered some of my most cavernous anxieties. And I would have taken the hunger over those any day.

To eat I needed time and quiet. I needed to stare at my meal and know, feel, that more food would be waiting for me after the bite I’d just swallowed was gone. My issues were deep-rooted, multilayered, and impossible to explain to someone who hadn’t grown up hiding expired Twinkies in secret spots, who hadn’t discovered fresh produce only well into her teens, who hadn’t fought with a sibling over the last stale cracker.

Not that I’d ever really tried. Tisha already knew, my therapist had pried out my history piecemeal over years, and I couldn’t imagine anyone else caring about me enough to want to listen. After all, I hadn’t been food insecure in over ten years, and I should have been over this shit.

Though clearly I was not.

That morning, I fucked up on a staggering number of levels: woke up late after a fitful night of sleep, let the hot shower boil my skin for far too long, went downstairs without my car keys, and finally met Samantha from quality assurance in the parking lot, who wanted to know if, in my opinion as “Florence’s favorite,” we were all soon going to be living in a tent below the underpass, like a big happy family. Eating was the last thing on my mind, and when I stepped into the lab I’d booked, I was twelve minutes late.

And he was there.

Parked on a stool.

Loose jointed and relaxed as he waited for me.

We regarded each other with equally masked expressions. Neither of us bothered to say hi or, god forbid, How are you? We just stared and stared and stared in the deathly early morning quiet, until his eyes began roaming over me, and his pupils got larger, and my skin began to tingle.

I wasn’t proud of the way I’d acted the day before—not because he hadn’t deserved to be called out on whatever Harkness was up to, but because I hated losing control. The world was a constant, full-on maelstrom, and my emotions were the one thing I could govern. Eli Killgore looked like the kind of person who’d love to take that away from me.

“Why?” I asked plainly. Diplomacy was past us.

“I’d like to hear about the work you do.” His voice was deep, more gravelly than yesterday. Not a morning person, either.

“Did you clear this meeting with Florence?”

His jaw tightened. “I did not.”

“In that case—”

“Your general counsel did, though.”

It was my turn to tense. “I’m about to start an experiment that will need constant monitoring. Your timing is not ideal.”

“What’s the experiment?”

I bit into my lower lip, and immediately regretted it when his eyes darkened. It felt dangerous, the two of us alone in the same room. Again.

“I’ve created a new type of protective layer for fruit and vegetables. It’s an invisible substance that I put around produce. Then I measure whether it extends the shelf life of that produce in different types of situations.”

“Such as?”

“Today, humidity. So I’m not sure I can—”

“What’s the layer made of?”

This was pointless. I swallowed a sigh. “Its main ingredient comes from shells, but it’s combined with lactic acid.”

Eli’s eyes shone with amusement; he was clearly laughing at me. Suddenly I was the Rue I’d always been: awkward, lost, unable to decipher the nuances of social interactions or to grasp what the hell people found so funny about what I’d said. Filled with the certainty that the world was in on the joke, and I’d once again failed to keep up. A beat too late. Out of sync.

Yet another unabridged summary of my life.

Except that the Eli I’d met the other night hadn’t made me feel this way, not a single time. Which was the reason this hurt so sharply.Please check at N/ôvel(D)rama.Org.

“Anything else you’d like to know?” I asked coolly.

“Yeah. How will you test the efficacy of this chitosan-and-lactobacillus-based microbial coating, Rue?”

I stiffened in surprise. How the hell did he even—

“Will you be using salt solutions?” he continued when I didn’t reply. “Spraying?”

“I…we have a humidity chamber.”

He glanced around with the air of someone who knew what a humidity chamber looked like and found none in his surroundings.

“In the adjacent room.” I pointed at the door, half-hidden past the filing cabinet.

“Ah. How many hours?”

“Six.”

“And how will you—”

“I’m here—I’m fucking here, sorry.” Jay slammed the door open and burst into the lab. His green Mohawk flopped onto the left side of his head, nearly brushing his ear. “Sorry, it’s that fucking piece of shit. Matt decided in the middle of the night that it would be so fun to kill me and fuck my corpse, so he asked for that allergen report before nine today. I was trying to finish it, didn’t manage to, and now that whoreson is going to—”

Jay noticed Eli and shut his mouth so energetically, his teeth clinked. The entire spectrum of human emotions passed on his face—surprise, shame, resignation, guilt, anger, and, eventually, defiance. “He is a whoreson. I stand by what I said.”

Eli nodded, as if expecting no less, and held out his hand. “I’m Eli Killgore. From Harkness.”

“Jay Sousa.” His tongue darted out to play with the ring on his lip. “Nice to, um, meet you?”

“Jay is assisting me today,” I said. “The humidity chamber room is quite small, so if you want to stick around, space might be a little tight.” Go away. Leave me alone. It’s for the best and you know it, too.

Eli looked between Jay and me, sharp-eyed. “How much would you like to not have your corpse defiled, Jay?”

“Um. A normal amount?”

“I assume you were going to help log the data?”

“Yeah?”

“I can do that. Why don’t you finish your report?”

Jay shifted on his feet. “Are you even capable of doing that?”

“Capable of using a click pen, you mean?”

Jay pondered the matter. “I guess you’ll manage,” he conceded. “Rue? Okay with you?” he asked, with something that felt a lot like hope.

I considered my options. Say no, let Matt unjustly use Jay as his whipping boy—probably to take out on an innocent bystander the fact that his HOA wouldn’t let him install a garden gnome or similar shit—deal with Eli later. Say yes, let Jay turn in the report, finish my business with Eli once and for all.

“Okay with me,” I said. Pain now, freedom later. Delayed gratification. “Come back when you’re done. No rush.”

Jay looked up to the ceiling, did the sign of the cross, and scurried out as quickly as he’d arrived, leaving me to wonder why god deserved gratitude when his salvation was clearly Eli’s doing. Once we were alone again, I stepped closer to him and folded my arms on my chest.

I couldn’t remember why I’d chosen to message him of all people. To avoid dick pics, name-calling, and requests to smell my used panties in lieu of hello, I only used apps that required women to make the first move—as at ease as I felt in sex-forward spaces, I liked to consent before seeing someone’s junk. But my selection criteria were sparse: men who were local, who’d been marked as safe by other users, who were willing to accept my limits. Their looks had always been little more than an afterthought, and I’d had perfectly satisfying sex with guys who were objectively not handsome and with guys whose particular brand of attractiveness did little for me.

Eli, however. He defied categorization. There was something all-encompassing about his presence, something physical and visceral and simmering that had a near chemical effect on me. He crossed his arms, too, and the bands of muscles under his thin shirt made me picture reaching out. Tracing. Touching.

“That was heavy handed,” I said without inflection.

“It was,” he agreed. Then something occurred to him. “Do you feel unsafe? Being alone with me?”

I thought about it. Considered lying and dismissed the idea. “No.”

“Then I won’t call him back.” His shoulders relaxed. “At what intervals do you measure?”

I cocked my head to study him, reassessing his role here at Kline. Remembering Euler’s number. You know this man’s phone’s passcode, his opinions on anal sex, and his interest in negotiated kinks, but you have no idea where his knowledge of food engineering comes from. Nice work, Rue. “Why don’t you guess?”

His mouth twitched, indulgent. “I’m not your dancing bear, Rue. I don’t perform on command.”

“No. You like the element of surprise.” His silence read like assent. He stared at my mouth until I asked, “What’s your educational background?”

“Is it relevant to what we’re doing here?”

I licked the backs of my teeth. Was it? Did I need to know? Or was I simply unjustifiably, uncharacteristically curious about this man I should be ejecting out of my life and mind? “I’m harvesting microbial growth every thirty minutes, and logging chamber conditions every fifteen, just to be safe.” I tore my eyes from his complicated face and put on my lab coat, facing away from him. When I turned around, he was staring with hungry eyes, as though I were something to be eaten, as though I were peeling off layers instead of the opposite.

Jay’s lab coat was larger than mine but turned out not to be big enough for Eli. He put on rubber gloves with the ease that only someone who visited a lab every day—or a serial killer—should have. I stared at his hands stretching the latex and thought, This is dangerous. We shouldn’t be together, he and I.

“When I was eighteen or nineteen,” he said, “I was working in a lab as an undergraduate RA, and I accidentally messed with the settings of the liquid nitrogen tank. My lab lost several important cell lines that were stored in it. It was a dumb mistake that set their research back by weeks.” He bit the inside of his cheek. “Everyone assumed that it was machine malfunction, and even though I felt guilty as shit, I never corrected them. The following semester, I moved to another lab.”

I blinked at him. “Why are you telling me this?”

His mouth quirked. “Just confessing something terrible to you. I thought it might be our thing.”

I remembered the car. My admission that I’d wished Vincent would just disappear. How jealous of his sister he’d been. Then, inexplicably, I heard myself say, “I once accidentally crushed a mouse’s skull while putting him in ear bars.” I swallowed. “The postdoc who was supervising me said that it wasn’t a big deal, and I pretended I didn’t care, but I couldn’t handle it. I haven’t worked with lab animals since.”

He didn’t say anything, like he hadn’t in the car, nor did he react in any other way. We just stared at each other with no disappointment and no recrimination, two terrible people with horrible stories, two terrible people who maybe were more interested in judging themselves than each other, until I couldn’t bear it anymore. I quickly grabbed an apple, and didn’t protest when he followed me to the humidity chamber. “Hot in here,” he commented. “Is the seal broken? I can take a look.”

“It’s just a small space. And a constantly running motor. You ready?” I started my timer before he could respond.

Admittedly, he was a good assistant. He knew how, and where, and what to log, did not ask me to repeat myself, and never once looked bored while I took my measurements. He asked questions about my research, about the company culture, about the work I’d done before coming to Kline, but he seemed to know instinctively not to bother me when I was harvesting samples or diluting them with buffers.

For the most part, I answered. I was certain that his intentions were sketchy, but couldn’t figure how sharing any of this information was going to harm Florence. The work we did was important. Florence was a fantastic leader. Maybe it was perverse of me, but I wanted Eli to know how much Kline had accomplished. Whatever Harkness was trying to achieve may have been legal, but it wasn’t moral, and I wanted him to feel like a villain for it.

But he didn’t seem upset, only happy to listen and ask questions. Above all, he seemed fully in his element. Like a lab was where he belonged.

“How long has it been?” I asked, grabbing a fresh pipette tip.

“Less than five minutes—”

“I mean, since you were last in a lab.”

He looked up from the clipboard, his face so blank, it had to be deliberate. “I haven’t kept track.”

“No?” He had. To the day. I was certain. “Why did you stop?”

“Don’t remember.” There were only two or three feet between us. His eyes were a light, predatory blue. Close enough that I could touch the lie.

“You don’t remember why you decided that you’d rather be a hedge fund manager than a scientist?”

“You really don’t know much about private equities, do you?”

My hand tightened on the pipette. “You know a lot about food engineering, though.”

“And where does that leave us?”

“I don’t think there is an us.” My hand tightened even more—so hard, I accidentally pressed my thumb against the pipette’s ejector, dropping the tip. “Shit.” I knelt to the floor, bending my head in the cramped space.

“Here,” Eli said. When I lifted my eyes, the tip was in the center of his open palm. When I lifted them higher, he was crouching in front of me.

Close.

Closer than he’d been since the other night.

“Thank you,” I said, without reaching for the tip. Not sure whether I could trust myself.

Eli stared as though my skull were made of glass, and he could see the exact mess passing through my head. He took my free hand, gently pried it open, and deposited the tip on my palm.

Then, just as gently, a lot more slowly, he closed his fingers around mine.

There were two layers of gloves between our skin. I could barely feel his heat, but his grip was possessive, at once taking and making an offer. My heart beat in my throat, and heat rushed to my cheeks.

“Have you been thinking about this as much as I have?” Eli’s voice was low and husky, scratchy with something I didn’t dare to name, but could have easily picked out in a lineup.

“I don’t know. How much have you been thinking about this?”

He let out a soft laugh. “A lot.”

“Then, yes.” I licked my lips, then almost begged him not to look at my mouth that way. “I wish there was a way to stop it.”

“Rue.” His Adam’s apple moved. “I think there is.”

“What’s that?”

“You know.”

I did. It was unfinished between us. What we’d started the other night was there, suspended, oscillating wildly. I could feel it in my teeth. “It’s not a good idea.”

“Is it not?”

“You’re with Harkness. I’m with Kline.”

“Yeah, well.” He sounded self-deprecating, as though he wasn’t a fan of his own feelings. “Right now, I don’t give a fuck about Harkness. Or Kline. Or anything else except for…”

You. This. Us. My brain wanted him to say the words, and I hated that about myself. “I don’t think I like you as a person. I certainly don’t like what you’re doing, nor do I respect it.”

If he was hurt, he didn’t show it. “Thankfully, that’s not a condition for anything.”

He was right, and I closed my eyes. Imagined saying yes. Imagined the process of working this thing out of myself, the act of sweating him out. How good it would feel, and the peace and satisfaction I’d feel later. I imagined hearing his name, seeing his face, and not having an instant, uncontrollable, incendiary gut reaction.

I could do it. If I had him, I could stop wanting him. It’s what always happened. No repeats.

But. “Florence wouldn’t like it.”

For the first time, Eli seemed genuinely upset. “And that’s what matters most to you? Florence’s approval?”

“Not her approval. Her well-being.”

He inched back his head. “Okay.” This time he looked disappointed, maybe in me. But his tone was casual, the discrepancy jarring even as his fingers tightened lightly around mine one last time. “Then maybe you should know that—”

He didn’t finish the sentence. Because the door opened without warning, and when we glanced up, Florence and Jay were staring down at us.