Everything is pain.
For a couple of seconds. Then the pain is over, and everything is noise: metal clanking as it plunges to the floor, horrified screaming, a shrill “Meow”
somewhere in the distance, and closer to my ear . . . someone is panting.
Less than an inch from me.
I open my eyes, gasping for breath, and . . .
Green.
All I can see is green. Not dark, like the grass outside; not dull, like the pistachios I had on the plane. This green is light, piercing, intense. Familiar, but hard to place, not unlike—
Eyes. I’m looking up into the greenest eyes I’ve ever seen. Eyes that I’ve seen before. Eyes surrounded by wavy black hair and a face that’s angles and sharp edges and full lips, a face that’s offensively, imperfectly handsome. A face attached to a large, solid body—a body that is pinning me to the wall, a body made of a broad chest and two thighs that could moonlight as redwoods. Easily. One is slotted between my legs and it’s holding me up. Unyielding. This man even smells like a forest—and that mouth. That mouth is still breathing heavily on top of me, probably from the effort of whisking me out from under seven hundred pounds of mechanical engineering tools, and— I know that mouth.
Levi.
Levi.
I haven’t seen Levi Ward in six years. Six blessed, blissful years. And now here he is, pushing me into a wall in the middle of NASA’s Space Center, and he looks . . . he looks . . .
“Levi!” someone yells. The clanking goes silent. What was meant to fall has settled on the floor. “Are you okay?” Levi doesn’t move, nor does he look away. His mouth works, and so does his throat. His lips part to say something, but no sound comes out. Instead, a hand, at once rushed and gentle, reaches up to cup my face. It’s so large, I feel perfectly cradled.
Engulfed in green, cozy warmth. I whimper when it leaves my skin, a plaintive, involuntary sound from deep in my throat, but I stop when I realize that it’s only shifting to the back of my skull. To the hollow of my collarbone.
To my brow, pushing back my hair.
It’s a cautious touch. Pressing but delicate. Lingering but urgent. As though he is studying me. Trying to make sure that I’m all in one piece.
Memorizing me.
I lift my eyes, and for the first time I notice the deep, unmasked concern in Levi’s eyes.
His lips move, and I think that maybe—is he mouthing my name? Once, and then again? Like it’s some kind of prayer?
“Levi? Levi, is she—”
My eyelids fall closed, and everything goes dark.
3
ANGULAR GYRUS: PAY ATTENTION
ON WEEKDAYS, I usually set my alarm for seven a.m.—and then find myself snoozing it anywhere from three (“Raving success”) to eight times (“I hope a swarm of rabid locusts attacks me on my way to work, thus allowing me to find solace in the cold embrace of death”). On Monday, however, the unprecedented happens: I’m up at five forty-five, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. I spit out my night retainer, run into the bathroom, and don’t even wait for the water to warm up to step under the shower.
I am that eager.
As I pour almond milk on my oatmeal, I give rad Dr. Curie the finger guns.
“BLINK’s starting today,” I tell the magnet. “Send good vibes. Hold the radiations.”
I can’t remember the last time I’ve been this excited. Probably because I’ve never been part of anything this exciting. I stand in front of my closet to pick out an outfit and focus on that—the sheer excitement—to avoid thinking about what happened on Friday.
To be fair, there isn’t much to think about. I only remember up until the moment I fainted. Yes, I swooned in His Wardness’s manly arms like a twentieth-century hysteric with penis envy.
It’s nothing new, really. I faint all the time: when I haven’t eaten in a while; when I see pictures of large, hairy spiders; when I stand up too quickly from a sitting position. My body’s puzzling inability to maintain minimal blood pressure in the face of normal everyday events makes me, as Reike likes to say, a syncope aficionado. Doctors are puzzled but ultimately unconcerned. I’ve long learned to dust myself off as soon as I regain consciousness and go about my business.
Friday, though, was different. I came to in a few moments—cat nowhere in sight—but my neurons must have still been misfiring because I hallucinated something that could never happen: Levi Ward bridal-carrying me to the lobby and gently laying me on one of the couches. Then I must have hallucinated some more: Levi Ward viciously tearing a new one into the engineer who’d left the cart unattended. That had to have been a fever dream, for several reasons.
First of all, Levi is terrifying, but not that terrifying. His brand is more kill-
’em-with-icy-cold-indifference-and-silentcontempt than angry outbursts.
Unless in our time apart he’s embraced a whole new level of terrifying, in which case . . . lovely.
Second, it’s difficult, and by “difficult” I mean impossible, to imagine him siding against a non-me party in any me-involved accident. Yes, he did save my life, but there’s a good chance he had no idea who I even was when he shoved me against the wall. This is Dr. Wardass, after all. The man who once stood for a two-hour meeting rather than take the last empty seat because it was next to me. The man who exited a game of poker he was winning because someone dealt me in. The man who hugged everyone in the lab on his last day at Pitt, and promptly switched to handshakes when it was my turn. If he caught someone stabbing me, he’d probably blame me for walking into the knife—and then take out his whetstone.
Clearly, my brain wasn’t at her best on Friday. And I could stand here, stare at my closet, and agonize over the fact that my grad school nemesis saved my life. Or I could bask in my excitement and pick an outfit.
I opt for black skinny jeans and a polka-dotted red top. I pull up my hair in braids that would make a Dutch milkmaid proud, put on red lipstick, and keep the jewelry to a relative minimum—the usual earrings, my favorite septum piercing, and my maternal grandmother’s ring on my left hand.
It’s a bit weird to wear someone else’s wedding ring, but it’s the only memento I have of my nonna, and I like to put it on when I need some good luck. Reike and I moved to Messina to be with her right after our parents died. We ended up having to move again just three years later when she passed, but out of all the short-lived homes, out of all the extended relatives, Nonna is the one who loved us the most. So Reike wears her engagement ring, and I wear her wedding band. Even-steven. I shoot a quick, uplifting tweet from my WWMD account (Happy Monday! KEEP CALM AND CURIE
ON, FRIENDS
