“Bee,” he repeats, a little guttural this time.

“I said I’d do stuff,” I tell him with a smile. The clink of his belt buckle bounces off the kitchen appliances. His fingers weave into my hair.

“I figured you meant . . . watching sports with me. Or another of your burnt—ah—stir-fries.”

I take him out of his boxers and wrap my small hand around him. He’s completely hard already. Huge. Shockingly warm against my flesh. He smells like soap and himself, and I want to bottle his delicious scent and bring it with me always. “I’m not very good at stir-fries.” My breath is on his skin, making his cock twitch. “This, I hope I can do well.”

I’m not exactly confident, and maybe I’m a little clumsy, too, but when I softly lick the head there is a quiet, surprised groan coming from above me, and I think that maybe I’ll be fine. I close my lips around him, feel Levi’s hands tighten on my scalp, and my insecurities melt.

I don’t know why we haven’t done this before. It has to do, perhaps, with how impatient he usually is, impatient to be in me, on me, with me. There is often an undercurrent of haste with us, like we both want, need, deserve to be as close as physically possible, as quickly as physically possible, and . .

. It doesn’t leave much time for delays, I guess.

Levi wants it, though. It might not be something he’d ever ask for, but I can see the shape of pleasure on his face, hear his intakes of breath. I suckle right beneath the head and he lets out a sound of shocked, overwhelming pleasure. Then he threads his fingers through my hair and starts guiding me.

He’s too thick for me to do much, but I try to relax, to let myself enjoy this, lose myself to the taste, the fullness, his soft, deep groans as he tells me how good it feels, how much he loves my mouth, how much he loves this, how much he loves . . .

“Fuck.” Softly, with his thumb, he traces the bulge of his cock through the skin of my cheek. My lips, stretched obscenely around him. “You really

are everything I’ve ever wanted,” he mutters, gentle, reverent, hoarse, and then he’s angling me again, this time a rhythm that’s deeper, purposeful, working my jaw for his pleasure. When he holds me close and says, “I’m going to come in your mouth,” like it’s inevitable, like we both need this too badly to stop, I whimper around his flesh from how much I want this for him.

He loses control a little when he comes, his grunts deep and unusually rough, his grip viselike, and I feel his orgasm course through me as if it were my own. I suck him gently through the end of it, and when I look up at him I’m wet and swollen and I feel empty, trembling, a messy lump on the floor.

“Open your mouth,” he rasps.

I blink at him, confused. He cups my cheek.

“I want you to open your mouth and show me.”

I comply, and the sound he makes, possessive and hungry and pleased at last, travels through me like a wave. He massages the back of my neck while I swallow, his thumb caresses my jaw, and when I smile up at him, he stares at me like I’ve just gifted him with something divine.

It’s a long night, this one. Somehow different from all the others. Levi takes his time undressing me, stopping often, lingering, losing track of his progress as if distracted by my flesh, my curves, the sounds I make. I moan, I squirm, I beg, and he still won’t slide inside, too busy tracing the swell of my breast, pressing his tongue against the bump of my clit, nuzzling against the skin of my throat. I teeter on the edge for too long, and so does Levi, immobile within me, then thick and delicious and slow, slow inside and then slow out, long, drugging kisses stretching the pleasure between us, making my body twitch for his own. And then he looks down at me, hands twined with my hands, eyes twined with my eyes, breath twined with my breath.

“Bee,” he says. Just my name, half gasp, all heated plea. He stares down at me as though I own him. As though his future hangs from my hands. As though everything he’s ever wanted, I hold it within me. It makes my chest hurt and leap with a dangerous, thunderous kind of joy.

I close my eyes not to see and let the liquid heat swell inside me like the tide, high and low all night long.

21

RIGHT INFERIOR FRONTAL GYRUS:

SUPERSTITION

THEY SAY DISASTERS come in threes, but it’s not true. It’s just a quirk of the human mind, always on the lookout for patterns in random statistical observations to make sense of chaos.

For instance, say you’re Dr. Marie Skłodowska-Curie, circa 1911. Your health has been declining after decades spent frolicking in kiddie pools of polonium. Everything’s painful and you can barely see, walk, sleep, frolic in more polonium. Sucks, right?

Well, things could suck more. You decide to do that thing you’ve been putting off: applying for membership at the French Academy of Sciences.

You have two Nobel Prizes, so you should be a shoo-in, yes? Non. The Academy rejects you, and instead admits this Édouard Branly guy, who I’m sure has many great qualities—such as a penis. (If you’re wondering “Who’s Édouard? Never heard of this guy!” that’s exactly my point. Excellent job, FA of S! Take your seat on the Loser Side of History, next to the University of Krakow.)

Our tally is two major bummers, and you’re probably thinking: the shit-cake has been frosted. No other catastrophe will happen for a while. But you forgot the cherry on top: someone breaks into your young stud muffin’s apartment, steals your love letters, and sells them to the Fox News equivalent of early nineteenth-century France. Jean Hannity has a field day.

Imagine being Dr. Curie. Imagine sitting in your minuscule Paris apartment, trying to eat a Camembert baguette while the mob rages outside

your window because you dared (gasp!) to be an immigrant! To be a woman in STEM! To fuck! Wouldn’t you tell yourself that there’s a reason this cluster of shit came about? Saturn ascending to the house of Sagittarius. Not enough lambs sacrificed to the Spaghetti Monster. Bad things come in threes. We’re only humans. We’re full of “whys,” drowning in “whys.” Every once in a while, we need a bit of “because,” and if it’s not readily available, we make it up.

Long story long: despite popular belief, a saying is just a saying, and disasters do not come in threes.

Except when they do.

The first is on Thursday night, right after the successful dress rehearsal for Friday’s presentation. I’m almost looking forward to seeing Trevor tomorrow—well, not him, but his face when he realizes what my simpering womanly brain has accomplished. I distractedly exchange a high five with Lamar while checking my phone, and I’m so shocked by my Twitter notifications that I forget my hand in midair.

They’re blowing up. In a bad way. As they often do. Except that this time the chaotic mess of insults isn’t coming from the incels, or the stemlords, or the men’s rights activists—but from other women in STEM.

“You gonna leave it there?” Lamar asks, pointing at my arm. I smile weakly and walk away.

@SabineMarch I cannot believe how you have betrayed us.

@AstroLena I hope STC presses charges, you bitch.

#WhatWouldMarieDoIsOverParty

@Sarah_08980 Hundreds of women in STEM have been

working tirelessly for #FairGraduateAdmissions, and all

along you have been pretending to be an ally while only looking out for your gain. Shame.

The last tweet is from someone I’ve chatted with as recently as yesterday. We talked about the events she was organizing, she asked me for advice, told me she loved my account. I blink at my screen and begin scouring for the source of whatever the hell this is.

I find it soon enough. On the account of one Benjamin Green—a name that’s familiar but not easy to place until I read the Twitter bio. VP at STC. I frown, and then I see the tweet.

It’s a screenshot. Many screenshots. Of a conversation that happened in a private Twitter chat between Mr. Green and someone else. Someone whose icon looks a lot like Marie Curie wearing sunglasses. I read the name:

@WhatWouldMarieDo. Me.

Impossible. I’ve never chatted with this guy. I rapidly scan the handle again, one, two, three times, looking for typos or missing letters that would signal an imposter. There are none. I frown and start reading the conversation.

The time stamp is from last night.

’

@WHATWOULDMARIEDO Hi, Jonathan. I m aware this is a bit unorthodox, but I hope that what I have to say will be bene cial to the both of us. I know STC has been

struggling with the negative publicity