Love on the Brain by Ali Hazelwood

            “What do you mean?”

            “Bring your stuff here.” He just got home from his run and looks sweaty, disheveled, and disturbingly good. “Pack a bag. Then you won’t have to go back and forth to get a change of clothes. It’s not your real apartment anyway.”

            I study him over my mug. Maybe he’s suffering from heatstroke. “I can’t move in with you.” I’m pretty sure there’s language about that in the fuckbuddying contract.

            “Why?”

            “Because. What if you need to . . .” Watch pornography? He probably wouldn’t—I’d be his live-in pornography. Bring home other girls? I don’t see him doing that, either. Man cave it up? It’s a big house. Walk around naked? He already does it. I can’t believe I’m having sex with someone with a six-pack.

            “I’m serious,” he continues. “I have a better bed. Better cat. Better hummingbirds.”

            “Lies. There are no hummingbirds in your garden.”

            “They show up when you’re not around. You’ll have to move in to see them.”

            “Rocío might notice.”

            He is quiet, waiting for me to elaborate. “And?”

            “Then Kaylee would. And she might tell others. If I’d found out that Sam was screwing Dr. Mosley on the side, I’d have hollered it to the winds.” I frown. “I’m a monster. Poor Sam.”

            “If Kaylee tells others, then she tells others. That’s not a problem.”

            I rub my eyes. “I’m not sure I want your entire team to know that I’m having a thing with a colleague. It sounds like the type of thing . . .”

            “. . . for which women in STEM get unfair shit all the time?”

            “Yup.”

            “Fair. But even if Rocío noticed, she wouldn’t know that you are at my place. Plus she might have other stuff on her mind, given the number of times I’ve heard her and Kaylee call each other ‘babe’ in the last week.”

            “True.” I bite my lower lip, actually considering moving in. Am I insane? I don’t think so. I just like him—like this, being with him. Fuckbuddyship with Levi Ward suits me, and I just want . . . a little more of it. “FYI, I wear a retainer at night.”

            “Sexy.”

            “And your bathroom will be stained purple forever. Seriously. Five showers and your bathtub will be a giant eggplant emoji.”

            He gives me a solemn nod and pulls me closer. “It’s everything I ever wanted.”



* * *



            • • •

            IT’S SATURDAY MORNING and we’re cooking together—by which I mean Levi’s making pancakes and I’m standing next to him, stealing blueberries and telling him about The Mermaid’s Tale, the Young Adult book idea I’ve been nursing since grad school (nothing like a nanoscopic office and perennially skirting the poverty line to stimulate a gal’s imagination for escapist fiction).

            “Wait.” He frowns. “Ondine doesn’t know she’s half mermaid before joining the swim team?”

            “Nope, she doesn’t know she was adopted. She finds out on the first practice, when they throw her in the water and she swims one lap in . . . I’ll have to research how long it takes to swim one lap, but she’s as fast as . . .”

            “Michael Phelps?” Levi flips a pancake.

            “Sure, whoever that is. And Joe Waters, cutest senior in school, sees her and becomes her faithful sidekick in her journey of self-discovery.”

            “Do they end up together?”

            “Nope. He goes to college, she sprouts a tail.”

            “Can’t they do long distance?”

            “No. I won’t lie to impressionable youths about the durability of human relationships.”