Love on the Brain by Ali Hazelwood

            “Hey,” I say, averting my eyes.

            “You okay?”

            “Nervous. You?”

            “Fine.” He doesn’t seem fine. I must be communicating it because he adds, “There’s a mess. Not work related—I’ll explain later.”

            I nod, and for a wild, reckless second, I have the weird impulse of telling him about my mess. I should, shouldn’t I? My name will get out sooner or later. If I tell him now, he’ll . . .

            Believe that Marie—and therefore me—is a crook. Like everyone else except for Shmac. No, I can’t tell him. He wouldn’t care anyway.

            “I have something for you,” he says, the corner of his lip curving in a small smile. The back of his hand brushes mine, and my heart squeezes. It likely seems accidental from the outside. It feels anything but.

            “Yeah?”

            “I’ll show it to you later. It has to do with your imaginary cat.”

            I smile weakly. “I can’t wait for Félicette to puke on your keyboard.”

            He shrugs. “Imaginary vomit’s my favorite kind.” He presses his knee against mine and stands, stopping midway to whisper against the shell of my ear, “I missed you last night.”

            I shiver. He’s gone before I can answer.



* * *



            • • •

            “—LONELINESS IS KILLING me, and I must confess, I still believe.”

            Once again, everyone in the control room laughs at Guy’s bellowing. The situation in the conference room is probably the same.

            “That was lovely. Thank you, Britney,” Levi murmurs through the mic, amused. We exchange a brief look. My heart’s aflutter. I feel like I’m about to go onstage for a school play I’ve been practicing the whole year. But I’m an adult, and what’s at stake is my professional hopes and dreams. Which, I remind myself, are the only sort of hopes and dreams I allow. “Ready to start?”

            “I was born ready, baby.” Guy lifts one eyebrow under the visor of the helmet. “Well. After a labor that my mother often refers to as the most harrowing forty-three hours of her life.”

            “Poor lady.” Levi shakes his head, smiling. “You know the drill, but this is what’s going to happen. We’re going to start an attention task on the screen.”

            “I’m being paid to play video games. Excellent.”

            “Then we’ll activate the helmet when we’re ready and measure your performance under both conditions, for reaction time and accuracy.”

            “Got it.”

            “Starting in a few seconds, then.” Levi turns off the mic. He and I exchange another glance, this time lingering.

            This is it.

            We did it.

            You and I.

            Together.

            Then Levi turns around and nods at Lamar to start the routine. There isn’t much I have to do since the protocols have been programmed and are loaded to go. I lean back, eyes on the monitor, fixed on Guy’s sitting form.

            I’ll need to buy him a present, I think. A bottle of something expensive. Britney concert tickets. For being so patient when I kept shooting theta bursts at his brain. For being so nice. For lying to him. Then the task loads, and I’m too busy observing to think much of anything.

            It starts like usual. Guy’s job is to detect stimuli as they appear on the screen. He’s an astronaut, and at baseline he performs about ten million times better than I, a regular everyday wimp, ever could. A few minutes later Levi gives another signal, and the brain stimulation protocol I wrote is activated.

            Ten seconds pass. Twenty. Thirty. I eye the estimates for the performance metrics—nothing happens. Accuracy and reaction times are hovering around the same values as before.

            Shit. What’s going on? I squirm nervously in my seat. The lag between the inception of the stimulation and the improvement in performance is usually over by now. I glance at Levi with a worried expression, but he’s calm, sitting back in his chair with his arms folded on his chest, alternating looks between Guy and the values. The only sign of impatience is his fingers, drumming on his bicep. He does that when he’s focused. Levi. My Levi.