Below Zero (The STEMinist Novellas #3) by Ali Hazelwood

            “I don’t mind,” he says again. I smile, because I know that this time he means it.

            “Good.” I push my tea to the side. “So, what would you be doing right now, if three-year-old you had known about sanitary sewers?”

            This time his smile is a tad more defined. I’m winning him over, which is good, very good, because I’m rapidly developing a thing for the contrast between his eyelashes (red!) and his deep-set eyes (blue!). “I’d probably be running a bunch of tests.”

            “At the Jet Propulsion Lab?”

            He nods.

            “Tests on . . . ?”

            “A rover.”

            “Oh.” My heart skips three beats. “For space exploration?”

            “Mars.”

            I lean closer, not even bothering to play it like I’m not avidly interested. “Is that your current project?”

            “One of them, yeah.”

            “And what are the tests for?”

            “Mostly attitude, figuring out where the ship is positioned in three-dimensional space. Pointing, too.”

            “You work on a gyroscope?”

            “Yes. My team is perfecting the gyroscope so that once the rover is on Mars, it knows where it is, what it’s looking at. Informs the other systems about its coordinates and movements, too.”

            My heart is now fully pitter-pattering. This sounds . . . wow. Pornographic, almost. Exactly my jam. “And you do this in Houston? At the Space Center?”

            “Usually. But I come up here when there are issues. I’ve been struggling with the imagery, and the feed update keeps lagging even though it shouldn’t, and—” He shakes his head, as if catching himself halfway through a rant that’s been playing over and over in his mind. But I finally know what he’d rather be doing.

            And I sure can’t blame him.

            “Did they send your entire team here?” I ask.

            He tilts his head, like he has no idea where I’m going with this. “Just me.”

            “So your team leader is not around.”

            “My team leader?”

            “Yeah. Is your boss around?”

            He is silent for a second. Two. Three. Four? What the— Ah.

            “You are the team leader,” I say.

            He nods once. A little stiff. Almost apologetic.

            “How old are you?” I ask.

            “Twenty-five.” A pause. “Next month.”

            Whoa. I’m twenty-two. “Isn’t that early to be a team leader?”

            “I’m . . . not sure,” he says, even though I can tell that he is sure, and that he is exceptional, and that even though he knows it, the thought makes him more than a little uncomfortable. I picture myself saying something flirtatious and inappropriate back—Wow, handsome and smart—and wonder how he’d react. Probably not well.

            Not that I’m going to hit on my informational interviewee. Even I know better. Plus, he’s not really my type.

            “Okay, what’s the security like at JPL?” I’ve never been. I know it’s loosely connected with Caltech, but that’s about it.

            “Depends,” he says cautiously, like he still cannot follow my train of thought.

            “What about your office? Is it a restricted area?”

            “No. Why—”

            “Awesome, then.” I stand, dig into my pockets for a few dollars to leave next to my unfinished tea, and then close my fingers around Ian’s wrist. His skin glows with warmth and taut muscles as I pull him up from the table, and even though he’s probably twice as big and ten times stronger than me, he lets me lead him away from the table. I let go of him the second we’re out of the coffee shop, but he keeps following me.