Love, Theoretically by Ali Hazelwood

            I think he’ll finish with a growl, make a mess out of me, maybe admire his handiwork, but that’s not what happens at all. Instead he pulls back so that his eyes can hold my own till the very last moment, glassy and nearly all black. His free hand searches blindly, frantically. It grabs mine when he finds it, twining our fingers together in a tight grip, and that’s when I know. When I realize deep in my belly that for Jack this is not about friction or about fucking. It’s not even about coming, or about anything else I might have stupidly suspected.

            This is about him and me. And the possibility of something that goes far beyond the both of us.

            “Elsie,” he mouths when he comes. He seems to retreat into himself, to dig deep into his head to deal with the shocking pleasure of it and avoid losing his mind, and all I need to do is hold him tight to remind him that yes. I’m here. With him.

            I’m here.

            It’s downright terrifying, what this could be. What I want it to be. It makes me tear up, and then it makes me sob, and then it makes me clutch at Jack for dear life, the splotch of his semen sticking to his shirt and my stomach, pooling in my belly button. To his credit, he doesn’t ask me what’s wrong. He doesn’t beg for explanations. He just holds me close, both arms wrapped around me, even when my tears morph into giggles, like I’m some crazy, unstable girl who doesn’t know what to be or what to feel.

            Wait. That’s exactly who I am.

            I laugh. Then I laugh some more. Then I cannot stop. The movie is over, “15 Step” by Radiohead bafflingly plays during the black-and-white end credits, and I’m laughing again.

            “You’re ruining the moment.” His lips curve into my throat, winded like he just finished an Olympic race.

            “I’m so sorry. I just—”

            “What?”

            “Just wondering if you still think it’s ‘too soon.’ ”

            He slaps my butt. I yelp and then keep on laughing.

            “Yes.” He maneuvers back and angles my head so that I’m looking at him. “It’s really soon. But the only person who can slow us down is you, so . . .”

            “So what?”

            He pushes a strand of sweaty hair behind my ear. His eyes are worried, and warm, and empty of everything that’s not us. “Be gentle with me, Elsie. That’s all I ask.”





20


            FALLING BODIES



From: [email protected]

                Re: Thermodynamics Essay


Doctor Hannaway, ma’am, it’s been 23 hours, have you graded my essay yet?



            Saturday’s a daze.

            I shuffle around my room gingerly, full of distant stares and hands stopping midaction, like I cannot remember what I opened my closet for, how to squeeze the tube to get the right amount of toothpaste.

            It’s a first. I sense that some paradigmatic shift has happened within me, but I cannot justify it. Jack and I did a bunch of things that high schoolers today would barely consider a quarter of first base—so what? I try to cognitively reframe last night as two adults having casual fun, but my head is full of aggressive, intrusive, embarrassing thoughts that make it hard to concentrate on grading. As though the sheer nature of grading didn’t do it on its own.

            “When did you get back last night?” Cece asks when I emerge in the kitchen. As usual, she’s engaged in a mix of activities: teaching Hedgie an obstacle course, listening to an audiobook on the women of the Plantagenets, making oatmeal.

            I try to recall what the clock in Jack’s car looked like when he dropped me off. The red numbers blinking at me in the dark, as if to say, You should go. And Jack leaning over the armrest for a kiss, then pulling me into his lap. Whispering, Not yet. “Around one.”

            “A record.”

            “We watched a movie,” I tell her, to avoid saying, I think I had the most soul-shaking night of my entire adult life, and it didn’t even involve cheese.

            “What movie?”

            “Um . . . a vampire movie.”