Love, Theoretically by Ali Hazelwood

            I claw out of my anxiety pit, take off my coat, then make to follow him into the kitchen, when—

            Jack.

            For no reason whatsoever, my heart jolts and I cannot breathe. Maybe there’s something wrong with my cardiopulmonary health—is my entire body joining my pancreas and crapping out? Does nothing inside me work anymore? But really, it’s not important. I don’t care. Jack doesn’t care. He stands just a few feet from the entrance, arms crossed, chestnut eyes full of warmth and amusement as he murmurs, “Looks like you and Uncle Paul have something in common, after all.”

            “I . . . He . . . It’s a misunderstanding.”

            His mouth twitches. “When you said you wanted to spend the night, I didn’t think you meant here.”

            I groan, covering my eyes with my hand. And when I feel Jack’s heat, I know he has drifted closer, and I let myself sink into him.

            “Hey,” he says, lips against my temple, and suddenly everything feels a bit more right in the world. I want to kiss him, desperately, just as desperately as I don’t want his brother to walk in on us kissing in his living room. So I pull back and open my mouth to say the first thing I can think of.

            Then immediately close it.

            Am I going insane? Is my brain leaking out from my ears? I can’t say that. I’m not batshit—

            “Honesty,” he chides gently.

            Crap. “I . . .” I swallow. Buck up. Take a deep breath. “I missed you.” I rub my forehead. “God, I’m such a weirdo.”

            He nods slowly, as though mulling it over. Then offers, “I went to campus today to get work done. Instead I kept wondering how buck wild it would be if I asked you to move in.”

            I let out a surprised laugh. “You’re a weirdo, too.”

            “Yeah.”

            “Have you ever . . . ?”

            “Nope. Total first.”

            “What’s wrong with us?”

            His eyes hold mine, unyielding. “I think we both know what.”

            I laugh again. “What?”

            “Come on, Elsie. You know where we’re going, here.”

            I take a step back, nearly bumping into a fully assembled hutch. Panic bubbles as I track this conversation. I think I know what he’s referring to, but . . . It’s not possible. It might feel like that, but it’s too fast.

            “No,” I say. And then turn away, dry mouthed, because he’s giving me the look again, the one he reserves for when we both know I’m lying.

            I’m afraid he’ll be his usual merciless self, but he just nods, pushes a strand of hair behind my ear, and tells me, “It’ll come to you.” His touch lingers briefly, then his hand drops to his side just as Greg calls to tell us that dinner is ready.

            “I’m a very mediocre cook,” he warns me, and it’s not a lie, but his mediocre food pairs perfectly with my mediocre wine, and even better with stories of his and Jack’s mediocre childhoods. Teenage Greg, apparently, used to update every Facebook status with emo song lyrics. Jack had a skater phase and a man-bun phase (not overlapping). They once collaborated on a homemade mafia thriller titled The Godson, which Greg promises to show me. In exchange, I make them laugh with my weirdest fake-girlfriending stories, like the guy who had me learn sea shanties in preparation for our date, or the one who was afraid of wallpaper.

            “This is . . . easy,” I tell Jack when Greg gets a late-night work call. He’s washing the dishes; I dry.

            “What is?”

            “Just . . .” I stare at his soapy fingers. “This. The three of us. I thought it’d be weird, but . . .” It’s not.

            “Why do you think that is?” he asks, with the tone of someone who already has the answer. I don’t, though. It eludes me, even as Greg unearths The Godson for its first showing in two decades. After we hug him good night, I doze off inside the car. And once we’re home, I hang my coat on my hook.