Love, Theoretically by Ali Hazelwood

            A reminder to change my insulin pod. I consider putting it off till I’m home, then look at Jack and think, Honesty. This day, this not-too-good soup, this man with a black-hole tattoo peeping out of his T-shirt sleeve, they are too good to not spend some honesty on.

            “I’m going to need a few minutes upstairs,” I say, hopping off the stool. “But I’ll be back.”

            “What’s going on?”

            “Just need to change my insulin pod.” I rummage in my purse and then hold my kit up triumphantly—a pale yellow bag with little hedgehogs Cece got me years ago. “Don’t worry, you don’t have to be there. I know people get squeamish. I’ll do it in your bedroom—”

            “Show me how you do it.”

            He puts down what’s left of his sandwich. Washes his hands.

            I laugh. “Why?”

            “Because I want to know.”

            “Why would you—oh my God. You want to put high-fructose corn syrup in my insulin. Was this a long con to murder me?”

            He smiles and shakes his head. “I’m starting to be partial to the way you bypass all rational explanations for everything I say, and dash straight to me being an unhinged serial killer.”

            “I think it’s our thing.”

            His biceps bunch up when he leans his palms against the table. “Show me how it works,” he repeats. It sounds like a soft order, and I answer with a soft question:

            “Why?”

            “Because I want to know these things.”

            There’s something unsaid in this. Because I want to know your life, maybe, or Because I want to know you. My eyes fall on the kit, and I picture myself using words like reservoir and expiration advisory and ketoacidosis. Explaining how each component works. I’ve never said some of those words out loud. They live exclusively in my head, together with the rest of my problems.

            Even Cece knows only the basics. But this is Jack. So I swallow. “Do you have any disinfectant?”

            The dimple is back. “I thought you’d never ask.”

            Less than an hour later, I settle between his long legs on the couch, toes brushing against his calves, his hand splayed on my stomach under the hoodie. He refuses to watch the end of Twilight (“I think I’ve seen enough”) but agrees with me that New Moon is the best in the series (“Relativistically”), curls around me for a two-hour nap during Eclipse (“You smell like me—you should always smell like me”), and then wakes up as the afternoon stretches into evening, just in time for Bella’s unexpected pregnancy.

            “This is atrocious,” he says, laughing at every single thing the characters do.

            “Shut up.”

            He laughs harder against my nape.

            “Shut up—she could die!”

            More laughter.

            “It’s about the hardships and sorrows of the universal human experience, Jonathan.”

            He nibbles on my ear a little too hard. “Still better than 2001, Elsie.”

            “Obviously.” Something occurs to me. “By the way, is Millicent okay?”

            “Yup. Why do you ask?”

            “It’s Sunday. Shouldn’t she be calling you with a vital emergency? Isn’t the newspaper boy tossing the Times into her rosebushes or something?”

            “Pretty sure newspaper delivery hasn’t worked like that since the early 2000s. And she did her weekend routine yesterday. Sent a photo of an alligator coming out of a toilet in a Florida gas station. Claimed it was happening in her en suite.”

            “She knows how to send pictures?”

            “Impressive, right?” He drums his fingers against my stomach. “I stopped by for lunch. Gave her the novel. Got scolded for not taking you.”

            “Oh.” I flush. With . . . pleasure?