Love, Theoretically by Ali Hazelwood

            “Can you?”

            “Yes. I’m a—” My brain stutters, then freezes as something occurs to me: if I told Jack about the fake dating, I’d be outing not just myself, but also Greg.

            Yes, Jack and Greg are close. No, Greg did not tell Jack about Faux, and it’s not my place to do so. I could avoid saying why Greg has decided to hire me, but would that matter? Jack would know that Greg is hiding something. That there’s something to prod, to investigate, and . . .

            “It’s just—I don’t know how my family would take it.” Greg rubs his palm in his eye, looking like he could use a deep-tissue massage and forty hours of sleep. “They might be complete assholes about it or be great or try to be nice and instead end up being massively invasive and . . . I’d rather not tell them, for now. I’d rather they not know that there’s something to tell.”

            I can hear Greg’s words as I glance up. Jack’s dark eyes are stern. Expectant. Inflexible.

            I’d rather lick the urinals than tell this guy any of my secrets. “Actually, I can’t explain, but—”

            Two voices—male laughter, loafer steps right outside the bathroom. We both wheel around to the entrance.

            “Someone’s coming,” I say unnecessarily. Shit. What if it’s someone from our party? I shoot Jack a panicked look, fully expecting to find him gloating. Instead his face takes on an urgent, calculating look, and things I do not expect happen.

            His huge hand lifts. Splays across the small of my back. Pushes me toward the closest stall. He wants to hide me?

            “What are you—”

            “Go,” he orders.

            “No! I can’t just—”

            I must hesitate too long, because Jack’s hands close around my waist. He lifts me effortlessly, like I weigh less than a Higgs boson, and carries me inside the stall, depositing my feet on the rim of the toilet. My brain blanks—no thoughts, head empty—and I don’t have the faintest idea what’s going on. What is he—

            The stall door closes.

            The bathroom door opens.

            Two men enter, discussing quantum advantage. “—scale the error correction by the number of qubits?”

            “You don’t. Scaled-up system behavior is erratic. How do you account for that?”

            Shit. Shit, shit—

            “Calm down,” Jack murmurs against the shell of my ear, like he knows that I’m on the verge of popping an aneurysm.

            “They’re from the MIT table,” I whisper under my breath.

            “Shh.” His giant paws tighten around me, as if to contain me and my panic. They span my waist. Our size difference sits somewhere between absurd and obscene. “Settle down.”

            I feel dizzy. “Why am I standing on the toilet?”

            “I figured you’d rather Dr. Pereira and Dr. Crowley keep on chatting about superpolynomial speedups and not see your heels under the stall. Was I wrong?”

            I close my eyes, mortified. This is not my life. I’m a discerning scientist with insightful opinions on spintronic tech, not this blighted creature clinging to Jonathan Smith-Turner’s shoulders on top of a latrine.

            Oh, who am I kidding? This is exactly my brand. Improbable. Cringeworthy. Botched.

            “Settle down,” Jack repeats, gruffly reassuring. We’re way too close. I want his breath to be garlic and sauerkraut, but it’s vaguely minty and pleasantly warm. I want his skin to smell ridiculous, like mango tanning mousse, but all my nose picks up on is nice, clean, good. I want his grip to be creepy and knee-in-the-groin worthy, but it’s just what I need to avoid slipping in the toilet. “Stop fidgeting.”

            “I’m not—” Pereira and Crowley are still talking physics—can’t believe all the fuss with the quantum Hadamard transform—with the added background of a stream trickling. Oh God, they’re peeing. I’m eavesdropping on one of the world’s foremost solar neutrinos scholars peeing. I can’t come back from this, can I?