Love, Theoretically by Ali Hazelwood

            “I know you do, Elsie.” His voice is low pitched and rumbly. “But I want someone else to get it.”

            “I know. Jack.”

            “Then it seems like we’re at an impasse. Elsie.” He articulates my name slowly, carefully. I’m going to lean forward and bite his stupid lips bloody.

            No, I won’t, because I’m better than that.

            Or am I?

            “You do not want to come at me,” I hiss.

            “Oh, Elsie.” His hands on me are incongruously gentle, and yet we’re on the verge of the academic equivalent of nuclear warfare. “I think it’s exactly what I want.”

            The dryer turns off into silence and saves me from committing aggravated assault. “They left,” I say. “Let me go.”

            His mouth twitches, but he deposits me on the floor in some ludicrous reverse–Dirty Dancing move. His hands on my waist linger, but as soon as they leave me I’m scampering out of the stall, heels clicking on the tiles. I nearly lose my balance. With Jack’s scent out of my nose, the stench of the place hits me anew.

            “Talk to Monica if you want to,” I bluff, turning back to him. “You’ll see the good it does you.”

            “Oh, I will.” He’s clearly about to smile, like the angrier I get, the more amused he becomes. A never-ending vicious cycle that can end only in me holding his head in the toilet bowl.

            “It’s my word against the word of the guy with a decade-long agenda against theorists, after all.”

            He shrugs. “Maybe. Or maybe it’s a physicist’s word against a librarian’s.”

            I scoff and stalk to the entrance, suddenly confident in my stilt shoes, determined not to be in his presence a second longer. But when I reach the door, something ticks inside me. I whip my head back to Jack, who’s standing there like K2, studying me with an interested frown, like I’m an exotic caterpillar about to pupate.

            God, I hope he has itchy, purulent ass acne for the rest of his natural life. “I know you have despised me since the very first moment we met,” I spit out.

            He bites the inside of his cheek. “You do?”

            “Yes. And you know what? It doesn’t matter if you hated me at first sight, because I’ve hated you long before we ever met. I hated you the first time I heard your name. I hated you when I was twelve and read what you’d done in Scientific American. I’ve hated you harder, I’ve hated you longer, and I’ve hated you for better reasons.”

            Jack doesn’t look so amused anymore. This is new to me—talking to others like the me I really am. It’s new and different and weird, and I freaking love it.

            “I’m really good at hating you, Jack, so here’s what I’m going to do: not only am I going to get this job, but when we’re colleagues at MIT, I’m going to make sure that you have to look at me every day and wish that I were George. I’m going to make you regret every single little jab. And I’m going to single-handedly make your life so hard that you’ll regret taking on me, and Monica, and theoretical physics, until you cry in your office every morning and finally apologize to the scientific community for what you did.”

            He is really not amused now. “Is that so?” he asks. Cold. Cutting.

            This time I’m the one to smile. “You bet, Jonathan.”

            I open the door. Leave the restroom.

            And I don’t glance at him for the rest of the evening.





4


            ENTROPY


            So. Just to get this straight. You, Elsie ‘I’m allergic to peanuts but I still ate Mrs. Tuttle’s homemade brittle because I didn’t want to hurt her feelings, have you seen my EpiPen?’ Hannaway—you told Jack Smith . . . all that?”

            I’ve kicked off the red dress, and I’m neurotically pacing in the glory of my thigh highs, striped cotton underwear, and insulin pod. I should be cold, but my anger burns toasty from within, like the plasma core of the sun. “It’s a minor allergy, Mrs. Tuttle is very elderly and our landlady, and yes, I did—because Jack deserved it.”