Love, Theoretically by Ali Hazelwood

            “I understand what I’m seeing, so listen to me, asshole.” Jack’s tone is chilling. Terrifyingly calm. Austin pales and takes a small step back, and I almost feel sorry for him. “You’re harassing a woman who asked you to get out of her personal space while she’s at a work function. Because she rejected you.”

            “But I paid her to—”

            “I don’t care. She asked you to leave. Get the fuck out of my sight.”

            Austin doesn’t want to leave. It’s clear in his flared nostrils, in his twitching jaw while he stares at the place above my shoulders where Jack has taken up residence. But he doesn’t stand a chance: after a few frustrated seconds he mutters “Fuck this” and finally, finally takes a step back.

            My heart starts beating again.

            “And one more thing,” Jack adds.

            Austin swallows. “What?”

            “If you say anything about this, to anyone, including your mother, I’m going to make sure you regret it for a long, long time. Understood?”

            Austin presses his lips together and nods once, tight. Then he disappears into the crowd, into another room, and—

            I free my arms and turn around, meaning to . . . I don’t know. Thank Jack? Explain myself? Play off what just happened as a fever dream?

            Problem is, he’s staring down at me. Watching me with sharp, inflexible eyes that miss nothing, and—

            He sees everything. Every molecule I am built of—he could list it, describe it, reproduce it in a lab. He sees the rebar structure in me, and I . . . I see nothing. I understand nothing.

            I still have no idea what he wants me to be.

            “Jack,” I say. A barely there whisper, but he can hear me. He can hear everything. “Jack. I . . . I just . . .” I shake my head. And then I can’t stand to be seen anymore, so I take a step back and weave my way through the room, looking for Monica to make my excuses.





10


            INERTIA


            In hindsight,” Cece muses while nibbling pensively on a piece of gouda, “we should have seen this coming. Boston’s population is seven hundred thousand. Say half are men, and half of that twenty-one to forty—Faux’s target demo. Now, Faux’s not cheap, and the masses are getting poorer while Jeff Bezos ruthlessly profits off my desperate need for one-day shipping of dill-pickle lip balm. So maybe only a fourth of the dudes can afford to hire us. And of that fourth, half is either in a happily committed relationship or . . . has morals. Now, consider that we’ve been doing this for about four years, fake-girlfriending an average of two clients a month. If we crunch the numbers . . .” She looks at me expectantly. I consider pretending I’m not a human calculator, then give up.

            “Ninety-six men.” I sigh. “And their family and friends. In a pool of twenty-one thousand.”

            Cece holds a carrot to Hedgie, who takes a delicate nibble. “Which makes the probability of us coming across someone we met through Faux in our private lives . . . ? Time to nerd out, nerd queen.”

            “Bayesian probability? Or frequentist?”

            Cece’s grin is my favorite of hers, with the tongue sticking out of her teeth. “Doesn’t matter. The point is, it’s possible that in our quixotic quest to make enough money to pay our taxes—something Jeff Dill Pickle Bezos is not asked to do, by the way—we . . .”

            “Fucked up?”

            “A good assessment.”

            I let my forehead slide to the table. It’s cold, and sticky with something that might not be Hedgie’s urine. “What if Austin tells his mother that I’m some kind of con woman who tricks her clients into . . . into . . .”

            “Into not fucking her? Did he look like he might want to talk to Monica?”

            “I . . .” Once Jack was done with him, he just looked scared. Shitless, one might add. But also angry, and angry people do angry, stupid things. Like climbing on top of a toilet in the men’s restroom with Jack Smith-Turner’s hands pressed into their waist. Or forgetting to monitor their glucose levels. God, what a shit show of an interview. At least the most disgraceful moments happened behind the scenes—yay for semiprivate humiliation. “I don’t know.”