Love, Theoretically by Ali Hazelwood

            The bedroom is just a tad messier than the rest of the place, the bed still unmade from Greg’s last night in Boston. He’s narrating a documentary on the environmental toll of almond production, which makes cajoling him into lying down marginally easier. I don’t turn on the lights, and he falls quiet while I’m untying his shoe.

            Thank God he’s asleep. I’ll be out of here in a minute and—

            “I like you, Elsie.”

            I look up from Greg’s boot. His eyes are closed. “I like you, too, Greg.”

            “Remember how you said we could be friends?”

            “Yeah.”

            “I want to be friends.”

            My heart breaks a little. Not when you snap out of it and check your email, you won’t. “Awesome. Let’s be friends.”

            “Good. Because I like you. Did I mention it?”

            “Yup.”

            “Not like like you. I don’t know if I can like like people.”

            “I know,” I say softly. I pull the boot off and get started on the other.

            “But you’re cool. Like . . . a Barbie.”

            “A Barbie?”

            “You’re not blond. But there’s one of you for every occasion.”

            Something catches the corner of my eye and I turn. Jack. Standing in the doorframe. Listening to us. His expression is dark, his brow is furrowed, and his chest is . . .

            Bare.

            He’s taken off his soiled shirt, and for some reason I am physically unable to look anywhere but at his body. Which has me realizing that I was totally wrong about him.

            He is . . . well, he is big. And well muscled, very well muscled. And I can see all the . . . all that stuff that people always talk about—the bulk, the mass, the abs, the biceps and the triceps stretching under the ink. But he’s not made the way I thought he’d be. I expected a gym rat body with 0.3 percent body fat and bulging veins, but he’s a little different. He’s real. Imperfectly, usefully strong. There’s something unrefined about him, as though he stumbled upon all this mass by chance. As though he’s never even thought about taking a mirror selfie in his life.

            Something warm and liquid twists behind my navel, and the feeling is so rare for me, so unfamiliar, for a moment I barely recognize it. Then I do, and I flush hotly.

            What is wrong with me? Why do I find the idea of someone not going to the gym attractive? Why can’t I stop staring at him, and why is he staring back?

            Jack clears his throat. He turns to reach for something to wear in Greg’s dresser, and whatever’s happening between his shoulder blades looks like a religious experience.

            “Elsie,” Greg mumbles from the bed. I’m grateful for the reminder to look away. “Is soy milk from a nipple?”

            “Oh, um . . . no.” My voice is hoarse. Breathing’s hard, but marginally easier once Jack walks out of the room. “Soy’s a bean.”

            “You’re so wise. And full of layers. Like . . .”

            “An onion?”

            “Like a yogurt with the fruit on the bottom.”

            I smile and drag a quilt over him. “Let’s play a game. I’ll go in the living room, and we’re both going to count however high we can. Whoever counts highest wins.” I have vague memories of Mom making Lucas and Lance do this. Of course, like everything with Lucas and Lance, it always devolved into them fighting over who could count the highest and waking up the entire house.

            “What a shitty game.” Greg yawns. “I’ll kick your ass.”

            “I bet.” I close the door between thirteen and fourteen. Jack’s waiting on the green Lawson couch, wearing a too-tight hoodie that’s probably tentlike on Greg. The mysteries of genetics.

            He doesn’t look up. He sits motionless, elbows on his knees, staring at one of Greg’s colorful, artsy wall prints with a half-vacant, all-tense expression.