Not in Love by Ali Hazelwood

His mouth twitched, indulgent. “I’m not your dancing bear, Rue. I don’t perform on command.”

“No. You like the element of surprise.” His silence read like assent. He stared at my mouth until I asked, “What’s your educational background?”

“Is it relevant to what we’re doing here?”

I licked the backs of my teeth. Was it? Did I need to know? Or was I simply unjustifiably, uncharacteristically curious about this man I should be ejecting out of my life and mind? “I’m harvesting microbial growth every thirty minutes, and logging chamber conditions every fifteen, just to be safe.” I tore my eyes from his complicated face and put on my lab coat, facing away from him. When I turned around, he was staring with hungry eyes, as though I were something to be eaten, as though I were peeling off layers instead of the opposite.

Jay’s lab coat was larger than mine but turned out not to be big enough for Eli. He put on rubber gloves with the ease that only someone who visited a lab every day—or a serial killer—should have. I stared at his hands stretching the latex and thought, This is dangerous. We shouldn’t be together, he and I.

“When I was eighteen or nineteen,” he said, “I was working in a lab as an undergraduate RA, and I accidentally messed with the settings of the liquid nitrogen tank. My lab lost several important cell lines that were stored in it. It was a dumb mistake that set their research back by weeks.” He bit the inside of his cheek. “Everyone assumed that it was machine malfunction, and even though I felt guilty as shit, I never corrected them. The following semester, I moved to another lab.”

I blinked at him. “Why are you telling me this?”

His mouth quirked. “Just confessing something terrible to you. I thought it might be our thing.”

I remembered the car. My admission that I’d wished Vincent would just disappear. How jealous of his sister he’d been. Then, inexplicably, I heard myself say, “I once accidentally crushed a mouse’s skull while putting him in ear bars.” I swallowed. “The postdoc who was supervising me said that it wasn’t a big deal, and I pretended I didn’t care, but I couldn’t handle it. I haven’t worked with lab animals since.”

He didn’t say anything, like he hadn’t in the car, nor did he react in any other way. We just stared at each other with no disappointment and no recrimination, two terrible people with horrible stories, two terrible people who maybe were more interested in judging themselves than each other, until I couldn’t bear it anymore. I quickly grabbed an apple, and didn’t protest when he followed me to the humidity chamber. “Hot in here,” he commented. “Is the seal broken? I can take a look.”

“It’s just a small space. And a constantly running motor. You ready?” I started my timer before he could respond.

Admittedly, he was a good assistant. He knew how, and where, and what to log, did not ask me to repeat myself, and never once looked bored while I took my measurements. He asked questions about my research, about the company culture, about the work I’d done before coming to Kline, but he seemed to know instinctively not to bother me when I was harvesting samples or diluting them with buffers.

For the most part, I answered. I was certain that his intentions were sketchy, but couldn’t figure how sharing any of this information was going to harm Florence. The work we did was important. Florence was a fantastic leader. Maybe it was perverse of me, but I wanted Eli to know how much Kline had accomplished. Whatever Harkness was trying to achieve may have been legal, but it wasn’t moral, and I wanted him to feel like a villain for it.

But he didn’t seem upset, only happy to listen and ask questions. Above all, he seemed fully in his element. Like a lab was where he belonged.

“How long has it been?” I asked, grabbing a fresh pipette tip.

“Less than five minutes—”

“I mean, since you were last in a lab.”

He looked up from the clipboard, his face so blank, it had to be deliberate. “I haven’t kept track.”

“No?” He had. To the day. I was certain. “Why did you stop?”

“Don’t remember.” There were only two or three feet between us. His eyes were a light, predatory blue. Close enough that I could touch the lie.

“You don’t remember why you decided that you’d rather be a hedge fund manager than a scientist?”

“You really don’t know much about private equities, do you?”

My hand tightened on the pipette. “You know a lot about food engineering, though.”

“And where does that leave us?”

“I don’t think there is an us.” My hand tightened even more—so hard, I accidentally pressed my thumb against the pipette’s ejector, dropping the tip. “Shit.” I knelt to the floor, bending my head in the cramped space.

“Here,” Eli said. When I lifted my eyes, the tip was in the center of his open palm. When I lifted them higher, he was crouching in front of me.

Close.

Closer than he’d been since the other night.

“Thank you,” I said, without reaching for the tip. Not sure whether I could trust myself.

Eli stared as though my skull were made of glass, and he could see the exact mess passing through my head. He took my free hand, gently pried it open, and deposited the tip on my palm.