The Spark Between Us by Stacy Travis
Chapter Ten
Sarah
After my firstweek at the lab, my team fell into a groove. We’d drawn up enough models to know the exact results we hoped to get. Now the fun part would begin—experimenting with the lasers and recording data until we found the strongest bond—something that could withstand G-forces in space.
In the lab, Keith worked with a quadrillion-watt laser that he mysteriously referred to as Batwoman. He’d spent a decade working on different applications for its powerful beam, and he still had boundless enthusiasm for building something even more powerful.
Today, Keith wore a hoodie with a picture of a cat on a wanted poster with the tagline, “Wanted dead or alive: Schrodinger’s cat.” I’d never tire of physicist humor.
“I’ve already compressed the beam into a shorter pulse to keep the heat down, but we need it to do much better,” Keith said, ruffling his hair. I stood next to him wearing protective goggles and watching him calibrate the beam.
Lasers lay far outside my field of knowledge. “I’m going to leave that to you, Keith. The heat is an issue with aluminum alloys, and that’s what the space program needs.”
I went back to our workroom. Sipping a green juice, Charlotte sat in an ergonomic chair and recorded our data. As the most junior member of the team, she got stuck with paperwork, but she was detail-oriented and liked that part of the job.
“Copper is the clear frontrunner,” Drew said. He wore a purple bowtie with a striped shirt and jeans, his usual uniform when we weren’t gowned up in clean room conditions. At the moment, we were in my office looking at spreadsheets of data from our first week of work.
“We knew copper would perform, but no one can afford to build rockets from copper,” I said.
“That’s why it’s a problem.”
“It’s not a problem. Yet. We should still work with the copper and study it. Why do the electrons move faster? How do we calibrate the laser to get the same results with aluminum?”
“Oh, is that all?” I didn’t mind his sarcasm. Our objective was challenging, which was why we’d allocated six months to accomplish it.
“Yes, just that.” I liked Drew. So far, he and I had found a good working rhythm. He reminded me a little of my dad, and sometimes I leaned into his comforting presence. My dad had died so long ago, but never a day went by that I didn’t miss him.
His death had shifted the way I dealt with my siblings in a way that was now so embedded that it impacted how I approached the world. With Finn and my oldest sister Isla away at college and my mom mentally unstable after losing her husband, I became the de facto parent to Becca, Cherry, and Tatum.
That meant I grew up fast and took on responsibilities for looking out for them and guiding them. Sometimes they resented it because I was practically their age, but I didn’t care. They needed an authority figure and I stepped into the void. It was overwhelming, so I put my life on a schedule—if I followed it to the letter, I could give my sisters what they needed and still find time for my graduate degree, the career I wanted, and eventually, I hoped, a relationship. So far, everything had gone according to my controlled plan, and I wasn’t about to abandon it now.
“Hey, should I start another spreadsheet for today’s results?” Charlotte asked as her phone started beeping. She had an alarm that went off every three hours to reminder her to eat something, so her blood sugar didn’t get too low.
We’d been going hard all day, so I hadn’t realized it was already seven at night—a hazard of lab work. The lights were always on, and often we got so carried away with an experiment that we lost track of time.
“No, we should wrap up,” I told them. “Come on, guys. We’ve been at this all day, and we’ll be right back here in the morning.”
Charlotte perked up. “You don’t have to tell me twice. I need to eat.”
“We all do. Is anyone free? Dinner on me if you show me a good dinner spot in town.”
I had three takers in seconds.
Fifteen minutes after that, we had an outside table at Juicy BBQ and Dry Spirits, and each of us had a full beer in front of us.
“This is good for team building,” Drew said, unwilling to loosen his bowtie after work.
“Ha. You just like that I’m paying,” I joked, drawing a finger through the condensation on my glass and watching the droplets join. “But you guys are worth it. We make a good team.”
Charlotte raised her glass and we all toasted. “To team spirit.”
A few minutes later, a giant platter of loaded nachos landed in the center of our table, and small talk gave way to racing each other to the bottom of the plate. After a couple bites of pulled pork, cheese, and other morsels I couldn’t even identify, I felt much better.
That was when I happened to glance across the street to see a familiar figure—a firefighter in low-slung dark jeans and his characteristic muscle-hugging T-shirt.
He was with a woman—a date.
That much was evident by the way he placed his hand on the small of her back. My spine tingled at the memory of him doing that with me—once—after my car accident. Then, on the morning that my neck had been locked up, he’d treated me gingerly, taking such good care to get me moving again.
But since then, he’d been busy with work and so had I. We’d interacted like roommates, ships passing in the night. As it should be.
It had taken all week for the memory of his fingertips brushing my skin to fade a tiny bit. But his hand on his date’s back brought back all the lustful feeling I’d been working hard to shove away.
I allowed myself to watch him since they were too far away for him to notice me voyeuristically tracking his every move.
His date was pretty—I could see that from far away. Petite with curves and ample breasts, she had long red hair that reminded me of my younger sister Cherry, the only redhead in our family.
I told myself that I most definitely did not have a crush on my roommate. My interest in him tipped toward the purely scientific—cataloging what a handsome firefighter did for fun, what kind of woman he found attractive.
You are so full of crap.
They entered the restaurant across the street, and I couldn’t see anything else. I deflated, unable to decide if I wanted to see him lean in and kiss her neck or if that would make me throw up on the nachos.
If I saw him kiss her, my dumb brain might realize he was off limits to me. He had a life here long before I arrived, and he wouldn’t abandon it to satisfy my roommate lust.
“Old laser physicists never die. They just become incoherent,” Keith said to the roaring appreciative laugh of my physics friends. These were my people. Like attracted like.
Nevertheless, while my team prattled on and the jokes got even worse and therefore more hilarious, I couldn’t help glancing at the door to the restaurant across the street, wondering if Braden’s date was running a bare toe up his leg under the table.
Probably.
Braden struck me as someone who knew what he wanted, and she was on a date with him now. He’d given no indication that woman was me.