Deep End(48)

“You—”

“That way,” he instructs, tapping my nape and taking a right turn.

My lips are tender and pouty. Earlier, in the elevator, he traced them with his thumb over and over, the soft hint of a pleased smile obvious in the creases at the corners of his eyes. He took my hand and held it—out of the lab, the hallway, the building, until I wiggled free.

It’s disarming, how a five-minute walk through campus results in several eyeballs slipping in his direction. But Stanford is the alma mater of dozens of Olympians, many of whom end up medaling, and Lukas is by no means unique. Basically a public figure, Pen said, and maybe she wasn’t wrong.

“Do you mind?” I ask him. I am slowly winding down. Not quite steady yet.

“Mind what?”

“Just, you know, the people. The attention.”

He gives me an empty look. “What attention, and what people?”

A laugh bubbles out of me, and I picture bringing this up with Pen. He doesn’t realize! I told you—constantly unfazed!

“You still doing okay?” he checks in, and I nod.

I feel used, deliciously so. But not like one might use a thing, only to discard it. I feel precious, something able to bring pleasure, a product of enthusiasm and instructions well carried out. And that, really, is the crux of it. When I’m following commands, my shoulders are bare of any weight. I’m sure there are many reasons people like what I like, but for me—this is it. The quiet. The grind, stopped. Knowing that for a brief moment, someone else has me. No decisions, no responsibilities.

When that’s over, though, reality seeps back in. Classes. Practice. Projects.

“I’ve been working on the pooling layers for the neural network,” I tell Lukas .

“You said max pooling, right?”

“Zach did.”

“Ah. What do you think?”

I pause. Chew my lower lip. “Zach is a grad student. I’m just an undergrad.”

“Uh-huh. And you can still disagree with him.”

“The average value would be better.” I glance up at him, sideways. “What do you think?”

“I think you’re better than me, or Zach, at this.”

I don’t strictly need Lukas to tell me that I’m good at something, especially when I already know that, but it’s still nice. A quiet warmth. My knees no longer shake, but I’m empty. Electrified. “Love the trust.”

“It’s a hell of a drug.” We exchange a knowing look. “I’m going to write a script to prepare the training dataset for the model.”

“Can you?”

His eyebrow quirks. “Are you doubting my coding ability?”

“No, no. I’d rather do it, though.”

“Why?”

“Well, I don’t know what coding languages you know, for one.”

“And?”

“I’m concerned that you’ll say, I don’t know, MATLAB.”

He scoffs. “MATLAB.”

“Your indignation is a relief.” I catch the twitch of his lips as he nudges me into a left turn. We’re slowly heading toward the outskirts of campus—maybe another library I don’t know about? “You may write the script.”

“How generous of you. How’s German going, troll?”

I glare at his smug, self-satisfied face. “Okay, first: troll? And, that was low.”

“But warranted. MATLAB. ”

“Uh-huh. Next thing you’re gonna ask me about my inward dives.”

“Hmm. Which ones are those?”

I halt in the middle of the sidewalk.

“What?” he asks.

“Did you just . . . do you not know what an inward dive is?”

He shrugs. “I get them mixed up.”

“But . . . Pen.” He stares at me like I should elaborate. “Your ex is a diving prodigy.” More blank stares. “You can tell different dive groups apart, right?”

“Well, I did notice the difference between the short, bouncy board and the tall, stiff board—”

“You mean the platform?”

“Is that what it’s called?”

I cover my mouth with both hands to prevent a clamor of harpies from slipping out of my trachea and attacking him—and then realize he’s messing with me. “I hate you.”

He smiles and reaches out, pushing a strand behind my ear. Then tugs me till I resume walking. “I do get the diving groups confused. I couldn’t pick out an inward dive.”

Unacceptable. “Maybe if you did she wouldn’t . . .” I stop myself mid-mumble, and cast about for a not wound-salting way of ending the sentence.

But Lukas is already grinning. “Have dumped me?”

“I didn’t mean to . . . I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I could memorize every item in the diving book by degree of difficulty, and it would change nothing.”

“Are you sure? It’s a bit of a red-flaggy, deadbeat boyfriend move, not knowing the basics of your girlfriend’s sport. Maybe she feels neglected?”

He chuckles. “Sufficiently supporting each other was the one issue we did not have, Scarlett.” Then continues, more serious. “Pen and I got together when we both needed something—someone outside of our disciplines. Knowing little about each other’s sports was part of the draw.”