“You are the team leader,” I say.
He nods once. A little stiff. Almost apologetic.
“How old are you?” I ask.
“Twenty-five.” A pause. “Next month.”
Whoa. I’m twenty-two. “Isn’t that early to be a team leader?”
“I’m . . . not sure,” he says, even though I can tell that he is sure, and that he is exceptional, and that even though he knows it, the thought makes him more than a little uncomfortable. I picture myself saying something flirtatious and inappropriate back—Wow, handsome and smart—and wonder how he’d react. Probably not well.
Not that I’m going to hit on my informational interviewee. Even I know better. Plus, he’s not really my type.
“Okay, what’s the security like at JPL?” I’ve never been. I know it’s loosely connected with Caltech, but that’s about it.
“Depends,” he says cautiously, like he still cannot follow my train of thought.
“What about your office? Is it a restricted area?”
“No. Why—”
“Awesome, then.” I stand, dig into my pockets for a few dollars to leave next to my unfinished tea, and then close my fingers around Ian’s wrist. His skin glows with warmth and taut muscles as I pull him up from the table, and even though he’s probably twice as big and ten times stronger than me, he lets me lead him away from the table. I let go of him the second we’re out of the coffee shop, but he keeps following me.
“Hannah? What—where . . . ?”
“I don’t see why we can’t do this weird informational interview thing, get some work done, and have fun.”
“What?”
With a grin, I look at him over my shoulder. “Think of it as sticking it to evil Great-Aunt Delphina.”
I doubt he fully understands, but the corner of his mouth lifts again, and that’s good enough for me.
* * *
See this thread right here? It’s mostly about the behavior of one of the rover’s sensors, the LN-200. We combine its information with the one provided by the encoders on the wheels to figure out positioning.”
“Huh. So the sensor doesn’t run constantly?”
Ian turns to me, away from the chunk of programming code he’s been showing me. We’re sitting in front of his triple-monitor computer, side by side at his desk, which is a giant, pristine expanse with a stunning view of the floodplain JPL was built on. When I mentioned how clean his workspace was, he pointed out that it’s only because it’s a guest office. But when I asked him if his usual desk back in Houston is any messier, he glanced away before the corner of his lip twitched.
I am almost certain he’s starting to think that I’m not a total waste of time.
“No, it doesn’t run constantly. How can you tell?”
I gesture toward the lines of code, and the back of my hand brushes against something hard and warm: Ian’s shoulder. We’re sitting closer than we were at the coffee shop, but no closer than I’d feel comfortable being with one of the—always unpleasant, often offensive—guys in my Ph.D. cohort. I guess my crossed knees kind of pressed against his leg earlier, but that’s it. No big deal. “It’s in there, no?”
The section is in C++. Which happens to be the very first language I taught myself back in high school, when every single Google search for “Skills + Necessary + NASA” led to the sad result of “Programming.” Python came after. Then SQL. Then HAL/S. For each language, I started out convinced that chewing on glass would surely be preferable. Then, at some point along the way, I began thinking in terms of functions, variables, conditional loops. A little after that, reading code became a bit like inspecting the label on the back of the conditioner bottle while showering: not particularly fun, but overall easy. I do have some talents, apparently.
“Yeah.” He’s still looking at me. Not surprised, precisely. Not impressed, either. Intrigued, maybe? “Yes, it is.”
I rest my chin on my palm and chew on my lower lip, considering the code. “Is it because of the limited amount of solar power?”
“Yes.”
“And I bet it prevents gyro drift errors during the stationary period?”
“Correct.” He nods, and I’m momentarily distracted by his jawline. Or maybe it’s the cheekbones. They’re defined, angular in a way that makes me wish I had a protractor in my pocket.
“It’s not all automated, right? Earth-based personnel can direct tools?”
“They can, depending on the attitude.”
“Does the onboard flight software have specific requirements?”
“The pointing of the antenna relative to Earth, and . . .” He stops. His eyes fall on my chewed-on lip, then quickly move away. “You ask a lot of questions.”
I tilt my head. “Bad questions?”
Silence. “No.” More silence as he studies me. “Remarkably good questions.”
“Can I ask a few more, then?” I grin at him, aiming for cheeky, curious to see where it’ll take us.
He hesitates before nodding. “Can I ask you some, too?”
I laugh. “Like what? Would you like me to list the specs of the maze-solving bot I built for my Intro to Robotics class back in college?”
“You built a maze-solving robot?”
“Yup. Four-wheel, all-terrain, Bluetooth module. Solar powered. Her name was Ruthie, and when I set her free at a corn maze somewhere near Atlanta, she got out in about three minutes. Scared the crap out of the children, too.”
He is fully smiling now. He has a heart-stopping dimple on his left cheek, and . . . Okay, fine: he’s aggressively hot. Despite the red hair, or because of it. “You still have her?”
“Nope. To celebrate, I got wasted at a bar that didn’t bother to check IDs and ended up leaving her at some University of Georgia frat house. I didn’t want to go back, because those places are scary, so I gave up on Ruthie and just built an electronic arm for my Robotics final.” I sigh and look into the mid-distance. “I’ll need a lot of therapy before I can become a mother.”
He chuckles. The sound is low, warm, maybe even shiver-inducing. I need a second to regroup.
I’ve settled—at some point on our five-minute walk here, probably when he pulled out a pretty effortless scowl to intimidate the security guard into letting me in despite my lack of ID—on the reason I can’t quite pin Ian down. He is, very simply, a never-before-experienced mix of cute and overwhelmingly masculine. With a complex, layered air about him. It spells simultaneously Do not piss me off because I don’t fuck around and Ma’am, let me carry those groceries for you.
Not my usual fare, not at all. I like flirting, and I like sex, and I like hooking up with people, but I’m really, really picky about my partners. It doesn’t take a lot to turn me off someone, and I almost exclusively gravitate toward the cheerful, spontaneous, fun-loving type. I’m into extroverts who love banter and are easy to talk to, the less intense the better. Ian seems to be the diametrical opposite of that, and yet . . . And yet, even I can see how there is something fundamentally attractive about him. Would I try to pick him up at a bar? Hm. Unclear.