Everyone in the room turns to him, but he takes his sweet time swallowing my donut. I stare at his throat, and an odd mix of phantom sensations hits me. His thigh pushing between mine. Being pressed into the wall. The woodsy smell at the base of his—
Wait. What?
“Levi Ward, head engineer. And . . .” He licks some sugar off his bottom lip. “The Empire Strikes Back.”
Oh—are you kidding me? First he steals my donut, and now my favorite movie?
“Kaylee Jackson,” the blonde picks up. “I’m project manager for BLINK, and Legally Blonde.” She talks a bit like she could be one of Elle Woods’s sorority sisters, which makes me like her instinctively. But Rocío tenses beside me. When I glance at her, her brows are furrowed.
Weird.
There are at least thirty people in the room, and the icebreakers get old very soon. I try to pay attention, but Lamar Evans and Mark Costello start fighting over whether Kill Bill: Vol. 2 is better than Vol. 1, and I feel a weird prickle in the center of my forehead.
When I turn, Levi’s staring hard at me, his eyes full of that something that I seem to awaken in him. I’m a bit resentful about the donut, not to mention that he still hasn’t answered my email, but I remind myself of what Boris just said: he’s my main collaborator. So I play nice and give him a cautious, slow-to-unfurl smile that I hope communicates Sorry about the angular gyrus jab, and I hope we’ll work well together, and Hey, thank you for saving my life!
He breaks eye contact without smiling back and takes a sip of his coffee. God, I hate him so—
“Bee.” Rocío elbows me. “It’s your turn.”
“Oh, um, right. Sorry. Bee K?nigswasser, head of neuroscience. And . . .” I hesitate. “Empire Strikes Back.” With the corner of my eye I see Levi’s fist clench on the table. Crap. I should have just said Avatar.
Once the meeting is over, Kaylee comes to speak to Rocío. “Ms. Cortoreal. May I call you Rocío? I need your signature on this document.” She smiles sweetly and holds out a pen, which Rocío doesn’t accept. Instead she freezes, staring at Kaylee with her mouth open for several seconds. I have to elbow her in the ribs to get her to defrost. Interesting.
“You’re left-handed,” Kaylee says while Rocío signs. “Me too. Lefties power, right?”
Rocío doesn’t look up. “Left-handed people are more prone to migraines, allergies, sleep deprivation, alcoholism, and on average live three years less than right-handed people.”
“Oh.” Kaylee’s eyes widen. “I, um, didn’t . . .”
I’d love to stay and witness more prime Valley Girl and Goth interaction, but Levi’s stepping out of the room. As much as I loathe the idea, we’ll need to talk at some point, so I run after him. When I reach him, I’m pitifully out of breath. “Levi, wait up!”
I might be reading too much into the way his spine goes rigid, but something about how he stops reminds me of an inmate getting caught by the guards just a step away from breaking out of prison. He turns around slowly, hulking but surprisingly graceful, all black and green and that strange, intense face.
It was actually a thing, back in grad school. Something to debate while waiting for participants to show up and analyses to run: Is Levi actually handsome? Or is he just six four and built like the Colossus of Rhodes? There were plenty of opinions going around. Annie, for instance, was very much in camp “Ten out of ten, would have a torrid affair with.” And I’d tell her Ew, yikes, and laugh, and call her a traitor. Which . . . yeah. Turned out to be accurate, but for completely different reasons.
In hindsight, I’m not sure why I used to be so shocked about his fan club. It’s not so outlandish that a serious, taciturn man who has several Nature Neuroscience publications and looks like he could bench-press the entire faculty body in either hand would be considered attractive.
Not that I ever did. Or ever will.
In fact, I’m absolutely not thinking again about his thigh pushing between my legs.
“Hey.” I smile tentatively. He doesn’t answer, so I continue, “Thank you for the other day.” Still no answer. So I continue some more. “I wasn’t, you know . . . standing in front of that cart for shits and giggles.” I need to stop twisting my grandmother’s ring. Stat. “There was a cat, so—”
“A cat?”
“Yeah. A calico. A kitten. Mostly white, with orange and black spots on the ears. She had the cutest little . . .” I notice his skeptical look. “For real. There was a cat.”