It’s not Lisa’s fault I’m a ball of anxiety.
“She is kind of cute,” one of the marketing guys says.
“I know. MCL would love her. Come on, Maria.” She looks at me over the crowd. “Say she’s the best shark.”
My head empties of all thoughts. My breath seems to stop. Anj, you idiot.
She realizes a second later what she’s done. Her face goes pale.
It’s been a long time since I got hit by an intense wave of irrational fear. The last time was…also caused by Lisa, when our landlord found out and yelled at us. My chest tightens with a constricting, crushing pain. My gorge rises. I reach out; my palms scrape the stone wall, and I steady my buckling knees.
I wait for everybody to look at me. To say something.
A second after that—the seconds seem to crawl by like sea snails on smooth glass—I realize that nobody is looking at me. Nobody else heard those sentences as connected. They heard two separate things—MCL would love it; Maria also loves my shark.
It’s okay. Anj didn’t just give me away.
She just got so carried away by her damned shark that she almost did. The pool house starts to spin in lazy circles around me.
It takes my body a few beats to catch up with my brain. To relax. I breathe, and my stomach slowly unclenches. My heart is still racing.
“Maria,” Anj says quietly, “my shark is awesome, right?”
She’s not asking me about her shark. Except she is.
I exhale slowly. “You know what? I need another beer.”
Tina looks at me. “Want me to come with?”
For a second, I hesitate. I need a moment to catch my breath. To steady myself so I can pretend that everything is okay again. I want to be alone. I need to be alone. And Tina needs to spend some time with Cyclone people.
“Nah.” I hope I manage to sound carefree. “Keep Anj company. I’ll be back soon-ish.”
Tina bites her lip. “Text me, okay?”
I go off to hide.
11
JAY
I have to park five blocks away to get to my parents’ house. As events go, Saints and Dinosaurs stretches the limits of residential neighborhoods. Even with the buses set up to shuttle people in from the Cyclone parking lots, too many people still drive in. Add in caterers, professional waitstaff, and it’s officially a zoo up here.
I don’t come in through the front door. For one thing, I’m sure there are people I don’t know all over the house. For another, I want a chance to take a breath. Set my things down. Instead, I sneak into my parents’ home through the garage. I kick off my shoes on the threshold and open the door to the mudroom.
It’s not empty.
Instead, the very last person I expect to see is here. Maria Lopez is standing with her back to the door, her head down. She’s wearing a green sundress that comes up to her mid-thighs. Speaking of thighs…
Of its own accord, my gaze slides down the long, satiny expanse of her legs. There’s a little scar on one knee. Her calves are firmly rounded. Her ankles are…
Shit. What am I doing, looking at her legs? I jerk my eyes to her face just as she straightens.
“Oh, fuck.” She plasters herself against the door, a look of horror on her face. “Are you serious? What are you doing here?”
I can’t quite get the memory of her legs out of my mind. This is the first time I’ve ever seen her not wearing shoes, and I keep wanting to look down at the metallic gold polish on her toes. Without her heels, she’s shorter than me.
She draws herself up as if she’s just noticed the exact same thing and wants every inch of height she can get. She glares at me, too, as if this bizarre situation is somehow my fault.
I blow out a breath. “You’re Cyclone adjacent,” I mutter. “Shit. Of course you would be.”
Some days it feels like half the Bay Area is related to, or friends with, someone from Cyclone.
Her arms fold in front of her chest. “My housemate is dating a Cyclone guy. What’s your excuse?”
I’m trying not to get baited into another heated exchange with her. I’m counting to five when she snaps her fingers.
“You know what?” she says. “I know why you’re such a jerk. You’re jealous.”
No. She had it right the last time we talked in the rain. I was a jerk because I took all the hurt and guilt from one experience and poured it into permanent blinders. Because I told myself that I had female scientist friends and that made me immune from whatever charge she laid at my feet.
It’s embarrassing just to look at her and remember what she told me.
“I’m not jealous,” I say slowly.
“No? I bet you always wished you could make decent arm candy. Is that why you’re here? I can’t imagine that an assistant professorship pays particularly well, not in comparison with this.” Maria indicates my parents’ house. “And there are some pretty impressive Cyclone women.”
It’s not like I don’t deserve this. Not with the shit I’ve given her. Still, even though I keep telling myself that I need to do better, she knows exactly how to get under my skin.
“Give me some credit,” I tell her. “If I wanted to date someone from Cyclone, I wouldn’t limit myself to women.”
She flushes slightly.
“And I wouldn’t do it for the money,” I continue, holding up my keyring. “You may have noticed that this is not a public entrance.”
She blinks.
“This being Cyclone, whoever you’re with likely said it was Sai’s house. Maybe they called her Saint Karawek. But Cyclone has this obsession with the whole first name hierarchy.”
She hesitates one second—she probably doesn’t know about the first name hierarchy—before nodding.
“So I’ll explain. They call her ‘Saint’ for a number of reasons. First, because Sai is actually religiously observant. Second, because she works miracles. Third, because she intercedes on behalf of Cyclone employees with Adam Reynolds.”
“Sure, Professor na Thalang.” She folds her arms. “The job suits you. You get to be pedantic all day long. Are we done with this lecture yet?”
We aren’t, and it rankles that she’s…not entirely wrong about my tendency to go on. “Finally, she’s called ‘saint’ because her login name at Cyclone is a combination of her nickname—Sai—and the initials of her last name.”
Maria gets it the moment I say those words. She shuts her eyes. “Oh, shit.”
“Sai na Thalang is my mother,” I tell her. “You’ll get no disagreement from me. There are some impressive Cyclone women. My mom is one of them. I’m proud of the fact that she will always outshine me, no matter what I accomplish. I wouldn’t have it any other way. So if you’re wondering what I’m doing here, I have the keys to this house.”
She looks me over with a glint in her eyes. “No,” she finally says bitterly. “Of course you belong here. You and your stupid put-on fake accent. Nobody picks up an accent in college. That is such pretentious bullshit.”
My temper finally snaps. “Yes, of course. I talk like this because I just love it when people constantly ask me how it’s possible that I have anything other than a vaguely caricatured accent. Globalism does not exist; my experience is just fake bullshit. But then, you would be the expert on fake bullshit.”
I shouldn’t have said that last. I know it the instant those words come out of my mouth.
Maria’s fists clench and her eyes flash. “Call me fake one more time.” She takes a step toward me. “I dare you. I really dare you.”
She’s not wearing perfume. I can still smell her. She reminds me of something sweet and feminine. There’s a little lace over her cleavage, white against her skin.
And that’s the moment when my brain intervenes, putting all the clues together.
I saw her face when I walked in, and while the view of her legs might have temporarily short-circuited my rational mind, details trickle back. Lips narrowed to a thin, pale line. Shaky breathing. The fact that she’s here, alone in the mudroom, instead of outside with the crowd.
She did not look okay.
She does not sound okay now. Her voice trembles as she speaks, and if I didn’t know better, I’d say she was on the verge of tears. For all the crap I’ve given her, I don’t get the impression that Maria Lopez cries easily.
She was upset when I came in. She’s worse now.
Shit. Shit. Shit. I wrestle with what to do for about three seconds before my conscience kicks in. It’s early December, and I don’t walk away from people who are upset.
Even if we will never get along.