The Year of the Crocodile (6 page)

Life goes on.

I can handle one dinner with an asshole. I've dealt with worse.

Almost there,
Gabe texts.
Sorry!

It's okay,
I answer.
I didn't expect you to be on time.

He texts me an emoji of a face with its tongue sticking out.

Gabe and I have lived in different cities since I was twelve and my parents kicked me out of the house. Even back then, he used to pick me up from school twenty or thirty minutes after class let out. In the years since, he's been late for Skype calls and the occasional dinner when our paths intersected. It's not just me; this is a perpetual habit. He was late for his own PhD commencement ceremony. His advisor walked on stage alone with Gabe's hood and gave the crowd a shrug.

I didn't think things would be any different now that we're living a mile apart.

After everything we've been through together, I can spot him fifteen minutes.

The fire door to my right opens, and Gabriel walks through. He has medium brown hair—like me, except his is cut as short as someone who has forgotten about haircuts for three months can manage, and mine has gold and red highlights. His jaw is a little more square, and he's about an inch shorter than I am. Which is why I hug him and say…

“Hello,
little
brother.” He's three years older than I am. Before I went through my growth spurt, he used to give me noogies and say, “that's what you get for being so small.”

Biology is a bitch, and so are younger sisters. I give him a noogie.

“Gah.” He pulls away. “It's not fair.”

That was
my
line when we were kids.

I stick my tongue out at him.

“I need to invent time travel and punch my teenage self in the face.” He turns to the door and presses the bell. “You're going to really like Jay. He's a good guy.”

I grimace at his back.

It's not the first time I've played nice with one of his “good” guy friends, and it won't be the last. There are a lot of reasons for guys to be a dick to me, and I've seen all of them.

We wait. The door opens again.

Professor Thalang opens the door again. Now that I know that he's Jay, and my brother's friend, his age is a little easier to discern. He's probably a few years older than I am—three, five?—and no more. I saw his CV. Damn. He has been busy with his life.

His eyes land on my brother and his face lights up. He grabs Gabe by the shoulders, slapping him on the back.

“Look at you,” Jay says. “You survived Switzerland. Almost. Too bad about the
other
thing.”

Gabe laughs. “Dude. Don't give me shit about the
other
thing until you meet Silke. She's the greatest.”

My lip curls slightly.

Yeah, that little crack is about par for the “good guy” course, in my experience. My brother spent the last two years in Switzerland. He had a postdoctoral position at CERN. He worked with some of the brightest scientists in the world at the world's most powerful supercollider. He published four papers about elementary particles. But all of that is equivalent to
almost
surviving Switzerland, because while Gabe was there, he got engaged to a lovely, smart computational scientist. Surely a fate worse than death.

I might as well be invisible. Jay—Professor Thalang—I'm not sure
how
I should think of him—smacks my brother's back. “How have you been, man?”

“Oh, you know. Busy on that revision for JACR still.”

I don't remember what journal that acronym stands for. I suspect that if I don't say anything, the two of them will descend into science. Which I don't mind, but I want Jay to squirm.

“Gabe.” I touch my brother's arm.

That's when Professor Thalang notices me. He literally didn't see me before now. He frowns in my direction, drawing away from my brother. “Hey.”

Gabe doesn't notice the look on his face. “Right. Before I forget—Maria, this is Jay Thalang. Jay, this is my little sister, Maria.”

I look Jay in the eye, and decide to annoy him. “Hi?” I let my voice go up at the end of the word intentionally, making the word a question.

He grimaces. “Oh.”

Oh
indeed.

“Shit.” He looks into my eyes and inhales. His eyes are dark brown and piercing, and the effect of his dark, thick eyebrows is that he looks fierce.

“Maria,” Gabe says, not noticing the tension racheting up, “this is Jay. He was a postdoc at Harvard when I was there. He does work on—”

“I read his lab posters in the hall after he shut the door in my face,” I say sweetly. “I know what he does.”

Gabe frowns. Even he can't avoid noticing this anvil of a clue indicating that all is not well.

Jay doesn't quite roll his eyes. “You read my posters,” he says with a hint of disbelief. “You know what I do.
Sure.”

That emphasis on
sure,
the way he looks at me… He doesn't believe I
could
understand. He's calling me stupid.

Like I said. It's not the first time someone's made assumptions about me, and it won't be the last. The good thing is, if he's not going to even pretend to be nice, I don't have to, either.

“I understand everything,” I say, turning to Gabe. “Did you know Jay's working on a top secret Pentagon project? He uses invisible radiation to turn himself into an asshole.”

Gabe looks at me, then at his friend, then back at me. “I'm missing something,” he declares.

“Don't worry, little brother.” I pat Gabe's shoulder. “His terrible transformation only happens around women. You're safe.”