Unmistakable (16 page)

He’s amused. Color me surprised. “You do realize that I’m going to make you work, right? This isn’t some charity project. I really do need help in the lab.”

“Oh, of course. I mean, definitely. I’m willing to do anything to help. I mean, I don’t have any formal training, but I tend to pick things up pretty quickly, so that really shouldn’t be a problem. And I really am willing to do anything. Anything,” I repeat.

God, he probably thinks I’m flirting with him.

“I didn’t mean anything,” I clarify. “I just meant...”

Foot in mouth. I am making this so much worse.

He lets out a long, low chuckle. “I’m pretty sure that we can figure something out. Something, not anything.”

I am embarrassed beyond belief. I offer him a tentative smile. “So...”

He blinks and leans back in his chair. “Do you want to hear about the project?”

“Sure,” I mumble.

“The goal of the project is to uncover new information about the changing nature of human interaction in the 21
^st
century.”

“Ambitious much?” I cover my mouth with my hand and glance up at him. “I am sorry.”

“One thing, Stella. You’re going to need to stop all of this earnest contrition if we’re going to be spending three days a week with each other. I like to think that I’m a patient man, but this constant litany of apologies is starting to get on my nerves.”

“I am so sorry,” I blurt out. Oh, crap.

I glance at him, hoping for some indication that he experiences any human emotion besides amusement. Nope. At least I’m entertaining him with my stupidity and not my insults. “Never mind. I’m not sorry. No more apologies. Got it, boss.”

With an unwavering smile, he pulls out a piece of paper from his desk. “We’re basing this particular project on psych experiments done in the 80s. My goal is to see what the intervening years have done to change the results. Our subjects are undergrads. They’re unpredictable, which makes them perfect for this kind of work.”

I look down at the outline. “Forced interaction?”

“Each mixer will be composed of ten students. The students will know that they’re participating in a psychological experiment, because they’re getting course credit for it, but they won’t know the ultimate goal, which is to understand how people interact when they’re placed with strangers in a situation without any form of stimulation. If you provide a movie, or some type of focal point, the interactions tend to center around that point of stimulation. However, when there’s no other choice but human contact, people tend to gravitate towards others like themselves in an effort to establish some sort of kinship. I want to see how technology disrupts those interactions, what happens when everyone has a mobile device to draw their attention from interpersonal communication.”

Psych-speak. Sometimes, I think academics just throw a bunch of big words out there in the hope that no one will ask about them.

“What do you mean?”

“The goal of technology is ultimately to improve human communication, right?”

I consider that for a minute. “I thought the goal was to improve productivity.”

“Spoken like a true economics major. That’s a goal, certainly. But think about it like this—if we didn’t have a need for faster and more efficient communication, none of the world’s greatest inventions—the printing press, the telephone, and of course, YouTube—would exist. The economics is a huge part of it, obviously, but I’m an optimist—I think people are all searching for some form of human connection. I want to find out if technology has become an impediment or an enabling tool.”

I swallow the urge to say, “Well, duh.” Of course people are just going to text on their phones instead of trying to make conversation with perfect strangers. It’s easier. Honestly, he could just head over to the nearest frat party and watch for about five minutes. I’m on the verge of suggesting it when I realize that I’ve already done enough damage to his ego. Plus, I’m not trying to make myself obsolete.

“Sounds great,” I say brightly. “What do I do? Join the melee? Mix it up a bit?”

“Your job will be to watch the interactions and to take notes. I’ll take your offer under advisement, though.” He grins. “I can only imagine that your presence might serve an interesting function at some point.”

I’m relieved. Mingling sucks. “I think I can handle taking notes.”

“I think you can, too.”

“So...when do we start?”

“Does Wednesday morning work for you? Around nine?”

I nod. “I’ll be here.”

“Don’t think I’m going to go easy on you just because you’re not a psychology expert.”

I bite my tongue. I may not be an expert, but I’ve picked up a thing or two from my mother over the years.

“I’ll e-mail you a couple of reviews of the previous research, so you can get caught up. I’d send you the original reports, but Caroline Granger has a tendency to be obtuse in her writing, and you might have difficulty deciphering her articles without formal training.”

Caroline Granger would fight his words to her dying breath. I stifle the overwhelming urge to tell him that.

He looks guilty and rushes to clarify. “She’s the originator of the experiments. She does breathtaking, groundbreaking work, and she’s probably the finest mind that the field of psychology has seen in the past two decades. She’s brilliant.”

The fruit is dangling. I can’t resist.

“So, maybe I should just read the originals,” I suggest, in my most innocent of voices.

He hesitates. “She’s not exactly Shakespeare.”

A tiny burst of laughter escapes. That’s a wild understatement. My mother hates writing, and it hates her. Whenever someone asks her to contribute to a professional journal or a book, she huffs and puffs and starts baking until the day before the deadline. I’ve tasted more than a lifetime’s worth of her burned cookies. Still, she would bristle at being called obtuse.
Not exactly Shakespeare
. She’s going to die when I tell her this story.

I can almost see her face...

Then again, maybe some stories are better left untold. I don’t think even Holden could keep up his aloof façade in the presence of my brilliant, obtuse, and furious mother.

“The literature reviews will be fine,” I manage, once I’ve successfully smothered all of my own laughter.

“All right,” he says, looking relieved. “Until Wednesday, then?”

“I’ll be here.”

He stands up just as I do. He has perfect manners. Perfect looks. And I’m still pretty sure that I’m not imagining the flirtation. He winked at me, for chrissakes.

If I were a different person, any other person, really, I would be head over heels in love with him.

I could try to fall in love with him.

It’s a crazy idea.

Love is for fools and schoolgirls. I learned that lesson the hard way. But maybe, just maybe, I could talk myself into a little crush on him. Holden is safe. He’s my professor. It’s not like anything is actually going to happen. I may not know him very well, but the door-opening, the escort service, the chivalry—all of those things are pretty clear indications that flirting is exactly as far as this will go. It would be harmless.

I can totally talk myself into that.

We both reach for the door at the same time, and our fingers brush against each other. It’s perverse, but I’m hoping for a burst of electricity, some kind of sign that I feel something more than friendship, or amusement, in his presence.

His touch is the same as his smile—whiskey-coated, warm, and soothing. “Please. Let me.”

I would have to be crazy not to be attracted to him. Really crazy. Crazy crazy.

He’s the prototype of male perfection. He makes me laugh. He can go toe-to-toe in staring contests. He’s the perfect candidate for a daytime fantasy. A nighttime fantasy.

I could totally have a crush on him.

There’s one tiny problem.

No fireworks. No explosions. Just a little voice screaming at me:
It’s not going to work, Stella.

I’ll make it work. Everything doesn’t have to be fireworks and explosions.

His eyes linger on my face when I turn back to give him a little wave.

I’ll manufacture a crush. How hard can it be, really?

* * *

I
zzy will jump all over this. I need a distraction. And Holden is beautiful and kind and everything that I should want in a man, especially since there’s no chance that I’ll let him inside my heart and there’s no way he’ll let me inside his pants.

It’s the perfect solution.

I’m so busy going over the specifics of manufacturing a perfectly harmless crush that I almost run into the stone pillar outside of the psych building.

I need to go to the library, so I eschew my usual route across the quad in favor of the scenic one. Greenview, for all of its innumerable flaws, is consistently voted the most beautiful campus in the country, and I breathe in the sweet smell of honeysuckle and flowers and try to be excited by the prospect of a dead-end crush on Holden Evans.

I’ve managed to produce a pretty good imitation of enthusiasm when I see Luke sitting on the lawn across from the student center.

He’s surrounded by a group of beautiful people, all of whom are talking and laughing like they don’t have a care in the world. Like attracts like. Isn’t that what Holden said? Holden, my new crush, who’s every bit as handsome as Luke and probably more so.

I search for the little scar above his eyebrow to convince myself of that fact, but my eyes drift lower, to the electric blue of his eyes.

It’s not going to work, Stella.

Shut up, self.

He’s painted a thoughtful expression on his face, but I can tell that he doesn’t give a shit what anyone else is saying. He has the ability to turn the world off, to live inside his head, to appear interested and engaged while he’s actually writing a song or solving the mysteries of the universe. It’s just the way that the strange brain of his works. I confronted him about it once, when he wasn’t paying attention to my story about Jack’s latest bimbo, a tale that I thought was perfectly enthralling. He denied and yelled and teased and whined, but I could tell that he was stunned that I had ferreted out his secret. “You’re not as good as you think you are,” I said haughtily. That remark earned me a fully-clothed swim in the pool.

He never pretend-listened to me again, though, so I think I won.

I stare a moment too long.

When his gaze lands on me, surprise stiffens his body. I try not to read too much into it, but no one gave my body that particular memo—there’s an explosion of color and sound somewhere in my gut. As our eyes meet, I hear him saying it aloud, in that breathless, sulky voice that I had never heard before—
you are infinitely beautiful
.

My hopes for a manufactured crush on Holden Evans take a serious hit.

Luke raises one mocking eyebrow. Oh, shit.

He slides his arm around one of the girls and proceeds to trace circles over her wrist. My skin itches with the memory of his fingers doing the same to me. She (her name is Nicole, I remember, with far more than a trace of loathing) giggles up at him, and he draws her in for a long, languid kiss. When she recovers and returns to the conversation, his eyes pierce right through mine.

His message couldn’t be clearer—I mean nothing to him.

The possessive part of me wants to march over and slap his face. Or kiss him. Or beg him to be the Luke that I know he can be and not the monster he is.

But he doesn’t belong to me.

He never has, and he never will.

Pride wins, but it’s a pretty long battle. I sling my bag over my shoulder and this time, I’m the one who leaves without so much as a second glance.

Three Months Later

––––––––

“K
ill me. Please.”

To my very great annoyance, Holden doesn’t even look up when I sink desperately into the armchair in his office.

“You’re not paying attention,” I whine.

“I am currently responding to an urgent e-mail from a student,” he says calmly. “He was polite enough to send his request in writing, and I am polite enough to respond to it. Some people don’t even have the common courtesy to knock anymore.”

His eyes crinkle at the corners, belying his authoritative tone.

“I’m a student and I have an urgent story to tell you.”

“I’m sure you do. Give me one second. Maybe two.”

Patience doesn’t happen to be a virtue of mine, so I make annoying little humming noises for a few seconds until he laughs, finishes his typing with a flourish, and shuts the laptop.

“Finally,” I say.

“You’re a nuisance. Anyone ever tell you that?”

“You. Every single day.”

“Good. Go ahead with your story now,” he says, waving his hand in the air and grinning at me.

“If one more person starts checking their fantasy football line-up while in the process of telling me that they don’t think their cell phones have an impact on their interactions with human beings, I am seriously, truly, really going to lose my mind.”

“That bad?”

I shake my head in disgust. “Worse. Get this. I was doing a pre-interview with one of the subjects. I think she’s a philosophy major. This woman had the nerve to tell me, literally, that she, and I quote, ‘loathes the death of human interaction. Lack of communication kills all sense of community.’ So, I thought, great, okay, she might be a little bit of a melodramatic lunatic, but she could also liven up the joint. You know, maybe the data from one mixer will at least give us a glimmer of hope for the next generation.”

“That would be your generation,” he interjects, giving me a mischievous look.

“Yours, too,” I counter. “You’re what? Four years older than me? A geezer.” I glare at him stonily, and he puts his hands up in surrender. “Anyway, she proceeds to play some game on her phone...”

“What game?”

“How the hell should I know?” I shake my head. “Check the tapes. Something with lots of bells and dings and whistles. It’s not important. I focus on her the entire time, but she doesn’t look up. Not once. She doesn’t attempt a conversation, or leave her chair, unless it’s to get another drink, and she certainly doesn’t display any sign of loathing the death of human interaction. We’re giving these people alcohol, at least the ones who are 21, and all they want to do is read Buzzfeed.”