“You got these together?”
Casey smiles and nods.
My heart becomes warm and fuzzy. “Ran into each other in town, my arse. That’s what you were up to on Saturday, isn’t it?”
“Guilty as charged.” Auggie nudges Casey with his shoulder. “It was Casey’s idea.”
“You two are amazing.”
“We know.”
The next present is another T-shirt with ‘What part of’ above lots of mathematical equations and ‘don’t you understand?’ beneath them.
“Do you understand any of that?” Auggie asks.
I stare at the equations for a while. “Some of them. This is E equals M C squared. Everyone knows what that is.”
“Um—”
“Energy equals mass times the speed of light squared.”
He shakes his head. “Nope.”
“It does.”
“I mean, nope, I don’t understand.”
“I’ll explain it properly sometime. You must have learnt it at school, so you’ve probably forgotten.”
“We don’t need to know that for our degree, do we?”
“No. It’s physics. Pharmacology is biochemistry.” I unwrap two pairs of socks, one with algebra on them and the other with three-dimensional shapes. I take my socks off, put the algebraic pair on, and then wriggle my toes. “They’re a perfect fit.”
“Almost as if we know your shoe size. Well, Casey does. I could have guessed.”
Casey smiles.
My cheeks ache from grinning as I unwrap a coaster with pi on it. Next is a mug with the element of surprise on it. I groan at the joke. “Please tell me you know this isn’t a real element?”
“It’s not?” Auggie asks in mock shock.
“We know,” Casey says.
“I still love it.” I put the mug on the coaster.
The penultimate gift is a number puzzle. I slot a few pieces in place before taking the last present out of the box. It’s a weighty oblong.
“I put it in the bottom to save the best until last,” Auggie says.
I tear the paper off, add it to the pile on the table, and then open the box inside. I gasp. It’s a periodic table of elements in glass, with small pieces of the elements inside. Not all the elements, obviously. The ones that are either liquid or gas at room temperature have three-dimensional representations of what they might look like if captured in time, and symbols mark the radioactive ones.
“It’s beautiful,” I whisper as a stray tear drips down my cheek.
Casey uses his crooked finger to wipe the tear away. “I’m glad you like it.”
“I love it. Thank you.”
“We wanted to spoil you.”
