"And if one of us wins?" My voice is smaller than I want it to be. "What happens to us then? What if… what if this tears us apart, Devan? What if we can't survive it?"
His expression softens. He reaches up, cupping my face in his hands.
"Then we'll deal with it." He presses his forehead to mine. "We're a team now, Sam. Whatever happens in that room, whatever games the committee wants to play, we face it together. Not against each other. Never against each other."
"You make it sound simple."
"It is simple." His breath is warm against my lips. "The hard part was finding you. Everything else is just logistics."
I let out a shaky laugh. "Logistics. Right. Just casually competing for the same life-changing opportunity while being biologically bonded. No big deal."
"No big deal," he agrees. He kisses the corner of my mouth. "We'll figure it out. I promise."
I nod. "Okay," I whisper. "We're a team."
"We're a team," he echoes.
He kisses me, soft and reassuring, and for a few seconds, I believe it.
Devan
"No," I say, staring at the whiteboard. "Absolutely not."
Sam stops mid-gesture, the red marker hovering over a sprawling, chaotic mind map that looks less like a research proposal and more like a conspiracy theorist's basement wall. "What do you mean, 'no'? It's brilliant. It's innovative."
"It makes no sense," I say, leaning back in the uncomfortable library chair. "You can't just introduce a variable for 'vibes', Sam."
"It's not 'vibes',Devan. It's 'the human factor.'" Sam pouts. Actually pouts. He pushes his glasses up his nose—he only wears them when he's tired, and they make him look ridiculous—and glares at me. "You're being a killjoy. A buzzkill with a spreadsheet fetish."
"I'm being the person who wants us to pass this seminar," I say, though my resolve is already crumbling.
We've been in the study room for six hours. It's Saturday night. The rest of the campus is probably out drinking cheap beer or making bad decisions in dorm rooms. We are here,surrounded by stacks of books, three laptops, and the smell of dry-erase markers.
I watch Sam pace the small room. He's wearing oversized grey sweatpants and a t-shirt that saysEntrophy is inevitable(yes, it's misspelled—he thinks it's hilarious). His hair is a mess of curls that have been tugged and twisted in frustration.
"You're staring," Sam says without turning around. He's erasing a section of the board. "You're undressing me with your eyes. I can feel it. It's distracting." He turns, grinning. "Stop looking at my ass and look at my data."
"I can multitask."
Sam laughs, that bright, loud sound that settles in my chest. He caps the marker and leans against the whiteboard, crossing his arms. "Okay, Mr. Precision. If you hate my 'vibes' variable, what's your solution? We need something that explains why people do dumb stuff when they panic."
"We need sugar," I say, standing up.
Sam blinks. "What?"
"You're crashing." I walk over to his backpack, which has dumped its contents onto the floor, and nudge it aside with my foot. I reach into my own bag, the leather satchel Sam calls my 'grandpa bag', and pull out the stash.
"I am not cra—" Sam cuts himself off as I set the items on the table.
A bag of chili-lime rolled tortilla chips, a king-sized pack of peanut butter cups, and a bottle of that neon-blue raspberry soda that looks radioactive.
Sam stares at the table. Then at me. Then back at the table.
"Shut up," he whispers.
"Eat," I say, sitting back down. "You get mean when your blood sugar drops."
Sam picks up the soda. "This is the blue one. Thespecificblue one from the vending machine in the basement of the Science Center. The one they don't sell in the cafeteria."
