Alex (9:15 a.m.):the black one with the v neck
Alex (10:22 a.m.):nvm i found it
Alex (10:25 a.m.):what about my shoes?
Alex (10:33 a.m.):nvm i found those too
Alex (12:01 p.m.):im gonna puke. what the hell is wrong with me
I’d laugh if I didn’t know he was serious and really, honestly so nervous he was making himself sick. Frowning, I push myself up to sit, and I text him back.
Nico (12:12 p.m.):Hey. I’m on a break. Do you need to talk?
He responds almost immediately.
Alex (12:13 p.m.):no i just need to calm the f down
Alex (12:13 p.m.):we’re on campus. taking my mom to see the lab and meet John
A selfie comes through then—a picture of him and his mom in front of the physics building where Dr. Ellis’s lab is. Alex is holding the phone out as far as he can, grinning, his arm wrapped around his mom’s shoulders as she hugs him. It’s probably meant to reassure me that he’s fine. But I can see how off he’s feeling. Helooks pale, and his hair’s out of place, a lock streaked with dark blue falling over his forehead. His smile isn’t his typical easy smile, either. It’s forced and tight.
Nico (12:14 p.m.):You’re gonna do great. You always do. I love you <3
I stare at the phone for a moment, waiting for him to respond. But he doesn’t.
With another frown, I look up toward the main studio just across the hall. I’ve still got a ton of work to do, and so I shouldn’t even consider skipping out on it to go support my boyfriend. He already told me he doesn’t need to talk, and he’s got his mom there and his whole lab, after all. It couldn’t possibly help him for me to be there as well. Could it?
I glance down at the phone again, his not-real-smile staring back up at me, and my chest tightens.
I can take a longer break. Come back afterward and stay late here to finish my work. Maybe it won’t really help. But then again, maybe it will.
Mind made up, I click out of the text chain with Alex and scroll through my other messages to find Greta’s number. I send her a quick text letting her know I had something come up and I’ll be back later in the afternoon. Then I head out, locking the studio behind me.
It’sashortwalkto the train station and then a very short ride to the Palo Alto stop. But it’s a busy Saturday afternoon, and I spendthe majority of the train ride huddled against the wall in the back of the train car, doing my best to ignore all the noise and bustle around me. By the time I get off the train and start walking toward campus, my heart is going about a million miles an hour and I feel likeI’mthe one who’s about to puke.
I pull up a map of campus as I walk, keeping off to the edge of the sidewalk so people can pass by me. It’s a long walk—a little over a mile—and by the time I make it to the building where Alex’s presentation is, it’s two minutes to one o’clock. I hurry inside, following a group of students who look like they know where they’re going up a few steps and through a set of automatic double doors. The lobby is mostly empty, thank fuck, and I jog up a set of stairs to the second-level entrance for the auditorium. I quickly slip in as the doors start to close, and then I collapse against the back wall to catch my breath.
The auditorium is massive. Stadium-style seating that’s already nearly full leads down to a large stage, and on that stage, standing next to a podium and talking with Dr. Ellis and another professor I don’t recognize, is my boyfriend.
Even from all the way in the back, I can see how nervous he is. He’s smiling and nodding at whatever Dr. Ellis says, but his shoulders are tight, and he keeps glancing out at the crowd as though he can’t believe how many people are here.
I step away from the wall and scan down the aisle ahead of me, hoping to find Alex’s mom or at least an open seat on the edge of some row. I’m not that lucky, though; the entire auditorium is packed, and the only unoccupied seats I see are in the middle of the second row from the front. I can’t find his mom anywhere.
I start down the steps anyway, forcing myself to ignore the fact that there are probably hundreds of people in the room, and I somehow make it down to the second row and across to the middle, shrinking down as small as I can to fit through the narrowspace between the back of the seats in front of me and the knees of the other people in the audience. My heart’s pounding, though, and as I finally manage to slip into one of the few open seats, my head’s pounding too. I slump down, crossing my arms over my chest, and glance up toward the stage.
Alex is staring directly at me, his lips pursed as though he’s not sure what he’s seeing. He blinks and shakes his head, then he mouths “what are you doing here?” I smirk at him and shrug, and he holds my gaze for another few seconds before grinning broadly. Dr. Ellis touches his shoulder, and he turns away, nodding.
“Yeah, I’m ready to go,” I hear him say, his voice as steady and confident as ever.
Dr. Ellis steps up to the podium on the stage, Alex right behind him. The lights dim, and the room goes silent as he adjusts the microphone and then looks up around the crowd.
“Good afternoon, and welcome, everyone, to the third session of our spring semester’sWhat Ifseries, hosted by the Physics Department,” Dr. Ellis says. “Today’s talk is on a topic everyone here should appreciate, even if the complexities of the research aren’t in your wheelhouse: gravity and space-time. Alexander Hayes is a second-year PhD student in my lab, and although he’s new at this, he already has quite an impressive resumé.” Next to Dr. Ellis, Alex’s face flushes bright red. “Alex graduated top of his class here at Stanford in 2029, with a bachelor’s of science in physics. His undergraduate research yielded not one, but two research papers, both published in theJournal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics. He’s got a third paper currently in the revision stage withNature Astronomy, and his research is included in an Astronomy and Astrophysics Research Grant from the US National Science Foundation. On top of that, he’s a Knight-Hennessey Scholar and just an all-around good guy. Please welcome Alexander Hayes for his talk today, titled”—Dr. Ellis glances down at Alex’s laptop,sitting on the podium in front of him—“‘Quantitative Measurement of Dark Matter, Gravity, and the Warping of Space-time.’”
Damn. That’s an introduction if ever I heard one.
I’m grinning with pride as I clap along with the rest of the audience, and when Alex’s eyes land on me as he steps up to the podium, I mouth, “Holy fuck, man.” His cheeks turn an even deeper shade of red, and he shakes his head lightly, holding back a smile.
I’d like to think me being here does actually help him in some way, because he absolutely knocks it out of the park. I mean, I can’t follow much of the science—I only know bits and pieces from what he’s tried to explain to me over the last several years—but he sounds perfectly confident as he first introduces the concept of dark matter and then goes on to show how he and his colleagues in Dr. Ellis’s lab are using some new approach to measure dark matter by looking at the warping of space-time. Or something like that. Whatever it is, he does well, and by the time his final slide comes up on the projector screen behind him about forty-five minutes later, everyone in the audience is still listening and engaged. Hands lift up around the room with questions, which spark a lively discussion lasting another twenty minutes or so.
