“Just… studying?”
“Uh, mostly. Some lecturing and tutoring on the side.”
He’s confirming what I’ve guessed, but it still rips through me like the point of a compass. “Youtaughtat Imperial College London?”
“Yeah, but I’m not…” He holds a door open for me as we move inside one of the buildings that makes me feel even more like an imposter. “It wasn’t anything complex.”
‘Wasn’t anything complex.’ Is he trying to make me feel better about being such an idiot? Because it really isn’t working.“First time I’ve heard someone say quantum physics isn’t complicated.”
“It’s not. It only seems complicated because we don’t fully understand it yet.” He carries on walking, head high, and I can see he belongs here. It’s his past and his life, and again I get that awful sense of the divide between us, sick, like I’m going to drop into the chasm. “But electricity was like that once, wasn’t it?”
As someone who doesn’t understand electricity either, I can only say, “Yes.”
“Or radio waves.”
Also, “Yes.”
“Or paleomagnetism, or dark matter. Or the movement of the planets.”
Finally, something I do get. When his last comment snatches my eyes up, it pulls at the corner of his mouth. “Do you still love astronomy?” He leans casually past me to push an elevator button, and I hold myself very still. I like the closeness. I crave the closeness. But I won’t let myself move nearer to him. I also don’t want to step back from him.
“I do. I wish, now more than ever, that I’d pursued it.” The longing in my voice is on full display. That quirk of his lips wrinkles slightly, almost into a grimace, but it ends in that sad smile of his.
I guess he misses his world. His hot Coke and his undoubtedly poorer version ofDesperately Seeking Susan. But I miss this. This existence I never got a foothold in. This world my parents would have wanted for me, with the money that was supposed to compensate me for their loss. The money I squandered.
Guilt sweeps over me for the millionth time. How much of a disappointment I would be for them, if they could know. What a moron I’ve been. Seeing all this, seeing the way he is, it’s such a visceral reminder of everything I’m not.
My vision clouds, a sting in my eyes, so I turn my face away before he can see, trying to shove it all back down. But there’s so much here. So much regret, so much sadness that I never let myself stop and feel. I press my eyelids together, trying to think of nothing but the dark and the black.
Then the touch on my arm. The soft grazing of knuckles just beneath my elbow. It’s a sensation so shocking I look down at it. His hand moves tentatively, along my forearm, over the cuff of my coat, then his skin hits mine. It’s half a second of touch, and a galaxy of stars exploding over every atom of me that he traces as his little finger stretches and wraps around mine. My own jolts in a violent chase, and I twist it around his, a desperate catch. But the light above us flicks on, yellow, the elevator dings, and his finger slips away with the rest of him, to the other side of the open doors, while what feels like a sea of students pours out between us.
When he finally can, he moves to the back of the elevator, so I take my place there too, leaning against the metal banister, as silent as he is while he waits for the others to file in. He doesn’t push a button, and offers me only a nod when I look at him for explanation. A nod that says he’s taking care of it, and that we should stay quiet.
The elevator climbs up and up, stopping several times on the way to the eighth floor. He doesn’t move an inch until the last person exits, when he finally steps forward and hits the B3 button.
Basement.
Strange.
I don’t know where I thought we were going. Some office or lecture hall, I guess. But we’re on the way down again, until we pull up at the fifth floor, and a woman gets on. She hits three. He hits two with a sigh, as though it hadn’t lit up the last time hepushed it. She gets out at three, and his hand slips to the close button.
At one, it opens halfway, but he’s pushed the close button again, and before a distracted pair of students have the wherewithal to shove a hand in the gap, he’s got the doors closed between us, and we’re moving again.
He keeps that nice hand on the button, his tongue passing swiftly between his lips, and we miraculously skip the ground floor where we got on. We fly past B1 and B2, and then the silver doors slide open on pitch black.
“This is it,” he announces, holding the doors open for me.
Guess it must be. But the cold and stale air, sleeping in darkness, doesn’t feel terribly inviting. Still, I’ve made a commitment to do this, so I step out. He follows me, and the doors swish closed.
The meagre yellow glow of the elevator light announcing our floor goes out, but just as swiftly as my heart rate elevates, his hand is on my forearm again. “It’s one of those push-light timer things. Hang on.”
The loss of his closeness is visceral. His steps on concrete echo as he finds the wall, and there’s a scrunch of plastic as he pushes the light into action.
It’s very much a basement. A small and clearly disused one. It’s almost empty, strewn with dusty and disowned cobwebs, stains on the floor from leaks, attempted cleanups, spills of whatever’s been stored here through the years. But he leads me forward to another doorway with a sign on it: ‘Keep Out.’
I can’t help the laugh that slips out at the ludicrous and hastily scrawled warning. “Does that really work?”
“No idea.” He chuckles back, fumbling in his pocket. “But I haven’t been caught yet.” He pulls out a key, slides it into the lock, then opens the door. A jolt hits me, like a moving elevator coming to rest. The lights are on, and with a sinking feelingentirely unrelated to an elevator coming to rest, I realise that’s exactly where I am.
