“Sorry.”
“Ex-girlfriend?” Taye said, smirking.
Ames was conspicuously silent. She had one of her curriculum books open on her knee, looking down at the page, but her eyes weren’t moving.
“Work,” Noam said after a beat. “Emergency meeting in two hours.”
“Dude, tell them you have basic in the morning and make them fuck off.” Taye spread both hands to either side, half a shrug. “You’re Level IV. You can’t spendallyour time liaising, or whatever else it is liaisons do. You have, like, homework.”
“Believe me. I know.”
Noam glanced at Bethany, who was watching him over the edge of her holoreader with steady, unreadable eyes. She hadn’t said much on the subject, although she must have noticed Noam was gone as often as Ames and Taye had. But she was also probably the only reason Ames hadn’t publicly and violently lost her shit at Noam yet—she didn’t want to make a bad impression on a fifteen-year-old.
“You can domyhomework for me, if you’re looking for extra work,” Taye added, lifting his geology textbook and wiggling both eyebrows.
“Definitely, if you don’t mind failing Bennett’s class.”
“I’m already failing Bennett’s class. Too many rocks, not enough numbers.”
Bethany hid behind her holoreader again, and something twinged in Noam’s chest—an odd guilt he couldn’t quite place.
“It’ll be okay,” Noam said, mostly for Bethany’s sake. “I signed up for this, after all. It’s important. I won’t ever be as good an Atlantian liaison as Brennan was, but ...”
He couldn’t finish that thought. Was he seriously using Brennan’s memory as a shield to justify having an affair with the man who made Noam kill him? Vile. The bar for basic human decency wasundergroundat this point, and Noam still couldn’t clear it.
“We can all go out this weekend,” he ventured. “Catch a movie in Raleigh ...”
“You gonna be free this weekend, Noam?” Ames said idly, and popped her gum.
“Should be,” he said. He forced a smile when Ames looked at him. “What do you think, Bethany?”
Bethany slapped her book shut and dropped it on the floor with a loud thump. “I think you should both leave me out of it.”
She shoved herself up and stalked out of the room. The girls’ bedroom door slammed shut behind her, a painting rattling on the wall.
“What’s up with her?” Taye said.
Ames’s cheeks had flushed red. Noam knew exactly how she felt.
“I’m going for a run,” he muttered and pushed up from the sofa, heading back into the bedroom to change—although not before grabbing his phone from the other cushion. The last thing he needed was someone bringing it to him, staring at the screen right when Lehrer inevitably texted again.
It was six miles from the government complex out west, past Noam’s old neighborhood, then north—carefully evading the whole Geer Street area, just in case—then back again down side roads and residential streets, cutting past the catastrophe memorial to return home. He always did the same loop, always tried to run it faster than the previous time, until his muscles burned and his lungs ached from the frigid winter air, until he couldn’t see for the sweat dripping into his eyes. When he ran, there was nothing. No thoughts. No fears. Just the crunch of the snow under his feet and the pounding of his own heart in his temples.
He hunched over his knees when he finally made it back to the government complex, sucking in a series of sharp shallow breaths and fighting a wave of light-headedness. His clenched fingers were pale and bloodless with cold.
But he’d beat his personal best time by thirty seconds.
And—more importantly—he’d figured out his next move.
Lehrer didn’t notice him come in.
That much was obvious as Noam toed off his running shoes in the hall—he could hear Lehrer in the kitchen, the sizzle of a frying pan, and Lehrer’s voice narrating out loud: “The most difficult part is folding the dumplings. It helps to use an egg glaze, like this, to glue the edges of the dough together ...”
He’s finally lost it,Noam thought as he moved across the living room on sock feet.Lehrer has finally, actually lost it.
But when he came into the kitchen, he found Lehrer standing with a little pat of flattened dough in one palm. Wolf sat by the table with his amber gaze fixed unblinking on Lehrer’s hand.
“He seems very attentive,” Noam said.
