She was the only person in the world who knew all his secrets—except for this one. She knew his father was an asshole, that Josh had cheated all through AP English, and that their romantic relationship in high school had never worked. They were too good at being friends, and all that sex stuff had ruined things—or nearly ruined them. What she didn’t know was that he’d given up on girls completely and had started dating guys.
It was a new thing. He wasn’t about to come out of the closet just yet because he hated labels as much as she hated tech support. But he’d thought he’d broach the subject during their annual weekend at MoreCon. He imagined telling her that he’d met a guy at a bar and that something had stirred. Part of him had heated and thickened, and all those things that were supposed to happen with a girl, but rarely did with him, happened with this guy.
Did that mean he was gay? He was exploring the possibility. He’d gone to a movie with the guy and found out he was a jerk. But that had opened a door, and so he’d gone on a few more dates with a few different men. He’d even kissed a couple.
All new. All exciting. And he wanted to share it with his best friend, but he wasn’t sure how to broach the topic.
Then she changed the subject.
“So you’re part of the opening ceremony extravaganza, huh?”
His eyes widened in mock surprise. “I don’t know what you mean.”
She laughed as he knew she would. “Usually you hate the opening event, but this year you’re all about how I have to take Friday off and be here in time for the 7:00 p.m. kickoff. That can only mean you finally wore down the management team enough that they let you be part of it.” She eyed his cape, no doubt seeing some of the badly hidden pockets on the inside. A seamster he was not. “Is that some of your dad’s special fire-resistant fabric there?”
He looked down and saw the exposed shimmery green fabric called Volcax that he’d stolen from his father’s factory. Years ago his father had teamed up with a brilliant chemist named Craig, and together they developed a fiber that was impervious to heat up to five thousand degrees. He’d been a kid at the time, sitting on the lab bench, listening to what they said, watching all the mixing and blowing up of stuff, and he’d gotten hooked. Chemistry was his jam, thanks to all those wonderful afternoons watching his father and Craig make things go boom. Eventually they’d figured out the formula and Volcax was born. Soon afterward they sold it to the government, and the fabric was now so hush-hush, Josh could end up in prison for what he was wearing.
Josh adjusted his cape. “I have no idea what you mean.”
She arched a brow. “You’re not going to set the hotel on fire again, are you?”
“That was one time!”
“Twice.”
“A stink bomb does not count as fire,” he said stiffly.
“The hotel manager didn’t see it that way.”
True. And he’d had to do some major pleading not to be banned from the entire hotel chain for the rest of his life. “No stink bombs this year.” Just pyrotechnics, some cool electrical effects, and a sleight of hand that he’d spent months perfecting. He grinned. “And the con comped my hotel stay.”
“That’s cool.”
It didn’t come close to covering what he’d spent creating his costume, but every bit helped. Especially since he was a lowly PhD student on a University of Michigan stipend. That covered rent, cheap food, and a heavy winter coat, but not much else. She, on the other hand, had gotten the holy doctorate at Michigan State and was now working in Big Pharma for more money than he’d make in years as a student.
“How goes the dissertation?” she asked.
“Need a couple more experiments.”
“That’s what you said last year.”
He shrugged. That was the problem with research. There was always more to learn, more to do, and more ways to delay writing the dissertation that would end his comfortable life in Ann Arbor and send him off into the big bad world looking for a job.
“You can’t spend your life doing rando experiments in a basement,” she said.
“I do them in a university lab now.” In their basement.
“I do them in a multimillion-dollar lab, and they pay me lots of money to do it.”
He nodded. “But they tell you what to do, when, and how to do it. I’d rather go where my curiosity leads me.” And right there was his problem. He liked exploring chemistry and was damn good at it. And he hated having anyone else tell him where his mind should go. There was no compelling reason—other than money—to pick their research over his own. He could live with a tiny bank account. He couldn’t live bored.
She sighed. “No one will pay you for that.”
“Yet. Eventually someone will recognize my genius.”
“You have to do something cool to be considered a genius,” she drawled.
“I won the Chem Hack Contest again this year. Five years straight. That’s pretty impressive.”
