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  He nodded, unsure of anything else to say. Agreeing to the idea’s lack of originality too heartily probably wouldn’t win anyone over.

  “Do you want me to introduce you to him?”

  “Sure,” he said, relieved at something else to fill the conversation.

  Olivia made polite introductions, introducing him only as Lawrence’s son, and then completely shut up. Maybe she was relieved not to have to hold up the conversation anymore, and that was convenient, because Eddie Pemberbrooke had a lot to say.

  Eddie had a short stature, heavy white eyebrows, a bulbous nose and belly, and a face set into a permanent scowl. But it didn’t take Jack long to realize that the scowl was really just an expression of intense thought. He rattled on at length about the courses, and in spite of the fact that Jack was sure that there were dozens and dozens of STEM digital courses out there just like them for middle schoolers, the old man had even gotten Jack’s jaded self excited by the end of it.

  “So that’s why we’re talking to your father’s firm, young man,” Eddie finished up. “Because I believe today’s young people deserve the very best.” He smiled fondly at Olivia, who gave him a look like he was embarrassing her. Like she’d seen that smile more than a few hundred times.

  Jack felt a stab in his chest, some mixture of fresh jealousy and old hurt. He’d been planning to dutifully mutter, “Well, Dad’s the very best,” but he just couldn’t get the words out now. Lawrence wasn’t the very best at anything, and Jack wasn’t lying about him in the blinding light of sincere parental affection.

  Good for Olivia, though.

  An awkward silence stretched on. Olivia shifted, clearly uninterested in picking up the conversational slack.

  “Are you planning any video in the marketing campaign?” Jack blurted the first non-toxic thing that came to mind.

  “Videos? Like television ads?”

  “Oh, no. Free ones.”

  “Free ones?”

  “Yes, sir. Sucks people in. Lots of interesting videos on YouTube for kids. You should see these crazy unwrapping videos that people make of Kinder eggs—”

  “Kinder what?” Eddie’s eyes had glazed over. Apparently a short attention span was hereditary.

  “Uh, never mind. Video is the next big thing, though, in marketing. On every social platform. And especially with courses. You could give away the first lesson free, or make some crazy experimental videos that could go viral. Like those guys with Mentos and Coke bottles?”

  “Mentos and Coke?” Eddie’s eyes were wide, which was an achievement under those heavy brows, but at least he’d woken up again.

  “Oh, c’mon, Dad. Even I know what a soda geyser is.”

  Of course, given it was related to food, Jack wasn’t surprised Olivia knew. As she struggled to describe it, he pulled out his phone and dug the old video up.

  Eddie was wiping tears of laughter from his eyes at a stream of Cherry Coke hitting an unfortunate amateur chemist in the face when Lawrence strolled up. A slight frown right between the eyebrows cracked his cheerful veneer.

  “Everything all right here?”

  “Everything’s great, Lawrence. You have a very entertaining son. Quite internet-savvy too. You must be proud.” Eddie beamed, but mostly at the phone, glancing up only briefly at Lawrence before retraining his eyes on the video as fresh Mentos dropped into Mountain Dew. To less effect, but still some.

  “Very,” said Lawrence, with absolutely no inflection. “Actually, I just strolled over because my secretary reminded me that I had these reservations for two to Centurion tonight.”

  Jack’s blood ran cold. Meanwhile, Olivia’s eyebrows flew up. Centurion was one of the nicest, and most expensive, restaurants in the city, at the top of a high-rise taller than this one. Her mouth was probably already watering.

  “I totally forgot about them. I’m chained to this office, but I thought Jack and Olivia might enjoy them.”

  Eddie’s face took on a look of mildly scheming hope. Olivia’s mouth was hanging open, but she wasn’t saying anything. Jack froze, still holding his phone out for Eddie. God, what could he possibly say that wouldn’t embarrass Lawrence—or Olivia—in front of Eddie? He didn’t give a shit about his dad, but Eddie he liked. Rudely rejecting his daughter right in front of him was definitely going to sting. Jack couldn’t do it.

  “C’mon, you two, I’ll get you a car.”

  Lawrence led them out by the shoulders. It seemed all Jack could do to put his phone away and Olivia could do to close her mouth. Lawrence thrust a paper copy of the reservations—how quaint—into Olivia’s hands, a corporate credit card into Jack’s, and ushered them into the elevator. He hit the button for the ground floor and headed back into the happy hour, whistling.

  Asshole.

  The doors slid shut like a coffin closing, and the elevator started down.

  “Olivia—”

  “Jack—”

  Neither of them could decide who should go first before they reached the bottom floor. Jack groped for words, but all he could imagine was the door opening and Violet coincidentally strolling past outside and seeing them and Jack feeling like a complete and total asshole.

  They sidled awkwardly out of the elevator. He stopped in front of it, and Olivia did too.

  “I’m sorry but—”

  “You have a—”

  They both laughed for a moment. “You go first,” Olivia said finally, smiling.

  Ugh. That wouldn’t have been his preference, but he took a deep breath. Here goes. “Look, you’re really nice, Olivia. You have a bright future ahead of you, and you’re very pretty, and—”

  She frowned in confusion. “You don’t have to—”

  “I just can’t,” he blurted. He pressed the credit card into her hand. “Go without me. Take a friend.”

  “I don’t have any friends in—”

  “Sorry.” He turned and fled, jogging for the revolving door. “Your dad seems really nice,” he called over his shoulder. She probably didn’t know how lucky she was.

  Yep, he’d done just fine on his own. Where was Violet tonight, in truth? He should have called her. No, no, no. He was staying single, and that was that.

  He turned down Osbourne Street and headed to his car.

  Craft beer wasn’t Violet’s thing, but she touched up her lipstick in the car and headed into the little local brew place anyway. The lame-ass graduate student association was having its quarterly happy hour. She usually avoided these functions like she would a soul-sucking zombie.

  But desperate times called for desperate measures. Not quite Tinder levels, but getting there.

  Time to give herself some other handsome asshole to rebound with and have ridiculous dreams about. One that wasn’t in a weird contract with her or friends with her friends. Later, when she’d survived her defense, when school was over, she’d figure out how to do this love thing right.

  Heaven forbid, she might actually find someone worth dating.

  Nothing in her contract with Jack said she couldn’t go on actual dates. Or attend bullshit happy hours. Although come to think of the dating part, he should have probably added that.

  Osbourne Street was bustling outside the tall windows, people bundled in scarves and hats rushing by. She hung up her coat by the door and accepted her single complimentary beer. Some sort of wheat thing. Well, it wouldn’t kill her.

  She glanced around for anyone she knew. Oh, thank God. “Penny!”

  “Violet!” Penny jumped from her stool by the windows, threw her arms wide, and enveloped Violet in a hug.

  When she finally released Violet, Penny drew her to a cold table by the window and introduced the crowd of young men gathered around. No less than six gentlemen had been drawn to Penny’s hardly touched beer. Oh, and also to the enthusiastic sparkles where her blue eyes should be, the amused freckles on her nose, and the perfectly straight blond hair. Her penchant for baked goods had endowed her with generous curves, and Penny had a love for formal but
ton-downs that one might assume was for sex appeal but was actually because Penny was just that kind of geek. If accountants these days didn’t use computers most of the time, she’d have had a pocket protector and calculator on hand. To top it all off, Penny radiated two more things that tended to draw a certain type of man in: doe-like innocence and an intense love of the color pink.

  Violet was doubly glad she’d shown up now. There were foxes in the hen house.

  “I’m surprised to see you here! You don’t usually come out to these things.” Penny smiled sweetly. As if she had any other way to smile.

  “I know. It was… kind of a whim.”

  “Without club meetings, I always get so lonely on Tuesday nights.”

  Mentioning loneliness was like throwing chum in the water. “What kind of club are you two in?” said one of the foxes, clearing his throat. She’d already forgotten all their names. He was a quant, a computational finance guy, and thus seemed optimistic about his chances.

  Violet hesitated, but Penny blushed, so Vi plunged forward. “It’s a fortune-telling club. For fun.”

  “Fortune telling?” said another dubiously, raising an eyebrow. She’d dub him CompSci Fox. He was kind of amazingly hairy, but he also had intelligent eyes and was wearing an old-school Doom T-shirt, so she’d entertained a spark of hope for him. It extinguished instantly at the tone of his voice.

  “Yeah,” said Penny. “You know, it’s a hobby.”

  “I have way too much work for hobbies,” said CompSci Fox.

  “Another day, another algorithm,” Vi said.

  Her ploy at friendly sympathy both succeeded and backfired. The subject shifted away from their club, thankfully—and onto a lecture about his research endeavor. The awkward, nervous air and lack of other competing conversational topics wasn’t doing much to stop him.

  The modern gorilla at work. Some kind of intellectual chest-pounding. And it was sort of working. A drama MFA from Ragsford crashing their happy hour said he was going to get another beer and never came back. A mechanical engineer drifted away to another group, and another actually left the pub, which was just as well. She couldn’t remember his name or his degree program. It was a good thing she was done TA-ing classes at this point. She sucked at names.

  Finally, CompSci Fox seemed to regain sentience. He abruptly shut up.

  “That sounds… fascinating,” said Penny, never one to let someone totally crash and burn. “And I am so glad I don’t have to do any of that.” She smiled winningly, and it came off as a compliment.

  Finance dude was not having it. “So what other hobbies do you two ladies have? Anybody like football?”

  Ah. I’m probably making that face, Violet thought. The one Olivia made when Jack tried to tell her about pro gaming. The I-can’t-bring-myself-to-give-one-shit-about-this face. She struggled to muster an interested expression, but it’d been sadly easier to listen to the algorithm rant. She didn’t have anything against football, but if she were going to watch a sport, it’d be DOTA or StarCraft.

  Penny was quietly encouraging even while attesting that she “knew absolutely nothing about football.” It was insane the girl was still single. And would certainly go home alone. She always did, but she always had them eating out of her hand. What was keeping her single, anyway?

  “Eh, football is boring.” CompSci had thrown the gauntlet. Vi winced inwardly. How many beers had that dude had? The two men were staring each other down. “It’s just throwing pigskin back and forth over the same hundred meters over and over and over again.”

  “We use yards in America, genius. And it’s better than navel-gazing at equations no one gives a shit about over and over and over again.” Finance took a self-assured sip.

  CompSci rolled his eyes. “The attendees of the conference I’m speaking at next month disagree.”

  “And you haven’t even solved that one yet. You said so yourself.”

  “I’ll be fine. If you could wrap your little brain around them, maybe you’d understand.”

  Finance scoffed. “My equations can make $10K in half the time it took you to explain that garbage.” He waved a hand, as if waving the other man away.

  Violet risked a glance at Penny, who was frozen in social horror.

  Yes. This was why she never attended these things. Hanging out with strangers. Truly desperate days indeed.

  “Hey.” A new fox in a leather jacket joined them, filling one of the vacated spots. “I’m Chris.”

  She held out her hand. “Violet.” She glanced at Penny, but her friend was still transfixed on the train wreck of a conversation in front of her. And Chris wasn’t looking at Penny anyway. Which was kind of nice. His brown-gold eyes were solely trained on Violet. “PhD candidate in physics,” she added.

  “Oh, a unicorn, huh?” He raised his eyebrows.

  She looked away, stared at the bar. “Minus the horn, I guess. What about you?”

  “Psychology masters.” He leaned one elbow onto the counter beside her, casual, like he had all the time in the world. He wore a gray T-shirt, ripped jeans, and just the right amount of stubble to form an effortless goatee.

  “Ah.” Violet was tempted to ask more, but professional talk was reaching dangerous levels. They all needed to lighten up. Maybe she should work harder on drinking her beer.

  “My research centers around PTSD and trauma recovery.”

  “Really?” Violet put down the glass. “How’d you get into that? My brother’s struggled with that actually. Army vet.”

  “Oh, just looking for an area that would make a difference, you know? Make the world a little better.” He kept his eyes trained outward, like he didn’t have two fucks to give about anything.

  “Good for you,” said Violet. Research intended to make the world better didn’t always have the desired effect, but she wasn’t going to rain on his parade. It was better than the dick-measuring contest going on next door.

  “You enjoy these things?” he asked.

  “No. Never go to them.”

  “What brings you here tonight, then?”

  Shit. Cornered. “Uh, my friend Penny here wanted me to join her.” She jerked a thumb over her shoulder. If he’d been around for five minutes, he’d have known that was a lie, but she couldn’t come up with anything better.

  “Are you… looking to meet someone?” Now he finally met her gaze over his shoulder, with a smile smooth as honey and maybe a touch smug. And cute as hell. She bit her lip.

  “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe.” She tore her eyes away and did her own scan of the bar. “What about you?”

  “Am I looking to meet someone?”

  She coughed. “I meant, do you enjoy these things? But sure, that too.”

  “Mostly no, on both counts.”

  Her heart stumbled, fell a little. “Mostly?”

  “Maybe if I ran into someone special. But you know the chances of that.” He gave her another honeyed glance that sent sparks shooting off like fireworks.

  “So… if you’re not looking to meet someone and you feel your soul being sucked dry in the presence of so much ‘networking,’ then why did you come out tonight?”

  “Free beer.” He was smiling but didn’t meet her quick glance, eyes back on the crowd.

  “You must be desperate.”

  “You don’t like it? It’s not that bad.”

  “I’m an old-fashioned girl. As in, I drink old-fashioneds. Hard liquor. Not that I am actually old-fashioned.”

  “The eyebrow piercing kind of tipped me off,” he said, smiling warmly. “Or maybe it was the sexy hair.”

  She flushed. “So… do you live near the UDW campus?” She leaned a little closer to him, away from the others.

  “Yeah, in the building next to Waldor’s. Near the Humane Society?”

  “I know the one.”

  “I do a lot of volunteering, thought that’d be convenient.”

  “You volunteer?” Ugh, hopefully the skepticism in her voice didn’t come through.
<
br />   “Yeah.”

  “Like, what? With puppies?”

  “Cat socialization, actually. It’s not a big deal or anything, just something I do for fun.”

  “Are you for real?” She eyed him, but he didn’t meet her gaze. Just smiled. Jeez, those pursuits kinda made her fortune-telling club look a little frivolous and self-indulgent. Maybe she should be putting in some hours to save the whales instead.

  She was saving her brother through his campsite. She shouldn’t forget that.

  “What do you mean, am I for real?”

  “You research to make the world a better place, cuddle cats for fun, and you’re single? Come on.”

  “Course I’m for real.” He frowned only slightly at her, then finished his beer in one swallow. He’d been there longer than she had, apparently. “What, you think I’d make that all up?” He scoffed. “Hey, since I’m outta free beer, you wanna go get something else? One of your old-fashioneds or something?”

  Why the hell not. “Sure.” She hugged Penny goodbye and cheerfully abandoned her beer as she shrugged into her coat and twisted her gray scarf with its periodic-table pattern around her neck. Her brother wasn’t terribly scientific, but the scarf had still been a thoughtful attempt at a gift.

  Chris grabbed her hand as he led her out into the street. A few blocks down, a quiet, trendy-looking bar didn’t look too crowded, and they headed inside.

  “So, tell me about your research,” he said as they slid into a dark, cozy booth side by side. He tossed an arm casually around her shoulders. “You said chemistry, right?”

  “No, physics.”

  “So, like some Stephen Hawking shit?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Yeah. Something like that.”

  “C’mon. I’m serious. I’d love to hear all about it.” He leaned back and propped his feet on the opposite seat in their small booth as her drink came, smoky and studded with a dark-purple cherry.

  “You really want to hear about my research.” She gave him the side-eye.

  “Is that so hard to believe?” He raised his eyebrows expectantly.