Loathe to Love You (The STEMinist Novellas #1-3)(70)

I am almost certain he’s starting to think that I’m not a total waste of time.

“No, it doesn’t run constantly. How can you tell?”

I gesture toward the lines of code, and the back of my hand brushes against something hard and warm: Ian’s shoulder. We’re sitting closer than we were at the coffee shop, but no closer than I’d feel comfortable being with one of the—always unpleasant, often offensive—guys in my Ph.D. cohort. I guess my crossed knees kind of pressed against his leg earlier, but that’s it. No big deal. “It’s in there, no?”

The section is in C++. Which happens to be the very first language I taught myself back in high school, when every single Google search for “Skills + Necessary + NASA” led to the sad result of “Programming.” Python came after. Then SQL. Then HAL/S. For each language, I started out convinced that chewing on glass would surely be preferable. Then, at some point along the way, I began thinking in terms of functions, variables, conditional loops. A little after that, reading code became a bit like inspecting the label on the back of the conditioner bottle while showering: not particularly fun, but overall easy. I do have some talents, apparently.

“Yeah.” He’s still looking at me. Not surprised, precisely. Not impressed, either. Intrigued, maybe? “Yes, it is.”

I rest my chin on my palm and chew on my lower lip, considering the code. “Is it because of the limited amount of solar power?”

“Yes.”

“And I bet it prevents gyro drift errors during the stationary period?”

“Correct.” He nods, and I’m momentarily distracted by his jawline. Or maybe it’s the cheekbones. They’re defined, angular in a way that makes me wish I had a protractor in my pocket.

“It’s not all automated, right? Earth-based personnel can direct tools?”

“They can, depending on the attitude.”

“Does the onboard flight software have specific requirements?”

“The pointing of the antenna relative to Earth, and . . .” He stops. His eyes fall on my chewed-on lip, then quickly move away. “You ask a lot of questions.”

I tilt my head. “Bad questions?”

Silence. “No.” More silence as he studies me. “Remarkably good questions.”

“Can I ask a few more, then?” I grin at him, aiming for cheeky, curious to see where it’ll take us.

He hesitates before nodding. “Can I ask you some, too?”

I laugh. “Like what? Would you like me to list the specs of the maze-solving bot I built for my Intro to Robotics class back in college?”

“You built a maze-solving robot?”

“Yup. Four-wheel, all-terrain, Bluetooth module. Solar powered. Her name was Ruthie, and when I set her free at a corn maze somewhere near Atlanta, she got out in about three minutes. Scared the crap out of the children, too.”

He is fully smiling now. He has a heart-stopping dimple on his left cheek, and . . . Okay, fine: he’s aggressively hot. Despite the red hair, or because of it. “You still have her?”

“Nope. To celebrate, I got wasted at a bar that didn’t bother to check IDs and ended up leaving her at some University of Georgia frat house. I didn’t want to go back, because those places are scary, so I gave up on Ruthie and just built an electronic arm for my Robotics final.” I sigh and look into the mid-distance. “I’ll need a lot of therapy before I can become a mother.”

He chuckles. The sound is low, warm, maybe even shiver-inducing. I need a second to regroup.

I’ve settled—at some point on our five-minute walk here, probably when he pulled out a pretty effortless scowl to intimidate the security guard into letting me in despite my lack of ID—on the reason I can’t quite pin Ian down. He is, very simply, a never-before-experienced mix of cute and overwhelmingly masculine. With a complex, layered air about him. It spells simultaneously Do not piss me off because I don’t fuck around and Ma’am, let me carry those groceries for you.

Not my usual fare, not at all. I like flirting, and I like sex, and I like hooking up with people, but I’m really, really picky about my partners. It doesn’t take a lot to turn me off someone, and I almost exclusively gravitate toward the cheerful, spontaneous, fun-loving type. I’m into extroverts who love banter and are easy to talk to, the less intense the better. Ian seems to be the diametrical opposite of that, and yet . . . And yet, even I can see how there is something fundamentally attractive about him. Would I try to pick him up at a bar? Hm. Unclear.

Will I try to pick him up after the end of this informational interview? Hm. Also unclear. I know I say I wouldn’t, but . . . things change.

“Okay. My question now. Mara—Mara Floyd, your cousin or something—said that you were working directly on the Curiosity team?” He nods. “But you were, what? Eighteen?”

“Around that age, yeah.”

“Were you an intern?”

He pauses before shaking his head but doesn’t elaborate.

“So you just . . . happened to be hanging out with mission control? Chilling with your space bros while they landed their remote-control rover on Mars?”

His lips twitch. “I was a team member.”

“A team member at eighteen?” My eyebrow lifts, and he looks away.