Loathe to Love You (The STEMinist Novellas #1-3)(71)

“I . . . graduated early.”

“High school? Or college?”

Silence. “Both.”

“I see.”

He briefly scratches the side of his neck, and there again is this feeling that he’s not quite used to being asked questions about himself. That most people take a look at him, decide that he’s just a touch too aloof and detached, and give up on figuring him out.

I study him, more curious than ever. “So . . . were you one of those kids who was really advanced for their age and skipped half a dozen grades? And then ended up joining the workforce while still ridiculously young?” And maybe your psychosocial development was still kind of ongoing, but you were never really sharing professional or academic settings with people in your age group, just much older ones who likely avoided you and were a little intimidated by your intelligence and success, which meant being the odd man out for the entirety of your formative years and having a 401(k) before your first date?

His eyes widen. “I . . . Yeah. Were you one, too?”

I laugh. “Oh no. I was a total dumbass. Still am, for the most part. I just thought it might be a good guess.” It fits the persona, too. He doesn’t come across as insecure, not quite, but he’s cautious. Withdrawn.

I lean back in my chair, feeling the thrill of having puzzled him out a little better. I’m usually not this dedicated to figuring out the backstory of everyone I meet, but Ian is just interesting.

No. He’s fascinating.

“So, how was it?”

He blinks. “How was what?”

“Being there with mission control when Curiosity landed. How was it?”

His expression instantly transforms. “It was . . .” He’s staring down at his feet, as if remembering. He looks awestruck.

“That good?”

“Yeah. It was . . . Yeah.” He chuckles again. God, it really does sound great.

“It looked like it. From TV, I mean.”

“You watched it?”

“Yup. I was on the East Coast, so I stayed up late and all that. Looked up at the sky out of my bedroom window and cried a little bit.”

He nods, and suddenly he is studying me. “Is that why you’re in grad school? You want to work on future rovers?”

“That would be amazing. But anything that’s space exploration will do.”

“NASA can put your maze-solving skills to great use.” His dimple is back, and I laugh.

“Hey, I can do other things. For instance . . .” I point at the third monitor on the desk, the one farthest away from me. It displays a piece of code Ian hasn’t walked me through yet. “Want me to help you debug that?” He gives me a confused look. “What? It’s code. It’s always nice to have a second pair of eyes.”

“You don’t have to—”

“There’s an error on the fifth line.”

He frowns. Then he scans the code for a second. Then he turns to me, to the monitor, to me again with an even bigger frown. I brace, half expecting him to lash out defensively and deny the error. I’m familiar with the crumbling egos of men, and I’m pretty sure it’s what any of the guys in my Ph.D. class would do. But Ian surprises me: he nods, fixes the mistake I pointed out, and looks nothing but grateful.

Wow. A male engineer who’s not an asshole. The bar is pretty low, but I’m nevertheless impressed.

“Would you really be up for going through the rest of the code with me?” he asks cautiously, surprising me even more. The contrast between his gentle tone and how . . . how big and guarded he is almost has me smiling. “It’s the work-around to fix the two-second delay in the pointing issue. I was going to ask one of my engineers in Houston to debug, but . . .”

“I got you.” I roll my chair closer to Ian’s. My knee presses against his, and I nearly move it away automatically, but in a split-second decision I decide to leave it there.

An experiment of sorts. Testing the waters. Taking the temperature.

I wait for him to shift back, but instead he studies me and says, “It’s a few hundred lines. I’m supposed to be helping you. Are you sure—”

“It’s fine. When I write my report, I’ll just pretend I asked you a bunch of questions about your journey and make up the answers.” Just to mess with him, I add, “Don’t worry, I’ll mention how having the clap did not set you back on your road to NASA.” He scowls, which has me laughing, and then I’m going over the code with him for five, ten minutes. Fifteen. The light softens to late-afternoon hues, and over an hour goes by while we’re side by side, blinking at the monitors.

Honestly, it’s pretty basic rubber duck debugging: he’s explaining out loud what he’s trying to do, which helps him work through critical chunks, and also figuring out better ways to go about it. But I’m a pretty happy rubber duck. I like listening to his low, even voice. I like that he seems to consider every single thing I say and never dismisses anything outright. I like that when he’s thinking hard, he closes his eyes, and his lashes are crimson half-moons against his skin. I like that he builds meticulously pristine code with no memory leakage, and I like that when his biceps brushes against my shoulder all I feel is solid warmth. I like his short, crisp functions, and the way he smells clean and masculine and a bit dark.