The Chemistry of Love(23)

“Just a guy from work.”

“The work you don’t go to anymore?”

Point made. I deserved a medal for not rolling my eyes. I would not revert to my teenage self, no matter how much she annoyed me. “Yes.”

I stepped on the first stair to go back to my room, but she asked, “What did he want?”

“For me to join his harem and give him a dozen children and to never, ever be a chemist again.”

“Anna! Be serious!” she exclaimed, just as my grandfather turned a page of his newspaper and said, “If that’s what she wants to do, that’s what she should do. Whatever makes you happy makes us happy, Stinker.”

I was pretty sure he hadn’t even heard what I’d said, but he had always played the peacemaker between the two of us.

That made me feel bad, him thinking he had to interfere on my behalf, so I decided to be the bigger person and answer her question. “I don’t know what Marco wants. But I’m about to go find out.”





CHAPTER SEVEN


I checked Marco’s text, copied the address he’d sent into my map app, and saw that the restaurant wasn’t far from the house. I went upstairs to do as much damage control as I possibly could on my face, which meant another shower. After that close encounter with Marco, it was probably warranted. He definitely made me a little sweaty. Again, I refused to closely examine my reactions and just dismissed them.

I went to my home lab and threw together a quick (glitter-free) exfoliant and headed to the bathroom. I turned the shower back on and considered calling Catalina while I waited for the water to heat up. But she would demand answers that I didn’t have yet. I couldn’t even formulate a hypothesis—Marco had dismissed all my suspicions. It was better to gather the relevant information, observe for myself what he wanted, and then talk with her so we could evaluate and draw our conclusions as a team. Right now, it was all just speculation and guesswork, and there was only one way to uncover the truth.

My phone buzzed, and there was a text from Catalina ten minutes ago asking for an update. She texted again shortly after that and reminded me that if I was interested, although she knew I wouldn’t be, that I was welcome to join her monthly D&D game. She said some of our coworkers would be there.

That’s all I needed. To be around chemists from the lab I’d just quit. Because that wouldn’t be at all awkward.

I disrobed and put baby oil on my face. I let it soak in and then got into the shower to exfoliate. I spent a long time there, hoping it was working and wondering what Marco had to say. I stuck my head out of the shower, cleared the steam off the mirror, and checked my face. Eh. Good enough.

I was too impatient to wait any longer.



My grandmother had once told me to always be the first person to show up to a meeting. That it was a power move. I arrived at the restaurant about half an hour early, not knowing whether or not Marco would come. The paranoid part of my brain still worried that this, despite his protest, had been some kind of setup and he wanted me to come to the restaurant all orange and sad to make fun of me. My irrational fears were quickly dispelled when I saw him waiting for me in the lobby. I had come here specifically to find him—so why did I feel a jolt on seeing him again?

“Hey, you made it. I knew you would,” he said.

That was annoying. I liked my science to meet my expectations, but nobody liked the idea that they might be predictable.

“I thought we’d sit in the back, if that’s all right with you.” We were in a pizza place—not quite the French froufrou fine dining I had anticipated. We were even seating ourselves.

“Sure.”

I followed behind him, the smell of toasted garlic and tomatoes making my stomach rumble with anticipation. All I’d had to eat so far today was chips.

He gestured toward a little booth. “Is this okay?”

I nodded, and he waited for me to sit down before he joined me. A few seconds later, a waiter approached, did a bit of a double-take when he looked at me, and then handed us menus and promised to return with water.

There was an awkward pause because I felt like Marco was staring at me. As if everyone had been looking at us since we arrived. This might have been because he was so uncomfortably good looking that they were all wondering what he was doing with someone like me.

It might also have been due to the self-tanner.

“You’re kind of staring at me,” I told him.

“I’m sorry. I’m having a hard time figuring out how to look you in the eyes without staring at you.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “We’ve both acknowledged the five-hundred-pound self-tanner in the room.”

“It seems like you might be mixing a few metaphors there, but you’re right. Does this kind of thing happen to you a lot?”

“More than I’d like to admit,” I told him. “Chemistry is sometimes full of surprises.”

He nodded. “True. And your face does look better. Less like an orange and more like a . . . dying orange? I don’t know. I can’t think of anything that is a paler orange.”

Shrugging one shoulder, I said, “A few more scrubs and I’ll be back to normal. Well, normal-ish.”

Our waiter returned with water and said he’d be back in a couple of minutes to take our order. When he left, Marco smiled at me and asked, “Do you know what you’d like to order?”