The Chemistry of Love(6)

I got to my laptop and pulled up the formulation. He stood to the right of my workstation, and the fact that we were breathing the same air made me unbelievably happy.

He picked up a sparkly, golden eye-shadow sample that I had on my workstation. “Newest blush?”

Had he not seen the gold and glitter? You’d only wear that on your cheeks if you were going to disco night at the club. “No, it’s an eye shadow. Marketing says it’s creasing, so I’m going to . . .”

My voice trailed off when he did the worst thing imaginable.

He started cracking his knuckles one by one. Loudly, each sharp popping sound fracking my soul and making my ears want to bleed. I loathed that sound with every fiber of my being.

A little voice whispered that my soul mate would never crack his knuckles around me. That was silly; I couldn’t believe I’d even thought it. I was about to ask him to please stop with the stomach-turning noise but realized how odd that might sound.

“Here,” I said, handing him my computer, hoping I could distract him.

Thankfully, taking my laptop stopped him from messing with his poor, abused knuckles. He made me so flustered, and I realized just how much his opinion on my project mattered. I wanted him to see how smart I was, to be impressed by me. I knew looks-wise that I’d never win him over, so he had to get to know me so that he could fall in love with my sometimes-winning personality.

But he wasn’t saying anything, and my stomach was starting to fill up with hard knots. I found myself wanting to explain my thought process to him. “I have to be careful with the formulation to meet all the vegan parameters, to make sure I don’t get impatient and raise the pH balance too quickly. I mean, all cosmetic chemists are guilty of that.”

“Yes, we’ve all been there.”

Was that sarcasm? I shifted on my stool. He had that bored expression back on his face. I pushed my glasses up my nose, worried that I might accidentally fog them up as I was breathing harder than normal. I told my brain that this moment was not as important as my central nervous system apparently thought it was. Needing to calm down, I reached for my beaker of water and took a drink.

Nope, not water. Not water. Cyclopentasiloxane.

I leaned forward and spit the entire mouthful into the sink. I grabbed the beaker that I’d filled up earlier with water and rinsed my mouth out, two, three, four separate times.

“Are you okay?” Craig asked, and I was touched by his concern. I was also thinking about the safety data binder in the bottom drawer of my workstation. I didn’t know if there was something else I needed to do in this situation, but I felt fairly certain I wasn’t going to die. I knew cyclopentasiloxane could potentially disrupt hormones, but I hadn’t actually ingested it.

If I pulled that binder out, though, Craig would know what I had just done.

“Fine. I’m fine.” I might have permanently damaged part of my endocrine system, but all good. “I just . . .” I didn’t want to confess to my colossal mistake. I was trying to win him over with my wit and smarts, not make him think I couldn’t distinguish a chemical from water.

Which was true, but still.

He set the laptop down. He didn’t say anything about my formulation, and I again felt the urge to fill in the silence. “I know it’s not all that exciting, but it’s what they assigned me. I’d love the chance to work on some of the things I’ve pitched to my boss. I think I have a lot of potentially good ideas.”

At that, his expression shifted. “Really? Have you shared them?”

How could I tell Craig that Jerry was a buffoon who wouldn’t know a good idea if it climbed up on his face and suffocated him like one of those alien larvae? “Not yet. We have a long list of things to accomplish, and I try to focus on that.”

I hoped that was diplomatic enough.

That anxious feeling returned while I waited for him to respond, and I reached across my desk until my hand landed on a thermometer. I picked it up. If someday I became famous and my biographer asked about this moment, I would never be able to explain why I made a dad joke. “Hey, what did the thermometer say to the measuring cylinder?” I paused. “You may be graduated, but I have several degrees!”

Craig blinked at me slowly, and the total and utter humiliation that filled me up, from the tips of my toes to the roots of my hair, made me want to climb under my workstation and wait for the heat death of the universe.

Then he spoke, skipping over my world-ending joke, and I didn’t know if that made things better or worse. “Those ideas of yours, you should stop by my office and share them with me. I’m looking for the next big thing. Something that will put Minx Cosmetics on the map.”

Obviously. We all wanted that. That’s why we were here—to come up with the next great innovation that would change our industry.

Craig kept talking, almost like he was reading my mind. “I know every executive at every makeup company around the globe is looking for the same thing. Easier said than done, right? It’s just that my father . . .” His voice trailed off and he sighed. “I need to find something that will make him and KRT happy with me.”

I knew Minx Cosmetics was a subsidiary of a much larger conglomerate, KRT Limited. Was his father involved with that company?

Putting that aside, I wondered how anyone could be unhappy with Craig. It seemed impossible.