After they left George, Jake’s junior year became a long stretch of routines. He worked out every morning, turned in early every night, and tutored twenty hours a week. Mom returned to waitressing at Glen Oaks and took a waxing job at Exhale Spa on the Upper East Side. They enjoyed small luxuries, like movies in the theater, herbed popcorn from trucks in Central Park, and home-cooked meals on Mondays. Mom stopped drinking—not that she ever had much—which Jake guessed was in part to spare the expense and in part a reflection of the new atmosphere at home. There was an unspoken sense of being joined in the same endeavor: getting Jake on the best track. Both were solemnly devoted to it. Jake didn’t decorate his room except for printed sheets of Yale’s courses taped to his wall. He grew his portfolio. $21,031.
Now, in mid-December, Jake was waiting for Yale’s decision on his early application. They never mentioned George, though Jake deduced major developments: he and Mom were officially divorced. George would pay Jake’s remaining tuition at Trinity, but no more. He wasn’t interested in keeping up with their lives.
A block from home, Jake saw their building’s door ajar. A spray of snow through the entryway left it white and watery. He clenched his jaw. He hated that, the insecurity of it. Their own home. He shut the door, angry, and jumped upstairs two at a time to find the door open to their apartment, too. Lights on. Jake pushed the door open, slammed it shut, and strode into the kitchen, boots on, to find Mom sitting at the kitchen table with her hands wrapped around a chipped mug of hot water. She still wore her Glen Oaks uniform, its green collar visible under her parka. A thick envelope waited on the table with a bulldog stamped on front. Mom started to cry. A thick envelope. He tore it open.
Congratulations….
He swung from word to word.
Full scholarship…
Mom cried harder. He hugged her in her chair—exuberant, ecstatic, relieved—until she started laughing. They jumped up and down together in a moment ridiculously youthful and summer bright. The future was almost here.
CHAPTER 4
Hours after they met, Jake and Sophie ventured into Bass, the underground library at Yale. His first text had invited her to study. Now, they passed leather chairs, marble tables, and bookcases arranged with the symmetrical precision of a royal garden, all the way to a study room meant for a small group. As Sophie unzipped her backpack, she imagined how their elbows might graze if she got lost in her own mind, forgot her body. She was on edge from proximity to him. It amplified the silence and magnified every detail.
So close to Sophie, Jake noticed that she didn’t smell like anything: unscented, just plain clean. The girls he was used to at Trinity had started making themselves up in middle school. They ironed their hair until it gave off a whiff of burnt plastic; glossed their lips with tubes of Lip Venom, supposedly plumping them; hid their faces under bronzers; and doused themselves with so much perfume that classrooms smelled like the ground floor of Bloomingdale’s. Jake found Sophie’s naturalness new and sensual. It had the quality of being undressed. Jake cleared his throat and opened his laptop, $1,199 from the Apple store on Fifth Avenue. He opened his usual set of tabs: Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Barron’s. He kept a Google doc open—named “Future”—where he wrote his ideas on where the world was going.
Sophie uncapped a Bic pen over her problem set from Professor Malchik and leaked her mind into neat blue print. She etched Σs and ∫s.
They relaxed into the silence.
Sophie resurfaced after an hour: 7:32 p.m. She put her pen down—first problem solved—and looked up to find Jake in his own focus cocoon. He was so singularly absorbed, she had the strange feeling she was staring at herself in her library at home. There was passion in his focus. Being so close to him now, in this unselfconscious state, felt intimate. What was happening between them? This ease, so soon after they’d met. She sank back into her problem set.
* * *
Jake waved his hand between them.
She checked her watch: 8:16 p.m.
“Sorry,” she admitted.
“It was cute.”
She covered her face.
“I was just—”
“Thinking.”
She smiled.
“Happens to me, too,” he said.
“We disappear.”
He smiled. She made it seem like magic.
“Do you want anything from the café?” he asked. Bass Café upstairs had a small counter stocked with pastries and refrigerated to-go items.
“Oh! Sure.”
“My treat. What’s your drink?”
“Milkshake.”
Jake chuckled.
“What?” she asked.
Her eagerness had reminded Jake of being very young: falling asleep in restaurants, the word grown-ups, and the illicit allure of sugar.
“What flavor?”
“Oreo?”
Jake smiled. He stood up.
“Be right back.”
* * *
Jake stood in line at Bass Café behind four girls with swinging ponytails. They chatted—about Franzia, a Mike Posner concert, being gluten-free, and a “stoplight party” where green means go and red is you’re taken—each topic with an infinitesimal half-life. Their lukewarm interest in each subject was never hot enough to spark a lasting fire. He looked over his shoulder toward Bass, thinking about her.
Then, his turn.
“Five fifty,” the cashier demanded.
When he paid for Sophie’s milkshake, Jake realized they were on a date. Their time together had felt natural, but that’s exactly what this was—a first date. He’d had the sense that dating was supposed to be more done up: more showing off, bright plumage, chest puffing, nervous energy, and self-doubt. But every moment with Sophie was calm. A date where two people did what they would’ve done alone—hopefully she saw the intimacy in that? They weren’t leaning into idealized versions of themselves. It was just them.
With their drinks—her large Oreo milkshake, his free cup of tap water—he walked back through the turnstile. Individual study rooms lined either side of him. In one, a boy in glasses shucked a Crunchy Peanut Butter CLIF Bar, its crinkle silent. Jake loved the quiet here, shrine-like. Sophie apparently did, too. He’d never met anyone else who… “disappeared”? Sophie was deep in thought when he reached their room and opened the door with his elbow. She jolted, then stood, took the Styrofoam cup, and admired all sixteen ounces topped with a whimsical swirl of whipped cream and black Oreo crumbs.
“Thank you!”
Sophie took a sip.
“What’ve you been working on?” he asked.
“The start of time.” She was solving the first Friedmann equation, which described the trajectory of the universe. “This calculates how much the universe is expanding or contracting. And when our world will ultimately come to an end. You just have to input how much matter, energy, and radiation exists, and when time began.”
“Time had a start?”
She nodded.
“Thirteen point eight billion years ago.”
“Huh.”
“If time had been around forever, the sky would have infinite stars, right?”
Jake tried to imagine that: the night sky bright as day, stars like carpet.
“What was before that?” he asked.
“Before the big bang? No one knows. After, there were a few hundred million years of darkness before any stars were born.” She reflected. “Maybe, though, when we see time, we’ll have a better idea what was before.”
“I like your confidence,” Jake blurted.
Sophie blushed, happy.
“Sorry. I just meant not everyone has a direction.”
“Thank you.”
“What do you think time looks like?”
She tilted her head to the side. Visualizing time was tricky. Doing so challenged the paradigm that people could only infer time by observing other things. She imagined people in previous eras had struggled with the idea of a round Earth in
the same way, because it defied everyone’s feeling that the ground was flat. Sophie’s hunch was that if she gained a better understanding of time, she’d understand where to look for it. Maybe it was joined with matter at the subatomic level in ways people couldn’t naturally detect.
“I don’t know. Yet.”
She smiled.
“You gonna build a telescope? A time telescope?”
“Maybe I will.”
The silence was stuffed full of loud thoughts, tension.
“Well, if—when you see time, will you show me?”
Sophie, warmer, nodded.
* * *
“The library will close in five minutes.”
Jake and Sophie exited, climbing stone stairs outside. On Cross Campus—the quad fenced by Sterling Library and Gothic dorms called “colleges”—stragglers headed home. Jake and Sophie were the only pair on the lawn. They stopped under the starry sky: glowy, pointillistic. Jake tried to look up through Sophie’s eyes. She saw such details, so naturally zoomed in. In the gorgeous spray above, Jake noticed that not all stars were the same size. Bigger dots interrupted dusty patches. He projected shapes between them: a smile arc, a pair of eyes. He realized that not all stars glowed the same, either. Some were brighter, others more gently gorgeous. Star was one word, but there was breadth to the lights.
“Do you want to study tomorrow?” Jake asked.
“Yes, please.”
He smiled.
“I’m Hopper,” she added quickly.
She pointed to the college closest to them. Jake realized they hadn’t asked each other the most common question at Yale. What college are you in? All freshmen were sorted into one. Affiliation lasted for life. Each was a gated community with its own dining hall, common area—a clubby, paneled room usually with a piano—gym, and library, and sometimes a basketball court or theater underground.
“I’m Berkeley,” he said.
He pointed to the college next to hers.
She laughed.
“We forget anything else?” he asked.
“Right past the basics.”
“What’s your sign?”
“Gemini. You?”
“Sagittarius. Okay, all caught up now.”
He walked her to Hopper’s iron gate, where they stood under a streetlamp, the yellow windows of her college, and 13.8 billion years of starlight. He leaned in to kiss her and in the same second she wrapped her arms around his neck. They held each other, frozen in the warmest way. Sophie felt all of the passion that had been driving his focus in Bass this time directed at her.
“Night, Jake.”
“Sophie.”
As Jake walked back to Berkeley, he looked up at the stars he wouldn’t have noticed without her. He thought there was a sparkling crystal quality to them. It was as though he were looking at champagne in a flute—if those bubbles were frozen in time.
* * *
Jake and Sophie studied together every night for the next few weeks. During this time, he learned her tendency to ask dreamy questions usually orbiting youthful concerns. She asked him, “What was your favorite birthday?” He couldn’t remember the last time he’d celebrated his. Then, “If you were an animal, what would you be?” He chose an eagle without thinking. And then, “What’s your favorite kind of doughnut?” Apple cider, he guessed. Meanwhile, Jake wondered if Sophie had ever had any adult experiences. It entranced him how her genius IQ was paired with interests so stunningly young—down to her sweet tooth. On study breaks, he witnessed her eat six-inch snickerdoodles double-dusted with cinnamon sugar, caramel stroopwafels dipped in apple juice, and even sugar out of the packet.
“What was your favorite birthday?” He returned that question to learn Sophie had never had a birthday party. He found that strange for someone so attractive. Didn’t beautiful girls always have friends? “If you were an animal, what would you be?” An eagle, she answered after him. “What’s your favorite kind of doughnut?” Rock candy, she claimed, and then described a pink one sprinkled with candy shards. Unlike Sophie, Jake added more serious questions that were grounded in reality. “Who’s your best friend?” My mom, she said. “What’s your biggest fear?” Being in a crowd in a place I don’t know—something Jake admitted sounded pretty horrifying. “What do you believe that no one else does?” One day, we will see time.
* * *
“Do you want to come over?” Jake asked late that fall.
Beyond their glass wall, students at the communal table were stuffing their backpacks. Arms threaded Barbour sleeves. A group in Yale Bulldogs sweatshirts passed.
Jake’s latest question electrified the air.
Sophie looked down at her problem set, the last page blank under the final prompt, and flipped it over. She smiled yes. As they packed their backpacks, she felt her heart beat, her breath whoosh. Her sense of her own body was piqued. Right before the turnstiles, they stopped for the bag check. A suited guard zigzagged a flashlight over hardcovers, her spiral notebook, and a pack of sparkling gel pens. Then it lasered inside Jake’s over a trash bag of gym clothes, his neon sneakers, and his laptop tucked into the back inner pocket.
“Thank you, sir,” Jake said.
Sophie smiled. Sir. She loved his grave respect for others. Sir. That was how he ordered at Bass Café, Ashley’s Ice Cream, and Insomnia Cookies, too. He spoke with such formality to strangers, with such purpose, it was as if he thought the universe would pivot depending on his word choice. He carried himself with the same intention.
They climbed the stairs to Cross Campus.
“Sorry, your question,” he said.
“Superpower?”
He nodded. Jake had been about to answer Sophie’s question, “If you could have any superpower, what would it be?” when the loudspeaker made its closing announcement and he pivoted wildly to invite her over. They were now walking to Berkeley over craggy stones jigsawed together, saving the grass from their sneakers. He reached for her hand and held it loosely, their fingers linked without pressure at the points of connection.
“I think about focus a lot,” he said. “Some people can just concentrate. No matter where they are, or how chaotic it is, they can fixate on the thing of their choice. There’s a lot of talk about ADHD, but I think I have the opposite. I can focus on one thing, just devote myself, for such a long time, it has to be… not a superpower, but something that makes me feel different. When I’m like that, there’s only one thing on my mind, and the rest just—”
“Superfocus?” Sophie said.
“Ha, sure. And I think you have it, too.” He squeezed her hand. “I know that doesn’t answer your question, though. If I had to have a superpower, maybe…” He remembered their first lunch. “I’d help you know everything.”
A week after they’d met, he’d brought her a gift: Physics of the Impossible, a book by Michio Kaku. He’d bought it at the Yale Bookstore, wrapped it himself, and taped a bag of Skittles on top next to a stick-on bow. “You definitely know all this already,” he said as she opened it in Bass. “It’s more so you have something from me in your room.” The sexuality of it shocked him as soon as the words left his mouth. Sophie just smiled, unembarrassed, as if she had no idea what illicit activities might unfold in her room between them.
Tonight, Jake had asked her over only because he wanted to keep talking. Sophie was an exceptional listener. Her attention was palpable, generous. She gave their conversations the same care she gave her work. Jake found it entrancing to watch her solve equations every night, to think that the universe was in her scribbling, that reality was so easily at her fingertips. He’d just wanted more of her time, maybe to ask “If you could have any superpower…” in return, but the closer they got to his room, the more he imagined how they could move together. He buzzed them into Berkeley’s courtyard and pictured kissing her, pressing her against the white plaster wall of his single. He guided Sophie to his entryway.
“How’re your roommates?” Sophie asked.
“
Not sure.”
Jake shared a common room with three others he barely saw.
They climbed the stairs.
Sophie huffed. She was acutely aware of her body now: the pipe of her throat as she swallowed, the fleshy tops of her thighs against the inseam of her jeans, the button snap on her belly. She wasn’t used to this: her body. She’d met with a psychiatrist only once, at her mom’s request in middle school. During that meeting, Dr. Putnam had asked, “Do you think you live in your head?” Back then, Sophie had thought, Of course My world is created in my head, and your world is created in yours. But it didn’t feel like the full answer. Since then, Dr. Putnam’s question had drifted back into her mind, unsolved. Now, Sophie understood what he’d meant. This was being out of her head. She was living in her whole body, so close to Jake on the way to his place. This was not analysis. This was the thick of it, pure feeling.
Jake unlocked the door to his common room, giving way to a wide-screen TV, ragged futon dusted with stiff potato chip crumbs, faded blue rug, lacrosse sticks leaning against the wall, tennis racquets—a claustrophobic amount of things.
“Which one’s yours?” She pointed at the three doors.
“I’ll just show you…”
He slid a key into his lock. Her small sneakers were just inches from him, shining white, with a rose on each side. The flowers bloomed on wavy green stems, and there was something magical about the way the stems curved, as if they undulated in an alternate reality without right angles. He opened the door to his room. They stepped inside. He flicked the light switch to reveal four blank walls, a neat bed with one pillow, a desk with a bare surface, a chair, and a bureau. It struck Sophie as Steve Jobs–like, radical minimalism.
“Can I have a tour?” she asked.
The absurdity of it amused him. What was there to tour? Jake walked toward the standard-issue desk, light wood grain. He pulled out the chair.
The Love Proof Page 5