Applied Electromagnetism

by Susannah Nix

  They hadn’t talked about when or if they’d let people at work know about them—although she realized now they probably should have. She assumed they’d opt for discretion, at least for a while. The optics of coming back from a business trip and suddenly being a couple were not great.

  But presumably people would find out eventually. They’d probably need to disclose to HR at some point. Gavin would find out, and the CIO. And if anyone happened to remember she’d used a recommendation from Adam to bolster her application to the leadership program, they might think things about her.

  She might think things about her. She wanted to be able to look back and know she’d earned this on her own merits. She’d rather not have it at all than get it with an asterisk beside her name.

  She stood up, reference letter in hand, intending to go talk to Adam about it. To thank him for writing such an incredible recommendation, and explain why she wouldn’t feel right about using it anymore.

  As soon as she stood up, however, Gavin caught her eye and beckoned her over. She weaved through the cube maze, still carrying Adam’s letter, and stopped in the open doorway of Gavin’s glass-walled office. Even the managers important enough to have offices with walls and doors weren’t allowed any real privacy.

  “Hey, welcome back!” He leaned back in his chair and saluted her with his coffee mug. “The victorious hero returns!”

  “Ha ha,” she said, putting on her amiable work smile. “Yeah.”

  “You guys had quite a week. But you pulled it off! Tell you the truth, I wasn’t entirely sure it was possible. And then after all the stuff that happened, I thought we were sunk for sure. But you and Cortinas worked a miracle and pulled off a win for us. You obviously make a good team.”

  “Yeah, I guess we do,” she said, smiling for real.

  “And to think, he didn’t even want you on the trip.”

  Her smile froze in place. “What?”

  “Yeah, he came to me after the meeting with the CIO and asked if I could send someone else from the commercial systems team instead.”

  “He did?” Her limbs felt numb.

  “Mmm.” Gavin nodded as he sipped his coffee. “But I told him you were the only one I trusted to do the job in my place. And since I couldn’t go, he was stuck with you.”

  Stuck with me.

  “Anyway, you proved him wrong, hey? And it sounds like you two got along fine. Talk about a trial by fire.”

  Gavin went on talking, but Olivia barely heard a word he said after that. All she could think about was Adam, going to her boss behind her back and asking that she be taken off a project.

  She’d known, obviously, that Adam hadn’t been her biggest fan before. He’d made that pretty clear. But she hadn’t known his dislike of her had run so deep, that he’d had so little faith in her abilities he’d actually tried an end run to avoid taking her with him to Texas.

  “Hey, you okay?” Gavin must have realized she wasn’t paying attention because he was frowning at her.

  “Sorry.” She shook her head, tuning back in to the present. “Just tired.”

  “Yeah, I’ll bet.” He gave her a sympathetic look. “Listen, the CIO’s out today, so the postmortem on Walhalla’s gotta wait until tomorrow. If you want, you can work from home for the rest of the day.”

  “Okay.” She rubbed Adam’s reference letter between her fingers. The corner she was holding was becoming felted from the friction. “Thanks.”

  Gavin waved his hand in friendly dismissal. “Go on. Get out of here.”

  As Olivia walked away from Gavin’s office, her eyes went automatically to Adam. He was hunched over his computer with his back to her still. She stopped, unsure where to go or what to do next.

  Adam’s head swiveled around, as if he’d sensed her watching him. When his gaze found her, he did that thing where he smiled with only his eyes.

  Olivia turned away and headed for her desk. She retrieved her purse and shoved the reference letter inside, not caring if it got crumpled. While she was packing up her computer, Adam came over.

  “Hey.” He stood just outside her cubicle, resting his forearms on top of the partition. “You leaving?”

  She didn’t look at him as she shoved her laptop into her bag. “Gavin told me I could work from home today.”

  “Nice. Did you get the reference letter I left on your desk?”

  “I did. Thank you.” She grabbed her travel mug and started for the elevators.

  “I’ll walk you out.” Adam trailed along behind her, his long legs easily keeping pace.

  When the elevator came, he got on with her. She jabbed the button for the lobby and stared straight ahead, facing the doors.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked as soon as they were alone. “Did Gavin say something to piss you off?”

  “In a manner of speaking.”

  “Olivia.” Adam’s fingers brushed her arm. “Talk to me.”

  She turned to face him. “Did you go to Gavin after the meeting with the CIO last Monday and ask him to send someone else on the trip instead of me?”

  He looked confused. “Yes.”

  “You told him you didn’t want to work with me.”

  “I asked him if there was someone else he could send instead of you.”

  “Why? Why would you do that?”

  “I thought traveling together would be awkward after I’d declined to give you a reference.”

  “You thought it would be awkward,” she repeated in disbelief. “So you decided to torpedo my credibility with my boss to save yourself the inconvenience of a little social discomfort?”

  “I told him it didn’t have anything to do with your job performance. That it was an interpersonal conflict that would make things tense between us.”

  “Oh, well, that’s fine, then. I’m sure it won’t affect my professional reputation at all that you couldn’t stand to work with me because of an interpersonal conflict. Jesus, Adam!” She dug into her purse for the recommendation letter. “You can take this back. I don’t want it.” She shoved it at him, but he refused to take it.

  “Don’t say that. Come on—”

  She ripped the paper in half. “I’d rather get a reference from someone who actually believes in me.”

  His whole face seemed to sag as he stared at the shredded letter in her hands. “I apologize. In hindsight, it was a shitty thing to do.”

  “You think?”

  “I realize now that you’re treated with a double-standard that means a comment like that can have repercussions beyond what I intended.”

  “Well, as long as you realize that now.”

  He scowled at her sarcasm. “I regret it, Olivia, just like I regret not giving you that reference when you first asked. But I don’t understand why you’re so mad about this now. You knew how I felt before.” He sounded frustrated, like he expected her to just get over this. Like it hadn’t felt like a knife in her heart to find out he’d done that to her.

  “You told me that you didn’t have any confidence in my management potential, but you didn’t mention that you disliked me so much you went behind my back to try and get me taken off this assignment. Christ, what do you think the CIO would have thought if Gavin had actually gone along with it and replaced me? He would have thought it was because I couldn’t hack it.”

  The elevator doors slid open and she rocketed into the lobby. Adam followed silently as she tramped across the wide expanse of polished tile and through the door to the parking garage.

  As soon as they were alone in the echoey garage, he surged ahead of her, bringing her to a stop. “I fucked up, okay? I was wrong in every possible way. But I’ve made a complete one-eighty in my thinking. From now on I’m Team Olivia.”

  “Great.”

  “You’re still mad.” He actually looked surprised.

  “Of course I’m still mad! I don’t get over being mad the second you apologize. Apologies aren’t coins you feed into a vending machine in exchange for instant forgiveness.”
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  “What more do you want me to do?”

  “I don’t know. Nothing.”

  He reached for her hand. “Olivia—”

  She pulled her hand out of his grasp. “Don’t. I need to go. I don’t want to talk about this here anymore.”

  “But we can talk about it later?”

  “Fine.” She stalked off toward the garage elevators. Thankfully, Adam didn’t follow this time.

  “I’ll call you later!” he called out.

  She kept walking.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Olivia couldn’t remember the last time she’d cried over a man. Maybe when Cody Briggs had called her a booger-eater on the playground, come to think of it.

  But she was crying when she got home, and what was that even about? Crying over a guy she barely even knew a week ago. She shouldn’t care enough to cry over him yet.

  But here she was, nevertheless, blubbering into a pillow that still smelled like him.

  She should have done a better job of protecting her heart. She should have fortified the walls she’d built around it, instead of letting Adam dismantle them stone by stone. Now her heart hurt like it had been torn in half, and it was all his fault for making her care about him.

  The really annoying thing was that he was right. She’d known he’d disliked her before, so what was the big deal? Why did it hurt so much to be confronted with the evidence of his past antipathy?

  She shouldn’t care. But she did. So much it scared her.

  Because the thing was, she wasn’t simply attracted to Adam. It wasn’t just his body she craved, or his touch. She wanted to know him. Even more shocking—she wanted him to know her.

  That had never happened to her before. Even with Ryan, when she’d convinced herself she’d been in love, she’d still been reluctant to open up. It had been a persistent point of contention between them. He was always accusing her of being too closed off and uncommunicative.

  But with Adam, she felt the strangest urge to confess all her hopes and fears and sins—all the secret insecurities she usually worked so hard to cover up.

  It was crazy. The exact opposite of sensible. It went against all her instincts for self-preservation.

  She’d thrown caution to the wind and let him make a space for himself in her heart, when he was probably the last person on earth she should lower her drawbridge for.

  That was why it hurt so much to find out he’d gone to Gavin behind her back. To be reminded of how strong his dislike of her had been, and how little he’d cared for her feelings.

  Adam had changed his mind about her so fast—in just a couple of days. It was too fast. If he could do a complete one-eighty that easily, what was stopping him from doing it again?

  Would he realize in another week he didn’t like her so much after all?

  Olivia sat up and leaned across the bed for a tissue. After she’d finished blowing her nose, she reached for her phone, intending to call Penny. But it was the middle of the day, and even though she teleworked, Penny still had to actually do work when she was supposed to be working. Plus, Olivia hadn’t talked to Penny all week, so she’d have to start from the very beginning of the story. She’d have to explain how she and Adam had gotten together before she could explain why she was upset now.

  The thought of it exhausted her. She wasn’t up to that much talking right now. She wasn’t up to anything.

  Instead of calling her best friend, she switched her phone to Do Not Disturb and climbed under the covers to take a nap.

  When Olivia woke a few hours later, it felt like her eyelids had been welded shut. She’d fallen asleep with her makeup on—after crying half of it down her face—which she never, ever did.

  She pushed herself upright and groaned when she saw she’d gotten smears of black eyeliner and dark red lipstick all over her pillowcase. A halo of yellow-orange light glowed around the blinds in her bedroom. It was nearly evening; she’d slept away the whole day.

  Feeling like she’d been hit by a truck, she went into the bathroom and scrubbed her face clean. Her skin looked raw and ruddy in the bathroom mirror. The skin under her eyes was so translucent they looked hollow and sunken, like a skeleton.

  She hadn’t just fallen asleep in her makeup, she’d fallen asleep in her work clothes. Her bra was like a band of nails around her rib cage and her shirt had turned into sandpaper. She clawed at the offending garments, stripping them off like they were trying to kill her.

  Her suitcase lurked in a corner of her bedroom, still waiting to be unpacked, so she dug through her dresser until she found an old T-shirt and a pair of plaid boxer shorts she’d had since college.

  In the kitchen, she was confronted by the remnants of the takeout she and Adam had ordered last night, and it felt like a punch to the chest. Ignoring the mess and the pain in her heart, she poured herself a glass of water and guzzled the whole thing down.

  She’d just started cleaning up the takeout containers when there was a knock on the door. That was when she remembered her phone was still on Do Not Disturb—and discovered all the text messages from Adam she’d missed.

  I’m sorry.

  Are you okay?

  Are you there?

  Are you ignoring me?

  Olivia, please.

  I’m coming over, okay?

  I hope it’s okay because I’m on my way to your place right now.

  She wasn’t sure what to expect as she went to answer the door. Would he be angry? Worried? Relieved? Happy to see her?

  The one thing she hadn’t envisioned was what she got: total blankness.

  His face betrayed no detectable emotion. He stood on her doorstep wearing an expressionless mask, the one he used at work and around people he didn’t want to engage with.

  It hurt. She felt it like a needle sliding between her ribs—and not a tiny little flu shot needle you could barely feel, but a big-ass scary needle, like the one they used on Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction.

  But even while it was hurting her, she felt a little twinge of familiarity. This was the Adam she remembered, the one she’d known for the two years before last week. Oh, hello, she thought. There you are. You’re still in there after all.

  He was still capable of being that Adam with her, rather than her Adam.

  But then he spoke, and his voice was so quiet and unsteady she knew it was all an act. He was hiding behind his mask, pretending not to feel anything, but the emotions were leaking out through his voice.

  “I’ve been trying to call you,” he said, betraying himself. In those six little words she could hear reproach and relief, trepidation and a hint of resentment, and over all of it a layer of exasperation.

  “I had my phone off. I was sleeping.”

  “Can I come in?”

  She nodded and stepped back. As he moved past her into the apartment, she caught a whiff of the blissful Adam scent of his skin, and it made her want to throw her arms around him.

  But she didn’t.

  He stood in the middle of her living room, hands shoved awkwardly into the pockets of his work slacks, still wearing his leather messenger bag across his chest.

  “Look, Olivia—” he started, but she held up her hand to stop him. There was something she needed to say to him first.

  “You were right.”

  “I was?” He seemed wary, like he was waiting for the other shoe to drop. Which was smart, because she was juggling a whole closet of shoes, and she was trying her best to keep them in the air, but any second now they were going to start crashing to the floor around her.

  “I overreacted earlier. You’re right that what you said to Gavin before shouldn’t change anything between us now.”

  “Okay.” He nodded, slightly mollified. “Thank you.”

  “Maybe what’s wrong now has always been wrong.”

  His face didn’t move. Not even a twitch. “Is that what you think?”

  “I think it’s a sign.”

  “A sign,” he repeated. The fact that h
e just sighed wearily instead of insisting there was no such thing as signs was probably another sign. A bad one. He couldn’t even be bothered to argue anymore.

  “I’m just not sure intense mutual dislike is a great foundation to build a relationship on,” she ventured.

  “I don’t care how you felt about me before.” He’d removed his hands from his pockets and was squeezing the strap of his messenger bag.

  “But I do,” she said. “I care. And I don’t know how to stop caring about it. I want to, but I don’t know how. Maybe it’s my Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria, or just a lifetime of insecurity, but I don’t know how to get past it, and I’m afraid it’s going to keep cropping up, and every time it’s going to feel like this, until eventually we both get sick of trying.”

  He looked down at the floor, and she wished she had a mirror she could lay at his feet so she could see his expression. Whatever emotion he was experiencing so strongly he needed to hide his face from her while he steeled himself, she wanted desperately to see.

  But then he looked up, and he hadn’t steeled himself at all. The emotion was still on his face plain as day. It was anguish. He looked utterly anguished, and it was because of her.

  “Don’t you get it?” he said, his voice coming out rough and cracking a little. “I didn’t like anyone. I didn’t feel any differently about you than I felt about everyone else in that office. I never let myself think about you or know you because I didn’t want to know anyone.”

  She could almost believe it. As much as the voices in her brain were trying to tell her it was all about her, that he must have harbored a special dislike for her because she was obviously The Worst and always would be, she could remember well enough how distant he’d been with everyone. How he’d never joined in on group lunches or after-work drinks, never chatted in the break room or showed up to the holiday party. How she’d never once seen him acting chummy with anyone or talking about anything but work.