Never Have I Ever (17 page)

Noah brought the back of my hand to his lips and kissed it. “There’s the level-headed woman I like to see.”

I bent across the bed and, gripping his hand, placed my forehead against his. “Thank you for this weekend, Sir. It’s been… well, enlightening, I think is the best way to describe it.”

“That makes two of us,” he agreed. He was so close, though I still felt as if I could never fully touch him. “But, I don’t want to keep you when you’re late for an obligation. Go see to it that you make the very best out of a bad situation.”

I nodded, but couldn’t bring myself to move from that position yet. The weekend seemed so long that all of the basic necessities such as graduation and kick-starting my career faded into oblivion. Yet it felt so short that I tried in such desperation to cling to the fabric of this dream-state for just a little longer if only I could hold on.

This feeling was not, by any stretch of the imagination, love. Not yet. I was not a believer of love at first sight, or even second sight for that matter. Love took its sweet time to develop. I knew of love before. And love ached. Love burned into me and ripped me in two once. This was not yet that feeling.

This was the hurricane of the very first batch of fight-or-flight butterflies dancing a samba through my stomach whilst a myriad of personal connections began to form between Noah and me. This was the first blush of lust; the lust for knowledge and discovery and mystery amid the passion of wild, unadulterated yearning for some form of human companionship from somebody who understood me and didn’t judge me for being who or what I was. That sort of acceptance was rare enough in and of itself to find. It was even rarer that we were brought together in this peculiar way.

“See you in three weeks?” I asked.

“It won’t be as long as you’d expect,” he assured me.

I gave him a quick kiss, then collected my heels from the corner and dashed out of the bedroom.

“Your valet ticket is on the kitchen counter,” Noah called after me.

“Thanks!”

It was snatched from the counter along with my purse and I was in the elevator before I could allow myself a look back. Had I looked back I may have said, “Fuck it,” and gone barreling back in, consequences be damned.

There’s nothing quite like doing the infamous Walk of Shame the day after your original Walk of Shame should’ve been scheduled. I prayed that nobody who was working Saturday night was there that Monday morning to recognize the same dress. It was not until I reached the lobby and handed over my valet ticket that I realized I left without my underwear. I had to be especially careful not to flash the man who brought my car around and closed the door for me.

For once in my life, on my drive up the highway into Pasadena, I felt at peace. It was a strange form of peace, slapped together with duct tape and paperclips, but I felt peace nonetheless. The sex was amazing, and I felt myself slipping into a relationship that might finally matter in the end. Not just because of the kinks, but also because Noah turned out to be that genuinely nice guy I met back at Anya’s with the dark streak in him which made him even more interesting to me. The farther I drove from his apartment, the emptier I became. The memories were so fresh yet so distant. Three weeks wouldn’t go by fast enough, I decided.

Riding on the high of the weekend, I struggled to strap myself in for a day of finalizing my data entry and translating the folder of all-encompassing knowledge into plain English so that any layman investor would be able to understand it.

That was the worst part; the translating. Any scientist worth their salt could read the data the telescopes collected and understand the language. It was difficult to convince regular people that what the numbers said were actually what the number said and that we weren’t just pulling randomness out our collective asses to get money.

When I arrive home, I fixed my hair into a high ponytail, slapped on a small amount of foundation and eye shadow, changed into my work clothes—which consisted of comfy beige slacks and a white button down blouse—fed the cat and snagged a granola bar for breakfast before I rushed out the door with my laptop and overstuffed accordion folder in hand.

Everyone was in military mode when I walked into the office. I slipped surreptitiously past Dr. Malcolm Fairbanks’ door and made a break for the secondary telescope room which we christened Kepler because its tiny size reflected that of the tiny space telescope. After factoring in the computing equipment and servers, there was little room for one person let alone me and the two others I occupied it with. The temperature almost always hovered around ninety degrees, as well. Dr. Fairbanks promised us a remodel and a larger space once the new grants came through.
If
the grants came through.
If I refrained from fucking it up.

Malcolm Fairbanks wasn’t a terrible man. He was ruthless when it came to timekeeping and had a nose for zero-tolerance regarding shenanigans in the work place. Distinguished scientists, in his opinion, were more serious than they were fun. Of course, Malcolm Fairbanks was also seventy years old, had a pension for tweed, and was seemingly unaware the entire point of science was to discover and to have fun with those discoveries.

The primary data collection room we called NuSTAR after the school-bus-sized behemoth recently launched into space. My pride grew a little more every time I walked into the NuSTAR room considering it was a fellow Caltech associate who headed the project.

My place, however, was in the Kepler Room. I shared the space with Quinton and Latisha, a brother and sister duo with whom few people went toe to toe. While they had only been employed at the observatory for five years, they made a greater contribution in their short time than half the tenured staff.

Quinton—Q for short—was on his way out of Kepler while I was on my way in. He was a little scrawny with dark ebony skin and bright brown eyes. He kept his hair shaved similarly to Declan’s and boasted a neatly trimmed circle beard stylized on his round-
ish
face. I considered it round-
ish
because it really could have fit anywhere between round and square. Q was an odd duck. He pushed his glasses up on his wide nose and looked down at me.

“Uh-oh, here comes trouble,” Q said with a chuckle.

“I know, I know, I’m late. I’m sorry,” I said. I squeezed past him through the door.

“You bet your pasty white ass you’re late,” Tish called from her chair.

Tish was the exact opposite of Q. She was the full-figured type with long black hair and adored herself in every way. Honestly, I did too. Tish was fun.
A little loud and a little over-the-top sometimes, but fun.

“I love you Tish!” I hollered back hopefully.

“You better. I found your missing flash drive. It’s on your desk.”

“Ah! You’re amazing!” I forgot I was looking for it what with the distraction of the weekend. I set my laptop and folder down on my desk and ran to give her a hug around her shoulders from behind her. She smelled like lavender soap. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“Uh-huh. And Miss Punctual is late on the most important day of the month why?”

I froze; uncertain of whether I should give a diplomatic and professional answer or divulge the gossip I knew would be spread. I decided on ambiguity. “I had a really good weekend.”

Q was still standing in the doorway. “I’m out for coffee. You want anything Piper?”

“I’m good,” I said.

He winked at me. “I know you’re good. I asked if you wanted anything.”

I stood up and leaned against
Tish’s
desk. “Quinton Cooper, are you flirting with me?”

“Maybe.”

“Must’ve been a
damn
good weekend,” grumbled Tish.

“I’ll pass, Q. Thanks though.”

As Q shut the door, Tish turned to me and said, “Hell of a weekend if you’re both late
and
in a good mood, girl.” She pointed a long manicured fingernail at me. “You can give me details later. We’ve got a project to finish.”

Too bad I wouldn’t complete my part on time. “I still have half a day’s worth of work to compress into two hours. That’s pushing it even for me.”

“Nah, you got this. Most of the data’s already compiled.”

“Not mine.”

Tish gave me a look that made me feel small. “Girl, if we don’t have each other’s backs then what sort of team are we?” My continued look of perplexity made her sigh. She got up and walked to the printer that was nestled in the corner of the office. She pulled off a stack of papers six inches thick and dropped them onto her desk. “Unlike some people, I got no life.”

“Wait. You—you did this? All of it?”

“Yep.”

“But this is like”—I scoured through the papers and lines of equations and data—“This is two weeks’ worth of work right here, easy. This is more data entry in one pile than what the entire project was supposed to be comprised of.”

I actually wanted to be angry at her. It wasn’t her job to cover for me; it was my own job to cover for me. Any repercussions would be on my head that way and not on her. I wanted to get in her face for being such a work-a-
holic
and never leaving the office and not spending some time on herself. But the way she smiled at me deflated all of that.

“Who loves
ya
baby?” she asked.

She did, obviously. While I was out for a full weekend for the first time in a year, Tish was being a team player and didn’t at all complain about a little extra work if it saved my sanity. In the end, my anger dissolved into humble reproach of myself.

“You just saved my ass Tish.”

“For a good cause baby girl.
For science, right?”

I threw my hands up in the air in a victorious cheer, “For science!”

Tish heaved the stack of paper into my hands once I lowered my arms. “Now go do that voodoo that you do and make it into something legible for the boss-man.”

“Aye, Aye,
Cap’n
!” I would have saluted, but my arms weighed about three metric tons what with the year’s findings now collected in my grasp. I settled for a hardy nod at her and marched back to my own desk.

Lunch came and went. I worked right through it without even taking a glance at the clock. Tish was wrong. I was not in a good mood. I was in a fantastic mood.

The elation of the weekend spilled over and I began to settle into my second wind with all the zeal of bright liveliness burning to be expelled in one form or another. I wound up snatching my iPod from my laptop bag and plugging it into the docking station on
Tish’s
desk. I had to move today. Being cooped up in a tiny room would drive me crazy. The only way to get that movement was to turn up the music and rock out to my heart’s content while Tish and Q busied themselves in the NuSTAR room after lunch. Everyone would be in the meeting rooms today.

As far as they were concerned I didn’t exist. Apart from uploading the slideshow presentation onto the main server so that someone else who was much more skilled at being a people person than I was could take it and sell us to the contributors, I had no reason to be noticed.

I cranked up the volume and, as I sorted through stacks of paper and transitioned the numbers into plain English, kicked on a party mix that Anya gave me nearly a month ago. The music cycled through a series of tracks. All of them were up-beat and high-energy.

It helped me focus. The movement took me from stack to stack as I sorted and typed out the final details of the slideshow.

Two and a half hours later I was essentially finished with the requirements and so began sorting through the extra papers to have on hand for future use.

It was somewhere in the middle of the second chorus of Pink’s Raise Your Glass that my energy peaked.

I bounced around the room, only vaguely aware that I was singing:

So raise your glass if you are wrong

In all the right ways, all my underdogs

We will never be, never be anything but loud

And
nitty
gritty, dirty little freaks

Won't you come on and come on and

Raise your glass!

Just come on and come on and

Raise your glass!

Then the music cut off.

I spun around at
Tish’s
desk only to come face to face with Dr. Fairbanks. His hand was still on the power button of the speakers as he glared at me like he was an angry bull and I was wearing red too close to him. His grizzled face twisted into a scowl and his brow knitted together, creating more wrinkles in his skin than I figured could fit on his face. As shock white as his hair already was, I was astonished that maybe, just maybe, my dancing and singing had turned it just a shade paler.

Dr. Fairbanks was quick to demand answers. “What exactly do you think you’re doing Miss Minogue?”

I held up a small stack of papers and swallowed audibly while the electric jolt of being caught whipped through me. My hair was a wreck and my breathing a little fast.
“
Heh
.
Data entry?”