The Duality Principle (5 page)

Chapter Five

When Gabriella returned to the Old Port for her second date with Connor, the sky was beginning to turn pink, lines of gold and yellow streaking across it as the sun dipped down below the watery horizon. It was still warm out, and the town was filled with people. She had to circle the parking lot several times before she found a space.

A breeze kissed the skin on her thighs as she got out of her car, and she flattened her palms against her sides to stop her skirt from flaring up in the air. The billowy yellow skirt, white blouse and flowery sandals she was wearing had actually gotten Jamie’s seal of approval, but Gabriella didn’t see the point. Connor was probably going to be a perfect gentleman again.

She walked across the brick and cobbled stones, ten minutes ahead of schedule, as usual. Even though the date was probably going to be a waste of time, that wasn’t a reason for her not to be punctual, right? Besides, being early would mean she could get a spot in line before Connor got there and maybe get this whole ordeal over with as quickly as possible.

She arrived at the ice cream parlor only to freeze mid-step. Connor was already there, sitting on top of a picnic table outside the shop’s front door.

“You’re early,” she announced.

He launched off the tabletop and smiled at her the same way he did at the café—the smile she’d been hoping for when he left her at her car. His mouth curled up and his eyebrow seemed to follow it, as if the two were linked. It was a grin of a hungry cat seeking a mouse, and she wanted to be chased and found.

“I didn’t have far to walk. My office is only a few blocks away. And besides—” Connor moved in close to her, closer than she anticipated, and brushed her hair off her shoulder. “I was looking forward to seeing you.”

His closeness surprised her, but she relished the opportunity to study him. His hair was a little more unruly today than the last time she saw him. The shorter strands by his forehead fell forward, brushing past eyes that were sparkling in the waning sunlight. A black, short-sleeved shirt outlined his chest and arms. Somehow, he was so much sexier than she remembered.

His gaze trailed down her frame, devouring her as if she were the piece of cake this time. Her body started to heat, her breath picking up under the intensity of his stare, but then his smile morphed into what looked like doubt. He dropped his hand and threw an awkward glance toward his shoes, the moment between them fading before Gabriella had a chance to savor it.

He waved a hand toward the ice cream parlor. “Should we get in line?”

Gabriella nodded and took a few steps toward the crowded entryway. It was a popular spot for tourists and locals alike, and she stopped at the end of a line so long it drifted out the door.

“How was your day?” she asked. “More coding of stuff?”

Connor chuckled. “Pretty much. I stare at screens all day long. It’s like
The Matrix
in there.”

“And all you see is ‘blonde, brunette, redhead,’ right?” she asked as she turned to grin at him, quoting the film.

“No,” he said. “Just blonde.”

Gabriella blinked, then realized he was talking about her. Her lips twitched and she fought the urge to smile, blushing intensely as she turned back around to face the doorway. Connor bounced from flirtatious to serious and back again so quickly, it really confused the hell out of her. Especially when his sweet little compliments strummed a romantic chord inside her she didn’t think she had.

They inched through the doorway, their bodies nearly jammed together as they edged slowly toward the counter. She felt Connor’s breath on her neck, sensed the broad expanse of his chest against her shoulder blades. The line moved up, and his large, warm palm met the small of her back, urging her forward. His touch was like an electric shock to her system. She lifted her gaze to meet his, wondering if he felt it too, but he quickly averted his eyes and nodded at the case of flavors on display.

“What are you gonna have?”

She went up on her tiptoes, canvassing the options. “I think I’m going with the salted caramel today. Can’t go wrong with a mix of savory and sweet.” She glanced back to him. “You?”

“I always go with vanilla. Boring I guess, but I like it,” he said. “Are you the kind of girl who likes a cup or a cone?”

“Oh, a cone for sure. You can’t eat a cup. I want the most bang for my buck.”

He chuckled. “A very logical answer.”

Gabriella grinned wide. “Of course.”

She ordered two scoops in a cone while Connor got the largest cup they had. When they reached the register, he once again refused to allow her to pay. She tried to argue with him, but he playfully nudged her away.

Gabriella looked around at the tables in the parlor. They were all full. “Doesn’t look like there’s anywhere to sit.”

“It’s a nice evening for a walk.” Connor angled his head toward the door. “Shall we?”

Yup, he was going to be all-gentleman tonight. She plastered a smile on her face and followed him to the door. He held it open for her, and they set out along the streets.

“Do you miss Boston much?” he asked. “This place must be pretty boring for you after growing up in a big city.”

“Actually, I really like it here. Don’t you?”

Connor shrugged and stared into his cup. “I guess it’s not the same when you’ve lived in the sticks all your life.”

“I wouldn’t call it the sticks.”

Gabriella sighed happily and looked around at the old, red brick buildings set in footprints of stone. The alley they were walking through was alive with music and the soft clink of silverware against plates. Old-fashioned streetlamps dotted each corner with perfect precision. The evening air smelled of pine trees and low tide—cool, clean and calm.

“I love the charm here,” she said. “The sea and the mountains surrounding the city. It’s so peaceful.”

“Right. Nature girl.” He grinned at her, and it made her grin back just as wide.

“Well, there are some really good trails, but I also have happy memories of being here. I was free from my parents’ expectations for a little while. It was my escape.”

She surprised herself at her honesty with him once again, but there was something about the tempering presence of the ocean and the lulling sound of Connor’s voice that drew back the walls she kept so tightly around herself.

“Your folks were pretty hard on you?” Connor scooped up another big mouthful of ice cream, and Gabriella tried not to focus on the way his tongue lagged over the edge of the plastic spoon.

“Were?” she asked with a snort. “They still are.” She almost added that their constant distance and propensity to judge were slowly killing her, but she forced the thought away, not wanting her baggage to become a third wheel on the date. “But I guess all parents hard on their kids, right?”

“I wouldn’t know. Mine took off years ago.”

Gabriella stopped walking. “They took off?”

Connor paused as well and frowned at the ground.

“My dad left when I was thirteen. Apparently, his next fix was more important than we were. I found out he died a few years later.”

He looked up, squinted and pinched his lips together, as if the words had a bad taste to them. “Mom tried to manage for a while, but she was using too. She couldn’t make ends meet, so she left me with my grandparents when I was fifteen to go into rehab.”

“Wow. How did that go over?”

“Weird at first, since I’d never met them before, but they took me in right away, no questions asked. Of course that was because Mom said it would only be until she got out of rehab.”

“She didn’t go?”

“She did. She just never came back.”

Gabriella’s mouth fell open. For all her parents made her crazy, she couldn’t imagine being abandoned like that. “I’m so sorry.”

Connor shook his head and let out an abrupt laugh. “Don’t be. She made the right choice. She couldn’t have handled me anymore. I was a real rebel back then. I needed some serious discipline.”

Something inside her flared at the word rebel, but she squashed it down.

“So your grandparents raised you?”

“Yup. They made me clean up my act. Taught me to respect others and to play by the rules.”

Gabriella’s stomach bobbed like a buoy on the tide. She wondered exactly how dirty his act had been and what rules he’d forgotten to play by, but she concentrated on her ice cream instead as they resumed their stroll down the street.

“My grandmother always taught me to just be myself,” she said. “Even when my parents seemed to want the exact opposite.”

“They don’t want you to be a mathematical genius?” He smiled at her, and that damn dip under his nose taunted her again.

“They do, but my mother wants me to find a safe, rich husband and settle down too.”

“And that’s not what you want?”

She halted on the corner and looked up at him. There were so many things she wanted, the least of which was the comfortable parameters of the kinds of relationships she’d known. No, she wanted Connor, wanted those brawny hands of his pushing her up against a wall and showing her all about the rebel he once was.

She flattened her tongue against the shaft of her ice cream and licked. Slowly.

“No. That’s not what I want.”

Connor’s breath rushed out on a tight exhale. He stared hard at her, his towering body looming, leaning in close. Gabriella’s belly tightened in anticipation of his lips finally brushing against hers, but then someone on the street called out his name. They jumped apart as two male voices hollered loudly from the cab of a pickup as it sped by.

“Friends of yours?” she asked.

Connor watched the truck, his body tense and guarded until it was out of sight. Then he let out a slow, deep breath.

“Yeah. Sorry about that. Some people never change, you know?”

She didn’t know. She’d never had anyone yell out of a truck at her, never stared at one as it disappeared from sight the way Connor had, either. He cleared his throat and nodded in the opposite direction from where the pickup had gone.

“So how’s your research going?” he asked, making it clear that talking about whoever had just passed by was off the table. She wished he’d let her in, because having another piece of the mystery that was Connor unsolved was almost as frustrating as how damn good he looked in his jeans from behind.

Gabriella followed him away from the lights of the streets and toward the dimly lit wharf. “Pretty badly, actually. I’m having trouble gathering evidence, which will make it interesting when I meet my thesis advisor in the fall and I have absolutely nothing to show him.”

“Well, disproving duality can’t be easy. I mean, everything is dual to some extent, right? Everything’s opposite is also its equal. North and South. Good and evil.” He grinned at her, lips quirking up again, eyes crinkling. “Autobots and Decepticons.”

Gabriella laughed loudly. It felt good to abandon their former heaviness.

“That’s the proof I need. I can base my entire thesis statement off
The Transformers
.” She waved her hand dramatically in front of her. “I can see the title now: ‘Eighties Cartoons Invalidate Central Theory in Projective Geometry and Boolean Algebra’.”

“It could work.”

Connor wolfed down the last spoonful of his dessert and tossed the bowl in the trash before they drifted in the direction of the docks. When they came to a point where a gate locked the pier, a
No Trespassing
sign guarding it, Gabriella stopped.

“Dead end,” she noted, but Connor typed a code into a keypad by the knob, and the catch in the metal door released. He opened it for her, and Gabriella eyed the pier down at the end of the ramp. Sailboats and yachts floated and rocked in every slip. “Do you have a boat down there?”

“No, but like I said—I know my way around codes.”

“And I’m guessing
No Trespassing
signs don’t apply to rebels like you, either.”

He laughed and held her gaze. “Something like that.”

His voice was soft and low, his eyes hooded and dangerous again. The Connor she’d seen for a few moments at the café was back, and she wanted more of him. She stepped through the open gate and waited as he closed it behind them. The ramp was steep, and they walked down the length of ropes and wood to the flat of the dock. It was steady, secured in place by tall poles made of timber, moss growing where the water broke around them. The noise from town quieted and was replaced by the softly lapping shore, the creak and groan of idling boats, and the sound of their footsteps. As they neared the edge of the pier, Gabriella was intensely aware of Connor’s presence and the fact that in between the moored boats and sleeping seagulls, they were completely alone.

“I still don’t see how you can disprove duality,” he continued. “Every extreme is a variation of its dual, right? Hot and cold are opposites, but really, they’re just degrees of the same thing.”

Gabriella enjoyed his logic, even if he wasn’t understanding the whole picture. “So you’re saying that light and dark aren’t opposites. They’re just two poles of the same phenomena.”

“Exactly.”

“Good theorizing. I’m impressed.” She leaned back against one of the poles and slicked her tongue over the pool of melted ice cream in her cone. “Do you have any other examples to share with me?”

“Tons.” Connor braced an arm above her head, his body so muscled and sure and towering over hers. “Love and hate. Repulsion and attraction.”

She felt the pull between them like magnets. Like gravity. She had to know if he felt it too.

“Pleasure and pain.”

“Exactly,” he repeated softly. “I mean, how can you try to disprove something when it’s standing right there in front of you?”

She licked her ice cream again. Connor’s eyes darkened as his gaze dipped down to her mouth, his heavy stare fixed on her tongue. Gabriella broke off a piece of the sugary cone and bit down on it sharply. She heard his breath catch.

“Going for the cone already when you haven’t finished your ice cream?” he asked.

“I guess I’ve had enough.” The truth was that she was nowhere close to full, her body empty and throbbing with the need to be taken and claimed.