String Theory

by Ashlyn Kane

  “C, E, G,” Ari murmured.

  “Yeah. And scientists think that the way these strings interact with each other, these open strings are just out there, and sometimes they join with other open strings.” He threaded his fingers through Ari’s. “And then they might join at the other end too and become a closed string.”

  “That sounds… very theoretical.”

  It sounded downright romantic to Jax, but Ari wasn’t wrong. “Understatement,” he agreed. “But it’s an interesting field, and it’s led to some breakthroughs that linked previously discrete branches of mathematics, for example. They had to discover, like, seven more dimensions to get there, though.”

  Ari rubbed his thumb over Jax’s breastbone. “I admit that I have trouble imagining that.”

  “Yeah, me too. I sort of envision them as pitch, color, temperature….” He shrugged.

  “I think perhaps I’ll stick to Golden Girls.”

  “Maybe Golden Girls episodes is one of the dimensions.”

  Maybe Jax had spent a little too much time reading up on mathematical journals before bed in preparation for a PhD defense that had been delayed yet again.

  “Hmm.”

  “What?” Jax asked.

  Ari nudged him. “Sit up.”

  Bemused, Jax slid his feet off the couch and turned toward Ari. “What—”

  Ari recaptured Jax’s left hand and held out the other one, beckoning.

  Jax let him have that one too.

  Ari ran his thumb over the back of Jax’s hand and smiled softly. “Closed loop,” he pronounced.

  Jax went warm all over, but while part of him wanted to melt back into Ari and the couch, instead he stood up and pulled Ari with him.

  “Where are we going?” Ari’s voice held a note of laughter.

  “Where are we going?” Jax echoed. “It’s three in the afternoon and you just made a romantic math overture. We’re going to bed, Ari.”

  Ari flushed. “I thought maybe you wouldn’t want… I made several mistakes.”

  “And you apologized, and I forgave you,” Jax said. “Are you saying you’re not in the mood?” Yeah right. Jax had had his head in Ari’s lap for the better part of an hour. He knew a mood when it was right next to his face.

  “Just acknowledging my good fortune,” Ari said, pulling Jax close by their still-linked hands.

  Jax tilted his face up into a very promising kiss and danced Ari backward.

  After, when Ari had his head pillowed on Jax’s shoulder and was idly walking his fingers up and down Jax’s bare chest, Jax laced their hands together again. “C, E, G.”

  If Ari could speak Jax’s language, Jax could learn his too.

  ARI HAD originally intended to pick Jax up at home prior to their dinner with his parents, because his parents’ neighborhood was a hopeless suburban tangle of streets that Google was still only guessing at and because the weather had turned cold and was threatening to snow. Also, his mother would shit a brick if Ari’s boyfriend showed up on a motorcycle. He wasn’t going to sabotage himself.

  Unfortunately Jax messaged him about needing to run something to the post office, so Ari waited for Jax at his apartment. They could leave from there instead.

  “Hey,” Jax said when he came in, his helmet tucked under one arm. He set it on the counter along with his keys. “I’m not late, am I?”

  “No.” Ari leaned over and kissed him, first a quick peck and then a firmer, deeper one that felt a little desperate. Jax had said he would be fine, and truly, if anyone could survive Ari’s parents, it was Jax. But…. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

  Jax cocked his head. “You don’t want to back out, do you?”

  Yes. But it was irrational. He’d prepared Jax as well as he could. “If I did, they’d think I invented you, and I’d have to endure another blind date.” He grabbed his car keys from the hook by the door. “I’d rather not have to cut them out of my life completely, so….” This is for the best.

  Jax followed him out of the apartment. “Should we come up with a safeword?” He hoisted a container Ari hadn’t noticed. “I made cookies. Just say ‘chocolate chunk,’ and I’ll fake a family emergency and you can be my hero.”

  Despite himself, Ari laughed. “Hopefully we won’t need such drastic measures.”

  At his parents’ place, Ari sat in the driveway for a long moment without turning off the car.

  “Ari?”

  “It would be irrational to turn the car around and simply run away forever.” He cut the engine.

  “Probably,” Jax agreed.

  They went into the house.

  “Baba, Maman?” Ari called out, and his mother arrived from the kitchen, drying her hands and wearing her polite “we have company” expression.

  “Ari, hello. Introduce us, dear,” she prompted.

  He swallowed. Right. “Jax Hall, meet my mother, Nasreen Darvish. Maman, this is Jax.”

  “Pleasure to meet you, Nasreen.” Jax smiled his charming smile and held up his Tupperware. “I brought cookies.”

  “Oh, how lovely.” She took the bin and peered inside. “Did you make these yourself?”

  “Yeah. I love to bake.”

  The look she gave Jax when she lifted her head was almost promising, but Ari refused to be lulled into a false sense of security. “These look delicious. I’ve always said anyone who can bake is worth keeping around. Now come into the kitchen. Baba is fussing over the stew.”

  “It smells amazing,” Jax said.

  Ari’s maman smiled at him. “It’s one of Nader’s specialties.”

  In the kitchen, his father stood at the stove. When they entered, he stepped away to greet Jax with a handshake. “I hope you brought your appetite with you.” He waved to the bar. “Feta with spicy fig sauce. Try some on a cracker.”

  Ari cut off some cheese for a cracker and passed it over to Jax, who took a bite. “God, this is fantastic.”

  “Good! It’s even better with chai.”

  They stayed in the kitchen as Ari’s father kept babying one of the dishes, and the rest of them stayed gathered around the food. “I should get this recipe. My niece would love it.”

  “Your niece?” Ari’s mother asked, looking politely interested.

  “Yeah. My sister’s kid. She’s cute as a button, and she loves figs. They’re her favorite treat. Her parents have to ration them out.”

  “How charming.”

  Ari couldn’t believe it. Was this actually going to work? Maybe he should’ve told Jax to bring the baby along.

  Jax grinned. “I started stocking Fig Newtons in the cupboard as a bribe, though they seem to be disappearing when I’m not looking.” He shot Ari a look filled with humor. “Don’t tell Hobbes I spilled about his secret passion.”

  Ari could not imagine the grumpy man eating Fig Newtons. Then again… maybe he could picture him sneaking them.

  “Hobbes?” His mother looked baffled.

  “Oh, my roommate. He’s a pediatrician. Maybe that’s where he got a love of Fig Newtons from.”

  “Ah, I see.” Her lashes fluttered, and Ari’s stomach tightened. Was she going to get after him for having a roommate? Lots of people had roommates.

  Of course, lots of people weren’t dating Ari—

  But then she smiled. “It’s clear you love your niece very much. Do you just have the one?”

  “Oh yeah, just the one nibling.” Jax sipped his chai, not quite a slurp but enough that Ari twitched internally. Fortunately his mother let this pass. “I only have the one sibling, an older sister.”

  “Just like Ari,” his father said cheerfully from the stove. “Are you and your sister as close as our two?”

  “Well, I’m not sure we’d survive tour cohabitation, but we’re pretty close. I really missed her the past year. She was in Muskoka and I was stuck here.”

  “I am sorry to hear that,” Ari’s mother said compassionately. “We were so blessed that Ari and Afra managed to get home and were near us
. I can’t imagine being so far from family during such a time.”

  Jax gave a somewhat wobbly smile, and Ari reached out to gently touch his waist. Jax swayed into the touch.

  “Happily, Jax’s sister has recently moved to town, so Jax gets to see her and his niece regularly.” Ari portioned another bit of cheese onto a cracker and slid it toward Jax.

  “Oh, how lovely! Did she or her husband find work here?”

  Jax hummed around his bite and nodded. “Yes, she did, actually. His company switched to remote working, so when she was looking for somewhere new, she picked London to be closer.” His smile turned almost bashful.

  His mother’s expression was open as she asked after Sam’s job and whether she liked London. Ari was starting to feel almost good about the meeting, which was probably why he thought nothing of saying, “Sam seemed very happy about her new employment.”

  “Oh?” His father had drifted over to grab some of the appetizer. “Have you met her already, then?”

  “Just last week,” Ari said carefully, but his doctor parents could do that math all too well, and they were not pleased.

  “How nice that you have met Jax’s family,” his mother said with a quiet edge of steel to her voice.

  Ari swallowed against the guilt.

  “Well, he hasn’t met my mother yet,” Jax said brightly.

  Ari shot him a look, trying to say thank you with his eyes.

  “Is your mother not in London, then?”

  “No, she’s in Kingston. She teaches at Queen’s.” Jax wiped his hands on a napkin and shifted his weight.

  “Oh.” Maman’s eyes softened. “And what does she teach?” Both of Ari’s parents had clearly warmed to this topic—a mother with a PhD could only mean good things.

  “Applied mathematics.” Jax smiled as he gave the layman’s explanation of his mother’s work.

  “She sounds quite accomplished!” His mother smiled. “She must be a very busy woman. What about your father?”

  Jax shifted his stance again. Ari wondered if he was biting back a retort about heteronormative assumptions. “No dad. Just Mom, Sam, and me. And George and Alice, now.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that.” Ari’s mother clearly thought she’d brought up feelings of grief for a dead parent.

  Jax waved away her concern. “Don’t be! I mean, he never existed.” He shrugged. “There’s a man out there who I owe for 50 percent of my genes—Sam too—but he was never our dad, never Mom’s anything.”

  “Oh.” Ari’s parents looked stunned. They had clearly understood the subtext and did not appear to know what to make of it. “Well, what, uh, what an unusual choice.”

  Jax’s eyebrows twitched. He’d always seemed proud of his family and his mother’s choices. Ari doubted he was impressed by the word unusual. “I think it was a practical one, Maman,” he cut in smoothly.

  “Totally,” Jax said with a small smile. “Mom wanted kids, but no husband.”

  “Well.” Ari’s parents exchanged another look, and Ari knew exactly what they were thinking. They had always believed children needed two parents because parents were the model for the relationship the child would grow up to emulate. Old-fashioned, but they would only point to statistics that showed a close relationship with one’s father as a child was a predictor of successful intimate relationships later in life.

  He had a feeling Jax could school them on the shortcomings of that math.

  Should he have warned Jax about this? On the one hand, he didn’t plan on breaking up with Jax, so his parents were eventually going to find out he’d been raised by a single parent. On the other hand, maybe it would have been better to avoid the subject until Jax’s charm worked its magic.

  Maybe Jax sensed the doubt this had introduced, because he added, “Mom’s parents were always in the picture too, and if you count the faculty Mom roped in as aunts and uncles, we probably had the world’s most overqualified babysitters.”

  Ari had to hand it to him—he really was good at reading people.

  “I can imagine,” Ari’s mother said warmly, glancing over at Ari. “We were lucky to have a similar support system when Ari was a child. Though Afra did the majority of the babysitting once she was old enough, of course.”

  “Of course,” Jax agreed, smiling out of the corners of his eyes as he too looked at Ari. He seemed to be saying, See? Told you I’m good at this. “I bet Ari never gave her any trouble either.”

  If that wasn’t a leading question, Ari had never heard one. But parents loved to talk about their children, and his were no exception. Ari’s father got up to put dinner on the table, and as they ate, he cheerfully recounted the greatest hits of Ari’s childhood.

  Ari would put up with any number of embarrassing stories if it meant his parents and Jax developed a rapport. He was starting to feel silly for having doubted him.

  “It is so strange that Ari kept you from us,” Maman said to Jax, though there was an edge to her voice and she was looking at Ari. “He’s never hidden things from us before.”

  And things were going so well. Ari wasn’t sure which of them that was intended to be a dig at, but either way, it wasn’t a great sign.

  Jax, however, missed the cue on this one, because he said blithely, “Oh, I don’t know about that. Every kid keeps things from their parents, right? Ari plays things pretty close to the vest.”

  “Are you implying I don’t know my son as well as you do?”

  Jax blinked, obviously taken aback. “I’m just saying most of the time we don’t know as much about other people as we think we do.”

  When the tension didn’t entirely dissolve, Jax cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, could you direct me to your restroom?”

  Nader gave the directions, and Ari tried not to panic at being left alone with his parents. He couldn’t blame Jax for needing a break, but….

  “Well,” said his mother, “Jax is certainly a character.”

  “Maman—”

  “He is handsome,” his father interrupted, talking over both Ari and whatever his mother had been about to say.

  Unfortunately this did not prove to Ari’s advantage. “Yes, of course he’s handsome,” Ari’s mother said dismissively. “But Ari, sex appeal is not enough to build a relationship on. What do you and this man have in common, really?”

  Ari had considered attempting to eat through Jax’s absence in an effort not to have to speak, but now he was glad he’d decided against it. “Maman, you’re being ridiculous.”

  “I’m being a parent,” she corrected. “It’s my job to ensure your future happiness. And I don’t see how you’ll be happy with a bartender, sweetheart. He is basically a frat boy.”

  “Maman,” Ari bit out. He’d known she would be judgmental. Thank God he’d prepared Jax. “That’s enough. He’ll hear you.” If she was going to insult him, she could at least have the courtesy to do it in Farsi to spare Jax’s feelings.

  Of course, maybe she was hoping he would overhear.

  “And anyway, it’s not—” It’s not your business to ensure my happiness. It’s mine. But Ari didn’t finish, because Jax reappeared in the dining room doorway.

  “Sorry about that,” he said with false cheerfulness. He had the same look in his eyes that he got when he was determined to play through a song he hated. “That tea went right through me.”

  Ari bit the inside of his cheek. An oblique reference to bathroom activities was a tiny infraction compared to the ones committed by his parents in Jax’s absence.

  “Oh, it’s fine,” Ari’s mother said, suddenly all light again. Ari wanted to relax, but he knew better. “Anyway, Jax, why don’t you tell us about yourself? Ari mentioned you’re a bartender. That must be… interesting work.”

  Ari wished he’d insisted on bringing wine to serve with dinner. At least alcohol could dull some of this pain.

  “Yeah, I love it,” Jax replied. “Who doesn’t like a good party? Work’s never boring. Ari probably remembers what it was
like—you worked there for a while, didn’t you?”

  “For three summers, when I was home from college,” Ari confirmed stiffly. Surely his parents remembered this.

  Surely Jax had some reason for asking him to verify the information.

  “That’s right,” Ari’s father said. “And Sean was kind enough to allow Ari to host a concert there so that local fans could attend.”

  Thank you, Baba. Perhaps together the two of them could keep this meeting from derailing too spectacularly.

  “That’s the night we met, actually.” Jax smiled and reached for Ari’s hand on the table. “I’m so glad I was able to bail him out when his pianist couldn’t make it. Call it Fate.”

  What is he doing? But Ari couldn’t question Jax without making everything that much worse.

  “That’s right, you play piano as well,” Baba put in. “Did you take lessons?”

  Oh no. He was probably trying to help, but he’d just led them obliviously into a whole new minefield.

  “No, no.” Jax reached for his water glass with his free hand. “I mean, not unless you count the six months of lessons I had when I was, what, eight? No formal musical education. But education’s not everything, right? Life experience counts for a lot.”

  Once, several years ago, Ari had been in the passenger seat when his sister had no choice but to run into another car trying to cut them off. The only other option had been to fail at a lane change on the busiest highway in Ontario. She slammed on the brakes and they braced for impact. The seconds right before the crash had been some of the longest of his young life—knowing what was coming and unable to do anything about it.

  It felt like this moment right now. Watching Jax implode the meeting with his parents while Ari could do nothing to fix it and couldn’t understand why it was happening to begin with.

  “Nothing can make up for a solid education in a field one is passionate about,” his mother said stiffly.

  Jax waved the idea away. “Education is great if you want it, but I’ve found it totally unnecessary for music. I can play most of the music I need through a bit of practicing and a lot of winging it. Most people don’t care if you fudge the chords.”