Laws of Physics Book 1: MOTION

by Reid, Penny

  “You mean his sass-back.” Pamela’s eyes narrowed, her lips compressing as though she weren’t impressed.

  “I mean his sarcasm,” Marie said diplomatically.

  It was at this point I should’ve clarified that Abram and I were not a unit, we were not dating. I shouldn’t have allowed these fine women to believe otherwise. Continuing to sit quietly and listen without correcting their misconception was dishonest. I knew that.

  And yet, I sat quietly, my eyes ping-ponging between the two women, my pulse quickening, my mind arguing with itself.

  Speak up! You are lying by omission.

  A voice that sounded suspiciously like Gabby’s shushed my altruistic instinct, Don’t you say a word. Just go with it, Mary Sue.

  “Well, you know what that’s all about, don’t you? The sarcasm?” Pamela asked, sounding exasperated, but I couldn’t tell which of us she was addressing or if she was merely speaking to herself. “It’s what he does to hide that big, sensitive heart of his. That’s all that is. Abram has always been extremely sensitive. He wasn’t a cheerful child, but he was a cuddly one, always needing hugs. And the world isn’t nice to sensitive little people, so they learn to hide it, unfortunately.”

  “Mom—”

  “They withdraw behind sass-uh-sarcasm, and pretend not to care, act like nothing matters. But when they do care—” Pamela puffed out a breath and lifted her eyebrows meaningfully, glancing between Marie and me with rounded eyes “—watch out, ’cause when Abram commits that heart to something—like he did with his music when he dropped out of high school, leaping without looking—he doesn’t know how to hold any part of himself back. Good or bad, even if he crashes and burns.”

  I won’t ask questions about Abram because I am not at all curious, because knowing more about him is pointless.

  Okay, okay. You got me. I was curious.

  Apparently, I was exceptionally curious, because I was now sitting on the edge of the bed, gluttonously gorging myself on this incredibly fascinating glimpse into Abram’s history and personality courtesy of his mother, greedily coveting and storing and consuming every single word, detail, and insight.

  I wasn’t, however, ready to admit how ravenous I’d been for information about Abram. Nor was I willing to cross the snooping line. Passive listening was one thing, allowing them to misunderstand the nature of my relationship with Abram through a lie of omission was also one thing, but actively drilling them for information on this man I liked—but shouldn’t like—was a gamma ray of a different wavelength.

  So, I refused to ask any questions, accomplishing this Herculean task by gripping my new fingerless gloves very, very tightly on my lap, holding my breath, and rolling my tongue to one side within my mouth.

  “But mostly good, right Mom? Abram’s choices are mostly good?” Marie cut in and her tone held an undercurrent of hardness, one my sister and my mom used on me and my brother when they didn’t want us embarrassing them in public.

  Clearly, Marie was trying to be a good sister. I adored her for it, but I also wanted her to mind her own damn business and let her mother spill all the Abram beans.

  “And he’s like a big thundercloud when he’s upset—” Pamela sighed again and set her chin in her palm, obviously not taking Marie’s hint, but she also wore a soft smile “—won’t listen. Stubborn.”

  “Mom—”

  “Remember when he found out about Santa Claus?” Pamela pointed at her daughter but didn’t wait for her to respond. “Took him a year to forgive his dad and me. A year! Even longer to forgive Marie, since she knew before he did. Said the trust had been broken and we’d all lied to him. He was seven. Thank God we never did the Tooth Fairy or Easter Bunny with him, he might’ve sought emancipation! Always been that way.” She made that clicking sound again with her tongue and teeth. “And so broody. Quiet. Keeps everything bottled up, like his dad. Won’t talk. And once he sets his mind to something, doesn’t matter how nonsensical and foolhardy, there’s no changing it.”

  “Anyway, I think today is the most I’ve seen him smile. Ever.” Marie tried again to shift the conversation back on track, adding softly, “He’s clearly smitten with you.”

  Again, she’d caught me off guard. Again, I opened my mouth to respond, to explain that Abram and I were not a unit, or together, or dating, or anything of the sort. But this time guilt kept me from speaking. I’d let them talk and talk and talk about Abram, revealing things they may not have revealed if they’d known the truth about us.

  There was no us.

  And admitting that we weren’t a unit now would certainly crush me under the weight of confession-awkwardness. So, I closed my mouth, and I returned her smile.

  And I said nothing.

  10

  Vector Addition and Subtraction

  Abram was the one who drove us back to Chicago through some unspoken, implicit agreement.

  But then, once we were on the highway, he said, “You don’t mind if I drive, do you? I’d like to get back before my next birthday.”

  Glaring at him from the passenger seat, I asked, “When is your birthday?”

  “In a few months.”

  I rolled my eyes, pressing my lips together, pretending to be irritated. This made him laugh, a good, deep sound. I liked the sound, and I liked the way a smile looked on his face, which was why I’d pretended to be irritated. He seemed to enjoy teasing me. And, you know what? I liked it too.

  Lisa’s teasing hadn’t been actual teasing—but rather passive aggressive barbs—in a very long time. Leo used to tease me, but we’d been speaking so infrequently these days and our calls had grown shorter and shorter.

  Other than Allyn, no one teased me. I’d been in very real danger of taking myself too seriously, a personality trait of my parents’ I’d never wanted to share. I firmly believed that good-natured teasing was good for keeping the ego in check, and therefore, it was good for the soul.

  We drove in silence for a while and I thought about the day’s events, feeling a small smile on my lips wax and wane at intervals. My brain kept snagging on and returning to one short conversation during dessert where Abram’s dad, a man of few words, had questioned Abram about his music.

  “How’s the song writing going?” He sounded genuinely interested and I found this enthralling.

  As far as I could piece together, Abram had dropped out of high school to pursue music. Where most parents would still be holding a grudge about potentially being embarrassed by their child’s rash choices (in front of their friends and colleagues), Abram’s parents seemed more interested in having a relationship with their son.

  Fascinating.

  The attention evident in Mr. Harris’s voice was one of the main reasons I’d kept smiling at the memory. How would that be? To have a parent interested in what brought you joy? To have a parent who valued the actual relationship over the value of having the relationship?

  The other reason I kept smiling had to do with Abram’s response.

  “Great,” Abram answered immediately. But then, as though needing to clarify, he added, “Now it’s great.”

  “Now?”

  Abram lifted his chin in my direction, his gaze sliding over me in a way that had my breath catching before his eyes dropped to his cup and he cleared his throat. “Since Lisa, it’s been going great.”

  “Really?” I sat up straighter, equally confused and surprised by this news.

  “Yes.” He rolled his lips between his teeth, not raising his eyes from the surface of his coffee. “Really.”

  I’d felt myself smile in wonder, still confused, but also flattered. An enjoyable, spreading warmth had expanded in my chest, a feeling I couldn’t seem to stop chasing on the quiet drive home.

  I appreciated the quiet. Finding other people who also liked quiet, with whom it wasn’t strained or awkward, seemed to be a rare occurrence.

  I thought I’d be spending the time grappling with residual guilt instead of trying to relive the best parts of the
day, but I didn’t. In retrospect, passively plying Abram’s mom and sister for information about him didn’t feel like such a terrible thing.

  Sure, in the moment, I’d worried that all my morals and ethics were crumbling around me, that failing to correct someone else’s misunderstanding today would undoubtedly lead to running for a US senate seat and golfing with big tobacco tomorrow.

  The slope wasn’t nearly as steep or as slippery as I’d assumed.

  But then randomly, an image of Lisa stripping off her clothes and climbing into bed with a clueless and sleeping Abram flashed in my mind’s eye. I frowned, shifted in my seat, and glared at the unpleasant image.

  Or . . .

  Or is the gradual steepness of the slope exactly the problem? Was this how Lisa’s lies had started? By her own admission, she was now a serial liar. One trivial omission had become a white lie, which had become a gray lie, which had become a Tyler-trash-island whopper?

  “What’s going on over there?”

  Abram’s question didn’t quite pull me from my musings and I said distractedly, “Incremental temperature increases.”

  “What?”

  “If you boil a frog slowly, it doesn’t notice.”

  I felt his eyes move over my profile, which finally stirred me from the morbid reflections. “Sorry. Just thinking.”

  “About boiling frogs?” His voice did a cute little catch thing at the end of his sentence, like he was worried that boiling frogs might lead to boiling bunnies.

  I slid my eyes to the side, clandestinely peering at him and wondering what he thought—what he really thought—of Lisa’s behavior last year. He’d been pissed at me (her) a few days ago, but when we’d discussed it last night, he’d forgiven me (her) easily.

  “Do you mind telling me about the night I, uh, the night we met?”

  Abram’s eyebrows climbed a half inch on his forehead. “You really don’t remember anything?”

  “Humor me.”

  He glanced at me once, twice, three times before saying, “I guess- I mean, you were pretty drunk. Do you remember the party?”

  “The party,” I said vaguely, using a tone I typically employed when my professors or classmates would suggest something foolish and I didn’t want to sound judgmental, but rather wanted to give them the time and space to correct or withdraw their faulty suggestion.

  “Yes. You and Gabby showed up at Leo’s party?”

  “Ah. Okay. Yes. Then what happened? I mean, from your perspective. What happened from your perspective?”

  He shifted in his seat, placing his elbow on the window sill, his index and middle finger lightly brushing against his lips as he stared out the windshield. “Let’s see . . . You came in and your brother pointed you and Gabby out. It was dark, there were a lot of people, so I didn’t get a chance to officially meet you. Plus, I was preoccupied with the upcoming set.”

  “Ah, yes. The set.” I assumed he meant a music set, i.e. he must’ve played a set of music for the party.

  Abram cleared his throat. “I thought it went well, given I’d never played for that many people before.” A hint of uncertainty edged into his voice, which had me smiling at him automatically.

  “The set was great,” I said unthinkingly, the falsehood slipping out of my mouth and sounding sincere. I didn’t know whether to be disgusted or impressed with myself, nor did I know why I’d said it.

  But then he looked at me again and smiled, another hitting-me-right-in-the-center-of-my-stomach grin, melting my brain with fuzzy feels. And I understood at once why my subconscious had decided to lie so convincingly.

  Conclusion: My subconscious wants to see him smile.

  Abram’s gaze flickered over my face, his eyes warm and appraising as he said quietly, “You have a really nice smile.”

  I blinked at him, and then turned my attention back to the road, surprised to discover that I’d been smiling as well. Surprise was accompanied by a rush of flustered heat to my cheeks at his unexpected compliment. It’s one thing to admire a person in the comfortable privacy of one’s own thoughts, but for those thoughts to be reciprocated out loud was highly disorienting.

  Struggling in the ensuing silence for a response, I finally settled on, “Thank you. Also, your smile is also nice. Also.” Instead of wincing at the stilted quality of my response, I cleared my throat and expression. “So, after your excellent set. What happened next?”

  I anticipated the next words out of his mouth with both dread and anticipation, but he didn’t leave me in suspense for long. “Leo introduced me to this guy named Broderick—a producer out of New York—and the three of us talked ‘til late, calling it a night around four. I went to bed, fell asleep, and then . . .”

  “And then?”

  He sighed. “And then I woke up and you were there.”

  “Naked.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Yikes.”

  We were both quiet for a short moment, and again the image of Lisa crawling into bed—okay, maybe she didn’t crawl, but crawling is skeevy and therefore in my imagination, she crawled—flashed within my brain. I was so irritated with her. Irritated and disappointed and . . . wait? Is that jealousy? WHAT?

  “You were pretty drunk.”

  “Don’t make excuses for- for me.” I swallowed around a lump of unpleasant feelings constricting my throat. We’d just exited the highway and Abram had to stop at a red light.

  He opened his mouth, as though to argue, but I cut him off, “How did you even recognize me? It was crowded at the party, we weren’t even properly introduced.”

  Abram’s eyelids lowered and he gave me a cut the crap look that reminded me of Leo.

  I shook my head. “What?”

  “Come on, Lisa.”

  “What?” I glanced left, I glanced right. What was I missing?

  “You know you’re crazy beautiful,” he said, not sounding happy about having to say it.

  Startled by this explanation, and confused about how irritated it made me feel, I straightened my spine and glared at him. He thinks Lisa is beautiful. Which, I reminded myself calmly, meant he thought I was beautiful. Because we were identical.

  . . . I hate that he thinks she’s beautiful.

  Shaking my head again, I mentally swatted away the irrational thought just as the light changed and he turned his attention back to the road. “Right, well—”

  “It’s impossible not to notice you,” he interrupted gently. “Even in a crowded room.”

  Suspended on those words, I felt my glare dissolve, again not knowing what to feel. Or, perhaps more importantly, why I was feeling anything at all. Settling back in my seat, I refocused on the questions I wanted to ask and the information I was lacking.

  “Right, so,” I started again, concentrating on balling my hands into fists. “You knew it was me. What did you do next?”

  “I tried to wake you up. When you didn’t wake up right away, I checked your pulse and breathing. You seemed fine.” His tone was flat as he told the story, giving me the impression this memory was not one that he enjoyed. “So I got dressed, put a T-shirt on you—I didn’t look!” He added this last bit sharply, sending me a hard glance. “And then I called your brother.”

  “You called Leo? Did you wake him up?”

  “No. He was with Gabby. They were both frantic, looking for you.”

  “Gabby was looking for . . . me.” I thought about that. I turned it over in my head. I examined it from many different angles.

  “I guess you disappeared on her and she freaked out, because she knew you were drunk. Haven’t you talked to her about this?”

  “Of course.” Crap. I was going to need to be more careful with my questions. “From your perspective, though, what happened next?”

  He sent me a questioning glare as he readjusted his hands on the wheel. “Gabby and Leo showed up, you were mostly awake by then, climbing all over me. I was trying to keep you from hurting yourself, but also . . . ” He paused and shook his head, making a f
ace of intense irritation.

  “Oh no.” I covered my face and peeked at him from between my fingers, frustration and anger nearly choking me. “I groped you, didn’t I?”

  He shrugged, not looking at me, but there was a palpable mood shift. He suddenly felt very distant, faraway. “Anyway, I wasn’t too happy. Gabby and I got into it. Leo carried you to your room. Gabby left. The end.”

  With more force than necessary, Abram flipped the turn blinker and made a right onto our street while I sat perfectly still. I felt so . . . so . . .

  ANGRY.

  How could he forgive her? What was wrong with him? He should have- should have- I don’t know. But he should have done something.

  Wordlessly, he parked in front of the house, turned off the headlights, and cut the engine, all the while staring forward. I let my hands drop from my face to my lap and also stared forward, now nauseous.

  But then, just as the stillness and silence settled around us, he faced me, drawing my eyes to his, Abram’s features now mostly in shadow. “Can we just forget about that? Can we just pretend it didn’t happen? I mean, what did happen? Nothing happened.”

  Nothing happened.

  A bubble of laughter erupted from between my lips and I shook my head, closing my eyes. I sighed.

  “Lisa.” He placed his hand over mine.

  I didn’t yank it, but I did slide it away and turned to open the door. “Come on. Let’s go inside.”

  Exiting the car, I took a moment to fix my skirt before walking to the keypad and punching in the code. I heard Abram’s door close behind me and he opened the gate just as it unlocked and buzzed. I walked through it and we climbed the stairs side by side, his hands in his pockets, my arms crossed over my chest.

  When we reached the top stair, he side-stepped, cutting me off, stopping directly in front of me, and forcing my eyes to his.

  “Listen, I was pissed at the time. But I’m not upset anymore.”

  “If the roles had been reversed, if I’d found you, an unknown person, naked in my bed. And then you groped me? Should I forgive you so easily? Should I not be upset?”