Page 75 of Love and Other Paradoxes

“Joseph.” She stopped him as they reached the tree-lined shade of the Bursar’s Garden. “Are you trying to hide me from someone?”

He winced. “Would you believe me if I said no?”

She crossed her arms. “What are we talking about here? Another girlfriend?”

The wordgirlfriendmomentarily short-circuited his brain. Diana wasn’t his girlfriend. She was his one true love, his muse, his destined— He cut himself off. He wasn’t supposed to be thinking about the book. “No! Just—someone who doesn’t think we should be together.”

“How intriguing. So this...” She stepped close, twining her arms around his neck. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “This is a secret?”

His breath caught. He nodded.

She looked over his shoulder, then drew him down for a stolen kiss. “I rather like it.”

He spent the next two weeks oscillating between the library and Dr. Lewis’s rooms, trying to climb out of the academic hole his past self had dug him into. In the moments between, he gradually adjusted to Diana Dartnell as his girlfriend, who he kissed and slept with and took out on dates, although never during daylight hours. The fact that they had to sneak around gave the whole thing a thrill of the forbidden. Part of him enjoyed the irony of feeling that way about a relationship that was sanctioned by fate itself.

And he was writing about her. The poems came to him in fragments, inexplicable as the gifts in his pigeonhole. Only after piecing them together and reading them back did he understand what it was like to be with her. It was a strange, backwards way to fall in love with someone. But maybe that was how it had to be with him and Diana. The poems had come first: reality could only do its best to measure up.

There was just one problem, which he had been successfully pretending wasn’t a problem until Rob had the temerity to bring it up.

“So when are you going to tell her?”

Joe looked up from revising Hegel. Rob, as usual, was knitting. He’d come back from Easter break with a huge circle made of black wool, and had been adding to it ever since. “Tell who what?”

“Campbell.” Rob’s acceptance of Esi into their inner circle had been sealed when he’d started calling her by her surname. “About you and Diana.”

He affected a casual tone. “You think she’d care?”

Rob barked out a laugh. “You know she’ll care. That’s why you haven’t told her.” His phone buzzed. “Speak of the devil. I’ll go and let her in.”

Joe stared into the void of Rob’s knitted circle. Over the holidays, he and Esi had talked endlessly, late-night MSN conversations that had kept him up till the small hours. But since he’d returned, a distance had grown between them. He reminded himself that he didn’t have the right to be upset about it. In less than two months, she would be leaving. Diana was his future, and Esi’s was on the other side of a wormhole.

It was hard to keep that in mind when the door opened and there she was, in a green-and-yellow dress that made her look like spring come to life.

Rob led her to his circle. “Feast your eyes. This is how I’m going to take Darcy down.”

“Amazing.” She looked at the circle, then up at Rob. “What is it?”

“It’s a black hole.” A manic grin lit his face. “Once inside the event horizon”—he tossed the circle into the air above Joe’s head. It landed, draping him in darkness—“the unlucky occupant gets turned to spaghetti.”

Joe clawed his way out, feeling his hair go static. “There’s no way you’re allowed to use this as a weapon.”

“Course I am. I got approval from the Umpire before I started knitting.” Rob looked eagerly at Esi. “It’s genius, right?”

She looked sceptical. “I don’t know. Feels like you’re overthinking it.”

“Of course I’m overthinking it! Two years I’ve been preparing for this duel.” He jerked a thumb at Joe. “Blame him. He took my attack animal away.”

“Because I’m not letting you throw my kitten at some confetti-wielding psychopath!”

Rob and Esi shared a look. For a moment, Joe felt intensely left out. He wished he and Esi could have that easy camaraderie again. But maybe he was rewriting the past; maybe things between them had never been so simple.

“Anyway,” said Rob. “Got to go. Revision supervision.” He looked meaningfully at Joe. “I’ll leave you two to catch up.”

He left them alone with their silence, full of all the things they hadn’t said to each other. Joe hurried to break it. “How’s it going with your mum?”

She sat down on the sofa, tucking her feet up. “I feel like I know everything about her life at this point. All her friend groups, all her lectures, all the societies she’s in. But I’ve still got no idea about the award. And the twenty-third is six weeks away.” She bit her thumb. “Any ideas?”

“One. But you’re not going to like it.” She looked at him questioningly. “You could talk to her.”

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