Page 37 of Deep End

“Huh,” he says, holding the door open.

“What?”

“A surprising amount of panting for someone who spends her day climbing stairs.” His eyes are warm, gently teasing. Heat blooms inside me as I wave at Zach and enter the small room. It has three chairs, one desk, and one projector. I’m not sure what it says about the fun house of horrors that is my social life, but the meeting that follows is the most fun I’ve had in a while.

“You really know your neural networks,” Zach tells me during a break. It could be the glossy patina of the deep learning algorithms, but my brain has classified him as Fairly Unthreatening. I’m relaxed enough to kick off my shoes and genuinely laugh at his terrible nonparametric statistics joke. Lukas is at the fountain right outside, refilling our water bottles. He conspicuously left the door open, and he made sure I was aware that he could see me through the glass doors.

Ah, the frazzling ordeal of being known.

“I took a couple of online classes,” I explain to Zach, lifting my bare feet on Lukas’s chair to stretch my hamstrings. “And was in the bioinformatics club in high school. And went to a comp bio research camp in my junior year.”

“Wow. A jockanda nerd.”

I laugh into my shins and deepen my stretch, closing my fingers around my toes. “Collecting archetypes is my passion.”

“Don’t stop on my account. You’re clearly great at it.” He points at the whiteboard, where I drew the forward and backward passes of my network. “You’re a senior?”

“Junior.”

“What are your plans for after?” He laughs at my pained expression. “Are you going pro?”

“With diving? I don’t think so. I’m trying to get into med school.”

“Have you taken the MCAT?”

“This weekend.”

“You’re on top of it.”

“Not really. My essays are a shitshow. And I think the German homework I’ve been turning in might be the written equivalent of burning a German flag?”

Lukas returns and hands me my water bottle. “You’re taking German?”

“Regrettably for everyone.”

Before I can vacate his seat, one of his hands wraps around both my ankles. He lifts them, holds them up as he sits down, and then lowers my bare feet in his lap.

I blink at him. Then at his hand. His grip softens against my left calf, its circumference loose. He has short, blunt nails. Long, enveloping fingers.

A wave of heat irradiates up my legs.

“Why?” he asks.

My eyes rocket up to his.What are you doing?

“Why German?” he repeats, imperturbable.

My cheeks burn. “Just . . .”

Move your legs, I order myself.He’snotpinning you. He is, in fact, fully relaxed in his chair. Only mildly interested in my tales of academic mistakes. The pad of a chlorine-roughened thumb unhurriedly sweeps back and forth over the ball of my anklebone. Is he evenawareof what he’s doing? “Med schools like foreign languages,” I say. It’s raspy. More of a dry-mouthed croak, really.

“Doyoulike foreign languages?” His eyes are on me. The weight of his hand settles on my skin like it belongs there, unchallenged.

I manage a fuzzy headshake.No, I don’t like learning foreign languagesis as beyond me as the Cartwheel Galaxy. My pulse thuds, sticky in my ears. Between my legs.

“Maybe you should take Norwegian,” Zach jokes. With the table between us, he can’t see what’s happening. “That way Lukas could help you.”

“Swedish,” I correct reflexively. Lukas’s hand wraps against the heel of my foot in a lingering caress.

---