He’s the sun, and I’m a planet trapped in his orbit. I can’t get away and I can’t go to him either. When I let myself go, I can get a little closer and bask in his heat. Those are my summers. But then my head cools and I circle away again, keeping my distance, alone and cold in an endless winter. Until I can’t bear it anymore and drift closer again. Spinning, spinning, in a never-ending ellipsis that is churning my heart to shreds with each new revolution.

  These maddening feelings swirl and boil around in my brain until I can’t take it any longer. I kick the wall and throw myself over my bed, suffocating a defeated scream into the comforter.

  I hate being smart. I hate being level-headed. I hate making the right choice. And most of all, I hate being a clucking chicken who can’t make the first move.

  27

  REESE

  After a fitful night of restless tossing and turning, I still wake up in a good mood because summer is coming and I’m eager to head down to the breakfast room, eager to see him. To burn some of my jittery energy—I want to avoid greeting Thomas like an over-caffeinated chipmunk—I take the stairs down to the dining area instead of the elevator.

  Thomas is already there, nursing his coffee and looking as if he hasn’t slept a wink either. I smile at the sight of him.

  When our eyes meet across the room, his face lights up with a smile that makes my heart race.

  He stands up, pulling a chair out for me. But before I can sit, he pulls me in a deep hug. His muscular arms wrap around me like a warm blanket, and I’m engulfed by an instant sense of peace and comfort. I allow myself a moment of indulgence to breathe in his scent—soap, man, and endless summers.

  Another heartbeat and I reluctantly extricate myself from the embrace, sitting in the chair he’s pulled out for me.

  “Good morning, Campbell,” he says with a nod, his voice deeper than usual.

  “Morning,” I squeak, wishing I had a programmable speech interface that could compensate for fluttery hearts.

  Thomas seems oblivious to my agitation. “What’s on the agenda today?”

  I laugh nervously. “I have to give my presentation.”

  “Are you nervous?”

  About the presentation? No. About him being in the audience? Yeah-ah!

  “I’ve given this presentation before.” I bite down on a croissant and shrug. “I should be fine.”

  “Good. I’m sure you’ll do great.” Thomas nods, taking a sip of his coffee.

  As he drinks, I can’t keep my eyes from wandering down to the way his lips glide over the rim of the cup. My mind races, wondering what those lips would feel like against mine.

  Mentally slapping myself for the umpteenth time for not kissing him last night or the night before, I avert my eyes and concentrate on breakfast.

  It’s a lost cause. I could spend the entire day staring at the masterpiece his mouth is, but fortunately, duty calls. I need to keep reminding myself that this is still a work trip and not a romantic getaway in Italy. Until something changes, he’s still going to become my boss and is therefore off-limits.

  We finish breakfast and head back up to our rooms. I quickly change into my suit, tucking in my shirt and pulling the jacket neatly over it. When I step out into the hall again, Thomas is already there looking as dashing as ever in a light-gray suit with a crisp white shirt underneath.

  As he looks me up and down with admiration in his eyes, my heart gets replaced by a bass drum beating at an incessant tempo in my chest. My palms get sweaty while my mouth goes dry.

  He takes a few steps closer and reaches out to push away a strand of hair from my face. His fingers linger on my cheek for a moment before he lowers his hand, leaving me wanting more.

  “Ready?” he asks with a crooked smile that sets my heart ablaze. I nod, not trusting myself to form coherent words in this state.

  After a slow taxi ride where I fidget the entire time given our proximity in the back of the car, we reach the conference center. I follow Thomas into the lobby, carrying my notes for the presentation. I don’t have to speak for another two hours, but I want to make sure I have all the material ready.

  When I’m sure I have everything in order, I check my watch. We still have plenty of time to kill. We could make a quick detour to a machine learning presentation on the automatic synthesis of admissible functions for variational learning before going to my hall. It shouldn’t be far from where I have to give my speech, so we could do both.

  When I lift my head to check the overhead signs and orient myself, I spot my ex-boyfriend across the room instead. I squint, hoping it’s just the light playing tricks with my sight, but no, it’s him: Professor Samuel Williams. My quantitative methods in systems engineering professor. Yep, the one I dated after grad school while I was getting my PhD and who also turned out to already have a wife and two kids he neglected to tell me about.

  Nausea rises within me like a welling tide, threatening to overwhelm me as anger and embarrassment flush through my veins.

  All my confidence in my presentation skills evaporates. On instinct, I grab the jacket of Thomas’s suit and hide behind him. I mean, he’s a tree trunk of a man, I should be safe.

  Thomas tilts his head backward, peering at me over his shoulder. “Hey, everything all right back there?”

  “Please get me out of here.”

  Thomas’s back tenses under my hands; he must register the agitation in my tone, but, luckily, he doesn’t ask questions as we awkwardly side-shuffle to a corridor where I collapse on a plastic chair, hyperventilating.

  Thomas kneels before me, hazel-green eyes boring into me, steadying me. “What’s going on?”

  I shake my head, fighting for every breath.

  He places a hand on my shoulder, applying pressure in a comforting gesture. “Take a deep breath, Reese. In and out.”

  It’s the way he says my name more than anything that steadies me. I follow his lead, inhaling deeply and exhaling slowly. It takes a few moments, but eventually, my breathing returns to normal.

  “Better?” Thomas asks, his voice gentle.

  I nod, wiping at the tears that have fallen without my consent. “Yeah. Sorry about that.”

  “Don’t apologize.” He reaches out to brush an errant tear from my cheek with his thumb—it sort of makes me want to keep crying. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  I take another deep breath, steeling myself to speak.

  “I saw someone.” I pause, unsure of how much I want to reveal. “An ex.”

  Thomas’s eyes widen. “Ah. I see…”

  “I’m not still into him or anything,” I explain. “But it’s been years since I last saw him, and gosh I still hate him.” A bitter laugh escapes my lips.

  Thomas stands up from his kneeling position on the floor and sits in the chair next to me. “Why do you hate him?”

  “He…” Before I know it, the entire story is spilling out of me. “We were together for two years and for that entire time, he had a wife and kids, a separate life I knew nothing about, that I didn’t even suspect. I was so naïve. I drank up every one of his lies, never questioning why we couldn’t spend a single holiday together or why he was gone most weekends.”

  Thomas stares straight ahead. “How did you find out?”

  “His wife came to his city apartment while I was there.”

  He looks at me now, eyes intense. “What did you do?”

  “Ah.” I slap my thighs. “I panicked, of course. I pretended to be the cleaning lady and scrubbed the entire place before I left forever.”

  Thomas raises an eyebrow at me, his lips twitching.

  The smile is contagious. “She even paid me fifty dollars for cleaning their toilets, isn’t that precious?”

  We stare at each other for another heartbeat and then burst out laughing.

  As our laughter fades, I instinctively lean closer to him, bumping our shoulders. “I bet you’ve never had such a humiliating break-up.”

  “Hey.” He gently lifts my chin. “He should be the one ashamed of himself. And my last girlfriend all but cheated on me before she dumped me.”

  I frown. “What do you mean?”

  “That even if she hadn’t technically cheated, she was already in love with another man when she left. A real man”—Thomas makes air quotes—“as she called him, not a man-child like me.” He lowers his head.

  I take his hand. “You’re not a man-child!”

  He tilts his gaze up to me, a grin on his face that doesn’t match the sadness in his eyes. “That’s not what you thought when you were sent the CEO’s son to babysit, though, right?”

  I squeeze the hand I’m still holding. “Maybe at first, but then I got to know you. Don’t sell yourself short, Thomas, you are kind, intelligent, intuitive, charming, fun…”

  He turns toward me fully, cupping my cheek. “You know what scares me the most about potentially dating you?”

  I give him a tiny shake of the head.

  “That one day you might realize I’m not smart enough for you, that my mind will never be bright enough for you.”

  I flash back to our first conversation about his “brain.”

  “I have no doubts your brain will be fully satisfactory,” I joke. He smirks. Then, turning serious, I gently tap his temple. “But it’s what’s behind here that I really like.” I lower my hand to tap his chest. “And here.”

  His eyes darken. Thomas grabs the finger I poked him with and kisses the tip. “Thank you for saying that; you’ve no idea how much that means to me.”

  I blush. “Anytime…”

  Thomas stays quiet for a moment, watching me before he speaks. “Do you think it’s a coincidence your ex is here?”

  I shrug. “He’s not a speaker, but I guess the only way to find out for sure is to see if he’s in the audience at my presentation.”

  “Would that be an issue for you?”

  “Probably. I still break out in hives of mortification whenever I see him.”

  “Then you keep your eyes on me the entire time, all right?” Thomas stands up and offers me his hand. “You’re going to kill it, Campbell.”

  28

  REESE

  As I walk into the conference hall, I spot Samuel sitting in the first row, an amused sneer on his face. I ignore him and walk right past his seat to the podium, willing my heartbeat to slow down and my hands to stop sweating. Once I’m behind the lectern, I pull up my slides and clear my throat.

  I shift to the initial slide and begin. “Good morning, I’m Doctor Reese Campbell, Head of Research and Development at Mercer Robotics, and today I’m here to speak about human-computer interaction technologies for measurement systems and their related applications. Nowadays—” My gaze drifts to where Samuel is seated, leering at me, and I falter. I take a long, slow breath and remember Thomas’s words—eyes on me.

  And that’s exactly what I do. I shift my gaze to the right where Thomas is and stare into his beautiful eyes. The brown in them grounds me while the green makes me come alive. “Nowadays, we interact with machines every day. Modern technology is everywhere: in appliances, lights, cars, and wearables like smartwatches that give us information at a glance that they gather from sensors and sophisticated electronic components, most of which are connected to the internet and powered by Artificial Intelligences. We use them to communicate, to monitor our health, to make our lives easier.” I take a breath and smile, Thomas smiles back. “And this is mostly what collaborative robotics is about, making sure that our interactions with the machines that surround us and aid us on a daily basis are easy and fun and not a source of frustration…”

  An hour later, I end on a high note. “Co-bots are the future of robotics and I firmly believe that through collaborative human-computer interactions, we can achieve great things. I will now take questions.”

  Samuel’s hand is among the first to shoot up in the air. I do my best to ignore him for as long as possible until I can no longer. I nod in his direction, bracing myself. “Professor Williams, you had a question?”

  “Dr. Campbell, how do you respond to the ethical concern that human skills will be eventually replaced or altered as a consequence of repeated interactions with co-bots within the existing manufacturing systems?”

  It doesn’t matter that I’m the one on stage and he’s the one sitting in the audience, his slimy handsome face still has the power to make me feel like a student under exam.

  My gaze drifts to Thomas once again, and he mouths a “You’ve got this” at me.

  Samuel’s head snaps toward Thomas at the same time, and the look of pure contempt on my ex’s face gives me the strength to carry on.

  I draw in a long breath and look the slimebag straight in the eyes as I give my answer. “Thank you for your question, Professor Williams. It is important to address the ethical concerns surrounding human-robot interactions as we continue to develop and implement these technologies. However, I want to emphasize that the goal of collaborative robotics is not to replace human skills but to complement them, allowing the human and mechanical ecosystems to coexist in a collaborative playing field where synergies are exploited to their maximum capacity. Some jobs might become obsolete, but they will be replaced by new, more rewarding opportunities.” Satisfied, I look away and address the audience at large. “If there aren’t any other questions, I’d like to thank you all for coming today and for your interest in collaborative robotics. Let’s continue to work together and push the boundaries of what is possible with these innovative technologies.”

  As I step off the stage, a sense of relief washes over me. Without missing a beat, Thomas takes my hand and whisks me away. I follow him, not sparing Samuel a second glance or thought.

  As I collapse in my bedroom that night, I’m exhausted. The adrenaline has left my system and I’m utterly drained. I’m in no state to go out for another romantic stroll through the city and have already changed into sweats. Still, it smarts that Thomas hasn’t asked me out again.

  In fact, we haven’t made dinner plans at all. Maybe he took me literally when I said I couldn’t date him until he was no longer on a path to becoming my future boss. And since last night felt like a first date of sorts, he doesn’t want to put me in that position again. It wasn’t a business dinner for sure.

  A little distance is good. Thomas is respecting my wishes. It’s good to be respected. Only now, I’d much rather be ravaged than respected. And what a waste of a night in Rome.

  I lie on my bed staring at the ceiling, trying to push thoughts of Thomas out of my head and focus on something else. Anything else. I’m mostly unsuccessful, when a knock resounds on the door.

  All tiredness forgotten, I eagerly stand up and find the object of my obsessive thoughts on the other side.

  Thomas is holding two paper bags in his hand and a tray of drinks in the other.

  “Hey, I thought that after today you could use a quiet dinner in.” He lifts the paper bags as a demonstration. “But if you prefer to go out, I can drop these in my room and we can go.”

  I’m half tempted to grab him by the collar of his unbuttoned shirt, forget the food altogether, and eat his gorgeous face for dinner instead. But of course, I don’t. I can’t.

  I simply nod and open the door wider. “Dinner in sounds amazing.”

  I take the bags from him and move onto the bed, peeking inside. “What did you get?”

  “Arancini and panzerotti. They’re not strictly typical food from Rome, but they’re among the best specialties from the south of Italy.”

  I inhale the delicious scent wafting up from the bag. “They smell heavenly.”

  I spread the small paper trays over the bed, and we dig in with gusto. As we eat, Thomas tells me stories about his travels through the south of Italy. He speaks passionately about the food, the culture, and the people. I smile as I listen to him; his enthusiasm is infectious.

  Once I’ve scarfed down my entire half of the food and maybe some, Thomas grabs something from the pocket of his jeans and throws me my new favorite chocolate bar. “Got you one of these for dessert.”

  I squeal like an excited child and tear open the wrapper. The rich, creamy white chocolate melts in my mouth, mixing with the perfect crunch of the wafer. I close my eyes and savor the delicious blend of flavors.

  When I reopen them, Thomas has already cleared away the empty containers and is standing up.

  My good mood drops at the thought of him leaving.

  “Guess I should be going.”

  Stay, I yell in my head.

  “Thanks for the incredible dinner, Thomas,” I say instead. “It was amazing. Italian food is the absolute best.” I lick the last traces of white chocolate from my fingers.

  His gaze lingers on my fingers, and I self-consciously drop them from my mouth.

  I stand as well, clumsily wiping my hands on my leggings to walk him to the door.

  We pause on the threshold, and he pulls me in, dropping a soft kiss on my forehead. “Good night, Campbell, you rocked today.”

  I take a step back and the distance between us hits me like physical pain. “Good night,” I whisper.

  I watch him step aside to enter his room and when he’s gone, I develop the same symptoms of an addict experiencing withdrawal. My hands shake, my heart is pounding in my chest, and I become slightly nauseous.

  I retreat to the bathroom and splash my face with cold water, brush my teeth, and dab more cold water behind my neck and on my chest, but I’m still boiling.

  I walk back into my room and sit on the bed, staring at the thick wooden door separating me from the thing I want most in the world. My thoughts are a jumbled mess, my heart is thumping so hard I can feel it in my throat. I can’t stop thinking about the way Thomas’s lips felt on my forehead, how close we were standing, and how his gaze lingered on my mouth.

  On impulse, I stand up, unlock my side of the door, and give it a soft knock.

  No response.

  I knock more decidedly.