❝ꪜ𝒊𝐨ŀꪋ❞

I was good at solving problems. No scratch that, I was great at them. After all, what was chemistry, but one giant puzzle? All it took was writing down the variables, looking for catalysts, and checking the results. So why wasn’t this working?

I eyed the board with Marvin’s name at the top and added a couple more pink Post-it notes to the right of the yellow ones. Pink was for questions, yellow was for facts, but there was a lot more pink on this board than I wanted at this stage.

The cold, hard fact was that a kiss in the bathroom with Marvin had happened at the prom, and I knew I hadn’t wanted it. I knew Marvin’s name, where he lived—given he’d inherited his parents’ house when they’d retired to Florida—and that he wasn’t married. Nor did he have kids, or much in the way of extended family.

That much I had found out online. I had added each tiny detail in the correct place, and yet, still, none of it was making sense.

“What are you up to?” Mars asked from behind me.

I jumped a mile high and slammed my closet door shut before my friend could see what I was doing. I still hadn’t told Mars the full details of what had happened at the reunion, even though I knew I should if only to get everything off my chest.

I’d confirmed to Mars that I’d closed a metaphorical door and then nodded when she had asked if I was okay.

Spoiler... I wasn’t okay.

All the memories surrounding Marvin were messing with my head. Add in his unfortunately timed and mind-blowing attraction to Sinclair, plus my growing pile of research and writing, and I was all over the place.

“Vie?” Mars prompted.

“Nothing’s wrong,” I blurted, which wasn’t an exact answer to the question I’d been asked.

She stared at me, and I was convinced that she knew something was going on.

“I don’t know what to do,” I admitted. “It’s all messed up in my head.”

Mars continued to stare at me for a moment and then reached past me for the closet door, her hand hovering near the handle. She waited, asking silently for my permission to look at what was in there. Ashamed and lost, I nodded.

Mars pulled out the pin board with its neat Post-it notes. It was all I could do to stand, and in the end, I sat on my bed and crossed my legs. Mars examined the two boards.

“Marvin? Who’s that?”

I wasn’t sure where to start, but Marcelina was the one person who might be able to steer me through this so I could shut that stupid door from school. I’d already received an email from Jason explaining that he hadn’t known what happened, that all his information had been secondhand from Zephyr. But the message had been long and detailed.

In it, he admitted he’d denied himself all the evidence pointing to the fact his best friend from school was an asshole. I wanted to reply, to tell him everything was okay, to exonerate Jason for not understanding the situation, even suggesting it wasn’t his fault. But the logical part of me understood that Marvin, plus both of his friends, were all integral to the mess in his head and that forgiveness shouldn’t be so easily doled out.

Hence, the pin board.

“There’s another one in there, behind the coat” I pointed at the closet.

Mars rummaged around and pulled out a second pinboard. This one had purple and green Post-it notes, and just the title alone made me squirm in embarrassment.

“The Viola-Sinclair hypothesis,” Mars read, and glanced at me in confusion.

“See?” I could hear how miserable I sounded. “I have two problems, and I don’t know where to start with either of them.”

Mars nodded. “Okay, do you want to talk about it? Or do you want me to try to make sense of everything? Do I need to get coffee for us both? Or do you want to throw these things back in the closet and sit in front of Nat Geo?”

My heart swelled, and I loved that Mars knew which options I might choose right now. But, as much as I wanted to sit on the sofa and binge-watch the newest episode of Gold Rush, I needed answers more.

“I can’t work with any of this,” I muttered, “My brain.”

I knew it didn’t make much sense just saying that, but I tapped my head anyway.

Mars nodded as if she understood.

“Okay then, start from the beginning. Who is this Marvin? Given these are photos from the yearbook, I assume that this guy was your classmate in high school?”

“He was an open door,” I admitted.

Mars’ eyes widened. “Go on.”

“He was something I’d blanked out, but when I went to the reunion, everything that’d happened with him flooded back. I was in the bathroom, all dressed up for prom, and I had the biggest crush on this boy, Paolo. I went to the bathroom to get ready to tell him, but Marvin came into the bathroom. It just flooded back that he’d kissed me at prom, but I don’t remember it being a nice kiss. It was him trying to take something from me that I didn’t want to give him, and that is a big reason why I would have forgotten it or blanked it out.”

“Did he hurt you?” Mars asked with a fierceness that I appreciated.

I kind of needed someone in my corner right now, and it felt good when Mars sat next to me on the bed, placing her arm over my shoulders.

“I don’t remember everything. Maybe being scared? I don’t know. But yeah, he was on the football team and was a lot bigger than me, he still is, and I imagine that if I hadn’t got away, maybe—”

“Oh I’m gonna kill him,” Mars interrupted, and her furious reaction made me wince.

“No, you won’t,” I began to explain, having in my head all the reasons why it wasn’t a good idea for Mars to go to prison. “I don’t recall everything that happened, and you being convicted of a crime, would—”

“Okay then. Maybe I can accidentally maim him.”

“Still prison,” I reminded her.

Mars muttered something harsh, then sighed. “What did Sin do when he found out who this guy was? Did he punch him?”

“No, he kissed me.”

I waited for the explosion. After all, this had happened a few days ago now, and I’d fobbed off Mars’ questions about the event with a generic “It was fine.” It appeared that Mars wasn’t in explosion mode, though, because she settled both of the boards on the bed and sat cross-legged next to me to examine them.

“Sinclair Bergman kissed you. This Marvin guy tried to kiss you. Viola, for the love of all that’s holy, starts from the beginning.”

It took us an hour just to work through the complicated reactions I was having to everything going on in my life. Marvin kissing me at the prom was just confusion and memories that didn’t sit right. But Sinclair kissing me was possibly the best thing to ever happen to me. Add in the fact that I had hired Marvin for more work— even though my bank account would scream at me when I paid the invoices and there was an awful lot to unpick.

Mars picked up a pen, wrote the word police on a green note, and added it to the Marvin board. I winced that she was using the wrong note color but I had to ignore it.

“That’s your first stop,” Mars said.

“No. Look. This happened ten years ago—I don’t recall any clear details, but I do know there was a witness who has, I think, been manipulated to consider exactly what they saw. The police will likely listen to my story and then, suggest that maybe it was just some prom thing that went wrong. Or maybe they won’t, and this was the only time Marvin did anything like that, and I’m throwing him under the bus.”

“But Vie—”

“And that’s why I have this board because I want to fix this, and I don’t want him to still be out there doing this to other people. I know that’s naïve, but if I could find enough of the variables that make him who he is, then maybe I can help him shut his own metaphorical door. He’s stuck in the high school loop where he used to be the big man, and I get the feeling things are slipping through his fingers in his real life now. I mean, he didn’t have a partner with him, and he didn’t seem to have photos of kids on his phone, he wasn’t sharing anything around like the rest of them were. He didn’t talk much to the other people there, certainly not about his work or what was going on in his life.”

“So, I get why you don’t want to go to the cops straight away” she huffed. “But I agree you should be worried about what he might be doing to others.”

“He looked at me as if he was going to cry, Mars. I don’t think I got the whole story, and then when he followed us to the car, I told him to fuck off, and he was standing there staring at me, and he looked broken.”

“Guilt?”

“Maybe, or secrets, or... I don’t know.”

“Then, the first stop is to think more about the Marvin thing. Maybe talk to the guy?” Mars side-hugged me. “And then, we move on to the kiss with Sin.”

I groaned and twisted my hands in my hair. “I don’t even know...”

“Well, to summarize about the kiss,” Mars began after she stared at the boards for a few more minutes. “I think you’re looking at this hypothesis in completely the wrong way.”

“But it’s science—”

“It’s not science; it’s magic,” she announced as if that made complete sense.

“Magic isn’t real—”

“Shh. You shouldn’t have two separate boards right now, you realize that?” she forged ahead without waiting for an answer. “What happened with Marvin didn’t, specifically, lead to the kiss in the parking lot, but the kiss was a reaction, like in chemistry.”

My ears pricked up at that. Chemistry was something I could deal with.

“Go on.”

She tapped the board and moved a few of the Post-its around.

“You plus Sin equals, I don’t know, something as a base, a starting point. Then, add in cocktails, and you have your first catalyst. Then, add in having to be social, plus the Marvin incident, plus recalling what happened at school, plus—”

“This equation is getting too big... even for me,” I observed.

I could see where this was going, and it seemed as if Mars wanted to excuse the kiss in the parking lot by detailing all the things leading up to it. But I wasn’t sure I wanted to excuse the kiss. I’d been extremely hoping there was an equation where the perfect kiss Sin and I had shared was just that... a kiss.

I didn’t want to admit that the hottest thing that ever happened to me was because of circumstances, because deep inside, I was desperate to keep the kiss as a discrete variable.

“All I’m saying is, everything that happened the rest of the night might have led to the kiss in one way or another, but that’s how kisses work. They have to come from somewhere, whether it’s drama, confusion, or just attraction. It’s nothing more difficult to understand than the fact that you and Sin have an attraction. Like two magnets, or something” Mars made fists and knocked them together as if she were demonstrating how magnets worked.

I smiled. I loved it when Marcelina tried to channel science because it was sweet that my friend took so much time trying to help me in ways I understood. I was aware I could be a hard friend to have at times, but Mars didn’t seem to care.

“You’re saying that Sin is my magnet?” I tapped my lip.

Now it was Mars’ turn to smile.

“Well, he is for the time being. Have I just talked complete garbage?”

“No. I want to say Sin is a very strong magnet, but I’ve got myself in a situation where I’ve had to hire him again, or at least, I didn’t have to hire him, but I did use some exaggerations about what my colleagues expected of me as an excuse to hire him. I mean, they’ll soon forget if I don’t bring a date to the Christmas party or Lady’s engagement, or the celebration for Denzel getting published.”

Then I frowned.

“But I want to kiss Sin again. A lot. And if I hire him then, maybe, we could do some more kissing, and it might add up to more.”

“Have you thought of maybe just asking him out on a date?”

I rolled my eyes and pressed my thumb to my chest.

“Have you seen me?”

“Cute?”

“Distracted, disorganized outside of my career. I don’t really take time to think about what I’m wearing. I barely remember social details, and I have these bright flashes where I remember everything. I’m contrary. I’m an equation that doesn’t balance.”

“That’s...” Mars huffed and then sighed. “One day you’ll actually realize you have way more to offer than you think. You’re kind, and funny, and brilliant.”

“Maybe then, after this Christmas event, I could ask him to come with me as my date. Only, what if he just laughs in my face? What if he says that unless he’s paid—”

“You’re an idiot,” she muttered. “In the first place, you wouldn’t be attracted to an asshole, and in the second place, Sinclair is one of the good guys.”

“Okay then, I’ll ask him. After the Christmas party.”

Mars nudged my elbow.

“Aww, little Vie is all grown up.”

I nudged her back, maybe a little hard as she tumbled off the bed, laughing like an idiot.

“I hate you,” I lied.

But Mars couldn’t hear me over the laughter.