“My point is that I went to MIT and played D&D and Magic—”

“Hello, I was a f**king D&D pro, Ziggs.”

“My point,” I said, ignoring him, “is that Yale-attending, lacrosse-playing former bass players might have ideas about how to improve the dating pool options of bespectacled, nerdtastic geeks.”

“Are you f**king with me right now?”

Instead of answering, I crossed my arms over my chest and waited patiently. It was the same stance I’d adopted back when I was supposed to be rotating through several labs to help decide what type of research I wanted. But I didn’t want to do lab rotations for my entire first year of graduate school; I wanted to get started on my research with Liemacki, immediately. I’d stood outside his office after explaining why his work was perfectly positioned to move away from viral vaccine research into parasitology, and what I thought I could work on for my thesis. I’d been prepared to stand like that for hours, but after only five minutes he’d relented and, as the chair of the department, made an exception for me.

Will looked off into the distance. I wasn’t sure if he was considering what I was saying, or deciding whether he should just start running and leave me wheezing in his snow-dust.

Finally, he sighed. “Okay, well, rule one of having a broader social life is never call anyone except a cab before the sun is up.”

“Yeah. Sorry about that.”

He studied me, eventually motioning to my outfit. “We’ll run. We’ll go out and do stuff.” He winced, waving vaguely at my body. “I don’t really think you need to do anything but . . . f**k, I don’t know. You’re wearing your brother’s baggy sweatshirt. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I have a feeling that’s pretty standard attire, even when you’re not jogging.” He shrugged. “Though it is kind of cute.”

“I am not dressing like a hoochie.”

“You don’t have to dress like a hoochie.” He straightened, messing up his hair before tucking it beneath his beanie again. “God. You’re a ballbuster. Do you know Chloe and Sara?”

I shook my head. “Are those some girls you’re . . . not dating?”

“Oh, hell no,” he said with a laugh. “They’re the women who have my best friends by the balls. I think they’d be good for you to meet. Swear to God you’ll all probably be best friends at the end of the night.”

CHAPTER TWO

“So wait,” Max said, pulling out his chair to sit down. “Is this Jensen’s sister you shagged?”

“No, that’s the other sister, Liv.” I sat across from the Brit and ignored both the amused grin on his face as well as the uncomfortable twist in my stomach. “And I didn’t shag her. We just hooked up a little. The youngest sister is Ziggy. She was only a kid that first time I went home with Jensen for Christmas.”

“I still can’t believe he took you home for Christmas and you made out with his sister in the backyard. I’d kick your ass.” He reconsidered, scratching his chin. “Ah f**k that. I wouldn’t have given a shit.”

I looked at Max, felt a small grin pull at my mouth. “Liv wasn’t there when I came back a few years later for the summer. I behaved myself the second time around.”

All around us, glasses clinked and conversation carried on in a quiet murmur. Tuesday lunch at Le Bernardin had become a routine for our group in the past six months. Max and I were usually the last ones to the table, but apparently the others had been held up in a meeting.

“I suspect you want an award for that,” Max said, studying his menu before closing it with a snap. Truthfully, I’m not sure why he even bothered to open it in the first place. He always got the caviar for his first course, and the monkfish for the main course. I’d recently surmised that Max kept all of his spontaneity for his life with Sara; with food and work, he was a quiet creature of habit.

“You just forget what you were like before Sara,” I said. “Stop acting like you lived in a monastery.”

He acknowledged this with a wink and his big, easy smile. “So tell me about this little sis.”

“She’s the youngest of the five Bergstrom kids, and in grad school here at Columbia. Ziggy’s always been this ridiculous brain. Finished undergrad in three years, and now works in the Liemacki lab? The one who does the vaccine work?”

Max shook his head and shrugged as if to say, The f**k are you talking about?

I continued, “It’s a very high-profile operation over at the med school. Anyway, last weekend in Vegas when you were off chasing your pu**y to the blackjack tables, Jensen texted to let me know he was coming to visit her. I guess he gave her a Come-to-Jesus about not living among the test tubes and beakers for the rest of her life.”