Page 42 of Omega's Formula

“I used to come here with Anna,” Erik says suddenly. “When we were younger. Our parents had a house not far from here. Weekend place.”

I glance at him, surprised. He’s staring out the window, expression distant.

“Nice,” I say, because I don’t know what else to say.

“It was.” He doesn’t elaborate.

The car drops us at a trailhead parking lot. There are a few other cars but the trails themselves are quiet. We pick a path at random and start walking.

The forest is beautiful. It’s late spring, everything is green and alive. Sunlight filters through the canopy in shifting patterns. Bird sing somewhere overhead. The air smells like pine and earth and growing things.

I take a deep breath and feel something unclench in my chest.

“Better?” Erik asks.

“Yeah. Much.”

We walk in silence for a while. The path is wide enough for two, but we keep drifting apart and then back together, some unconscious gravitational pull neither of us can quite escape. Every time our shoulders almost brush, I feel that spark of awareness again and I have to consciously step away.

It’s worse out here, somehow. Without the apartment walls to contain it, without the distractions of cooking and cleaning and television, there’s nothing between us but air and want.

“About yesterday,” Erik says.

My stomach tightens. “Which part?”

“The morning. I shouldn’t have—” He stops walking, turns to face me. “I shouldn’t have called it a mistake and left like that. It was cowardly.”

I stop too, turning to look at him. Big mistake. The light out here catches his eyes, turns them impossibly blue, and I forget for a second how to breathe.

“Is that an apology?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.” I start walking again. “Noted.”

He catches up, falls into step beside me. “That’s it? Just ‘noted’?”

“What do you want me to say? That it’s fine?” I keep my eyes on the path, on my feet, on anything but him. “It doesn’t matter what I say. It doesn’t change anything.”

“It matters to me.”

I stop again. He stops too, and suddenly we’re facing each other in the middle of the trail, morning light dappling through the trees, and he’s looking at me with an expression I can’t read.

“Why?” I ask. “Why does it matter what I think?”

“I don’t know.” His voice is rough. “It just does.”

The air between us feels thick, charged. I should step back. I should make a joke, break the tension, keep walking.

Instead I stay exactly where I am and watch his eyes drop to my mouth.

“This is a bad idea,” I say.

“I know.”

He takes a step closer. I don’t move away.

“If you kiss me again,” I say, “I’m going to kiss you back. And then we’re going to have a problem.”