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The man’s eyebrows shot up, and he was silent for a beat before he threw his head back and laughed. Much to her consternation, it wasn’t just any laugh; it was a full-body, from-his-belly kind of laugh.
He had a nice laugh. It made her angrier. A man who acted like he did had no right possessing the sort of laugh capable of warming her down to her toes.
“I don’t see what’s so funny. You’re behaving like an ass. No, not even that, you straightened-out wire coat hanger! You’re-”
“Hey!No!” Lou yelled, appearing at her elbow. She shook an uncapped sharpie at Grace in a way that reminded her Lou had just ended a scuffle with naught but the simple marker.
“Don’tnome,” Grace yelled back, taking a sidestep away from her sharpie-wielding friend.
“Then don’t call Anton an ass, or-” She paused and gave Grace a perplexed look. “A straightened-out wire coat hanger? I mean, why?”
Anton.
That one word brought Grace’s world crashing down around her with the force of an atomic explosion.
It was him. The snotty voice actor washerAnton.It hadn’t even crossed her mind, not with the entitled manner he’d spoken to her, not when he had treated her like nothing. Not even with Anton ghosting her, because hey, he’d been a little drunk and sometimes people did weird shit when they were drunk. Not even after that had she thought this was her Anton.
HerAnton didn’t do that—wouldn’t.
And yet here he was, doing just that.
Grace jabbed a finger at the boorish man she had just been tempted to slap. “The broken coat hanger is Anton? There’s no way.”
“The one and only.” Anton put one hand on his chest before giving her a low bow, complete with a flourish of his other hand. “Anton Kovalev.”
Grace frowned, thinking back to the phone calls, the emails, the fluttering sensation in her stomach associated with the name Anton. The one that had asked her out, because by Odin’s beard,the man had asked her out.How couldhebe the man who still bowed, though now he looked up at her with an infuriating smile?
His face, Grace decided, was stupid. But only because she wanted to dart forward and kiss the smile right off it.
That would show him some manners.
Of coursethis was Anton, who turned out to be an asshole in person.Of courseshe had fallen for him without letting herself Google search him. Of course this kind of man would ghost a girl.
Of course, of course, of course.
“He isn’t nice,” she blurted out, giving Lou a sidelong look. “At all. Not even a tiny bit.” She glared and shook a finger at him. “You-you’resupposedto be nice. I expected courteous and kind, maybe even a little cheeky, but not a demanding prima donna!And you ghosted me!” She ended on a scream. There was no denying it was a shriek, but for now Grace would tell herself it was a scream. There was honor in a scream, but not a shriek.
Lou sighed. "Look-“
“I still need a coffee,” Anton interrupted, uprighting himself and leaning against the back of a lab table. He looked bored with what was going on in front of him, and Grace decided she would rather walk over broken telescope lenses, or get lost in the curvature of time and space for the rest of her natural life, before she got the man a single thing.
He paused, gave her a raised eyebrow, and then held up a finger. “What are you talking about ghosted you?”
She cared for her science tribe out of the goodness of her heart, out of her desire to see them grow up to be healthy, strong science minions. She’d thought of this man as hers, wanted him to be hers, but now she knew that’d been a mistake.
The whole stupid thing, the flirting, thoughts of a date with him included, had been a terrible mistake. This man was not one of her brood, and she fixed him with a caustic glare.
“You’ll get nothing and like it, buster. And don’t act like you don’t know what you did.”
Lou dropped the sharpie with a gasp at Grace’s vehemence. She had never known her friend to speak like that to anyone, but here Grace was, staring down one of the most brilliant physics minds in the world, fire in her eyes.
“What the hell happened? I was gone for two minutes.” Lou’s eyes darted between the pair, who were now locked in a battle of stares.
“Says who?” Anton asked Grace, ignoring Lou’s question. “A glorified delivery girl?”
“Anton!” Lou’s eyes widened in shock at the other astrophysicist, but Grace had drawn herself up to her full height and stared down the man in front of her. If he thought he could talk to her like that and get away unscathed, he was mistaken. Didn’t matter if she’d had a crush or flirted with him. She wasn’t Grace Muñoz, Queen of Overthinking and Science Geniuses, for nothing.
“A delivery girl? That’s rich, coming from a Steve Jobs rip-off! Nice top,” she said flicking a finger at his turtleneck.
