His voice is a little gravelly. Maybe he’s coming down with a cold. I hope I don’t get it. “Um, that would be great. Thanks.” It takes him about half a second. Then we’re both back to our original positions, me with my coffee, Liam with his tea, and I realize that in the mildly mortifying adventures of the last minute, I forgot to think of a decent olive branch topic of conversation. Fantastic.

So I blurt out: “The Nationals are doing well this season.” I think? I overheard a dude say it on the bus. Liam’s always playing video games with his dude friends. He probably likes sports, too.

“Oh. That’s . . . good.” Liam nods.

I nod.

More awkward nodding, and then silence. Again.

Okay. This is way too uncomfortable. I’m going to install motion sensors in every room in the house so I can make sure our paths never cross again—

“What sport is that, again?”

I look up from the coffee I’m furiously stirring. “Mmm?”

“The Nationals. What sport?”

“Ah . . .” I glance around the kitchen, looking for clues. Find a grand total of none. “I have no idea.”

Liam dunks a tea bag in his mug, a gleam of amusement in his eyes. “Me, neither.”

We leave the room from opposite doors. I wonder whether he’s aware that we almost smiled at each other.

Five

Four months, two weeks ago

I look out the window, trying to use my engineering degree to approximate how many meters of snow fell overnight. One? Seventeen? Sadly, there was no Ballpark How Snowbound You Are 101 in my grad school curriculum, so I give up to glance down at my phone.

There’s no way I can make it to work, and my entire team at the EPA is in the same situation. Sean’s car is stuck in his driveway. Alec, Josh, and Evan can’t even make it to their driveway. Ted is on his fifth joke about extreme weather events. The Slack channel pings with a few more messages cursing all forms of precipitation, and then Sean makes the call that we all should just work from home. Accessing the secure server from our EPA-issued laptops. Which for me is a bit of a problem.

So I text Sean:

Mara: Sean, I don’t have my EPA-issued laptop at home with me.

Sean: Why?

Mara: You haven’t issued me one yet.

Sean: I see.

Sean: Well, you can just take the day to answer emails and stuff like that, then. We’re just going to try to fix the electrostatic sprayer issue today, so we don’t really need you.

Sean: And next time make sure to remind me that you don’t have a laptop yet.

How passive-aggressive would it be to forward to Sean the reminder email I sent him two days ago? Very, I imagine.

I sigh, text a quick Will do, and try not to grind my teeth over the fact that I’d love to give my input on the electrostatic sprayer issue. It’s actually closely related to my graduate work, but who am I kidding? Even if I were present, Sean would act like he always does: politely hum at my contributions, find a trivial reason to discard them, and fifteen minutes later paraphrase and restate them as his own ideas. Ted, my closest ally in the team, tells me not to take it too personally, because Sean’s a jerk to pretty much everyone. But I know I’m not imagining that his most egregious behavior is always directed at me (“I wonder why,” I muse to myself, stroking my woman-in-STEM chin). But Sean’s the team leader, so . . .