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You don’t ask, you don’t get. It was one of the very first lessons Jo’s father had ever taught her—right after “stop existing” and “be a boy.”
She chuckled darkly to herself and wiped some of the sweat from her brow, leaning an elbow out the open window of the van and staring at the rows of palm trees lining the road.
She might not have been able to fulfill all his wishes for her, but at least there were a few of good old Dad’s teachings she’d taken to heart. She was going to ask all right. She just had to get there already, before she lost her nerve.
Twisting around in her seat, she glanced at the clock and worried her lip ring with her teeth. “How much longer?”
The driver, Roberto, tapped his finger against the steering wheel. “Ten minutes?”
Ugh, that still sounded like forever. After eight odd hours in airports and planes—and getting on near forty minutes in an un-air-conditioned van—Jo was more than ready to be done with travel for the day. Nodding to herself, she turned to face the window again, staring out at the little clusters of tiny, pastel-colored houses set off from the road, with their clotheslines, satellite dishes, and what seemed like unending swaths of overgrown green.
She took a deep breath, trying to let the scenery zipping past calm her down. Obsessing over what she was going to do and say when she arrived wasn’t going to get them there any faster. It was only making her more anxious and pissed off.
How could she not be agitated, though? She’d been busting her ass at school for ages. Had snagged decent internships after her freshman and sophomore years, and now here she was: one of nine undergraduates getting to spend the summer working in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, doing research at the biggest radio telescope in the world. It was her dream job. The capstone for her CV—the thing that was going to propel her into a top-level graduate school. Make her dad stand up and finally take notice of everything she’d managed to achieve.
Anger and disappointment echoed in her chest. She’d thought it would be all of that and more. Right up until she’d found out she was being shunted off into a second-tier project. Again.
Curling her hands into fists, she shook her head, pent-up rage sending fire and ice down her spine. Whoever this P.J. Galloway person was who had divvied out the assignments had a lot of nerve. If the guy thought she was going to sit back and be sidelined and coddled just because she was a girl, trying to hack it in the sciences… well. He had another think coming.
Just as her simmering frustration threatened to boil over, a sign appeared over the crest of a hill, pointing the way to the observatory, and Roberto put the blinker on.
Okay. Go time.
He looked to her as he took the turn, gesturing to the left. “I take you to where you are staying.”
“Actually…” She swallowed hard and channeled all the lessons she’d learned over the years. Making her voice as authoritative as she could, she insisted, “I need to go to the main building first. I have an e-mail.” She patted the pocket of her cargo shorts, reassuring herself with the crinkle of the printout she’d stashed there. “From Dr. Galloway.”
He frowned, lines appearing between his eyes. “I think you meet Dr. Galloway tonight.”
“Everybody else will,” she agreed. “But we have things to discuss before that.”
He gave her a sidelong glance, and she held her breath. But after a long moment, he shrugged. “If you say so.”
She exhaled long and slow. She had said so. She’d asked, and she’d gotten what she wanted. Now she just had to do it one more time.
Without saying anything else, Roberto drove them straight up to the observatory gates, where he got waved through by the guard on duty. Jo blocked out the sights around her, concentrating on psyching herself up for this. Channeling all her righteous indignation and all the times people had tried to pass her over in the past.
Because it wasn’t going to happen. Not today. No way.
As soon as the van pulled to a stop, Jo unhooked her seat belt and shoved open the door. Behind her, Roberto protested, “You sure you don’t want me to take you to the house?”
“I’m good.” She waved him off, her focus intent on the closed door in front of her. On flinging it open.
The second she was inside, it was like she went blind, the humming fluorescent lighting overhead no match for the brilliance of the sun outside. She blinked to get her eyes to adjust, staring down a series of corridors, all painted cinder-block walls and propped-open doors. She had no idea where she was going, but she didn’t let that stop her. She knew the drill: walk around as if you own the place, and most people will assume you do.
“Miss? Miss!”
Sighing, Jo called over her shoulder, “Give me just a second.”
Roberto wasn’t letting her off that easily, though. He called after her again, and she swore beneath her breath as a couple of faces turned to give her curious stares. Yeah. Turned out the whole “walk around like you own the place” thing didn’t work quite so well when everyone knew you didn’t.
For the first time, a little prickle of doubt made her stomach twist. This entire plan of hers had the potential to be a disaster. She was tired and sweaty and disgusting, and it felt like her hair was plastered to her head. She was going off half-cocked, and in the kind of mood she was in, she was probably going to burn a bridge or two.
She hadn’t gotten as far as she had in life by being nice, though. In a man’s world, a girl never did. Not unless she had a hell of a lot bigger tits than Jo did.
The thick soles of her boots thudded against the tile floor as she rounded the corner, turning to enter a hallway lined by open doors. She scanned the numbers beside each one until finally she spotted it. Office number 109. She screwed up her confidence and tugged the hem of her top down. Shoved her hair out of her face and rubbed the studs in the shell of her ear for luck.
She knocked once before stepping right in, keeping her voice strong as she said, “Dr. Galloway?”
And then she did a double take as the chair of one Dr. P.J. Galloway slowly rotated, spinning to face the door, revealing—
Not the pot-bellied, middle-aged man Jo had been expecting. But a sixty-something-year-old lady in a lilac dress.
Fuck. So, so many layers of fuck.
The woman who was apparently Dr. Galloway raised one silver-hued eyebrow, peering over her glasses at Jo, and Jo was not the type to demur, but she shrank just a little inside. “Yes?”
“I’m—” Jo snapped her mouth shut when her throat made a wobbling sound. She swallowed and tried again. “I’m Jo Kramer, and I’m—”
“One of the delightful members of our Research Experience for Undergraduates program, yes. Yes, I know.”
As long as she didn’t know who else Jo was.
Before she could say another word, Roberto caught up with her. Breathing hard, he skidded to a stop in the middle of the hallway, and Jo glanced to find him sending a pleading look at Dr. Galloway over Jo’s head.
Dr. Galloway made a withering sort of noise but smiled as she shook her head. She refocused her attention on Jo, who hadn’t felt this much like a butterfly pinned to a specimen tray in years. “Is this regarding the matter about which you e-mailed me earlier this week, Ms. Kramer?”
Fuck it. Jo wasn’t about to back down now. She squared her shoulders and lifted her chin, crossing her arms over her chest and planting her feet. “It is.”
“Did you not receive my reply?”
“I did, but—” But what? But she’d thought she might be able to get her way through sheer force of will and personality. Thought she’d butt her head against the problem at least a few more times, because people got tired of dealing with her. They always got tired of dealing with her, and being exhausting and tenacious was how she got things done whenever someone slammed a door in her face. Whenever someone tried to tell her no. “But I’m here to argue my case in person.”
“Well, then.” Dr. Galloway tugged her glasses off and folded them before setting them down on her desk. “Please. Be my guest.”
All the words she’d rehearsed on the plane and in Roberto’s van seemed to shrivel as she called them forth. “I am… I… You’ve assigned me to a female advisor.”
“That I have.”
“And I’d like to request that I be switched to a different one.”
“Do you find yourself uncomfortable working for women, Ms. Kramer?”
“No! No, of course not.” It was ridiculous to think about. Almost as ridiculous as the idea that she’d be trying to make this case to a woman. A woman named P.J.
Seriously. How was she supposed to have seen that one coming?
Dr. Galloway tapped one short-cropped nail against the arm of her chair. “Because our nondiscrimination policy is quite clear on this point.”
“Nondiscrimination?” she croaked. As if Jo were the one trying to discriminate? It was laughable, and if this woman knew an iota of her history, she’d never dare suggest it. “I’m happy to work for a female advisor. Only…” She trailed off, uncertain how to say this.
How to explain the look that had been in her tenth-grade counselor’s eyes as she’d suggested that Jo should consider a field of study more suited to her sex. The way her physics teacher had never learned her name. The way the department chair at her university had scowled as he’d told her that maybe the lone female professor in their group might be able to find some work for her when he couldn’t be bothered to.
The way her father had always looked at her whenever she’d asked him for anything. Anything at all.
“Only…?” Dr. Galloway prompted.
Fuck it. There wasn’t really any way Jo could mess this up any worse than she had so far. “Only, I wasn’t sure if you were assigning me to a female advisor on account of my being female myself.”
It had happened before, and it burned, every time.
Dr. Galloway’s expression was one of very, very thinly veiled amusement as she arched her brows higher. “Ms. Kramer. You are one of six women enrolled in our undergraduate research assistant program this summer. Four of the nine resident scientists who were kind enough to take on students happen to be women. It would sadly be mathematically impossible for at least one of our female students not to be paired with an advisor of the same gender.”
The breath Jo sucked in made a whistling noise, a sound that echoed the one currently happening inside her head.
Six women. She was one of six women here this summer, and the very thought of it made something loosen in her chest.
Three years of undergraduate physics and astronomy and math and computing courses, and not once had there been six girls. Hell, in general, there had never been more than one. She’d only ever had one female professor in all that time, and now there were going to be at least four.
She wasn’t about to let her guard slip—it was entirely too tightly ingrained in her for that. But for the first time in a decade, the armor she surrounded herself with seemed to lighten. It made the junction of her shoulder and her neck pinch a little less hard, and her lungs filled in a way they rarely did as she let herself inhale.
Seeing Jo’s posture relax, Dr. Galloway smiled, her lips teasing upward with a knowing look that wasn’t about derision. No, Jo recognized derision entirely too well, and this was something else. Something Jo didn’t know exactly what to do with, but something that felt… safe, almost. It was a novel concept.
“Will there be anything else?” Dr. Galloway asked.
“I… um… no. Just that.”
“Well, thank you for being so accommodating with accepting your assigned advisor. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I do have some work to finish up before our welcome session this evening.”
“Right. Of course.”
“Roberto?”
“Sí?” he said, stepping forward.
“If you would be so kind as to deliver Ms. Kramer and her belongings to the girls’ residence?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Thank you.”
It was a dismissal if ever Jo had heard one. Her cheeks felt warm, embarrassment at the way she’d acted—at what she’d assumed—almost as hot as the climate.
But that was how things had gone for her—how things had always gone for her. You could only be discouraged or shunted aside so many times before you learned to expect the worst of people.
It burned to admit that she was wrong. But a person did what she had to do. “I apologize for—” she started.
Dr. Galloway waved her off. “Not an unrealistic presumption, unfortunately. I’ve been there a time or two myself, as you can imagine.”
“Um. Yes.”
Dr. Galloway started to spin around to face her computer screen again, and Roberto stepped to the side, holding out a hand for Jo to go ahead of him. Gritting her teeth, Jo nodded and plotted her retreat.
She’d only just turned away when Dr. Galloway called after her. “Oh, Ms. Kramer?”
Jo paused. “Yes?”
“Do try not to accuse Heather of sexism the first time you meet her. I think you’ll find she’s not quite as understanding about that kind of thing as I am.”
Jo’s stomach churned. “Right.”
With that, she put one foot in front of the other and let herself be marched back to the van they’d left waiting at the front of the building. The whole time, her neck tingled, shame and anger both twisting her up.
Shame at her behavior. At her presumptions and the way she’d let her temper get away from her. Anger at all the people who’d made her feel like she had to go in swinging every time—at her professors and her father. At herself.
“The other girls are already here,” Roberto said. He visibly stopped himself from getting her door for her.
“Great.” It wasn’t, though. She was in no mood to play nice with other people right now.
But maybe that was for the best. There wouldn’t be any hiding or mistaking. They’d know right off the bat what kind of bitch they were dealing with, and they could skip right over that awkward moment when people tried to be her friend.
She had neither the time nor the inclination to be anybody’s friend. She was here for ten weeks, and she was here to do her job. In her first five minutes, she’d managed to make a bad first impression on the person running the program and on the guy she’d have to talk to any time she needed a ride off-site for any reason. But that was fine. Totally fine.
Gazing out the window at the mountains in the distance, she sucked her lip ring tight between her teeth. The first impressions she’d given them weren’t wrong. They were just irrelevant.
And she’d work as hard as she needed to prove it.
Adam McCay was lucky. So, so lucky. He just had to keep reminding himself of that.
Mopping sweat off his brow, he folded up the last of his shirts, tugged open a drawer, and dropped them inside. He straightened back up and surveyed his room. Four white walls and a couple big, screened windows with clunky wooden shutters. A closet and a dresser.
And it all looked unbearably empty. None of his usual posters or prints. None of his usual anything, but there hadn’t been space in his suitcases for much except books and clothes. It didn’t really matter, though. Just ten short weeks here, and then he would get to go home.
He frowned at himself for even thinking it. If he started romanticizing home on his first day, he was going to be wallowing by the end of the week. And it was so damn shortsighted and selfish, anyway.
He was here, in sunny, beautiful Puerto Rico. He had a summer research job that any physics or astronomy major in the country would kill for, mapping out galaxies using a giant radio telescope. He was getting paid, and he was getting valuable experience, and he was living someplace exciting and interesting.
And all he could think about was that his phone still hadn’t rung.
Even though he’d sworn to himself he wouldn’t do it—wouldn’t keep worrying at this like a scab about to bleed—he pulled out his phone and glanced at the screen. No messages, no missed calls. Nothing. He put the thing away with a sigh. Shannon was probably busy with whatever she was up to back at home, and he didn’t begrudge her that. Their mismatched schedules were part of why they’d decided to take a break this summer, after all. Part of why she’d wanted to take a break. And he hadn’t thought she was entirely wrong.
He had thought he’d hear from her occasionally, though.
Not that standing around obsessing about it was going to do him any good. He shook it off, giving himself a couple of quick slaps on the cheek for good measure, because honestly, this mood of his was starting to piss him off.
He gave the room another quick once-over, but there really wasn’t anything left for him to do. Coming from his parents’ place in Florida, he’d managed to be the first one here by a long shot, arriving early enough that it had warranted the observatory’s driver, Roberto, making a special trip out to San Juan just for him. It had been a good chance to pick the guy’s brain about how things operated out here, and an even better chance to get first dibs on the room of his choice. An extra couple of hours to work on getting settled in, but now he was restless, and really, really in need of a distraction.
Normally, this was the kind of energy he’d prefer to burn off by going for a run or lifting some weights, but the heat made him think twice about it. He’d have to get used to fitting in his exercise routine in the early mornings if he didn’t want to die of heat stroke. Didn’t help him much right now, though.
At a loss, he pointedly did not reach for his phone, but instead wandered out into the hall and stuck his head into the room next door.
“Hey.” It took him a second, but he remembered. “Tom?”
“Yeah?”
Tom was sitting on the floor, suitcase barely touched, with a book in his lap and a fan pointed right at his head. Adam chuckled at the sight, plucking at the damp fabric of his own T-shirt in sympathy.
“A summer without AC is gonna be killer, huh?”