Chapter Text
“Erin, no. Come on.”
“I’m just looking.”
“Looking leads to touching, which leads to trouble.”
Erin pouts a little as she gazes into the window of a pet store, looking in on an enclosure filled with kittens. “What if we only get one?”
“Then I’ll fall in love with it and then we’re both screwed, because I’m allergic as hell. Now come on, we’re already late for this meeting.” Abby hooks both her arms around one of Erin’s and pulls her away until they’re both walking down the street again.
Erin sighs. “I just want someone around when you’re away on trips…”
“Well, I hate to be that person, Er, but you could try to re-enter the dating pool?”
“I’ve been too busy to devote time and effort to a person, but a cat would be just the right amount of commitment. Besides, my last date was with—“
“Yes, I know. Your last date was with Kevin, who you’ve been chasing for over half a year and only said yes after he took pity on you, and who then proceeded to completely screw up the date to comical proportions. I know. That was a bad night, I had to pull soba noodles out of your hair when you got home.” She pats Erin’s shoulder sympathetically. “But have you considered that the solution to this problem isn’t to get a cat, but to maybe go on some dates? Keep it light and just work a little on your self-confidence, meet some new people?”
Erin just groans in reply. They arrive at whichever building this meeting is for, so Abby drops the conversation and they go inside. The meeting itself is beyond boring, it barely even relates to their current work at all. Erin doodles in the margins of her legal pad while she pretends to listen to what her department head is saying. Eventually, the meeting ends and Abby nudges her as the other people begin to leave. They get Starbucks on the way back to their apartment.
“I can’t believe how many grants we’re going to have to apply for this year for the physics department to get anywhere.” Abby flops onto the couch and sucks on the straw of her chai latte despairingly. “Get your schmoozing pants on, we’re in for a lot of ass-kissing.”
“Why can’t we just ask nicely?” Erin sits down beside her, messing with the cardboard sleeve around her cup.
“Because people who donate money and people who award grants like to feel like they’re investing in something that’s assured, and our field of research just doesn’t allow us to walk up to people and guarantee them that their money is going somewhere useful. So we have to come up with interesting ways to convince them, embellish the truth until they’re dying to give us assistance if it means they can share some of the glory of helping make a breakthrough.”
“Oh, good.”
“Well, that’s life. We’re cute, though, so I’m not too worried.”
“Instead of talking about manipulating rich people into funding us, let’s talk about dinner. Our fridge is totally empty.”
“That’s true. I’d suggest Chinese food, but I’m not in the mood for a pre-meal argument. How about we go down to that new taco truck down the street?”
“Sure.”
The pair go out to eat their dinner, and return to the couch to watch Netflix while they each peruse their laptops. At nine o’clock, Erin showers off and checks her e-mail one more time before she bids Abby good night and slips into her bed. This has been the schedule for the past two years, with maybe a handful of exceptions if Abby can convince her to stay out late one night, or once in a blue moon when they go out of town together. And Erin has herself convinced that it doesn’t bother her a bit that the only two people she has in her life right now are Abby and Patty. She has herself convinced that they’re enough.
Two weeks go by before Abby gets ready for another conference upstate. She gets involved with as many as possible, while the opposite is true of Erin, who is currently sprawled across Abby’s bed while the other woman packs her suitcase.
“It’s just a week long, and if you really didn’t want to be alone, you would come with me.”
“Do you know how freaked out I was when I presented for my doctorate? I don’t think participating in big public panels is a good idea.”
“Suit yourself, but I’m going to go and I’m going to have a good time. I’ll call you whenever I can, to check in on you and make sure you’re eating properly. And there better not be a cat in this apartment when I get back.”
“I’ll be fine. The apartment will be nice and quiet and I can focus more on my work.” Erin crosses her legs and looks up at the ceiling fan.
“Are you still planning the book?”
“Yeah, but I need more time to organize my thoughts. I’m having trouble visualizing the layout.”
“You should just try pouring everything out and sorting through it afterwards,” Abby suggests, tugging a pair of pants out from under Erin. “That’s how I wrote mine. And if you make progress while I’m gone, then I’ll look it over once I get back.”
“It’s worth a shot. After all, my approach hasn’t gotten me anywhere.”
“That’s the spirit.” Abby glances around her room to see if there’s anything she’s forgotten, then looks back down at Erin. “Promise me that you’ll go out? Even if it’s just with Patty. I don’t want you to coop yourself up in your room all week.”
“I will,” Erin replies indignantly, even though she knows that she would do just that if she could get away with it. But she already knows that Abby has told Patty to come check in on her, so there’s no use in trying.
“I know I sound like a mom right now, but I’m just a little worried about you. I don’t want you to get in a funk or anything.”
Erin knows what Abby is implying. She can still remember a time, not too long ago, when Abby wouldn’t even have considered leaving her by herself. Their past was complicated, and full of struggles, and crying, and screaming. There are still times where decisions Erin made come back to bite her in the ass, and moments in her relationship with Abby that are just as strained as they were all those years ago. She can’t really blame her friend for worrying, even now.
“I’m okay, Abs. And if I’m not, I’ll call Patty. I promise.” She’s said it a hundred times before, but it’s just as important every time.
Abby’s eyes linger on Erin, it’s a look that she’s seen many times before, and it never fails to make her heart ache with a mixture of emotions. “I trust you, Erin.”
They walk down to the lobby of the apartment building before they say their goodbyes. Erin hugs Abby tightly, wishes her luck, and watches her disappear into the waiting cab across the street. Once she gets back to the apartment, Erin eats a bowl of cereal and watches the game-show network until she falls asleep, stretched out on the couch.
The week is rather uneventful, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Erin is mostly left alone with her numbers and figures, and she makes some headway in her latest postulation. Lunchbreaks are spent in Patty’s office in the history building, which has just recently been renovated and still smells like fresh paint. The book is amounting to half a dozen pages of chicken scratch in her notebook, and an intimidatingly blank word document that has been ten typed pages before being backspaced back to nothingness. The first couple of nights are pleasantly quiet, spent reading cheesy romance novels and watching awful movies on the Hallmark channel. These nights are broken up with a couple dinners out with Patty and Kevin, who both listen attentively to her talk about her work even though it’s definitely beyond their respective areas of expertise.
Towards the weekend, when Abby is due to return, it's midnight and Erin can’t fight off the restless loneliness that settles into her chest. She wraps herself in the extra comforter that they keep in the linen closet and sips on a glass of wine as she looks through a list of popular dating sites. Part of her is resentful for even seeking out sites like True Match and Cupid’s Choice, but there’s another part, which sounds suspiciously like Abby, telling her that it’s worth a shot. She halfway fills out one profile, finishes another, and gets partway through the questionnaire before defiance takes hold and she clicks away, until suddenly she’s stumbled into a more obscure corner of the internet.
One link catches her eye, and Erin finds herself on a site meant to be a message-board for people to simply chat, a platonic True Match, in a way. Despite the fact that it’s not licensed or in any way official, it seems to be quite popular, and it’s free. Erin closes her previous windows and decides to create a profile. Most usernames are people’s full names followed by numbers, but to keep things anonymous she chooses particklephysics, because her drunk brain seems to think it’s both ingenious and hilarious. The last thing Erin remembers before falling asleep is choosing a photo of herself, wearing her favorite suit jacket over her favorite pin-striped shirt, with her face artistically cropped out as her profile picture.
The next morning welcomes Erin with a blinding headache and a crick in her neck. She gracelessly rolls right off the couch and onto the cold floor. Her laptop is still open on the coffee table, but presumably died sometime after she passed out. After a moment of groaning and trying to find her equilibrium, Erin gets up and plugs in her laptop before assessing the pile of crumpled blankets on the floor, and the empty wine glass sitting beside the wine bottle with an impressive amount of its contents gone. She pushes her hair from her face and cleans up the living room, mentally noting that letting her isolation get the best of her was a bad idea that only ended in pain. Next time, instead of indulging it, she’d just call Patty and go to bed early.
Once the computer powered back on, it began chiming with notifications. Erin, who was in the kitchen shaking aspirin into her hand, was quickly much more interested in what the laptop was doing than in curing last night’s bad decisions. She lowered the brightness on the screen and opened her web browser, suddenly remembering the website she had joined. Apparently, she had begun a conversation with someone, because the messenger app was opened and had multiple text bubbles back and forth. Dread and embarrassment flooded over Erin as she prepared to read this conversation, and then promptly delete her account.
Hiighvoltaage has messaged you.
[2:03AM] Hiighvoltaage: Hey there, I see on your profile that you’ve chosen Physics as your main interest. Don’t see many of those on here, care to talk about the wonders of subatomic particles with me sometime?
[2:05AM] Particklephysics: Absoltuly, I’m always ready to talk about partickles!
[2:05AM] Particklephysics: You could say that physics TICKLES me haha
[2:06AM] Hiighvoltaage: You okay there?
[2:09AM] Particklephysics: I might be a liiittle drunk at the moment
[2:15AM] Hiighvoltaage : Aha, that is apparent to me now.
[2:16AM] Hiighvoltaage : Have you had this conversation before? Explaining the username?
[2:22AM] Particklephysics: Actually no, I just made this whole account tonight because its better than the cupid matchmaker or whatever site
[2:27AM] Hiighvoltaage: So are you planning to use this site to meet eligible scientists then?
[2:31AM] Particklephysics: What? No I mean I’m choosing intellectual prusuits over romance and maybe meet a friend or two so Abby will get off my back
[2:36AM] Hiighvoltaage: That’s very noble of you. Maybe we can talk more when you sober up?
[2:55AM] Hiighvoltaage: I’m assuming you’ve fallen asleep, so goodnight
Erin sits there, mortified. The only positive thing about this is that she hasn’t seemed to have contacted anyone other than this person. She briefly checks Hiighvoltaage ’s profile, only to find that, like her, this person has chosen to leave off most of their personal information, including what their face looks like. Heart beating faster with anxiety, Erin reopens the messenger and types into the text box.
[10:13AM] Particklephysics: Oh my god, I’m so sorry about last night.
[10:13AM] Particklephysics: I’m so embarrassed.
[10:14AM] Particklephysics: I’m going to leave you alone forever now.
After waiting a few minutes, and even refreshing the page a couple times, Erin shuts her laptop and goes to take a shower. Once presentable, she decides to just go to the grocery store so that Abby can come home to a restocked kitchen. She meanders down the aisles and grabs the necessities: fruit, vegetables, eggs, cereal, coffee, milk and a few packages of meat, and then a bag of chips and a couple bars of chocolate for good measure.
By the time Erin gets back to the apartment, she brain isn’t quite as frantic as before, but she’s still thinking about the person she talked to last night. Even though really it shouldn’t matter that she went on a random site anonymously and had a brief conversation with another anonymous person who probably couldn’t care less that she’d come across like a moron. This was someone she’d never have to see in person. But her brain wasn’t always logical, so she still felt apprehensive when she sat down and reopened her laptop. The messenger chimed with a notification, to her mild surprise.
[1:35PM] Hiighvoltaage: Don’t worry about it. I’d still be up to talk sometime, if you’re as fun sober as you are drunk ;-)
Her face flushes and, with some other emotion thrumming in her chest, she types.
[1:37PM] Particklephysics: I’m actually not sure what part of that conversation amused you, so I can’t confirm or deny if I’m fun when I’m sober. But, if you would like to talk physics, I think I’d like to talk again. You seem like a nice person.
[1:45PM] Hiighvoltaage: Sure thing. Let’s use this site for the intended purpose, shall we? I have a few other correspondences going on right now, and a weird work schedule, but I’ll try my best to respond when I can.
[1:49PM] Particklephysics: That sounds good to me. I’m using this site casually, but I’ll probably check my messages when I get home from work in the evenings.
[1:53PM] Hiighvoltaage: Sounds like a plan. See you later, gotta run!
Erin bites her lip, fingers hovering over the keyboard.
[2:00PM] Particklephysics: I’m Erin, by the way.
After a couple moments, she second-guesses the decision to drop her name, panics, and tries to delete the message.
[2:08PM] Hiighvoltaage: I'm Holtzmann. Nice to meet you, Erin.