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“At least it smells good,” Pete said while Myka dragged him into the emergency room, which was not at all consolation for the fact that he had a damn marshmallow stuck up his nose.
He waved to everyone in the emergency room and winked at the receptionist while he signed in. Myka flung herself into a chair, glowering. It was Friday night, early enough that the drunks and partiers hadn’t started rolling in yet, but still, the emergency room was packed. One kid (whom Pete refused to look at directly) had a towel wrapped around her hand and was talking a little too giddily to the old woman next to her, who had a bump rising on her forehead. Several people were coughing, and one guy was standing against the wall, blushing and sweating.
“What do you think that guy’s got in his butt?” Pete asked when he sat down.
“I so don’t want to know.”
The woman on Myka’s other side, who’d been studying what looked like a prosthetic running leg, muttered absently, “I believe he said it was a highlighter. Which I’m sure will be the highlight of his medical history.”
Myka laughed, and even Pete got a smile when he told her it could have been worse.
“I would not have spent an hour trying to dig something out of your butt, Pete, and would you even have called me in that case?”
“Who else would I call?” Pete asked, as if the thought of being left adrift in the consequences of his own stupidity was unimaginable.
Eyebrow raised, the woman asked, “What exactly have you got stuck where?”
“He snorted a marshmallow.”
“I was attempting to fire a marshmallow out my nose, and it was hilarious.”
Myka leaned toward the woman and whispered, “He snorts when he laughs. Total Prince Charming.”
“And what brings you and your… contraption to this lovely medical facility on such a beautiful summer day?” Pete asked, and suddenly he was charming, all smiles and sparkly eyes and genuine interest.
The woman scoffed and ran a hand through her hair, and it showed off how thick her hair was, how it fell so perfectly. She was gorgeous, now that Myka considered it, and expensively dressed, and Myka hoped Pete wasn’t going to actually get anywhere with her, because clearly she was…
“Are you familiar with the video game Portal?”
Pete gasped. “Are those long-fall boots?”
A nerd. This woman was a total nerd. So much for Myka’s man-eater first impression.
“Brilliant, aren’t they? Bit bigger than the ones in the game, of course, because one has to make room for the foot and leg, but they almost work.”
“I’m guessing that ‘almost’ is what brings you here?”
The woman winced. “Field test one was not a perfect success.”
“I’m Pete, by the way,” Pete said through his laughter, reaching across to shake the woman’s hand before pointing to Myka and introducing her.
“Helena,” the woman replied.
“You don’t look like you’re hurt,” Myka said, because Pete was still leaning across her to talk to Helena, and she was not going to have him flirting with someone while practically in her lap.
Helena sighed. “They’re Claudia’s boots, actually. My young friend from an engineering project, she wanted me to film the test.”
“The test” apparently being to jump off a roof to see if the boots absorbed shock as well as Claudia’s models had. And, Helena insisted, they worked wonderfully for that; only a little soreness in Claudia’s knees and ankles, but the shock absorbers had sprung back up and launched Claudia forward after she’d landed. She was half-way through explaining how wonderful Claudia’s form was as she’d crash-landed on her face when Pete was called back by the triage nurse.
“You take good care of her, okay, Helena?” Pete said, winking at her and patting Myka on the shoulder.
Myka sank lower in the hard plastic chair, glanced at the television in the corner, then asked Helena, “Why would you let a kid jump off a roof?”
“I trust her,” Helena said. “I have faith in her designs and her ability to manage consequences. Do you not have such faith in your friend?”
Myka laughed. “No way.”
She looked at the window into triage, watched Pete waving his hands while the nurse laughed, and smiled. “I’d be there to pick him up off his ass, though.”
Helena’s answering smile was gentle, and Myka sighed and sat up straighter, let the tension from her bunched-up shoulders relax, while Helena went back to tinkering with her friend’s invention.
Pete came out of triage, told a joke or two, and whined about having to go face the doctors alone.
“I’ve seen enough of the inside of your nose for tonight. Go by yourself, I’ll find a vending machine for you.”
“Ooh, get us all one, we’ll call it a date!”
Myka grumbled, “I wouldn’t eat that crap if you paid for it, which you would never do when my wallet is within a hundred yards.”
“Just you and me then,” Helena smirked.
Pete made his stupid “ooh” face, blew them a kiss, and started making friends with the attendant at the door.
And that was that. Myka and Helena together again in the slowly emptying waiting room. Helena murmured that Pete was a charming man while she squinted at a hairline crack down the long-fall boot’s upper casement.
“How did you meet?”
So Myka talked about Pete. Because of course Helena would want to get to know Pete, who wouldn’t? And jeez, this woman was gorgeous and gregarious, but down-to-earth enough to keep him in line, so who was Myka to protest?
Then Helena talked about how the particular crack she’d been pursing her lips at indicated where the impact was felt most in the boot: below Claudia’s foot, but honestly too close for comfort.
“It makes sense that there’d be cracks. Claudia’s models were made with much the same materials, and while everything else scaled up nicely, the strength of this plastic clearly has limits.”
“What about the falling-on-her-face problem?”
Helena shrugged. “Simple enough in theory. We just need to have shock absorbers for the spring-back of the other shock absorbers, the ones that manage the landing force. Though one might want to keep a bit of it, to transfer into forward momentum.”
She seemed engrossed in the boot in her lap, so Myka wasn’t prepared for her to look up with such intensity. The way she was focusing on Helena and her physics was mirrored in the way Helena was focusing on her.
Given a few more seconds, she would have said something, but the door into the waiting room swung open, and a red-haired girl in a sling called out, “HG!”
Helena ran a hand through her hair, gave Myka a surprisingly shy smile, and started gathering her things.
Myka stood with her, touched her fingertips to Helena’s elbow to stop her—and dear god that jacket was so damn soft, like the curious look Helena gave.
“This is, uh,” Myka started, fumbling a pen out of her pocket and scribbling on the back of a business card, “this is Pete’s phone number. In case you’re interested. Because, you know, he seemed interested in you.”
Her laugh was nervous, and it crumpled like wet confetti while Helena frowned at the phone number. Then she turned the card over and smirked.
“And is this your phone number?” she asked, holding it up.
“Yeah, it’s just a business card.”
Eyebrow raised, Helena asked her, “Must I only call you on business?”
Myka’s eyes were wide as she spluttered, “No.”
Claudia was whining that she wanted to go home, and Helena sighed and tucked the business card into her jacket. Myka crammed her hands in her pockets and looked away.
“Myka,” Helena said before she turned to leave, and Myka looked up into those intensely focused eyes again. “I promise we’ll go somewhere nicer than a vending machine.”
When Pete came out, Helena had sashayed out the door already, but Myka was still standing and rubbing the back of her neck. Pete whined in disappointment.
“I gave her your number,” Myka told him.
“Schwing!” Pete said, and it was the strangest noise because his nose was still a little swollen. “What’d she say?”
“I uh, I think she’s gonna call me.”
Pete insisted he smelled love, but Myka said it was probably just the residual sugar.
She said it all weekend, until the first time Helena called.
“Yes, that is Pete singing love songs in the background,” she muttered while Helena laughed. “No more marshmallows in his nose, but he might need medical attention if he doesn’t shut up.”
Myka tried to be annoyed. She really did. But Helena was listing restaurants, and her top choice had “the most wonderful woodwork, bit of a Moorish influence, which is admittedly odd for a Thai restaurant, but you should really see…”
And yeah. It smelled a bit like love.