The Duality Principle (4 page)

Connor looked out past the porch railing. In the darkness, fireflies winked at him from the lawn. It wasn’t that he didn’t know his grandfather was aware of his not-so-savory past with girls. He just didn’t
want
him to know about it. It was hard to avoid, though, considering how he’d behaved.

He picked at the hole in the knee of his jeans, the threads unraveling. “It’s been a while since I acted like that.”

“Hmm,” his grandfather said again, bringing the cigar to his lips. This time, Connor knew exactly what that
hmm
meant. It meant he’d heard that before. It meant Connor had been so wild for so many years, breaking laws and breaking hearts, unable to be tamed after a childhood of lawlessness, it was hard to believe he’d come out of it changed.

“It’s true. Besides, I don’t want to be like that with her.”

“Hmm.” Another puff. “What makes her so special?”

Connor tugged on a loosening strand of frayed denim until it snapped.

“She’s different,” he said, knowing Gabby was a hell of a lot more than just that. She was the kind of girl who went beyond his wildest expectations. The kind he thought he could never have. “She makes me want to be different too.”

“So be different.”

Connor had no clue how to reply to that one. Wondering how to do exactly that was the reason he needed advice in the first place. But as the porch swing gently swayed, Connor finally figured it out.

Duality. Gabby’s theory.

He could replace himself with his dual and become the opposite of who he once was. He could be a different version of the Connor Starks that everyone in town knew and pitied. A better version. A version Gabby would want to be with.

Then, maybe, he’d have a shot.

Chapter Four

“Are you going on another date with Connor?”

Gabriella looked up from where she was crouched by her grandmother’s overgrown rose bushes. Jamie was on the other side of them in her own backyard, stretched out along a deck chair, her brown ringlets piled up in a messy bun on top of her head. She’d been lying there slathered in oil for hours while Gabriella attempted to garden, wearing a hat and covered in SPF-80. Jamie was a lifeguard and spent enough of her time outside that she didn’t need to tan on her day off. Still, she’d been simmering in the sun for so long Gabriella was surprised she couldn’t smell her friend’s skin burning.

“Do you know that ninety percent of skin cancers are associated with exposure to ultraviolet radiation?” Gabriella asked.

“Do you know you’re really good at not answering the questions I ask you?”

“Fine,” she answered with a sigh. “Yes, I’m going out with Connor again. He asked me to go out for ice cream before we left the coffee shop on Saturday.”

“Locking in the next date before the first one ends. That’s good. I think he really likes you.”

“Well, he was nothing but a perfect gentleman.” Gabriella eyed the edge of the bush she was pruning. It had become wild without Nana’s diligent attention, and she’d started the day with a pair of shears in hand, hoping she inherited her grandmother’s green thumb. “He just walked me to my car after our date and didn’t try anything at all.”

“What were you hoping for? For him to attack you in your backseat?”

It was a rhetorical question, making it all the easier for Gabriella to say nothing. It was better Jamie didn’t know she’d wanted something exactly like that. She’d been hungry for it after the Cake-Feeding Incident, and again after that when Connor lifted a leftover crumb from the corner of her mouth with his thumb. She wanted to lick it. She’d wanted to lick other things too.

“You thought he was cute, though, right?” Jamie asked, obviously not needing an answer. “I thought he was perfect for you, you both being geeks and all.”

“I’m not a geek. I’m a mathematician. There’s a difference.” She snipped some bark away, freeing the last stem from its hardened casing. “But yes. I thought Connor was very—” She shook her head. Scrunched up her nose. “Cute.”

Connor was more than just cute, with that perfect face and considerable frame, but their date turned out to be more frustrating than anything else. He walked her back to her car, and Gabriella had stared up at that God-forsaken little dip above his mouth, wanting to prove her theory that it was soft and supple. She needed to crane her neck to look at it. He was so tall that even with her almost on her toes she was barely eye-level with his shoulder. She was close enough, though, to tell him she enjoyed meeting him, that she’d be happy to join him for ice cream, and waited for him to take the first step. She wanted him to kiss her or at least give her another raised eyebrow or that glint in his eye again. Connor seemed momentarily torn, as if he were holding himself back from something. His eyebrows pushed together as he stared at her mouth, worry lines forming on his forehead. When he finally leaned in, all he did was give her a polite peck on the cheek, said he would meet her in town on Wednesday and walked away.

“I just don’t think it’s going anywhere,” Gabriella said. “But I suppose I’ll go out with him one more time.”

The truth was that she couldn’t figure Connor out, and nothing irritated her more than a problem she couldn’t solve. His behavior walked the delicate tightrope between gentleman and bad boy, and she wanted to know why. Why he set her spine tingling with his eyes on her mouth at the café, and why he stopped right when he could have had more. She tossed her shears onto the grass and sat back on her heels. Connor was like a complicated proof she needed to take her time with, but after so much dissatisfaction and nights left wanting, patience wasn’t a virtue she possessed anymore.

Jamie sighed and shook her head. “Your mom is right. You’re never satisfied.”

The words stung. Gabriella always thought that it was her mother, not her, who could never be satisfied. Despite all of her accomplishments, despite being accepted to M.I.T., passing her qualifying exams and having her thesis proposal accepted, the fact that she wasn’t paired off to some loafer-wearing doctor-in-the-making somehow made her a failure. Her mother was still in the mindset that the pursuit of a man was more important than a career. It was another archaic conjecture Gabriella wanted to disprove.

“So when are you seeing him again?”

“Wednesday.”

“Wednesday. Okay.” Jamie sat up. “That gives us two days to figure out what you should wear.”

Gabriella rolled her eyes. What was the point of putting any effort into figuring out what to wear if Connor wasn’t going to put any effort into taking her clothes
off
her? She began gathering the roses she’d cut, bunching them together a little too quickly. A thorn scratched against her index finger. She winced and inspected the drop of crimson that beaded up on her skin.

“My clothes are fine,” she insisted, her tone a little more forceful than she intended. Jamie didn’t seem to notice.

“No, they’re not. Maybe if you knew what to wear on a second date, you wouldn’t be single.”

“You’re single.”

“I’m not single. I’m weighing my options. There’s a difference.” Jamie stuck her tongue out. Then she shook her head again, more dramatically this time, as if to say how hopeless Gabriella was. “I’m going to make some margaritas. You want?”

“No thanks.”

Jamie shrugged and went inside.

It was an unlikely friendship they’d formed the first summer Gabriella spent in Portland. She was nine and gangly and unsure of herself. Jamie, however, was always ready for a new friend and had knocked on Nana’s front door within minutes of her arrival, asking if Gabriella could come out and play.

“Oh how wonderful,” Gabriella’s mother had trilled, practically shoving her out onto the front porch. “Someone to play with instead of doing math all the time.”

Gabriella had been born with a knack for numbers, more at home with sums and products than other girls. She didn’t get along with her classmates at the all-girls private school she attended, but Jamie had grown up with three older brothers and was happy to have a girlfriend around. Gabriella’s mother had no idea what kind of influence Jamie was going to be that first summer. Despite the early awkwardness between them, their friendship grew to become something she secretly looked forward to every year. For the months of June through August, she deviated from the well-behaved little girl she’d always been. Instead, she ran through the sand dunes barefoot and learned how to play practical jokes, helping Jamie scare her brothers. The summer she was twelve, Jamie taught her how to apply lipstick and French braid her hair. Visits in her teen years were spent reading magazines that explained the “Rules of Dating,” including how to kiss and when to let a boy go all the way.

That had happened for Jamie well before it did for Gabriella, her virginity lost midway through her senior year in high school. Jamie said he’d held her hand for hours first, that he’d been gentle, sweet and tender. Gabriella wasn’t jealous—not exactly. She wasn’t interested in slow and romantic. She wanted it hot and wet and dirty. She had no idea where those fantasies came from or why they were the spark that pushed her over the edge when her body ached in the quiet hours of the night, but she was desperate to know what that kind of raw, uninhibited passion felt like.

It wasn’t until her freshman year at college that Gabriella was able to experience that. She hooked up with the R.A. of her dorm on Halloween. He’d been only moderately drunk, and she’d been ridiculously turned on by the way he pinned her down on his twin-sized bed, his fingers dipping into her panties and remarking huskily over the slick skin he found there. He was clumsy from the beer and not as easy on her as he would have been if he’d known she was a virgin, but she didn’t offer the information. The sex was uncomfortable and disappointing in the end, but it was her first taste, a trial run, and each subsequent date became an opportunity to try for the grittiness she always wanted. Seven years and a string of boyfriends later, she decided the search was pointless. It also didn’t mesh well with the other goals she’d nurtured for years: to become a well-respected mathematician and counter theories everyone else thought of as truth.

She lifted her head from the rose bush as a butterfly floated past her, its wings a wash of orange, yellow and black. She had to laugh at the coincidence. It had been when Gabriella stepped into the tattoo parlor in Cambridge and chosen a butterfly design for her ink that she realized that duality wasn’t possible. The butterfly transformed from the ordinary caterpillar into something beautiful and wonderful, but that was a paradox that couldn’t be physically reconciled in humanity. They were a dichotomy in nature, opposites but identical at the same time. It simply wasn’t logical for a division of unity like that to exist. The tiny sunburst of color on her hip was a daily reminder of that.

Gabriella stood and rubbed the dirt off her legs. Creases lined her knees, echoes of the blades of grass that had been pressed against her skin for the last few hours. It felt good—evidence of the hard work she’d put in. Work she’d be willing to keep putting in if only her parents saw the value of this house. Here, where the doors were never locked and nature hummed quietly outside the windows, she was able to feel close to her grandmother again. It was a crime that her parents wanted to sell it. They’d only allowed Gabriella to spend the summer here until they found a suitable buyer. Despite all the pressure they put on her, despite the fact that they made her feel like she was never quite good enough, taking away this house was the only thing she truly hated them for.

She went inside with the handful of roses she’d clipped, took off her hat and filled a ceramic vase with water. Careful this time to avoid the barbs that protected the flowers, she dropped them into the vase and brought the arrangement into the dining room.

“Roses are a symbol of balance,” Nana had told her years ago by the very rose bushes she’d just attempted to prune. “A rose represents promises and hope, but its beauty is bonded with thorns. It embodies pain and loss. Combined together, they are in perfect harmony, equal parts beautiful and strong.”

She’d brought the lush rose petals to Gabriella’s nose, letting her inhale the fragrance.

“You are beautiful and strong too, my darling Gabby. Always stay true to who you are.”

Gabriella sighed and carefully arranged the vase on the sideboard across from the cherry oval table.

“Balance,” she murmured, scrutinizing the delicate combination of petals and thorns. Maybe her grandmother’s words could help her gather evidence for her thesis. She looked down at the finger she’d pricked and then ran it against the silky petal of a flower, testing its texture.

“If it’s true that a rose is beautiful, it must also be true that the opposite is beautiful as well. A thorn may be the opposite of a rose, so therefore, is it also true that the thorn is as beautiful as the rose? No, it’s not.”

Gabriella pressed her thumb against a tiny sharp spike and smiled triumphantly at her supporting conclusion. Her grin slid into a frown, though, as she continued to chafe the pad of her thumb with the thorn. Was the pain she felt when it grazed her flesh any less pleasurable than the smooth touch of the flower? Were they truly opposites, these two sensations she craved? Or were they merely two sides of the same coin? If a thorn wasn’t as beautiful as the rose, how could she lust for the roughness of a firm grip as much as she hungered for the sweet bliss of shattering pleasure?

Gabriella released the rose and turned to study herself in the mirror above her grandmother’s ornate sideboard. She traced a still-wet finger along the glass.

“A mirror image is the dual of its original. Water molecules must be arranged as H2O in order for them to act like water. Theoretical Mathematics says that Oxygen-Hydrogen-Oxygen and Hydrogen-Oxygen-Oxygen are the same, but in the real world, those molecules aren’t water. In fact, they don’t even exist. Therefore duality can’t apply to mirror images and must be incorrect.”

It was a sound hypothesis. But if her mirror image wasn’t her dual, then the woman staring back at her wasn’t the same as Gabriella. She certainly felt like two fractured parts, two pieces of the same whole scattering in opposite directions. If her rider appeared at that moment and wanted to tie her to the bed, wanted to take her out in the backyard and fuck her senseless where everyone could hear, would the part of her that calculated and planned enjoy it as much as the part of her that ached for the raw slap of a spanking?

As if on cue, she heard the sharp buzz of tires ripping around the corner.

Gabriella moved to the window to watch him ride past. He was covered in head-to-toe leather, denim and steel, as always. He must have been melting under all that clothing. Once again, she imagined stripping his jacket and gloves from him, revealing sweaty skin and rippled muscles. The strong body that would take her as brutally as she’d always wanted.

He slowed and her heart stopped, as if her fantasy was actually coming to life. But he drove on and she pinched her eyes shut, feeling like an idiot for the way hope had leapt up her throat. Wanting her rider was ridiculous. She was water lusting after oil, a coupling that would never mix. That’s why Jamie had set her up with Connor, after all, and not with someone like
him
.

She had to let the fantasy go. She wouldn’t let it exist anymore.

Turning from the window, Gabriella searched the room for more evidence to disprove her theory. She found nothing.

“I’m getting nowhere,” she said. “And I’m talking to myself again.”