Personalities - Part Two (takes place significantly after Five Quarters of the Orange)

"Opposites attract," Sheldon said. Amy nodded. "I'm so glad we're not opposites. I liked you from the beginning because we were so much alike. Everyone should find someone they are so much like."

Amy smiled. "I don't think that works for everyone."

Junior

Maybe she'd been too harsh on him last year. Maybe Dylan was just shy or something. After all, Ada said he'd hardly cared about her snog with Jacob at the party. And, even though she'd lied and told Ada it was just a kiss, Yasmine had seen more than enough to know it was far more than that.

But Ada seemed content. She and Dylan were still together. They even had some sort of sex life, although getting details out of Ada was like pulling teeth. They never, ever did it in the dorm room, Yasmine was certain of that. Even this year, when she and Ada agreed to stay on campus because the walks were shorter but moved up to an apartment style dorm with separate bedrooms and a kitchenette.

Yasmine decided to make an effort, even if she found Dylan as dull as watching paint dry. After all, if Jacob could agree to go hang out with Ada and Dylan, surely she could, too. This was the year of trying new things, she decided. She wouldn't change her accent anymore. She would clean up her language. She might, if she met the right person, give that monogamy thing a try. She even went shopping with Ada and bought both a blue shirt and a red one because she missed color. She would try to be as comfortable in her own skin as Ada clearly was in her's.

Wearing the new red shirt, she sat at their usual table at their favorite little restaurant and looked around at their foursome.

Ada, tall and beautiful and dressed like a . . . Yasmine wan't really sure. Somehow, she still managed to pull it off. Deep in the midst of some story, Ada was sitting so still, her posture absolutely perfect, her dusty timbred voice even and in control. You had to give credit were it was due; Ada may not talk a lot, but when she did, you listened. Ada could hold the masses in thrall. That girl could tell a story.

Sometimes, Yasmine had to correct people when they said Ada was shy. She was not shy; she just didn't see the need for chit-chat with strangers. She honed her Instabook followers list down to those she only really liked and you had to prove your worth to be accepted virtually by her ("I don't understand the point of collecting followers you either don't want to or never have a conversation with in real life."). But if she needed to be the center of attention for some reason, she stood tall and straight, accepting the spotlight with poise and ease. Some people said she was stuck up, and, although Yasmine could understand where that impression came from, Ada's disinterest was not malicious. Yes, her brutal honestly could seem cruel at times. She had this innate sense of her place in the universe, and she wore her assignment seriously if lightly. You think you can imagine what it's like until you meet one, or live with one, but a genius' mind really is on a completely separate plane. Ada was never purposely rude; in fact, thanks to her Grandmother Fowler whom she mentioned in revered tones, she was polite in a quaint, old-fashioned sense: hot beverages and thank-you cards on monogramed stationary. Ada remained the most self-possessed person Yasmine had ever met.

Jacob. Now, he was shy, although, the more Yasmine got to know him, the more she liked him. He was physically awkward, with his bouncing and his fidgeting, but his recent short haircut and new contact lenses had improved his looks enormously. He actively shrank from any spotlight, and it was only in Ada's presence that he seemed lighter. Although she didn't know or understand the whole story, Ada had explained his parents' divorce had somehow contributed to his nervous manner. But he was kind and he was very intelligent in his own right, and sometimes Yasmine got lost listening to him and Ada have a conversation. Ada may have been an idiosyncratic geek, but Jacob was a full stop nerd. You had to be a nerd to be president of the MIT chess club and start an MIT horticulture club.

"Why do I imagine him having one those giant people-eating plants like in Little Shop of Horrors?" Yasmine asked the evening Jacob posted the announcement on Instabook. She and Ada were sitting on opposite ends of the sofa, half-watching Jeopardy!, battling to shout out answers first. Ada, as usual, was in the lead, although Potent Potables and Popular Music were both categories so Yasmine had hopes for a tie.

"What's Little Shop of Horrors?" Ada asked.

Yasmine rolled her eyes. "Sometimes your pop culture knowledge is profoundly anemic. You should brush up, for Jeopardy! if nothing else." She paused. "Has Jacob ever had a girlfriend?"

"Not that I know of. He's dated a few times. And he had an almost-girlfriend our senior year of high school," Ada explained.

"An almost-girlfriend?"

"It was actually Sophie. You met her, right, our freshman year?" Yasmine nodded, remembering Ada's high school friend that it seemed like she'd lost touch with. She briefly wondered if she'd been struck from the Instabook list. "He had a huge crush on her, and she agreed to go to prom with him."

"And?" Yasmine prompted, turning on her end of the sofa.

Ada shrugged. "It didn't go well. Sophie accused Jacob of ruining her prom."

"Did he? What happened?" Yasmine leaned forward.

"It's not my story to tell." Then Ada's eyebrows went up. "Unless someone official asks. Then it's only my story to tell. Jacob had nothing to do with it."

"What? Come on, Ada! You can't just dangle that in front of me and not tell me the whole story!"

"No. It's not my story to tell." She reached over to open her iKindle and stopping yelling Jeopardy! answers, which Yasmine knew was the signal that the topic was closed.

Now Yasmine watched Jacob responding to Ada's story, telling his own little anecdote, his hands practically wringing in front of him, as he didn't like to be the center of attention. She saw Ada's hand reach over to gently lay a single fingertip on the back of one of Jacob's hands and they instantly stilled. Yasmine raised her eyebrows. It occurred to her that this was a long practiced habit between them, and neither one of them realized it was occurring, as there was not a single break in Jacob's story or Ada's attentiveness.

She glanced over at Dylan, to see if he noticed, but he sitting there mute, as usual, although he was gazing at Ada with a soft face. Yes, maybe she had been too harsh on him. Maybe it wasn't that he was just all inertia, without any sense of his own animation. Maybe he hadn't just stumbled across a beautiful girl who somehow agreed to be his girlfriend. Yasmine had no idea what went on behind his closed door, maybe he really was an active participant in their relationship. Yes, his gaze looked more like zoned-out daydreaming, but maybe it really was admiration and love - No, Yasmine shook her head, she was turning over a new leaf and would only think kind things about him because he was important to Ada.

That spring, Ada went to Japan to study abroad. Yasmine missed her presence in their little pseudo-apartment, oddities and all. Even though Ada was a generally quiet person, Yasmine missed the flashes of color as she walked by, the constant guessing of what her costume du jour was, the sound of her stylus on her tablet as she was drawing, the way she held the marker in front of her chin while standing at the her white board and pursed her lips above it when she was thinking, the way she always knew when Yasmine was frustrated by something and needed a hot beverage or the most amazing, gooiest grilled cheese sandwich Yasmine had ever had ("Grandmother taught me how to make it"). Without Ada, their little foursome never gathered. Although Yasmine didn't really miss seeing Dylan around, she missed Jacob's nervous little conversations. Jacob. What was he up to without Ada? All chess club and growing plants named Audrey? Probably. Yasmine smiled. Poor backwards Jacob. She wondered if he was a virgin. Probably. He was a nice guy. Smart. For just a second, a thought lingered in Yasmine's imagination, and then she pushed it away. No, she told herself, ashamed for even having thought it. Even though she could probably make it happen, it wouldn't be right. She could not and would not ruin the possibility of a someday for her best friend.

Instead, when Yasmine called him up, she only asked him if he'd like to go out for coffee.

"Sure," Jacob said. "Actually, there's someone I'd like you to meet."

"To meet?"

"I've been seeing this girl, and Ada's not around to give her opinion, you know." Yasmine saw him shrug on his end of the screen. "Her name is Bertha."

"That's unfortunate," Yasmine said. "Oh, sorry."

Jacob smiled. "No, you're right. Gosh, you almost sounded like Ada there for a second."

That's when Yasmine realized it was even worse than she thought. So she met Jacob and Bertha for coffee. Bertha was loud and talkative and fluttering; Yasmine didn't know if these obvious differences relieved her or troubled her. Bertha was in the middle of yet another story, when she said something about a prom.

"Prom?" Yasmine asked. She turned slightly at the table. "Jacob, what happened at your prom?"

"Nothing." But the fidgeting had started.

"That's not true. Ada said there's a story, but she refused to tell me."

"It's her decision. It's her story to tell, not mine." Full hand wringing now. Yasmine put a finger out to touch his hand, like Ada did, but it didn't work. He pulled his hands away but kept on twisting them.

"Funny, that's the exact same thing she told me."

"Who's Ada?" Bertha asked.

Yasmine turned to her with eyebrows high. She knew Jacob and Ada were in communication, their names had passed each other's lips when Yasmine had talked to each of them. She knew they had a long habit of playing virtual chess and talking throughout it. "Jacob hasn't mentioned his best childhood friend of all time?" Bertha shook her head, and that's when Yasmine realized it was far, far worse than she'd thought.

"Listen -" Jacob said suddenly, and, Yasmine thought, too conspicuously, " - prom was a long time ago. I did something for a friend, and a friend did something for me. Because that's what friends do, they do something noble and they don't expect anything in return. They defend and protect each other."

Biting off her questions, Yasmine didn't say anything about Ada the rest of the night, regretting she'd brought it up here, now. But it was apparently too late, anyway. It was the last she ever heard or saw of Bertha.

Senior

Love. Making love. Of course, both of these things were calmer and more sedate than her mother led her to believe. It was in Mom's nature, Ada knew, to over romanticize things. Not that she doubted her parents loved each other, embarrassingly so, but that silly dreamy look Mom got on her face whenever she talked about Dad . . . it was all a bit too much to be believed, wasn't it?

Ada had suffered that dreamy look too much when she was younger. An event, no matter how trivial, never happened growing up that Mom wouldn't make into a lecture or a teaching lesson. Feminism, female empowerment, respect your body, etc., etc., etc. Love and sex were discussed in the most holy and most cringeworthy tones ever. Ada, too, believed that knowledge was power, but did it ever occur to Mom that the last person Ada wanted giving her knowledge about sex as "a celebration of love and the pleasure of the one's body" was her mother? Who was doing her celebrating with her father? Ugh. There were dozens of times, suffering through her mother's lectures, Ada had just wanted her mattress to open up and swallow her. Honestly, why couldn't Mom just have handed her a book about it all, a biological textbook, and left it at that? Or stuck to just the facts, not rhapsodizing about it. Why?

Because Mom believed she had the power to make Ada's life perfect. Mom devoted her life to this task. There had been times Ada felt like she was suffocating under all the wishful thinking of her mother. Even now, at age nineteen, having made peace with it, now seeing that it was well meant, and sometimes even missing her mother so much it hurt, Ada would feel her back bristle at a stray comment here or there. It was partly, she knew, a difference of opinion. Mom had shared with Ada that her childhood was not as idyllic as she thought it should be, that secrets had been kept. But Ada just couldn't see it; she had loved and adored Grandmother Fowler. She could talk to her about anything without getting overwrought about it. They had both understood this on some basic level. "No need to make a fuss, dear." Wouldn't the world be more harmonious if everyone understood that?

So, tangents aside, of course having sex with Dylan didn't cause angels to sing or rainbows to shoot through her body or teddy bears to cry or whatever it was Mom claimed. Real sex was like this: nothing fancy, really only two positions, certainly no loud or lewd noises. Many real woman didn't have orgasms from sexual intercourse. Studies supported this. Real men, the gentlemen, weren't constantly horny and always trying to initiate. No one actually stumbled through their house tearing their clothes off or played strip games or wore costumes. Seduction was for romance novels. Instead, Ada and Dylan had a simple system. Ada would ask, "Would you like to make love?" And Dylan would reply either "Sure" or "Not tonight." No need to make a fuss.

Oh, there had been a time or two Ada had asked Dylan to try something new, and Dylan had brushed the suggestion away with a brief and final "I like it simple" or "I don't like oral." There, see: honest, calm, adult conversations. No need to make a fuss. And, yes, there had been some annoyance that Dylan wouldn't stay awake to at least listen to her enjoy herself afterwards, but she may have been too embarrassed anyway. There, see: he was respectful of her privacy. Maybe she wouldn't have minded deep conversations afterwards instead of a peck on the cheek and a "That was nice. Goodnight," but did she honestly believe her parents discussed the meaning of the universe or the last digit of pi or the innermost secrets of their souls during or after sex? No, of course not. No need to make a fuss. If the very thought hadn't make her shiver in disgust, the idea of her father saying something romantic or, heaven forbid, sexy in bed would have made Ada laugh.

No, her mother had dreamed it all up, in her overly romantic imagination. Although Ada really tried not to think about her parents in the bedroom, she suspected it was very much like being in Dylan's bedroom when she spent the night. Calm, adult sex. Just like their love: calm, adult. Too high of a high meant too low of a low and they both knew it without discussing it. No need to make a fuss.

"Obviously we're in love. We've been together two years," Ada huffed in the middle of one her almost-tiffs with Yasmine about him. Why shouldn't Dylan play a gig for singles on Valentine's Day? Stupid Hallmark holiday, anyway. Never mind that her carefully selected Valentines, the product of an hour spent on the virtual Hallmark store, were already addressed in red calligraphy and stamped in custom stamps and ready to send in the old fashioned mail to everyone she cared about.

"Being together and being in love are not the same thing," Yasmine pointed out.

"Well, it feels like forever, and that's a good thing to me," Ada said.

"I'm not sure that's a ringing endorsement either, Junior." Yasmine shook her head and turned away, letting the topic drop.

Ada looked over at her. Yasmine was her best friend, her roommate for almost four years now, long after the majority of freshman roommates were looked back on as unfortunate pairings. The past two years, without discussion, they'd submitted the same form to their house, saying they wanted to stay together. On the whole, she'd improved with time. Yasmine had softened and matured and given up her ridiculous fake accents and black wardrobe and grown into herself. At first, in the tiny freshman dorm room, Ada had disliked her immensely, and she was angry at her parents for forcing this roommate agreement upon her. Dad had gone to college at age eleven, why couldn't he trust her to do the same at five years older? She'd immediately sensed that many of Yasmine's traits were overcompensation, that she was so desperate to fit in, to not be a minority or the refugee she still thought she was. This had baffled Ada; why would anyone want to be something or someone they weren't? But, gradually, Yasmine had shed her fake punk-rocker skin without losing any of her attitude and sass, and Ada was, quite simply, crazy about her.

But Yasmine never really liked Dylan, just tolerated him for Ada's sake. Even though her comments had become softer and much less frequent in the past year or so, it still hurt Ada that her best friend didn't believe in this relationship like she did. Part of the problem was that Ada always the feeling that Yasmine knew something, or at least believed she knew something, that Ada did not and that she was forcibly holding herself back from saying it. It was the only true source of contention left between them.

Sighing and looking back at her tablet, Ada shook her head. She didn't have time for this. Here it was, late January, and she'd yet to pick her graduate course. Several schools had accepted her conditionally for mathematics, but she wasn't sure that was exactly what she wanted to do. And then there was Dylan. Harvard had accepted her, maybe she should just stay here.

"Oh," Yasmine said suddenly.

Ada looked up. "What?"

"Will Shortz died. You know, the former editor of The New York Times crosswords puzzles?"

"That's unfortunate," Ada said. "Mom will be sad. She's quite the crossword puzzle fan."

"Hey, did you know this?" Yasmine asked, still reading her own screen, "'He is the only person known to hold a college degree in enigmatology, the study of puzzles. Shortz achieved this feat by designing his own curriculum through Indiana University's Individualized Major Program.'" She looked up. "Can you imagine a degree in puzzles? Will they really let you get a degree in anything?"

"No, you can't get your degree in sex, drugs, and rock n' roll," Ada said.

"Aww, too late." Yasmine smiled. "I'm too old for that now. Besides, I'll never catch the next George Clooney if I don't become Britain's next top civil rights barrister."

Smiling back, Ada felt a tug in her chest. Only three more months, and their lives would change all over again. Yasmine would be off to Cambridge, Jacob was returning to Los Angeles to work, and she was getting her PhD . . . somewhere. In something broader than she wanted. Why couldn't she get it just in geometry? Or even geometry combined with topology? Was there really so little left to know about geometry that no school could imagine spending years studying it and -

"Wait a minute. Individualized Major Program?" Ada asked.

"Hmm? Oh, yes." Yasmine touched her screen. "At Indiana University. Isn't that somewhere one flies over?"

"Maybe," Ada murmured, already redirecting her browser.

"Oh, Ada has an inkling! Here comes the ruminating!" Yasmine sang. That had been around for four years, too, and, in that time, Ada had gone from hating it to loving it. "Listen, before you fall deep in your stupor, what are you going to do about Dylan?"

Ada looked up sharply. "I haven't decided," she confessed. She wanted Yasmine to say something negative about him, but she just nodded softly.

"Well, whatever you decide, I've got your back, Junior. I just want you to be happy, even if it is with Dylan." It was the sincerity that hurt the most.

But Ada nodded it away and looked back at her tablet, letting the fog of an idea, of making new plans enshroud her. Tentative inquiring emails were sent, polite responses were received, an application was accepted, and phone calls were had that were positive and optimistic. A decision was made. But only one of two that needed to be determined.

"Dylan?"

"Yes?" He didn't look up from the magazine he was reading, sitting in his favorite old beat up chair, his long legs stretched in front of him.

"Can you look at me? I have something important to say." He complied. "I've made a decision. I'm going to get my PhD at Indiana University. They have an Individualized Major Program and, while no one has used it for a PhD yet, everyone I've spoken to there says they would be open to considering it. And, even if they don't approve it, I'll just get my PhD in mathematics. It's the only option I have anywhere else, anyway."

"Okay. Cool," he smiled.

Ada took a deep breath. "We need to decide what to do about us."

The smile fell. "You know I don't like angst and confrontation. Let's just make a decision."

No need to make a fuss. They would decide something like adults and see it through. "Good. How about . . ." She swallowed. "How about you move to Indiana with me? We could live together." A pause. "You don't have to decide right now. I'm just asking you to consider it. I understand it's a big step, because your friends are here and your music gigs and everything. I am also aware it's a big step for us."

Dylan didn't reply right away, which didn't concern Ada. He was thinking. That was why they were so well suited: he was being thoughtful and calm. No ripples in their relationship. "Okay, sure."

"Really? Just like that?" Ada asked, incredulous at the ease with which this had been determined, after weeks of her inner turmoil.

"Sure. Why not?"

"Dylan, you're the best!" Without thinking, she threw herself at him, landing on his lap, wrapping her arms about him that that old chair, even though demonstrative wasn't really their thing.

"Uh, Ada? What's wrong with you?" he asked, pushing her away slightly.

She was so pleased she wouldn't have to start over alone in Indiana that she didn't answer.

Near the end, time sped up. Plans were finalized, exams were taken, long good-byes were begun. Suddenly, it seemed it was a Thursday morning at the end of May, and Ada stood next to Yasmine in their matching black gowns.

"Are you nervous about your oration?" Ada asked.

"Terrified. But," Yasmine took a deep breath, "it's good practice for the Supreme Court." Ada smiled. "I'm still surprised to you didn't try for the oration competition."

Shaking her had, Ada looked down to pick a piece of lint of her graduation gown. "No, you know I don't seek the spotlight."

"But you're so good when you're in it," Yasmine said. "Although maybe the Sophia Freund prize and the oration prize would have been a bit flashy, even for you."

Before she could reply, there was knock at the door, and the private moment was lost as all their parents arrived together, flooding around the moving boxes to give hugs. It was over in a flash, it seemed, even Yasmine's beautiful speech. Suddenly, her tassel was on the other side of her mortarboard, and Ada was a Harvard graduate. There were so many pictures to take: with her beaming parents, hugging her dearest friend and roommate, and some with Dylan's arm loosely holding her around the waist. Her only wish was that Jacob could have been there, but his own commencement was tomorrow and his parents and Lucy would be arriving today. Not that Ada would have had enough tickets for him, anyway.

They all went out to eat together, everyone laughing and in good spirits, buoyed by the joy of a milestone achieved. Of course, it was still stilted between Ada parents and Dylan, but she squared her shoulders and determined not to let it get to her. They were just unhappy about the move, she reasoned; Dad was so old-fashioned he'd actually used the term "living in sin." That didn't bother her, actually. For two and half years she had just wanted her father to be himself, to express him opinions forcefully, even hysterically, like he would about anything else. But he was always so reticent on the topic of Dylan. After first, Ada had assumed this was Mom's doing. But then, and there were not words express how much this hurt her, she came to think perhaps her father truly just didn't care about Dylan. So she'd almost wept in relief with Dad become hysterical when she told them at Spring Break, raving about wasting her life and making mistakes and living in sin, and she'd thrown her arms around him and squeezed him time.

"Oh, Dad, you do care," she'd sobbed.

"Hey, kid," he'd squeezed back, his voice becoming soft and heavy, "I care about you and your happiness more than you'll ever know. Is this really what you want? A bohemian existence in the Midwest?"

"Yes," she'd whispered. "Captain Janeway lived there."

"Okay." A soft sigh. "Just please don't turn into a hippy and stop wearing deodorant."

Now, at her graduation dinner, Ada reached her hand across the table and squeezed her father's aging one, and he looked up, surprised. Ada used her free hand to blow him a kiss, and he reached up and grabbed the invisible token of love and pretended to slide it in his suit pocket. Too soon, the moment was lost in conversation and then, equally soon, the night was over as everyone went their separate ways.

The second knock at the door of the day surprised her. The little apartment was quiet again, still and hushed, as the campus buzzed around it. Ada was relishing the quiet after such a busy and momentous day. After three majors in four years, it felt good to sit down and read in silence.

But once she looked through the peephole, she smiled and happily opened the door. "Jacob! What are you doing here? You have your own commencement tomorrow."

"I had to go to the grocery store." He patted the bag in his hands.

"There at least a dozen grocery stores and markets between your apartment and Harvard," Ada said, raising an eyebrow.

Jacob sighed softly. "Okay, I couldn't leave without saying good-bye."

"It's not good-bye. We'll still see each other in California when I come home to visit."

He shrugged. "But it will be different. I've gotten used to your baby face around."

"Stop calling me that."

Smiling, he said, "Honestly, I can't stay long with my family in town and everything. Are your parents back at the hotel?" Ada nodded. "Where's Yasmine?"

"Some party. For old times sake, she said," Ada explained.

He laughed. "That sounds about right." A pause. "Well, I just wanted to wish you well. You're going out next week, right?"

"Yes. To look for a place to rent. Once I find one, Dylan's coming out." Then she added in a rush, "Not because he's leaving all the work to me, but because he wants me to find a place I like. That's quiet for my studies. He's being considerate."

Jacob wrinkled his brow. "Uh, sure. I didn't say he wasn't."

"Sorry." That was unfair. Jacob had never once said one negative thing about Dylan or her relationship with him. That was all Yasmine's doing. Ada sighed. "Yasmine disapproves. I'm used to having arguments at the ready. You know how she is."

"She's going to be an amazing lawyer. She terrifies me sometimes still."

Ada chuckled.

"Have your parents made peace with it? Living with a boy?" he asked.

"I suppose. More like they've resigned themselves to my legal independence." She bit her lip and sighed harder. Perhaps she had made some form of peace, but Mom just smiled broadly, all teeth, that fake smile Ada knew well. It was the force of her mother's positive thinking, of her need to put on a happy face to Ada when she didn't feel it, that weighed heavily.

Jacob shifted and rummaged in his bag. "Here," he said pulling a can out.

Ada took it, surprised that it was cold. "Mountain Dew? Uncle Stuart isn't here."

"Actually, it was your dad who taught me to drink the strong stuff when I had troubles," Jacob said, opening his own can.

"Really, Dad?" Ada shook her head, wondering why Jacob would come prepared with Mountain Dew. "It's not troubles. At least not for me. I'm happy. Dylan's happy. It's just my parents. There's all this strange tension still. I think that Mom - and maybe Dad, too, I don't know - thinks that Dylan can't be the one because it's too easy."

"Easy?" Jacob asked, taking a drink.

"Yeah. How we met, that we're so well suited, that we get along so well. Or maybe that I'm too young to find 'the one.'" She made air quotes around the words before she reached down to open her can of soda. "It's so hypocritical because she and Dad are so much alike. But it's like she believes the one is a lightening strike, something violent, not something sensible and comfortable. That you have to work hard to find the one, that you have to have all this pain and all these emotions for the one. Like it's a trial and you have to prove your love. She even quotes from The Little Prince - you know, that children's book - about how working hard for your love is what makes it special. But why does it have to be such hard work? Why can't the one just be right in front of you all along?"

"Indeed," Jacob said softly.

"I'm sorry. I'm rambling. It's beneath me," Ada said, taking a drink.

"You weren't rambling," Jacob said. "You should feel strongly about Dylan, since he's the one."

"Exactly. I wish everyone else would understand that. It should be apparent as we're moving across the country together."

"Obviously."

"It's such a relief to talk to you, Jacob. You've always understood me." Ada smiled softly and took another drink.

"I try. You're a tough nut to crack, Ada Cooper." He took a deep breath. "Listen, sorry I upset you. I really did come to say congratulations and wish you well in graduate school."

"Thank you. Any leads on a job?"

Jacob shook his head. "Not really. It doesn't help that I'm not exactly sure what I want to do yet."

"I'm sure you'll find something. You're such a smart man," Ada said.

"Thanks." He smiled, and then he put his can out in front of him. "To the future."

Ada grinned and touched hers to it. "To the future."

After they each took their drink, Jacob sat down on her sofa, as though he'd never said he didn't have the time to stay, and said, "So, Jesus Christ, tell me how you're going to save the backwoods of Indiana."

"I really wish you wouldn't call me that, either," Ada said, but with a laugh, as she sat down next to him, tucking her legs under her and talking to him until well after midnight as though he didn't have to leave, as if those four crucial years weren't drawing to a close, as if their paths weren't dividing.

Thank you for sticking around for such a lengthy (and unconventional) After Dark! And, as always, thank you in advance for your reviews!