The Love Hypothesis. Laura Steven

while longer. I try to regroup and fortify my defenses, but his unrelenting attacks punish my piece count. It’s not going great, but at least I don’t have any brainspace left to think about Haruki and our awkward encounter.

      After ten more minutes, I’m not surprised when he promotes a pawn and effortlessly checkmates me.

      At this point Mateo could choose to be gracious in victory, but as it happens, that is not the path he takes. ‘Suck it, Kerber! What’s that now? Eleven games to three? Twelve? I lose track.’ He whistles unnecessarily. ‘You need to grow some lady balls. Launch an attack. Maybe take your queen out for a joyride every once in a while. Or, you know, keep making a dick of yourself. Your call.’

      I swear to god, I’m going to shove a rook so far up his ass he’ll be able to taste wood varnish on the back of his throat.

      By the time I leave school at five-thirty, the temperature is vaguely less hellish, so my walk home is bearable at least. Despite the absurd amount of thunderflies in the air.

      I live a couple miles from school, which I diligently cover on foot every single day on account of Dad #1’s obsession with car accidents. If you ever need to know hard statistics on how many people are killed in crashes each year, he’s your guy. As far as fetishes go it’s pretty niche, but I’d rather his search history showed repeated hits on government data sites than on hardcore pornography. You take the wins where you can.

      At least the route home is pleasant. My neighborhood is a nice one; my dads are both tenured academics, so we live in the more affluent area of town. However, when you’re a chronic overthinker, walking four miles a day with just your own thoughts for company is a special kind of hell. And before you suggest podcasts or audiobooks, yes, I have tried them. Doesn’t work. My cogitation is louder than any headphones can plausibly go. I experience the audial equivalent of reaching the end of a page, then realizing you’ve absorbed precisely nothing because you’re so busy fixating on an embarrassing thing you said back in kindergarten.

      Tonight is no exception. As I pass preppy spandex-clad joggers, Labradoodles in appalling Swarovski collars, and an implausible number of 4x4s, all I can do is replay the painful encounter with Haruki over and over again.

      The public call-out. The subsequent loaded silence. The heat – oh god, the heat. Like my cheeks were being flame-grilled and served as the steak portion of a surf ‘n’ turf.

      As if that weren’t bad enough, the ass-clenching moment when I stopped at the sound of his throat-clearing, and it became immediately, excruciatingly apparent that he was not clamoring for my attention.

      And the look. The look he gave me – like I was nothing to him. Which I guess I am.

      I take my time ambling home, in no rush to discuss what I learned at school today with my dads over dinner, like I do every night. Blame the heat, or the emotions, or the ABSURD QUANTITY OF THUNDERFLIES, but for whatever reason, my heels are dragging.

      Argh. Why do I even care so much about Haruki’s lack of interest? I’m used to the whole unrequited-love deal. It’s not new to me. I should be better at handling it by now.

      Because it’s definitely a pattern. A pattern with no outliers, no anomalies, no exceptions. Just data point after data point after data point of rejection. No, not even rejection. Rejection would require the objects of my affection to notice me enough to reject me in the first place.

      Actually, there is one almost-exception. Kevin Cartwright. He’s a couple years older than me, and we had a string of hookups over the summer. It started with a drunken one-night stand at a house party – classy way to lose your V-plates, right? – and became a regular occurrence whenever he’d had so much as a sip of beer. But every time I texted him sober, he ghosted me. He only ever wanted to hook up when it was on his terms, and when his blood-alcohol level was past the legal limit.

      One night – when he was super wasted – he told me he was still hung up on his ex, and that it wouldn’t be fair to me to turn whatever we had going into something more. And even though I was starting to kind of like the guy, I tried my best to bury whatever feelings I had for him. I knew deep down it wasn’t going anywhere.

      Then he went away to college a few weeks back, at the same time as my older brother, and I haven’t heard a peep since. Guess I was just a way to kill time, when the lights were low and the beer goggles were firmly in place.

      I sigh, inhaling warm summer air. The streets are quiet, even by my sleepy town’s standards. Nearby, an elderly man is cutting the grass with his shirt off. A grey-haired woman watches lovingly from the window. And, to be fair to the Matching Hypothesis, they are precisely the same level of hotness. Figures.

      Pulling my phone out of my back pocket, I press the home button. My lock screen lights up: nada. No messages, no missed calls. Keiko will be rehearsing for tonight’s gig, and Gabriela will be tutoring after-school Spanish. She speaks, like, seven languages, has a makeup Insta with a gazillion followers, and bakes the best banana bread in the literal world.

      Then she’ll be hanging out with her boyfriend, Ryan. They’ve been together since freshman year and are basically the same entity at this point. In fact, I’m not entirely sure she hasn’t absorbed his personality via osmosis. She had some actual points to make about the NFL draft the other day. Still, they’re pretty cute. He’s always picking up egg and cheese bagels for her breakfast, holding up her ring light so she can take the perfect selfies, making her study playlists on Spotify.

      When I think of being with Haruki, that’s what I imagine. Not huge, grand gestures of rapturous romance. Not even necessarily the physical aspects of having a boyfriend. Just small, everyday kindnesses that let you know you’re loved.

      For whatever dumb reason, I unlock my phone and open up the message chain between me and Kevin. It’s . . . confronting. The last three messages were all sent by me: a stack of shameless blue bubbles.

       Hey, how are you? Are you going to Steph’s party this weekend? Hope to see you there. *beer emoji*

       Kevin! Fancy a drink tomorrow night? My dads are out of town. And there’s red wine in the refrigerator. (I know. They’re criminals. Room temperature or bust.)

       Hey! Just a quick message to say I hope your big move to Penn State goes well. Hit me up when you’re next home and we can catch up.

      My skin crawls, reading them back. But they’re not that awful, are they? I obsessed so hard over striking the right balance between casual and flirty. Between upbeat and sarcastic. Between perfect and, well, perfect. And it still wasn’t enough to get his attention.

      I can’t help but feel, like I do 201,674 times a day, that it’s all because of the way I look. The blank stares, the ghosted messages, the everlasting feeling of irrelevance. It has to be. Because I’m smart, I’m interesting, I’m funny (when I have the guts to actually crack jokes within earshot of other human beings). I’m a nice fucking person. And yet no guy has any interest. Why?

      I’m about to shove my phone away when, as it always does, temptation strikes. What if this is the one time Kevin will reply? What if he’s drunk at a daytime frat party, and I send a message at the perfect moment, and he actually responds? It would soothe my self-hatred, if only for a moment. And hey, if he ignores me – what’s new? It can’t suck any more than it already does.

      So I do it. I fire off a quick, breezy text, watch as the ‘delivered’ sign appears, and bury the phone back into my pocket. Maybe if I don’t look for a while, there will magically be a message waiting for me later tonight.

      My pretty, faux-Edwardian house is detached and modestly sized. Vati – Dad #2 – is out front gardening, and as I’m walking up the driveway I almost don’t see him. He’s about two inches from the soil, hacking away manically at the border with a pair of secateurs. He’s a godawful gardener. Like, imagine you gave a donkey a pair of scissors and told it to go to town on your flowerbeds. That’s how our garden looks.

      But Vati loves it, so Dad just lets him crack on and