When I was four years old I fell in love for the first time. It was an epic love, like the sun rising for the first time, spreading its golden light over the fertile ground of my open heart.
It happened one fall night when I was sitting outside in the cool, shaggy grass of our back yard in Northern California. The night-thick scent of cedar and redwood drifting from the old-growth woods just past the edge of our small, grassy lot tickled my nose as much as the grass tickled my bare feet. I could hear my mom washing dishes in the kitchen, my dad humming from the open door of his toolshed, and the raspy droning of cicadas congregating at the edge of the woods. My legs and arms puckered with goose bumps from the chill night wind, so I pulled my sleep shirt over my legs.
Then, I looked up.
I looked up and I was swallowed by the sky.
The Milky Way stitched across the black velvet, the moon full and pregnant with expectation, Mars with its red flickering light, Jupiter bright and strong, and I tumbled headlong into the mysteries of the universe. And then, as I fell, a meteor shot across the sky, streaking a path straight to my heart.
I gasped, swallowing the starlight, and then I jumped up and ran to my dad’s toolshed, where he told me the distant stars were unreachable, that everything we saw happened millions of years ago, that some of the stars I saw were long dead, and that none of us, not a single one, could ever reach the stars, and if there were other habitable planets, other beings out there, we’d never know, because it was impossible to reach them too. We could yearn, but we’d never find what we were yearning for.
He said, “Ducky, keep your feet on the ground, and your eyes on what’s possible.”
But I was in love with the stars, with the universe, and so I decided right then and there that I loved this universe I’d found myself in and I was going to unlock its secrets. I was going to make the impossible possible.
That was the day I fell in love with science without knowing what science was.
But that feeling? That tumbling, rolling, diving through the stars to be swallowed whole by the wonderment of the night sky? Yes. That’s a feeling I’d recognize anywhere.
I also avoid it. I flee from it as fast as a proton shooting at the speed of light. I don’t have room to love anything else but science. It’s my passion. It’s my purpose. Plus, I know what happens when you fall for a man. You cease to be you.
You become this new creature, half-yourself, half-someone else. Your tastes change, your passions change, your priorities change. You literally lose yourself in the object of your desire. It’s like the anglerfish—one of the most dysfunctional, toxic relationships in the animal kingdom. The clingy, jealous, controlling male anglerfish finds a female and then attaches himself to her. Not with his teeth or his fins or his reproductive organ,1 but with his whole self. He mates with her and then their skin tissue fuses together, their circulatory systems combine, and they share all nutrients, blood, oxygen, everything, until the day they die.
This is basically what happens when two people fall in love.
Everyone knows this. We’ve all seen it.
Those couples who wear matching his-and-her outfits? Khakis, white shirt, Converse! We’re one person!
The couples who combine their name? We’re Nathangela! Elizabert! Kerbob!
The couples who speak as if they are one person with one opinion? “We only eat local, organic, gluten-free sausage.” “Our favorite color is ecru.” “We like to be spanked.”
It’s all out there for everyone to see. Fall in love, lose yourself.
Fall in love, have your organs fused, your brain hijacked, and your personality wiped.
So, when the stunningly attractive man with the dimpled smile, the sky-gray eyes, and the rumbly voice that makes my heart pound asks if I feel it too, I take a moment to laze in what I’m feeling.
Tingling skin. Thumping heart. Shortness of breath. A pull tugging me toward him even while I’m glued to my seat.
Is it love?
Or is it lust?
Is it stardust raining over me, or is it “yes please, let’s get it on tonight and then never speak again”?
My mouth goes dry at the unexpected visual—me with my legs wrapped around him, his hands gripping my bare thighs, his mouth devouring mine. Suddenly I wish Vinny had brought out my pilsner and pickle, but unfortunately no one has come by yet.
The soft rumble of the pub, muted by the stone, folds around us. The dark of the far corner, the shadow of the low-beamed ceiling, blankets us in intimacy. The spice of vinegar and beer pinches my nose.
The man leans closer as he tilts his head, waiting for my answer. I feel that static again, the warm electric pull running through me, lighting up my insides, tugging me toward him.
Lust.
It has to be lust.
Us humans, we’re made up of electrical impulses. Our hearts run on electricity. Our neurons are jumping with it. So it’s not surprising that I’d find a man who makes me feel as if I’m sitting next to a generator, plugged in and buzzing with delicious, stroking energy.
So. Do I feel it?
“Maybe . . .” I say in a careful voice, and the man grins as if I just shouted “yes” from the top of Mount Blanc for all of Geneva to hear.
At his grin, I can’t help it. I grin back.
His eyes widen and he stands, pushing his chair back. It scrapes across the wood floor. Now that he’s upright I can see that he’s exactly as tall as I thought, a little over six feet. He dwarfs the low-ceilinged pub with its homey plaid, cozy wood, and crowded tables.
I trace my gaze over him. His shoulders are wide and solid, he’s built like a footballer, lean but muscled. He stands with confidence, his shoulders back, his eyes direct, and he takes two long strides to stand next to my sticky-topped table.
As soon as he does, the cool, vinegary air of the pub is swept aside and replaced by viscous warmth and his subtle scent—clean, fresh mountain air, cedar, and . . . can someone smell like starlight? Oh yes, he smells like starlight.
No. That doesn’t make sense. People don’t smell like starlight.
I blink at him as he holds out his hand. “I’m Henry Joule, from Oxford.”
I pause, wondering if this is one of those moments that should come with a warning label. For example: “Proposition 65 Warning for California Residents: This man may contain chemicals2 known to cause reproductive harm from repeated sex, masturbation, and uncontrollable desire.”
Or perhaps the warning is that his last name is Joule, the same as James Joule, the famed English physicist who discovered the relationship between the amount of heat produced and the current flowing through a conductor. The man who the Joule3 is named after.
I hold my hand out to him and say, “Ducky, from Northern California.”