In My Skin

CH 47 || Potential Wells

Suz doubled over laughing. "He—He's luring you with sex?"

It was a few days later, and we were crossing campus, on the way to her car. We both had late classes tonight, so she'd offered to pick me up and drop me back at Killian's place afterward.

"Shush! Do you want everyone else to hear that?" I frantically looked around. Despite the sunny weather, no other students were hanging around the parking lot. Good.

"Oh my God, I can't," she said, trying to catch her breath. "You're done,"

"What's that supposed to mean?" I asked after we settled into our seats.

"Sweetie. I was already impressed he came up with the one-month thing. He knows you too well. It's hilarious really how he outmaneuvers you before you can even make your move."

"Very funny," I grumbled and blushed.

Somebody knocked on the window. I jumped but relaxed when I saw it was Jules. Suz unlocked the car and he hopped into the back, handing each of us an oat latte.

With one long look at our faces, he asked, "What's up with you guys?"

Suz, still wearing that stupid grin, shrugged. "Tay lives with Killian and Cody now."

"Ah," he said as if that made perfect sense.

"What?" I probed and took a sip of the warm liquid. Shouldn't he sound more surprised at that? Did Killian tell him already?

His brows drew together. "You two finally hooked up, I suppose?"

I sprayed Suz with part of my oat latte, but she was too busy to dissolve into another fit of laughter to care much. "I told you," she exclaimed after finally calming down, followed by a satisfied sigh. "I knew you two were gonna end up like this."

I bristled. "How? We hated each other."

Jules and she exchanged a glance. "You keep looking at each other. For one," Suz said.

"I mean we're friends," I said. "Sort of."

"Yeah, but that's not the friendly look. It's the please notice me kind of look," she teased.

"That's not how I look at him," I sputtered and glanced at Jules pleadingly. "How come not even you are surprised?"

He shrugged. "The attractive forces between you two were too strong to resist. It was only a matter of time."

"I wouldn't call it a purely attractive force," I replied. "It's more like there was this high potential barrier but somehow our wave functions overlapped and I accidentally tunneled."

"And now you're trapped in Killian's potential well," he chuckled.

Suz gaped at us. "Sometimes I forget that you two study all this science stuff. I feel like I need a PhD just to understand what you two are saying."

I laughed and faced her. "Think of it like this. You have a ball outside an open box. Now the ball cannot enter the box unless you give it enough kinetic energy and throw it in."

"Right..." she replied hesitantly.

"But on a very small scale, particles or the ball can act like a wave and its position becomes a probability. This means there is suddenly a small probability that the ball just ignores the wall of the box and tunnels inside."

"It's simple quantum physics actually," Jules said and leaned forward with sparkling eyes.

"Simple," Suz repeated tonelessly. "I would have just said opposites attract or something because you two like to argue but sure, um...potential tunneling makes perfect sense as well."