God. Okay. Listen.

In my defense, I did not mean to fall in love with a girl who publicly called me a “STEM-brained baboon and an active contributor to the intellectual death spiral of post-postmodernism.”

I didn’t even know what that meant at first. I had to Google it. Twice.

Anyway.

We met because she wrote this Tumblr think piece called Cannibalism as Love—which, okay, already sounds like it was written in a clawfoot bathtub while Born to Die played in the background—and I, like the idiot I am, thought it was literal. So I stitched together this super calm, super respectful 7-minute YouTube video titled: “Why Humans Cannot Digest the Human Heart (But Let’s Talk About It Scientifically).”

Big mistake.

Huge.

She quote-Tweeted me with this brutal takedown about how “STEM bros can’t handle metaphor and that their brains are just programmed to accept knowledge rather than create it. Boring much?!” and that if the humanities hadn’t existed, I’d still be “banging rocks together and calling it a TED Talk.”

Which... okay. Fair. But also: uncalled for?

Except it was kind of hot.

Look, sue me. She used the word epistemological in a sentence and then called me a caveman. I had no choice but to fall in love.

Anyway. Somehow, after I DM’d her a paragraph-long apology explaining semiotics, we started talking. Like, a lot. Like... daily good morning texts that include weather updates and screenshots of niche Reddit threads we think the other would like. She sends me sad poetry at 2am and I send her memes about Schrödinger’s cat.

And now we’re here.

YouTube convention. Anaheim. July 2014.

I’m sweating through my NASA sweatshirt. I’ve double-checked the schedule three times. Her panel on “Digital Mythology and the Eroticism of Aesthetic Suffering” ended twenty minutes ago. She texted “Meet me by the Polaroid photo wall,” and my knees went weak like a stupid little Victorian schoolboy.

God, I’m gonna throw up.

She’s not real. Like—okay, I know she’s real, but she looks like a Tumblr moodboard came to life.

I don’t even believe in soulmates but if I did—shut up, I’m spiraling.

Also? Her lip gloss smells like peaches. This is a crucial detail.

“Hi,” I say. Except it comes out too high-pitched, like I’m trying to impersonate myself.

She looks up. Smirks. “Hey, if it isn’t the science guy who thinks love is just oxytocin and evolutionary strategy.”

“Okay, ouch,” I laugh, cheeks going nuclear. “I also think it’s... like... cosmic. And potentially algorithmically improbable.”

Smooth.

She raises an eyebrow. “So you’re saying I’m a statistical anomaly?”

“I—” Abort mission. “I mean. Kind of?”

She snorts. “You’re blushing.”

“No, that’s... I was just walking really fast.”

“You walked from the convention center to the fountain in 97-degree heat wearing a hoodie.”

“...I have social anxiety?”

She grins. A real, slow one that feels like a sunbeam directly to the sternum. I blink a few times because—honestly—my brain is buffering.

“Wanna get coffee?” I blurt. “With me. Not like in a weird science romantic way. Just... normally. Unless you want a weird science way. In which case, I can bring notes. Not notes notes. Like. I mean—I’ll shut up now.”

(WHY WOULD SCIENCE AND ROMANCE EVER BE SYNONYMOUS, CALVIN?!!)