What Is Love?

by Jen Comfort

“I don’t usually take dates back to my room after the first drink, and definitely not ones who’ve insulted my intelligence, but you are wearing glasses and suspenders, which I find very slutty on a man. My virtue is real negotiable right now.”

One could argue there were a ton of challenges to having ADHD in a world designed to reward tedium and consistent focus. Maxine preferred to instead dwell on the mega-sweet advantages it gave her. Such as the creative problem-solving ability that came from easily connecting seemingly unrelated thoughts from her brain cloud. Or the ability to thrive under pressure. And above all, the almost childlike ability to derive intense joy from very simple things.

So what if she had to beat both Teddy and the most legendary, undefeated player in Answers! history? She’d grown up poor, neurodivergent, and pissed off. Maxine ate challenge for breakfast and washed it down with a glass of spite. There was nothing she couldn’t do with enough embittered feminism and classist rage.

Accuracy had never been Maxine’s weapon of choice (61 percent—but who’s counting?). She was more of a “buzz first, worry about whether you know the answer later” kind of player. Chaos was her modus operandi: she rang in on everything, wagered wildly, and chose clues like she was throwing darts blindfolded to disrupt other players’ momentum (and find the Daily Duplexes before they did).

Did he really want to go to an event that excluded Maxine on the basis of her background? It felt . . . wrong, somehow. Not that he and Maxine were friends, per se, but he felt a certain loyalty to her. She may be his foe, but she was a foe he considered his equal in skill—even if he didn’t approve of her methodology.

“Trivia is by nature trivial, but that’s what makes it so fun. Facts by themselves are dry and boring, but trivia is learning made holistic. Answers! gives people entry to a world where everything is interconnected. Where each piece of information gets more meaningful when it interacts with other parts of the world.”

“Maxine.” His hand closed around her wrist, gently but firmly. His voice was a register lower than usual. “Don’t begin to undress me unless you intend to finish.” Heat swept over her skin. Her wrist was on fire. Her eyes came up to meet his, and she discovered that ocean eyes could burn too. A challenge.

Until she’d met Teddy, no one had ever been able to get to her, because she was Maxine Hart, and she was amazing. Everyone who dared insult her was so far beneath her that they may as well be sidewalk scum under her boots. But oh, did Teddy get to her. He was the only one who’d ever truly bested her, which made him her equal. And since she couldn’t pretend he was beneath her, that meant he had the power to wound her . . . and that terrified her.

Rabbi Cohen watched too many rom-coms, and lately he’d been getting Marlon hooked on his late wife’s romance novels. But they should know her well enough to know she wasn’t romance-heroine material. She was Outrageous Friend Who Encourages the Heroine to Make Poor Choices material, at best.

“You wanna get something you’ve never had before, you gotta do something you’ve never done before.”

Teddy wondered how she couldn’t see it. That he’d happily let her ruin his entire life—if only she’d stay in it afterward.

“Maxine, I respect you more than anyone else on this planet. You’re the only person who’s ever bested me at the thing I do best. So, if I ever gave you the impression otherwise, I’m sorry.”

How had he ever thought luck was a farce? Somehow, he’d found her, out of nearly eight billion others. Stratospherically impossible odds.

(Cue up Muse’s “Supermassive Black Hole,” because baseball was back on the menu.)

(In fact, most emotions entering the maze of Maxine’s brain rerouted to anger except, ironically, anger itself—which rerouted to either sadness or horniness, depending on how much sleep she’d gotten and whether she had the option to eat shredded cheese straight from the bag while standing over the sink and sobbing.)

She’d let her guard down, and bam! She loved Teddy so keenly that it was causing her physical pain.

A lock of his sandy hair fell forward into his face, and standing there in the unlit hallway with his shirt undone and his chest heaving, it gave him an air of an impassioned and slightly deranged movie villain. “How dare I? You’ve invaded my entire life, pushed me to bare my family secrets, probed at the hopes and desires I’ve never spoken of to anyone else, and I’ve let you. But when I ask for reciprocity, you won’t give me a single, fucking scrap of the real Maxine!”

Whenever he saw her for the first time on any given day, he fell in love again as forcefully as if he’d never met her before.

Be excellent to each other. She hadn’t lied when she’d told Teddy this was one of the two philosophies by which she tried to live. Maxine was selective in who she loved; who she brought into her circle of trust. But once she’d chosen someone, they were hers, and she’d protect and love them until the heat death of the universe.

Maxine had never expected that Teddy would upstage her—but she’d never been prouder of him for doing so. Like her, Teddy began by thanking his family. Then he turned to face her, just like she’d done to him. “Maxine Hart, you are my worthiest adversary—and my most worthy ally. The Bard once wrote, ‘Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once.’ And the day I met you, I ran from fear and met death for what I pray will be the penultimate time. You’ve taught me not to hesitate, to place my trust in fate, and to leap into the unknown with my mind open. You’ve taught me to go all in. To bet it all. To give my maximum heart. “So, it is with everything I have to wager that I ask: Will you marry me?”