What Is Love?

by Jen Comfort

Theodore “Teddy” Ferguson III fell in love with Maxine Hart the day before she crushed his intellectual prowess on national television.

Teddy grinned, the confidence of having gone undefeated for so long empowering him to flirt, when five weeks ago he’d have, at best, awkwardly mumbled an apology. “Don’t be alarmed. It’s a completely natural mineral, often used in sunscreen.” (For Teddy, the relaying of trivia was flirting.)

She’d already stripped him naked in other ways; the fabric over his chest was the only armor he had left.

She whispered, “I’m going to eat you alive.” God, I hope so.

Maxine kissed him like they were at war and their mouths were the battlefield, and it changed his world. Everything he thought he knew about love (a slow-burning, respectable, reasonable thing) was suddenly wrong, every unassailable truth about the universe flipped on its head.

Guys or girls, it didn’t matter—Maxine was whatever the opposite of an acquired taste was to her paramours.

Unable to help herself, she whispered to Teddy, “Zola’s here. She must be the winner of the Fan Favorite contest.” Teddy’s lips pressed together. “She’s a masterful player.” Maxine pretended to pout. “I thought I was the only player you were afraid of.” “Don’t be absurd. I’m not afraid of you.” “You will be.”

Maxine didn’t bother clapping at all. That fake-tanned douchebag could clap his own ass cheeks together if he needed a warmer welcome; he wasn’t getting one from her.

Tarrah: All I see is Herc’s got a net worth of 100 million??? Girl forget finding where in the world does Teddy’s sandy dick go! I’m looking to get bukkake’d in 24k gold, babyyyy Maxine: bukkake is the noun version of the verb bukkakeru, which means “to rudely splash with liquid” but gold’s melting point is like 2000 deg which is basically lava temp Tarrah: so? Maxine: so wear protection Tarrah: nerd

Maxine: sorry. I was licking my wounds. Tarrah: don’t be sorry. I get it. I pour alcohol on mine; it’s sterile.

Trivia takes this boring piece of information and makes it . . . magical. It makes meaning out of raw data, the way statistics does with numbers, except trivia does it with all the loose odds and ends of the universe. “So, that’s why trivia matters to me.

It made her wonder if he was furry elsewhere. Did he wax his chest? His balls? For luck’s sake, do not think about Theodore Ferguson’s balls. Her body’s attraction to him was disturbing enough without imagery.

So, sure, she’d played a little dirty that first night they’d met. But playing clean was a privilege that girls who grew up poor couldn’t afford. Moving up in the world was a pricey endeavor, and so was her sister’s med school. You played the cards you were dealt, and Maxine had been dealt a pretty face and cast-iron guts.

“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.”

O.O

The J-names were ranked eighth and ninth, respectively, and had all the wagering gusto and intellectual breadth of a stack of empty pizza boxes.

“What do you want me to do? Show up on Teddy’s doorstep with a bouquet of flowers and say, ‘I’m sorry I spend three hours a day fantasizing about shoving you in a locker, but will you please teach me everything you know so I can beat you in the most important tournament of our lives?’” Marlon and Rabbi Cohen said in unison, “Yes!”

“Have you broken into my email correspondence?” “No. But I probably could. I bet you write all your passwords down in a little alphabetized notebook that you lock in your desk drawer.” Teddy made a mental note to move his password journal to a more secure, Maxine-proof location.

“Are you stoked about running the Takahashi Gauntlet today?” Teddy focused very hard on the wainscoting around his ceiling fan. “I don’t know what that is, but the absolutely demonic tone in which you’ve presented it makes me certain the answer is no.”

When Teddy had experienced his first heartbreak at seventeen, after Brittany Bauer had turned down his invitation to prom, he’d done what any sensitive, intellectual boy would have done: plundered his mother’s first-edition poetry collection, glommed on to Yeats and Byron, and sulked about the house being wretchedly maudlin and cynical for an entire summer. Thankfully, his mother had discovered his hoard of misanthropic literature and put a stop to his otherwise-inevitable slide into insufferable self-absorption that all too often terminated in late-stage virginity, prosaic misogyny, and having one’s own podcast.

“If you want to earn a woman’s love at some point in your life, you must first understand her rage,” she’d said, followed by the sly warning: “Don’t tell your father about these.”

With no next-day competition hanging over their heads, everyone who’d lost in the quarterfinals had gone out on the town to celebrate, and someone had thought it was a good idea to bring up the age-old debate about whether the Iliad or the Odyssey fucks more. Shit had gotten so out of hand that Sikander Shaw left with a black eye, Rutger Bradley was now banned from Wingstop, and apparently Rayla Woods was seen going back to Andrea Hsu’s hotel room.

Maxine had taught him to worry less about inconsequential details and more about whether he was having fun. Her love was sunlight streaming in to the darkest corner of a library, murmuring in dust motes against his cheek, All this collected knowledge is wonderful, but have you been outside lately?