The Soulmate Equation
: Chapter 21

JESS AND JUNO were about a block away from school one morning when Juno stopped and asked, “Now is River Nicolas your boyfriend?”

“What made you think of that on the way to school?” Jess deflected.

“Just wondering if you’re going to see him this morning.”

She carefully considered this statement; her kid was fishing. “I’ll probably see him at Twiggs later.”

“Oh.” Juno slanted her eyes up to her. “I thought I saw his stuff at home.”

Jess’s neck heated, her mind starting to race. The last week, River had come over every morning for an hour or so after school drop-off and before they both started work for the day—it was their only time totally alone—but Jess’d had no idea that he’d been leaving evidence behind. She guessed in the haze of sex on the floor, on the bed, in the shower, bent over the dresser, and once on the kitchen island, even a hyperorganized scientist was prone to forget something.

“Huh,” she said, stalling.

“Yesterday,” Juno said casually, her eyes straight ahead, “he left some shorts.”

“Oh.” Jess scrambled to come up with a suitable explanation, but the image of River suffering his way through a workday without underwear made her cough out a tiny laugh. “He probably used our place to change after, um, going for a run?”

Juno nodded at this and kicked a stick into the street. “Yeah, probably.”

They stopped at the border of school property, and Jess turned to face her daughter, needing to see her eyes when she asked, “How would you feel about it if we were dating each other?”

“I would like it,” Juno said absently, and her eyes veered to the side as she started scanning the playground for her friends.

Jess guided her chin so Juno was looking at her again. “Are you sure? Because it means sometimes he’ll be with us, doing things.”

Her daughter’s eyes glazed over. “I know.”

“But you are still the most important thing in the world to me.”

Juno’s attention started to drift to the side again. “I know.”

God, it was not the time or the place to be having this conversation.

“Juno,” Jess said with gentle authority. “Look at me.”

Her eyes cleared. “What?”

“It’s important to me that you hear this,” Jess said. “You asked about River, so I want to say this now. You are my family. It’s you and me, and nobody can change that, do you understand?”

Juno nodded. “I know, Mama. I like River. And I know you love me.”

From a few yards away, Naomi and Krista called out Juno’s name. She tensed in excitement, bouncing on her feet, but obediently kept her gaze on her mother, waiting for the release of the goodbye kiss.

Jess pressed it to her forehead. “I do love you, Juno Merriam.”

“I love you, too, Jessica Nicolas!” With a delighted giggle, she tore off toward her friends.

RIVER’S HAIR WAS a tangled mess from Jess’s fingers as he kissed his way back up her body, and his expression quickly turned cocky at the view of her rag doll prostration on the bed.

“That was inspired,” she mumbled.

He kissed her once, breathless and smiling, and then fell to the side in his own exhausted puddle. “Good.”

Jess rolled over, half sprawling across his chest, and grinned up at him. “How was going commando at work yesterday?”

Letting out a laugh-groan, he reached with his free arm and wiped a hand down his face. “You’d think I would notice the lack of boxers sometime before leaving for work.”

“Sex drunk.”

Humming, he smiled into a kiss, and then went completely still as realization dawned. “Shit. We had sex in the kitchen yesterday.” He squinted apologetically down at her. “Juno found them, didn’t she?”

Jess waved this off. “She thought they were shorts.”

He winced, face grim. “I’m sorry, Jess.”

“No, it’s good.” She rested her chin on her fist, gazing up at him. “I did tell her we’re together, though. I hope that’s okay.”

River bit back a smile. “Of course it is.”

“Honestly, I’m amazed her friends at school didn’t ask about the U-T article. Or the Today show, for that matter.”

“Was she okay with us?”

She stretched to kiss him, because that was the perfect first question. “I think she’s thrilled, River Nicolas.” Returning to her perch on his chest, she added, “I don’t want her to worry that things are going to change too fast.”

He dragged long, lazy fingers through her hair and gazed unfocused at her face.

“I’d ask you what you’re thinking,” she said, “but I bet the answer is, like, RNA editing or restriction enzymes.”

“Actually, wiseass, I was thinking how beautiful you are.”

An important circuit shorted out in her brain; she had no idea how to respond articulately while elation simmered in her veins. “Oh. So… not RNA editing.”

River smiled, curling to kiss her. “No.” He settled back on the pillow. “I was thinking how happy I am.”

Her blood cells stood up, gave a roaring standing ovation. “Just like your fancy machine predicted.”

“I haven’t felt this way before,” he said, ignoring her joking. “Is it too soon to say that?”

Jess grew short of breath. “Of course not.”

“I haven’t been home in years, but I feel that way with you.”

She bent and pressed her face to his chest, squeezing her eyes closed and trying not to hyperventilate.

“You okay?”

“Just trying not to freak out,” she said, and quickly added, “Good freak out. Deeply infatuated freak out.”

“That’s a good freak ou—Oh.” When she looked up in response to his tone, an uneasy smile spread across his mouth and he pushed back into the pillow to be able to see her better. “I meant to tell you this as soon as I got here, but—”

“But I was waiting for you naked?” she interrupted with a grin.

“Yes, exactly.” He laughed. “We have people coming into the offices on Monday.”

“… Okay?”

He gazed at her, and then laughed at her misunderstanding. “We have People magazine coming into the offices on Monday. They’re meeting with us in the morning, I guess,” he said, gesturing to include her, “and then David, Brandon, Lisa, and I will have an interview in the afternoon. So, unless you and Fizzy are going to remove every copy in the grocery store, it’s probably good Juno found out today.”

AFTER A TRY Something New Sunday—River joined all four Davises at the zoo, and holding his hand in public was the novelty—Monday came along, and she didn’t even wake up in a panic. She was getting used to all these high-pressure situations—interviews, parties, photo sessions—though no doubt it helped that her relationship with River felt like a cornet-blaring, red-carpet-unfurling, fireworks-over-the-ocean, first of its kind in all of history.

It helped, too, that he slept in her bed Sunday night. In life, River was restrained and cautious. As a lover, he was expressive and generous. And in sleep, he was a cuddler: pressed up against her all night, her long, big spoon.

At six, his alarm went off and he jerked awake like he’d been hoisted by strings, sleepily tugging on clothes—double-checking that he had on all of his clothes—kissing her, and silently sneaking out before Juno was awake.

Half an hour later, he was at their door “surprising” Jess and Juno with coffee and hot chocolate.

Juno shuffled out of her bedroom, and the three of them sat down at the dining table for breakfast. River pulled out some papers to review; his foot came over Jess’s, reminding her that not even an hour ago he was beside her, in her bed. She tried not to let the thought unspool, imagining the three of them sitting there in easy silence every morning for the rest of their lives.

Juno poked sleepily at her cereal. “Why did you leave so early to get coffee? Mama has a coffee machine in the kitchen.”

River and Jess went completely still. Finally, he managed a deeply unconvincing “Huh, does she?”

They followed the path of Juno’s pointed finger to the counter, and River let out a murmured “Oh, I didn’t know that. Thank you.”

He looked at Jess over the top of Juno’s head and winced for help. Jess had to bite her lips to keep from losing it.

They walked Juno to school together, bracketing her, each holding one of her hands. She crab-walked; they swung her. “You need to be taller, Mom,” Juno said. “River Nicolas can swing me way higher.”

He looked over at her, gloating.

And all of it felt like the tip-top of the roller coaster, the feeling of anticipation before the thrill of the drop.

So obviously, Jess was terrified.

WHICH WAS OKAY, because there was plenty to distract her from those enormous, scary feelings. When they arrived at the GeneticAlly offices—the parking lot more crowded than Jess had ever seen it—everything exploded into motion and excitement. Lisa greeted them at the curb, firing information off about the schedule as soon as they climbed out of the car. Jess and River were up first for two hours, then the reporter, Aneesha, would take River to meet with David, Lisa, and Brandon over near the Salk. Before she’d even had a chance to put her purse down, Jess was being ushered into Lisa’s office, where a makeup artist and hairstylist got right to work.

“You look like you’ve been carried here upside down,” Aneesha said, laughing. She was a gorgeous Black woman with glowing skin and the most perfect crab-apple cheekbones Jess had seen in her entire life. “Totally shell-shocked.”

Jess laughed as the makeup artist worked around her. “I am not—to put it mildly—accustomed to this treatment.”

Over the next twenty minutes, Jess learned that Aneesha Sampson had interviewed Brad Pitt last weekend, had an irrepressible laugh, called River “Keanu Banderas,” and embraced both plunging necklines and shoulder-grazing dangly earrings in her personal style. Jess didn’t know if she wanted to propose or propose a life swap.

“We’re going to start in the lab, if that works for you,” Aneesha said as they all stepped out into the hall. “Just River at first.”

Lisa looked a little harried. “Jess, are you okay just hanging out?”

Jess held up her laptop. “I have a ton of work to do. You can put me anywhere.”

As Aneesha headed toward the elevator and Lisa bent to reply to a text on her phone, River leaned in, kissing Jess. “Okay. I’ll see you in a bit. I love you.”

White noise roared in her ears and her eyes went wide. “What?”

River stared down at her, his expression slack with shock. But he didn’t take it back. He just… started laughing. He nodded sideways to Lisa, saying quietly, “Not the place I’d planned to say it, but hallways and audiences do seem to be our thing.”

Lisa turned to take a call, and Jess broke into a grin, throwing her arms around his neck. She planted a dozen tiny kisses all over his face. “I love you, too.”

The truth of it was so obvious; Jess didn’t know how they hadn’t been saying I love you from that very first day.

With his smile straightening and a bright heat flashing like lightning in his eyes, he moved his lips to her cheek, and over to her ear. “I’ll see you in a few.”

“River, they’re ready for you.” Lisa waved him down the hall.

With one final peck, he disappeared into the elevator and Lisa returned. “Jess, I’d put you in River’s office, but they’re setting up for some stills.” Hooking her thumb to the office directly behind her, Lisa said, “Let’s just put you in David’s for now. He won’t mind.”

Jess lifted her laptop. “I’m cool anywhere.”

Lisa tried the door, then pulled out her keys and unlocked it, immediately wincing as she turned back to Jess. “This okay? I forgot how messy he is. I never go in here.”

And… wow. David’s office was the upside-down version of River’s. Where River’s desk was bare but for his computer, David’s had the look of a desk found in the rubble post-hurricane. It was covered with printed-out data sheets, empty paper cups, wadded-up napkins, Post-its, and stacks of journal articles. His shelves were lined with a dusty and disorganized array of convention freebies: a Merck-branded stress ball, a Sanofi travel mug, a plastic DNA molecule from Genentech, a pile of branded pens.

But listen. River Nicolas Peña had just told her he loved her. Lisa could drop Jess off on Bourbon Street early on a Saturday morning and she’d be fine. “This is great.”

“We’ll come grab you when Aneesha is ready.” Lisa grinned before ducking out, closing the door behind her.

Staring at David’s desk, Jess wondered whether she should use her laptop on her actual lap, before figuring she could just carefully set it on top and not disturb the mayhem. While her computer booted up, Jess glanced around the sciencey detritus. Among the papers were sheets and sheets filled with hundreds of rows of data. An electrical current passed over her. Maybe that was a thread of why she and River were a Diamond Match—they were both deeply enthralled by numbers.

About halfway down a messy pile of papers, a corner of one stuck out. Jess’s eye caught on something written in the top left corner, and she carefully pulled free the thick binder-clipped cluster.

Client 144326.

Her blood turned carbonated as she registered what she was seeing. That was her. Jess’s data. And beneath her number was another: Client 000001.

River.

Below, in bold, was the information they’d heard a thousand times in the past month: Compatibility quotient: 98.

She’d never seen their raw scores before, but there was something oddly holy about holding the data in her hands.

Okay. I’ll see you in a bit. I love you. His words echoed in her mind.

Smiling, Jess scanned the rows and rows of numbers reverently. The client numbers and compatibility score were in the top left corner, and in the top right was the assay information: date, time, which DNADuo machine had run the assay, et cetera. Below that were about sixty rows of numbers, broken into three groups of columns, each three columns wide. Behind this sheet, there were pages and pages of solid numbers.

Jess got chills realizing she was currently holding the information on the roughly 3,500 genes for which she and River aligned. Was it really possible that their connection—their love—was encoded in their cells? Was she programmed from the day she was born to feel this happy—even when Jamie was leaving her over and over, when girls teased her on the soccer field for her drunk mother on the sidelines, when Alec stared mutely at the pregnancy test for a handful of minutes and finally said, “I’ve never wanted kids”? Of all the men Jess could connect with, was River her perfect fit all along?

The idea made her both queasy and high. She looked back down, leaning in to focus on each tiny row of information. The first two columns on each set showed what she assumed was the gene information—gene names and GenBank session number. The third columns held raw compatibility scores, with numbers that seemed to range from zero to four. Nearly all of their scores were higher than 2.5. So, somehow these scores came together in the neural network’s algorithm, and ninety-eight popped out at the end. Clearly, Jess could see now, the data was scientific, but it also felt deeply magical. She was a convert. Show her to the GeneticAltar.

She dragged a finger across the page, wanting to feel the information for herself.

Their most recent assay had been completed on January 30—River’d drawn her blood the night before with such careful formality. They’d been so awkward around each other, so wary. Jess bit back a laugh remembering. Holy shit, she’d had no idea: he’d wanted her even then.

Looking up to confirm David’s office door was closed, she quickly took a picture. She knew she shouldn’t; it might have even been illegal—besides, she could just ask River for a copy of it anyway. But Jess knew she’d want to look at it again and again. Flipping through, she began snapping photos of every page, rows upon rows upon rows of data. Each one had a few values circled, annotated, called out—she guessed—for being totally fucking awesome.

Maybe she’d frame this for him as a gift at some point.

Maybe they’d each pick their favorite gene and get that value tattooed.

Maybe she was starting to sound like one of Fizzy’s heroines right now and should probably shut the hell up.

Grinning like an idiot, Jess flipped to the next page, ready to snap a picture, but stopped. This next set of data was from their first DNADuo assay, the one from her spit kit. In this stack, some cells were circled in pencil and some notes were scribbled in the margins, barely legible. Jess marveled that their data had been pored over like this. Her soaring-soundtrack brain sang that their data might even unlock larger truths about love and emotional connection.

And there was still more. Jess flipped more pages, expecting notes and correspondence, but she found another first page. A duplicate? No. It was a different first page—someone else’s—from an assay run in 2014.

Client 05954

Client 05955

Compatibility quotient: 93

This must be David’s Diamond Match pile, Jess assumed. But her brain tripped over a coincidence in the upper right corner. She flipped between this one and her and River’s top sheet, comparing.

The assay dates were different in all three cases, but the assay end time was exactly the same.

Every time.

Jess blinked, tilting gently toward uneasy, flipping back to their first pages to confirm. Yes: for all three assays, the run time ended at 15:45:23.

Her stomach tightened. Statistically, that was… deeply unlikely. Out of 86,400 seconds in each twenty-four hours, there was only a 0.0012 percent chance of two events landing on the same second. Even if Jess assumed the assays were usually started and finished at roughly the same time—say within the same four-hour window—that was still only a likelihood of 0.007 percent, or a 7 out of 100,000 chance, that Jess and River’s assay and another assay completed on a different day would have finished at the exact same time. But all three? It was nearly impossible. The chances—Jess closed her eyes to do the math—of three assays randomly ending at the same exact second on different days were roughly 1 in 2.5 million.

Jess tried to think logically. She pushed back the roaring in her ears. Maybe the machines were programmed to begin and end at the same time to reduce certain variables? It wouldn’t be unheard of.

Except on January 29, River had started the assay almost immediately after taking her blood. In fact, he’d double-gloved and rolled up to the fume hood before she’d even left the room. The following morning, he’d texted her, asking for a date, and said the test had been confirmed. But although the date on the printout was right, how was it possible River had the data in the morning if the assay wasn’t complete until 3:45 that afternoon? Did he lie to her that he’d gotten the confirmation? That didn’t sound like River.

“What the fuck?” Jess exhaled the words, confused. I have… I have to be missing something.

Her lungs hurt. Her stomach rolled. Her eyes burned from the strain of her intense focus. She couldn’t blink. And then—her heart seemed to fill with needles—Jess noticed that all three assays were run on the DNADuo 2. She remembered seeing the two machines the night he ran the blood samples and asking about them.

“Are those the DNADuos?”

“Creatively named DNADuo One and DNADuo Two. DNADuo Two is down right now. Getting serviced next week. It’ll be up and running by May, I hope.”

A thought crashed into her head. She was frantic now. Flipping through the respective pages on the two data sets, she scanned down the columns on the two pieces of paper. She tried to replace differences in the data sets between her and River’s ninety-eight, and this other couple’s ninety-three.

She couldn’t; they were identical. Every value—as far as she could tell—was exactly the same. It all went blurry the harder she stared. It was too many rows. Too many tiny numbers. It would be like looking for a needle in a haystack while her hair and the haystack were both on fire. And, she thought desperately, for scores this high, maybe most of the raw scores would be identical? What was she missing?

With dread sinking in her chest, Jess registered that the circled numbers on their first data sheet were circled for a reason. Her gaze slid to a penciled oval on the original spreadsheet from January 19.

Jess brought a shaking hand to her mouth. On her and River’s sheet, she saw:

OT-R GeneID 5021 3.5

But on the other couple’s:

OT-R GeneID 5021 1.2

Inside another circle on their original sheet—for the gene PDE4D—Jess and River had a 2.8. Her heart vaulted into her throat. The other couple had a 1.1.

Jess only had the stomach to confirm two more circled values—an AVP of 3.1 on hers and River’s, a 2.1 on the other couple’s; for DRD4, a 2.9 on theirs, a 1.3 on the other couple’s.

As far as Jess could see, the only values that were different—maybe only thirty in the entire data set of nearly 3,500—were the ones that had been circled in their first DNADuo. To draw attention to them. If it weren’t for the identical time stamp and the DNADuo 2 mystery, Jess could have told herself a lie, that those values were circled because they differentiated her and River from the other assay. But she knew they weren’t circled because they were special. They were circled to keep track of which ones had been altered. Someone had, on purpose, changed a compatibility score of ninety-three into a ninety-eight.

Johan and Dotty were our very first Diamond Match, River had said at the cocktail party. Their granddaughter brought them to us back in 2014, and she was right: they came through with a score of ninety-three.

She might throw up. With shaking hands, Jess took a picture of every page of the assay she was almost certain belonged to Johan and Dotty Fuchs. She nearly knocked over the pile twice. She was numb as she bent and stowed her laptop. She put her phone away. And then she sat quietly. Waiting for Aneesha to come for her, Jess had no idea how she was going to get through the interview, knowing what she knew now.

River and Jess had never been a Diamond Match.