Chapter 3
(The Present)

     The first time Chase saw Lacey was in the library at UCLA. As she walked in, he (along with most of the young men and, frankly, most of the young women) gazed at her, trying not to blatantly stare. She had a very feminine and equally unnecessary light-pink bra translucing through her slightly cut-off tank top. Not just a little of her matching panty peeked out over the thin waist of her shorts that were pulled down slightly on the left side. Chase figured this wasn’t on purpose, because she didn’t seem like that kind of girl. He got the sense that it wasn’t sloppiness, either, but rather a casual, confident nonchalance that he found particu-larly attractive, partly because it’s something he’d been striving for for years with only occasional and usually short-lived success. As he gazed, Lacey caught his eye and, to his surprise and mild distress, didn’t let it go. She had vivid blue-diamond eyes, her face was set in short but stylishly cut golden hair. Her nose was slightly too big; but all that did was make her a 9.8 rather than a 10. She sat down at the half-height cubicle directly across from Chase. He was still gazing… and so was she.

     He expected that, if she were going to say anything at all, it would be something like, “Nice day, isn’t it?” So, her first words caught him a little off guard. Respecting the semi-quiet of the library, she whispered, “I don’t quite understand why matter has mass.”