Excerpt from The Atomic Weight of Love by Elizabeth Church, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

We often walked together between or after classes, when Alden wasn't committed to secret work in his laboratory. I remember an ozone-scented April afternoon when he pulled my hand from my raincoat pocket and held it in his hot, enveloping hands. Abruptly, suddenly aware of his own gesture, he paused in his description of atomic half-life, radioactive decay. We stood on the rain-darkened campus sidewalk, looked at each other, and I used my free hand to tuck a curl of his hair behind his ear. I felt so calm with Alden. Jerry always felt precarious, but Alden gave me sure footing. He's solid, I thought as, wordlessly, we began walking once more.

My thoughts surprised me. Unconscious, unbidden, I was falling in love.

Excerpted from The Atomic Weight of Love by James Church. Copyright © 2016 by James Church. Excerpted by permission of Algonquin Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.