Chapter Eight
Outside on the patio, dusk has settled in, streaking the clouds in shades of pink on a lavender sky.
I finally spot Lewis at the back corner where, with his back to me, he’s talking to a woman with thick, black hair pulled into two space buns atop her head.
Every few words, she pushes a huge pair of glasses back up the bridge of her nose.
They look like they know each other—closely, I suppose, given the relaxed set of his shoulders and the animated gestures she makes, followed by a hearty laugh.
My steps falter as I approach. Faking a relationship in front of random colleagues is one thing, but one of Lewis’s friends?
Go and enjoy your time with Lewis, Vivienne’s words echo in my mind, making my decision for me.
As I make a beeline for the pair of them, I flip through my options of how I could slide into the conversation in a determinedly couply way.
Call him a pet name? Or hold hands? We’ve done that before, and he didn’t mind, even when I was crushing his fingers.
Although Vivienne’s probably looking elsewhere, I need to prove to myself that I can do this.
So, I take the leap and stretch my arm into the space between us until my fingertips graze the back of his hand.
Lewis jumps. He snatches his arm back and clutches it to his chest.
A hole in the floor would be nice. Or a collective, very short-lived amnesia for everyone attending.
He turns, eyes wide, and his mistake registers as he sees the chasm of space between us, my pained expression, and the quizzical look on his companion’s face.
I curb the urge to down my glass of wine in one gulp and force myself to keep looking at him instead of checking if Vivienne—or worse, Jacob—witnessed this little show.
It’s fine. It’s all fine. It’s totally normal for a person to jump at a tender gesture from their girlfriend.
“Static shock,” Lewis says unconvincingly. There’s a hitch to his voice, as if his body wants to tell each and every person around us that he is capital-L Lying.
Hell, this is not working.
He makes a grab for my hand, but his grasp is so tight that it hurts. I plaster a smile on my face and wiggle my fingers, forcing him to loosen up.
“Hi, I’m Frances,” I introduce myself, nodding at Lewis’s friend.
As Lewis clears his throat, her gaze shoots to him. “Frances, uh—I don’t believe you’ve met each other. This is my friend Brady. We did our PhDs in the same lab. And this is Frances, my girlfriend.”
Her brown eyes grow wide on that last word, then snap to Lewis.
“Okay, so while I’ve been word-vomiting at you about my idea of a small-town AU with Geralt of Rivia as a hot grumpy veterinarian, you didn’t think once of interrupting me to tell me you are dating?
And Dr. Frances Silberstein, of all people? ”
She turns to me and, without letting Lewis get another word in, continues, “It’s so nice to meet you. I’ve heard so much about you!”
Lewis blushes furiously, as though he doesn’t want Brady sharing what he’s told her about me and my uninspired, flashy research.
“It’s really nice to meet you, too.” I smile, although I only understood about fifty percent of what she said, and even that was confusing.
“Brady, um.” At my side, Lewis rubs the nape of his neck with his free hand.
“Listen,” Brady murmurs, leaning in as she rights her glasses.
“You have to tell me everything about how angel eyes over here”—she nods her head in Lewis’s direction—“groveled and finally made it up to you because last time I heard, you were still very much enemies and far away from being lovers.” Her mouth gapes open.
“Ohh, or is that your thing? Intellectual sparring as forepl—”
“Brady,” Lewis cuts in, exasperated.
I’m so lost. “Um? Groveled?”
Her gaze flicks to Lewis, then back to me. “I mean for that paper he published? The one he left you out of?”
Lewis’s hand tightens around mine again.
“Oh yeah, right. He did. Um, grovel big-time.” I force my cheeks to hold on to the smile and change the subject. If we start talking about that paper, there’s no way I’ll be able to pretend to be in love with Lewis now. “So, uh, what do you do now?”
What I really want to ask is: What does she mean, finally make it up to me?
It’s not like I need to be reminded of what he did four years ago, but both of their reactions confuse me. That Brady knows and so bluntly talks about it and that Lewis stares back at me with what I can only interpret as a painful expression.
“After graduating, I took a bit of a different path, research-wise,” Brady supplies. “I’m working on early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s now.”
I rifle through my mental file on Lewis, wondering where the hell that same lab they were both in is based.
We only got in touch once we were postdocs, so I’m not sure where in the world they first met.
He was in Oxford when we first started emailing, and then he switched to the Berlin School of Mind and Brain two years after. But where did he live before?
A girlfriend should know that, right?
I can’t place her accent, but her sentences sound like they’re questions—Australian maybe? Hang on, did Lewis do his PhD in Australia?
“That’s interesting,” I say. “Did you move… elsewhere for your postdoc then?”
“No, still in the same place,” she tells me, unhelpfully.
I nod and push my thumb into Lewis’s palm until he finally catches on. “Brady fell in love with Vancouver from the moment she moved there.”
She laughs. “Says the one who went for a weeklong hike to say goodbye to the area before moving to Oxford.”
He grins at her. “England is nice and all, but the hikes don’t compare.”
“Seems like you share a love for the outdoors then.” Vivienne glides into our loose circle like a pro.
She presses a glass bottle of soda into Brady’s empty hands and throws a measuring gaze at Lewis’s and my drinks.
We’ve advanced into the next level of our fake dating test way too soon.
A good friend of Lewis’s and Vivienne all at once?
I take a sip of my wine. Despite my hard attempt at confidence, the rim clanks painfully against my teeth. “We surely do.”
“Do you have any outdoor adventures planned while you’re here?” Vivienne asks.
I consider adapting the two-week-long trip to the Pacific Northwest that I’ll embark on with Karo after the Sawyer’s. But it’s too risky. Vancouver is on our route, and Brady would likely want to see Lewis if we stopped by.
The silence stretches.
How can we be so ill-prepared? I’m considering walking up to Columbia tomorrow and demanding that they take back my PhD, because I’m so many levels of stupid. Analytic thinking, strategic planning, my ass.
“A friend of mine has a cabin upstate,” Lewis answers eventually. “It’s not the wild outdoors, but it’s a nice reprieve from the city. I was thinking we’d spend the weekend there. It was meant to be a surprise,” he adds as a last thought, probably to excuse his long silence.
Brady “Awww”s.
“It’ll be a nice change of scenery,” I note.
Both of their expressions shift into a frown.
Crap. I should probably react to this romantic surprise, shouldn’t I?
“Omigod!” I exclaim with a pitch I didn’t know my voice could venture into. “We’re going to a cabin?” I lay my hand on Lewis’s chest and do my best to lovingly gaze into his eyes. They flash in amusement.
“That sounds lovely,” Vivienne says, but Brady tilts her head, like she’s contemplating how to extricate Lewis from my arms. “How did the two of you meet?”
“It’s a funny story…” I falter as Jacob casually steps up to Vivienne and sneaks his arm around her shoulder, then swirls the amber liquid in his glass.
Whiskey, no doubt. We’ve advanced to the boss fight, but it’s much too soon.
I knew I wouldn’t be able to avoid Jacob completely, seeing that we’re at his house, but I didn’t expect him to come hang out with us.
Between his curious gaze, Brady’s probing questions, and Vivienne, who I still can’t read, my teeth clench so tightly I should probably pencil in a dentist appointment for when I get back.
“It must be,” Brady quips, “since I’ve only ever seen the two of you fight online.”
Painfully aware of how I’m blanking, I pull my hand from Lewis’s chest and put it on his arm, where I dig my fingers into his skin, hoping he’ll get the message: Help me out here.
“We met on our way to a conference. The flight was pretty turbulent,” Lewis jumps in.
Jacob knits his brow. “That doesn’t sound like it’d be funny, especially for you.”
I’m not sure how to feel about the fact that he remembers my fear of flying. “It wasn’t. But luckily, I sat next to this guy.”
“And I had to distract her through the turbulence,” Lewis continues. So far, so good. In the back of my mind, I replay our encounter, looking for moments where romance could’ve sparked.
“You were sat next to each other?” Vivienne’s gaze jumps back and forth between the two of us. “Such a coincidence!”
“It was.” Lewis takes a long swig of his drink, and I hope it’s not as obvious to everyone else that he’s stalling for time.
“I started a discussion about the role of sleep in memory consolidation. You know, if it has an active contribution or if all it does is to protect the brain from interference of new incoming input.”
“Active role, definitely,” I state. “The alternative option is ridiculous. During sleep we see a repetition of those same patterns of activity that a rat exhibits when it’s learning the layout of a new environment.”
“Yeah, but that’s not conclusive evidence, is it?” Lewis smirks down at me. “The rat also shows this sort of activity when it’s awake and relaxed.”
I narrow my eyes at him and that glint in his eyes. “What about strengthened synaptic connections? The fact that memory performance is better after sleep?”
Lewis pats my hand, the one that’s gotten far too comfortable on his arm. “And this,” he says, turning to the others, “is how she captured my heart.”