Chapter Eight #2
Brady smiles into her drink. “I can see how that would distract from turbulence.”
“Here we are questioning you about all these details. You must feel like you’re in a job interview.
But we’re just very curious. At least I am, for my part.
I love to ask couples how they’ve met, it always makes for such entertaining stories—thank you for telling us yours.
” Vivienne crouches down and picks up the bottle of wine she left at her feet. “More, anyone?”
My arm shoots out, holding up my stress-drained glass.
Jacob takes the bottle from Vivienne and, angling his arm over her shoulders, tops us up. “I hear you work in Berlin, Lewis? Nice city.”
“It’s amazing, but the winters are really gray.”
“Oh right, you’re from Berlin, aren’t you, Frances?” Vivienne asks.
I nod. “My sister still lives there, and my parents, too.”
“How’s Karo doing?” Jacob wants to know as he’s raising his glass.
“She’s—uh.” I study his face, searching for an ulterior motive, but his tone is relaxed and not the fake-friendly kind he puts on when he wants to hide his true feelings. “She just got married, actually. We went to the wedding right before flying over.”
“Really?” Brady butts in, gaping at Lewis. “You don’t even like weddings.”
Lewis smiles good-naturedly. “We don’t get to spend a lot of time together. And I get along well with her parents, so…”
Oh no.
I register Lewis’s mistake the exact same moment as doubt settles into Jacob’s face.
I forgot to tell Lewis. And he’d know, too, if he’d actually met them. My parents don’t speak English. They learned Russian as a second language back in the days in East Germany and it’s not like that’d help Lewis to get to know them, unless he has hidden talents I don’t know of.
“That’s great. Send them my best wishes,” Jacob tells me, then turns to Lewis. “How do you talk to them, if you don’t mind me asking?”
In fact, I mind him asking. Especially after my parents stammered through a language they barely spoke just to get to know him while he didn’t even show a modicum of motivation to pick up a few words of German to make things easier on them.
I mind a lot, so much that I need to squeeze my hand into a fist, trying to dilute the sudden anger.
“I’m not sure I understand your question,” Lewis says, stepping into what I suspect was a trap on Jacob’s behalf.
Of all things, I can’t believe that it’s my parents’ language skills that mess up this entire farce.
“Then again, I speak German to them, same as I do with her,” Lewis goes on as he leans into me.
“Nicht wahr, B?rchen?” His mouth is hot against my ear, the goose bumps on my skin chased by a wave of elation.
Isn’t that right, little bear? It’s a cringe-worthy term of endearment, and he butchered it with his American accent, but it gets the job done.
When we finally get out of their place, I’m riding a high, pure enthusiasm flooding my veins.
Our first test as a fake couple and we crushed it—especially Lewis’s knockout punch that drew a dark look to Jacob’s face and made him leave us alone soon after.
Granted, it may also be the wine sloshing through my body, but nothing can ruin my mood.
The information screen showing major outages on the subway network due to some signal malfunction?
The hot, stagnant air? I don’t care one bit.
“What a nightmare.” Lewis surveys the empty platform and the screen above our heads. The orange LED shows two horizontal bars instead of its usual time estimate.
“I can order us a ride,” I suggest. “You also have to go back uptown, right?”
He runs his palm over the back of his neck. “I wasn’t talking about the subway.”
I stop the search for my phone in my bag and nudge his shoulder. “Come on,” I say. “We weren’t too bad. You knocked it out of the park when you showed off your German skills.”
“Uh, Frances? We barely scraped by.” Lewis frowns at me. “You do realize that I literally jumped away when you tried to take my hand.”
The smile slides off my face when I mentally review the past hours. That gesture should’ve been normal for a couple. We all but stumbled through Brady’s and Vivienne’s questions, not to mention Jacob’s doubtful expression, as if he was somehow onto us. “Okay, fine, you’re right,” I concede.
In the silence that follows, I worry that Lewis wants out of our deal. But calling it off is not an option, not with our careers on the line.
He peers over my shoulder, bites the inside of his cheek, and hoists his backpack up. Then he utters five magical words: “We need a better plan.”
“Yes,” I breathe, relieved. “Okay. We’re scientists—we’re good at plans.”
“Whatever we did so far is not working,” he continues and holds out his hand. “Come on, let’s walk. We can talk on the way.”
I give him a confused look. “Are you not staying close to campus?”
“I am.”
“We’re on the other end of Manhattan.”
“We have a lot of planning to do,” Lewis retorts and motions for me to follow him up the subway stairs. “So, a plan,” he repeats when we’re back outside, on the busy sidewalk.
This close to Jacob and Vivienne’s house, there might be inadvertent eavesdroppers, but between the man zipping by on a skateboard and the group of students carrying a couch across the street, I don’t spot any familiar faces from the faculty dinner, making it safe for us to talk.
“We should’ve thought about this sooner,” I grumble as we stop at a traffic light and let a car pass by, then cross the street. “Karo warned me. No fake dating without a plan.”
“Karo is your sister, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, so we’re in this madness thanks to your sister.”
“I’m saving my career thanks to my sister,” I correct him.
“Well, and thanks to you.” I try to remember the basic ingredients to a fake-dating setup Karo told me about.
“Our end-date was kind of implied right? For the duration of the Sawyer’s.
Which is next Friday.” I wait for him to nod, then go on, “And to make things less complicated, I guess we should be exclusive for this time, unless…”
“Relax, Frances. I don’t have some high school sweetheart hanging around town.”
“Good. What about back home?”
He huffs out a laugh. “Maybe this is something you should’ve considered before you included me in your plan.”
Ah, here it comes. Another lecture about how I should be more detail-oriented in research and in life.
But Lewis just shrugs. “There have been women. Friends of friends, colleagues. But nothing in the last couple of months. Nothing serious, just friends with benefits.”
Colleagues. My mind latches on to the word. “Wait, you’re familiar with this whole situation?”
“God, no. The absolute opposite. The benefits I’m referring to are—”
“I know what friends with benefits are,” I interrupt him. We pass a food cart selling churros and breathe in the air that’s heavy with sugar and frying oil. “I meant that you’re used to hanging out with colleagues in your downtime.”
“If that’s what you want to call it, yes.”
“Huh.”
“Don’t sound so surprised,” Lewis says. Ahead of us, in front of what turns out to be an ice cream parlor, the sidewalk is clogged with people.
I momentarily lose track of him as we weave around the crowds, but then catch the unmistakable swoop of his hair, the set of his shoulders and his canvas backpack.
He reaches for me, wrapping his fingers around my elbow, and throws me a look, as if to make sure that this is okay.
I nod, trying not to catalog how rough the pads of his fingers feel against my skin, how his knuckles brush against my waist, how his scent envelops me.
A whiff of pine trees, a hint of sweat. As we cross another side street, he lets go of me.
“We were attracted to each other,” Lewis picks up the conversation again, “and we both didn’t feel like dating, but needed a way to,” he drops his voice as he leans in close, “decompress after work. It’s as easy as that.”
The technical term makes me snort. “Decompress. How romantic.” How did this whole thing between him and his colleague start?
Did their paths cross at the printer? Did she come on to him with a calendar invite?
Until three days ago, the thought of stuck-up Dr. Theodore L.
North seducing anybody other than a robot would’ve been laughable.
But now that I’ve gotten glimpses of his quiet charm, I suppose I can acknowledge that he can be attractive. To some people. Under a certain light, which annoyingly includes the cold neon glare inside planes and the milky glow of the streetlights on Eighth Avenue.
I clear my throat. “And here I thought you were plenty busy with waging social media wars against me and finding the holes in my analyses. And learning German, of course.”
“Well,” he says, ducking his head, “I’m not that good.” As he pulls a steel bottle from his backpack, his ears and cheeks flush pink.
Interesting. He’s proud to a fault when it comes to his science, so his humility surprises me. Those three German words he said at the dinner were more than Jacob ever deigned to learn.
“You’ve lived in Berlin for what?” I backtrack the moment the footnote of his affiliation switched from University of Oxford to Berlin School of Mind and Brain. “Like, a year?” I ask, though I know it’s been longer than that.
Lewis takes a swig from his bottle. “Almost two,” he corrects once he’s swallowed.
“Being able to speak German is sort of expected on the job. It’s not like patients who just underwent open brain surgery should make the effort to speak English to me.
Not that I expect them to in the first place. Speak English, I mean.”
“They don’t call you B?rchen, though, do they?”