Chapter Nine #2
“This is cozy,” I say, hoping to get Lewis out of whatever mood he’s been in, and into fake-date mode. We’re here to make sure Brady sees us having a wonderfully romantic evening. So far, it has been anything but that.
Lewis peels his gaze off my bare shoulder, only to turn it to my lips.
It lingers there long enough that I worry some of the peanut butter pretzels I inhaled before leaving the apartment have gotten stuck between my teeth.
Then he finally meets my eyes and shuts down my attempt at small talk with a simple, hesitant, “It’s okay. ”
“Look,” I tell him, “I get that all this wasn’t part of the plan. That maybe you wanted to have a quiet night at home with your thoughts of why I’m using the worst possible neuroimaging method, but we started this whole thing together, so now we have to see it through. Otherwise—”
“Frances,” he interrupts, voice low. “That’s definitely not what I think about you. And I’m not annoyed about spending the evening with you.”
“Then why are you so cranky?”
He sighs deeply. But before he can say anything, a waiter with a crooked nose and a shock of black hair shows us to our table next to the large window front.
The ledge under the window holds a set of stained wine crates, planted with an assortment of herbs, and their scent mingles with the heavenly smell of melted cheese wafting in from the kitchen.
This really would be the perfect place for a real date—not that I’ve had one of those in a while.
But tonight, Lewis and I are only here to hold hands and get lost in each other’s eyes and be conveniently visible when Brady passes by on her evening walk.
After the waiter has served us sparkling water, an oval platter of bread, and a dish of herb-seasoned oil, I scan the menu for vegetarian and, preferably, warm options that can combat the actual and proverbial freezing temperatures in here.
“You know,” Lewis starts, “regardless of all those arguments, the current research points to waning and waxing activity related to working memory, and not persistent firing.”
I lower my menu so he can fully appreciate my eyeroll. He finally shuts up as the waiter takes our order—ragú, no cheese for him, gnocchi drenched in gorgonzola for me, and half a carafe of red to share.
“You’re cold,” Lewis observes, nodding at my posture: arms folded in front of my chest, shoulders hunched.
I tighten my arms around me. “I’m okay.”
But he clearly doesn’t believe me because he leans forward to ghost his fingertips over my collarbone. I shift in my chair, hyper aware of his caress and the shivers that trail it, the unexpected twist deep in my belly.
“Do you want to leave?” he asks.
“Not when operation Brady is still ongoing. And don’t think we’re done with this conversation.”
A smile crosses his lips. “Fine. But take my jacket.”
Before I can protest, he’s up and shrugs out of his suit jacket, which he then drapes over my shoulders.
The fabric is silky, still warm from his body, and the feel of it on my skin is strangely intimate.
It smells good, too. Comforting. Like smoky pines and a quiet stay in a log cabin.
Lewis’s knuckles brush the nape of my neck as he scoops up my hair from where it got trapped under the collar, sending heat zinging through my body that has nothing to do with the warmth of his jacket.
“Better?”
“Yeah,” I breathe out. Glad my back is still toward him, I chug my water to wash down the unexpected surge of sensations. “So. If we’re saying you’re right, which, to be clear, we aren’t. But if you were. How’s working memory different from long-term memory then?”
Back in his chair, Lewis stares at the candle on our table, the flickering light reflected in his widened pupils.
Without his jacket, the outlines of his arms and chest are sharply visible.
He folds up the sleeves of his shirt, calmly, like he’s getting ready for battle, and I follow the movement, mesmerized by the dance of his tendons and the gold dust of hair on his forearms. Then he wets his lips, looks me in the eye, and launches another attack.
Our food is served, we dine, and the argument keeps rolling.
There’s something oddly familiar about this situation and the cogs in my head whir as they grasp for counterarguments and hypothetical questions I can toss back at him.
I sip on my wine, and that’s when it hits me.
We’ve done something like this before. Four years ago, when he took my arguments as his own.
I won’t fall for this again.
“Hey!” I hold up my index finger. “I thought no espionage about each other’s projects.”
His eyebrows shoot up.
“Wasn’t that one of your terms? About our arrangement?”
“Yes. What about it?”
“Are you, coincidentally, writing a review and need some help?” I hiss, stabbing the last of my gnocchi with my fork. “Should I pick my words more carefully so that they’ll sound nice in your next paper?”
He sets down his cutlery. “Do you mean—”
“Don’t be smart, Theodore,” I bite out. “You know exactly what I’m talking about.”
“Don’t call me that!”
I lean forward. “You’ve done this before. Remember? Four years ago?”
“I know,” he mutters quietly, but I’m too far into my rant to care.
“The opinion paper with your name on it? The one that should have had mine on it, too, if you’d had the decency to credit me for my work? But instead you used my thoughts, my intellectual property, for your own good just like he—”
“I know,” Lewis says, and then again, “I know.” And this time it shuts me up, because:
“You know?”
I would’ve expected anything else: for him to fight back, or to rationalize himself out of it in some way that makes me feel like I’m overreacting. Or even for him to outright deny it. But not to accept my accusation, the corners of his mouth turned down in a perfect expression of regret.
Lewis pushes his empty plate to the side and rests his elbows on the table. “I know.”
I set down my silverware with a clang. “That paper made your career. It’s been cited—”
“Five hundred sixty-two—”
“Five hundred sixty-three times,” I correct him, because yes, I checked again this morning, and yes, it’s pretty awkward that I know and he doesn’t. “It was wildly, vastly unscientific of you to leave my name off of it.”
He scrubs a hand over his face. “Listen, I’m sorry. I was then”—he pauses, as if to find the right words—“and I still am. I wanted to tell you, but I didn’t know how to, for so long, until I felt like it was too late. I tried making it up to you, instead.”
His reaction blew the anger out of me in a gust, but with the bullshit he’s serving me now, it’s back in an instant. “By requesting me as a reviewer on your next paper? Gee, thank you very much.”
“I suggested you as a reviewer because I thought you’d see its worth,” he tells me, voice sharp.
“It tied neatly into one of the open questions we’d discussed, and I thought it would be good for you, being able to list Neuron as a journal you were reviewing for. And anyway, that’s not what I meant.”
Is he getting frustrated? Great, that makes two of us.
“What do you mean, then?” I hiss back. “Because between publicly sharing everything you think I do wrong—”
“I don’t think you do anything wrong,” he cuts in. “I just want to help.”
“Help?” I echo, unable to get out anything else while I process his obnoxiousness.
“Yes,” Lewis exhales. “Because that’s what peer reviews are all about: making the science better. That’s what you should care about, too. The science and not whether you’re seen as successful or not.”
I’ve never engaged in a physical fight, never been kicked, but I imagine this is what it must feel like. The blow hits me deep in the pit of my stomach, pain spilling bluntly, hitching my breath for one, two, three maddening seconds, until the adrenaline kicks in and anger seethes through my chest.
“Oh, the science? That’s easy for you to say. Also, why even bother.” His pages-long review on my last paper is fresh on my mind. “If all I produce is research that—how did you put it?” I tilt my head, “Is ‘uninspired and lacking major contribution to the field.’ ”
“I said what?”
His question confuses me, but I barrel on. “It’s a little hard for me to see how any of that would make up for not crediting me in the first place, but maybe you can help me with that, too, since apparently, I’m not fit to produce anything ‘remotely publishable’ without your contribution.”
“Why would I ever say such a thing?”
“What—”
But he cuts me off when he reaches across the table, his expression replaced by a forced smile. He cups my jaw and rubs his thumb over my temple. “I see Brady,” he says. “And as much as I get that you’re angry, maybe the sight of us fighting would tip her off.”
“Oh.”
He’s shielding my face from Brady’s view, drawing lazy circles on the side of my cheek.
I lower my eyes and take a few slow breaths to wrestle down the anger.
There’s another lifelong skill grad school has trained me for.
Every time my advisor decided to send a male postdoc in his stead when he couldn’t make it to an invited lecture, or when I noticed he only ever responded with “good question” or “excellent thought” when said questions and thoughts came from one of the male lab members.
I not only have a PhD but also an unofficial diploma in how to keep the burning unfairness to myself to not disadvantage myself further as a woman by appearing emotional in the leagues of oh-so-rational male scientists.
“How did you know she’d pass by at exactly this time?” I ask, when I can trust my voice to sound level again.
“Brady is a creature of habit,” Lewis explains. “She has dinner on her walk home from the Sawyer’s, then goes to her room to write fan fiction. After about two hours of that, she goes outside for another burst of inspiration. And here she is.”