Chapter Ten #2
“I have reviewed your papers, even your most recent one,” Lewis tells me, meeting my gaze with earnest eyes. “But calling you those things? ‘Uninspired’?”
“Flashy, too,” I supply him with another haunting word from that review.
“That’s anything but constructive.” Appalled, he furrows his brow and pulls out his phone.
“Here,” he says after he taps around on it, and shows me an email addressing the journal editor from my last paper.
While his review goes on for pages and meticulously details all his notes, it’s objective but not rude.
I gape at him. “You were the other one? The one that was perfectly reasonable?”
He nods. “Your paper was really good, and so were all of your other ones. I’m sorry my behavior landed so wrong with you.
I messed up when I didn’t credit you, but everything else was really only coming from a place of intellectual discussion and constructive criticism.
” He shrugs, a blush tinting his cheeks.
“I was really only ever trying to push you to be better.”
I break my gaze away, needing a quiet moment to mull over his words.
As a scientist, I’ve internalized making analytical, objective decisions.
I’ve been trained to look at the same thing over and over again, to consider it from all angles, and to pivot when the data demands it.
Lewis has just supplied me with a whole lot of new data.
He made a mistake, but he regrets what he did.
He hasn’t been out to get me this whole time.
In fact, looking back, I can see how I’ve let resentment seep into my perception of him.
While he was trying to push the science further, I twisted his genuine feedback into personal attacks.
And that last review wasn’t even him, but some other anonymous scientist who chose to be outright rude.
Ever since meeting him on the plane, I’ve been struggling to fit the two versions of him together; the condescending Dr. North that only cares about himself, and the considerate Lewis who agreed to fake date me even if it was a risk for him.
But maybe Dr. North is an image forged by years of bad communication and bitterness, and the real Lewis is the one sitting in front of me, the one who has learned from his mistakes and wants to do better.
I decide to pivot.
“I’m not sure I’ll be able to forgive you for leaving me out of the paper,” I finally tell him, still looking down at my hands.
“But hearing your side of the story helps, and your apology does, too. I think I resented you so much that I was only too happy to jump to conclusions, but maybe I’ve judged you too quickly.
You seem too kind and thoughtful for the egocentric asshole I painted you out to be. ”
I look up at him to see that the tension has melted from his face. “I’m sorry for judging you.”
“It’s okay. I’m just glad we finally got to talk,” he responds softly, giving me a small smile.
“Me, too,” I say, though I suspect it’ll take some time for his apology to fully sink in.
Lewis glances out of the window, where the rain is still pounding hard. “Now, do you think you can tolerate my presence for another hour or so?”
I let out a laugh, grateful he’s found a way of lightening the mood. “Only if you share your snacks with me.”
“You pick.” Lewis lets me root through the minibar and rifle through the basket of surprisingly nice snacks that come with the room, as he sets up camp on the side of the bed I’ve left empty.
He seems more at ease now, one arm propped against the wall behind his head, so that his caramel skin pulls smoothly over the landscape of his biceps and—
Enough, I scold myself.
My prefrontal cortex really has to get it together.
I grab two cans of premixed gin and tonic, a bag of salted cashews, and some fancy dark chocolate thins.
Lewis switches on the TV as I spread my haul out on the duvet, making sure they form a nice, obvious line between our halves of the bed.
The chatter of the show host washes over the room and folds into the noise of the raindrops drumming against the window.
We catch the end of Family Feud, followed by a rerun of a trivia quiz show where college teams compete for a spectacular spring break trip.
Next to me, Lewis mutters his answer to the first question and I shout an alternative into the room, although I have no clue what the Production Possibility Frontier even is.
Lewis twists his mouth triumphantly when the show host reveals the correct answer.
And the competition is on.
Though I barely scrape by on a question about relativity physics, the science questions are a no-brainer for both of us, and the challenge is really about blurting out the correct fact before the other does.
My specialty is world geography (all that moving has to be good for something) and sports (I religiously watch the Olympics whenever they’re on).
Lewis, annoyingly, aces all the boring questions: names of obscure presidents throughout history and details about the US tax system.
When he correctly names all fourteen golf clubs in a set, I can’t help myself any longer.
“Wow, you truly are a treasure trove of useless information.” I pretend to yawn as I dramatically fall back into the pillow.
“You,” he says, glaring at me out of the corner of his eyes, “are just jealous I got one of your sports questions right.”
“You,” I counter, mimicking his clipped tone, “are losing all popularity points that you’ve just gained. Golf—really?!”
Lewis laughs, and nudges my shin with his bare foot, setting off a prickle up my leg. “Shush. Look at what a great team we’d make. I think we know where to go if we ever need funding for a lab.”
I swallow thickly. For me, ever is more like right now. The familiar anxiety bubbles back into my chest, prickling and sickening like a fizzy drink that has been shaken too much. It’s always there, simmering somewhere below the surface, but it spikes when I remember that soon I’ll be out of a job.
Lewis must remember what I told him on the flight, because he amends, “I’m sorry about that. I’m guessing you haven’t heard about the grant yet?”
“Nope.” I take a breath to dislodge the ball of nerves in my throat.
“It’s driving me crazy. Everyone always complains about how they dislike writing the grants.
Like, yeah, putting in all this work for something that most likely won’t get funded sucks.
But I find the waiting worse. When you’re writing, at least you’re doing something. ”
Lewis sighs. “I know.”
“How do you deal with it?”
He shrugs. “To be honest, I don’t think about it much. Once a grant’s submitted, the work’s done for me. I don’t like the writing, so I’m usually happy to get back to whatever data I was analyzing before.”
“Lucky you.”
“I could introduce you to some people, if that helps,” Lewis suggests.
I shake my head. Getting propelled forward in my career by the man at my side, fake or not, makes me feel cheap and incapable. It’s the trigger that blazed off my relationship with Jacob.
“No, thanks,” I brush him off. “I don’t need your help.”
He bites his lip and then, as though he’s sensed his offer might’ve come across wrong, clarifies, “I know you don’t. But if you think it would be useful, just say the word.”
“Thank you.” Now I actually mean it. “But I need to figure this out on my own.”
We lapse into silence as an upbeat jingle of a commercial chimes from the TV.
“Hey, do you want to know how I know all these boring facts?” Lewis asks after a beat, his secretive tone luring me closer. “In a previous life,” he murmurs, “I studied economics and was a member of a kids’ golf club.”
“Yeah, right,” I drawl, “and then you decided to turn your back on multinational corporations and become an honest man, so you went into academia.”
Rolling my eyes, I lob a cashew at him. Lewis tries to catch it with his mouth, but it bounces off of his chin and falls into the collar of his shirt, where it nestles up against the smooth skin of his neck.
He peers at his chest. “Here,” I say and point at my own throat, but he only stares at me quizzically. I lean into him, fishing the nut out of its hiding place. My nails brush against his throat, and as his exhalation prickles over my jaw, heat flickers low in my belly.
I only realize how close I’ve gotten to him when I feel the warmth of his body radiating against my skin.
“I—uh.”
I should lean back.
Do I want to lean back?
My brain abolishes the motor plan when I catch his eyes. His pupils are blown large, his lips parted ever so slightly. He doesn’t look like he wants me to lean back, either.
“Found it,” I say lamely and hold up the cashew. My voice doesn’t sound like it belongs to me.
Before I can force myself to pull back, Lewis curls his hand around my wrist and draws forward. Eyes pinning me, he lowers his mouth, slowly and carefully, until he closes his lips around the cashew.
A tendril of want licks up the base of my spine.
It’s the heat of his mouth and the scrape of his teeth against the pads of my fingers; the pine scent of his skin and the smolder in his eyes.
It’s the press of his thumb at the inside of my wrist, sensing each and every thudding pulse, even when he sits back and leaves my fingers feeling cold.
As I shift my hips, the comforter rustles, and the noise snaps me back into reality.
What just happened?
The gin must be getting to me, or the unexpected apology, or maybe it’s the fact that I haven’t been in the proximity of an objectively attractive male body attached to an objectively smart and, accordingly attractive, brain in a long time.
Whatever the reason, my synapses seem to be going haywire.
Lewis lowers my hand onto the empty square of comforter between us, runs his fingers over my knuckles once, and then, eyes flashing at the darkened window, says, “I think it’s stopped raining,” as if we’re in the midst of a regular conversation and not at the tail end of a strangely intimate moment that colleagues, even if they’re in a fake relationship, shouldn’t be having.
His touch echoes against my skin. My insides are molten with the memory of his gaze, and now the room feels even smaller than when we entered it, like a tiny little shoebox that is too small to allow me the arm’s length at which I like to keep him, apology or not.
I have no clue how to define what just happened, which is why I need to get out of here. Now. I surge from the bed and pace across the room where, to my relief, the rain has indeed stopped drumming against the window.
“I should go,” I announce, rummaging through my bag for my phone.
“Sure. Should I order you a car?”
“Already on it.” My thumb flies over the screen, and I’m glad for the excuse to avoid looking at him.
“It’ll be here in a few minutes.” I keep my head down as Lewis slides his legs over the edge of the bed, his sweatpants riding up to reveal a bare ankle, and dear god, I need distance to talk some sense into my hormonal brain.
“You don’t have to walk me downstairs,” I rush to say, my voice panicked.
“I—”
“Please.”
I must sound desperate enough, or maybe he notes my choppy movements as I pull on my sneakers, still wet from the rain, because he stops insisting and watches me instead as I tie the laces. “You know, it wasn’t a joke.”
My head whips up. “What?” I swear I can feel the beat of my heart against my vocal cords. What just happened didn’t feel like a joke to me, either, but I’d still rather not talk about it.
Lewis clears his throat but pauses long enough for me to grab my purse and the bag with my wet clothes. When I straighten, he looks down at his feet. His eyebrows slot toward each other. “The stuff about studying business and playing golf.”
Back in the elevator, the same generic jazz music that was playing when we walked into the hotel washes over me, but I know something monumental has changed since Lewis and I rode up to his room together.
Now, I’m wearing his clothes, wrapped up in his scent.
Now, I’m relieved, intrigued, and confused where the shift we’ve undergone tonight is going to take us.