Chapter 9 Gamete Transport and Fertilization #2
The call with my therapist had ended a while ago and now I was lounging in Andreas’s bed, horizontal across the mattress with my laptop glowing at quarter-brightness, the room dark except for a pencil stripe of late-afternoon sunlight crawling in through the drapes.
I hadn’t called Andreas today. I hadn’t texted, either.
For the entire afternoon, I’d done a spectacular job of not thinking about whether I should reach out, or if he was mad at me for meeting with Tobias, or if our goodbye on the curb last Thursday meant something to him.
It had to, right? No one kisses like that without it meaning something . . . right?
Except, we’d kissed like that on the night of our fake engagement, and it had meant nothing then.
Instead of checking the subreddit, I spent forty-five minutes reading back through our text string and not spiraling over what it meant that he’d hearted the text message I’d sent yesterday wishing him good night, a fact I’d missed until this afternoon.
For the record, it was a really good text.
Funny, but not try-hard. Then, I’d spent another hour on a resale site for yachts, judging rich people for not having three full bathrooms on their ten-million-dollar floating McMansion.
Setting the laptop to the side, I rolled onto my stomach, resting my cheek against the pillow.
There was no trace of Andreas’s cologne or shampoo in the sheets.
I’d made the mistake of washing everything the day he left, since I’d slept in his bed with my clothes on.
Now I regretted it. If I could wish for one additional coping mechanism tonight, it would be the ability to smell a man who was several time zones away and pretend, for a minute, that everything was fine.
My therapist had been less than impressed with this wish.
Our virtual session earlier today started exactly on time, as always, and lasted precisely fifty minutes.
When I’d told her a lot had happened since our last visit, Dr. Glass had blinked once behind her large, aggressively round glasses and said, “So you’re not sleeping. Tell me about that. Let’s start there.”
I explained the sleepwalking. The relocation from my bed to Andreas’s. The sense of being a passenger in my own body.
She wrote things down on her tablet, and then, when I was done, asked, “When did this first start?”
“The very first time was years ago, after my dad died,” I said, and realized I hadn’t rehearsed that answer at all. “I was thirteen. I’d get up, move things around the house. Sometimes I’d wake up in the backyard.”
“Did your mother address it with a doctor?”
“She was, uh, a little busy being nonfunctional.” My laugh was brittle. “But after a while, she put a lock on my door. She didn’t want me wandering outside.”
Dr. Glass digested that for a minute, then nodded. “There’s nothing abnormal about stress manifesting in these kinds of dissociative episodes. Especially if you experienced a sudden trauma at a formative age.”
It was so clinical I almost wanted to hug her. God, I loved her analytical approach. She always made me feel less broken in a critical sense and more fixable in a pragmatic one.
“Have you ever tried medication for it?” she asked.
“I’m already on sleeping aids,” I said. “But I don’t like to take them too much.”
She nodded again, scribbling. “I agree. Sleepwalking while on sleep aids can be dangerous. Have you tried meditation? Or grounding exercises?”
I told her I’d tried everything: deep breathing, progressive muscle relaxation, counting sheep, counting backward from ten thousand, listening to classical music, binaural beats, actual brown noise, guided meditation apps, and once, in a moment of true desperation, those ASMR videos where women whisper compliments at you like you’re a child in need of a sticker.
None of it worked. Or at least, not well enough to keep me from getting up in the middle of the night and sleepwalking into the bed of the world’s sexiest chess master.
She said, “I think your current situation is unique in that you’re dealing with multiple stressors.
The inheritance. The security threat. The pressure to perform at work and academically.
And on top of all that, you’re living with a man you may or may not be in love with.
And for the first time in your life, you’re open to the idea—albeit, just a slight opening up—of a committed relationship with that person. This is a lot, Sam.”
“Thank you. That’s a relief to hear someone else say. I was worried it was all in my head.”
Dr. Glass smirked kindly at my poor attempt at a joke and prescribed more self-care, less caffeine, and a list of meditation apps that I’d already tried but would try again.
She also said, “May I suggest—since you said he’s okay with it—you continue to start the night sleeping in his bed?
Let’s see if this reduces your sleepwalking.
Keeping you safe is the top priority here.
And give yourself time to adjust to the new normal.
You are not responsible for fixing everything at once. ”
Now, as I lay in Andreas’s bed, I opened my phone and flicked through the meditation apps, then gave up and typed “London chess tournament standings” into the search engine.
The coverage was, as you’d expect, less than riveting.
The Chess Master blog recapped each round like it was a boxing match for the criminally nerdy.
Andreas was, of course, undefeated, but the write-ups focused mostly on his rivals’ self-destruction.
There were only a few candids of him, and in them all he was staring at the chessboard with that same intensity I’d witnessed Thanksgiving morning, like the pieces might move if he blinked.
I watched a video clip of his most recent game, not because I understood chess, but because I liked to watch his hands when he played.
I discovered he had this habit of twirling the pieces between his fingers, never slamming them down but always moving with an economy that was so .
. . Andreas. The video was annotated by some bespectacled British guy who talked a mile a minute.
“And you see Kristiansen here, arriving with less than a minute on the clock, which, frankly, you never see at this level—most players, you give them a thirty-minute clock, they’ll use all of it—but Kristiansen, look at him, he sits, shakes hands with his opponent, stares at the board, and bang, bang, bang, executes the first ten moves in less than five seconds.
It’s like the man was playing from memory. ”
I paused the video, rewound it, and watched again. He did sit down late. He did shake the hand of his opponent. And then he just, almost absentmindedly, destroyed the guy.
I tried to imagine what it must feel like, to be so certain in your next move that you don’t even bother to look up. To know, before anyone else, exactly how the game will end.
The phone was heavy in my hand. I wanted to text him, but what would I even say? How’s the bird with the croissant? Try on any other suits? Please come home soon . . .
Instead, I set the phone aside and pulled the duvet up to my chin. It wasn’t cold in the apartment, but I wanted the extra weight. I counted backward from one hundred, as Dr. Glass suggested, and I was halfway to fifty-six when a sharp rap at the door pulled me upright.
“Come in,” I said, voice embarrassingly hoarse.
Tara entered with the confidence of a woman who’d once subdued a drunk hedge fund manager using only a plastic spoon and her own elbow. (True story. She’d told me about it on Saturday after our kickboxing class.)
The woman wore actual pajamas, a cartoon-print T-shirt and plaid pants, and held a box in one hand. She set it at the foot of the bed and said, “Something came for you.”
I sat up completely, pulling my legs under me. “What is it?”
She shrugged. “It’s not a bomb. I already checked. It’s from Andreas. He texted me yesterday and said it was coming.”
The box was heavier than it looked, and taped shut with precision. I picked at the tape, then gave up and used my keys by the bed to slice it open.
Inside was a blue-and-silver tin of Scottish shortbread, a box of herbal tea called Nighty Night Relaxation Blend, and, on top, a card. My name, written in Andreas’s neat, almost typewritten print. No heart, no flourish, not even a “to” or “from.” I opened it.
The note inside read,
Thinking of you. I hope you have sweet dreams.
—A
I stared at the card for a second, my face doing that thing where it tries to express seventeen feelings at once and lands on none.
I wanted to laugh because it was such a short message for him to rush across the sea.
I wanted to cry a little because he remembered that I liked shortbread cookies.
Mostly, I wanted sniff the card just in case it held traces of his rosemary shampoo.
Tara watched me, arms crossed. “Cookies and tea?”
I held up the tin. “Want one?”
She narrowed her eyes. “No, Sam. These are for you, not us.”
I frowned, confused.
She shook her head. “You’re weird, Sam. Why would Andreas rush a package of tea and cookies? These are meant just for you. You’re the one he’s in love with.”
Before I could formulate a response to that, she yawned and padded back out the door, leaving me alone with the parcel and the echo of her words.
I opened the tin. The cookies were arranged with geometric precision, three rows of four, each one stamped with a pattern. I picked one, then another, and arranged them into a triangle on top of the tin. I stared at them for a long time, thinking about what Tara said.
Andreas obviously hadn’t told Tara or any of the other bodyguards about the nature of our arrangement. If one wants to keep a secret, the fewer people who know, the better.
And I knew that if I didn’t come clean soon regarding how I’d consulted Kaitlyn and Martin about Andreas’s proposal before I’d accepted it, I would start sleepwalking again. I felt certain I would. Thus, I resolved, right then, to call Andreas tomorrow and tell him.
I picked up my phone, debated for a second, then sent him a photo of the cookies, arranged in the shape of a smiley face. Underneath, I typed out a message.
Sam: Thank you for the cookies and tea.
I hovered over the send button, then pressed it, and immediately buried my face in the pillow. I should’ve called him earlier today instead of avoiding it after Tobias’s visit. I shouldn’t let Tobias—or Henrik—factor into my relationship with Andreas.
When I surfaced, there was a reply already.
Andreas: Let me know if you want bedtime company. For tea.
My heart did the thing, the swoop and fly thing. Was he flirting with me?
I think so, yes. This is, what the kids these days call, the flirting.
Before I could formulate a response, he texted me again.
Andreas: I need to go to sleep. Don’t want to be late tomorrow. Call me when you’re free.
I smirked at his reference to being late, then I exhaled a long breath.
I liked this. I liked his check-ins and I liked knowing about him and what he was up to.
Setting the phone on the nightstand, I lay down and stared up at the ceiling, imagining a chessboard there, all the pieces in their perfect rows, waiting for someone to move.
I would call him tomorrow. I would tell him the truth. But for this evening, at least, I could let myself rest, and dream of the one man who, for better or worse, always seemed to be five moves ahead of me.