26. Ethan
Ethan
It’s early morning, and Sophie is already standing outside my office door when I come around the corner with my coffee, her bag over one shoulder, her hair pulled back in a soft ponytail, wearing a cream blouse and those dainty ballet flats.
“Hey,” I say, surprised. “You’re early.”
“Couldn’t sleep anyway.” She shrugs. “Figured I’d come in and get started.”
I unlock the door and wave her in, and I watch her take in my office.
Her eyes scan the room slowly. Her gaze catches on my desk, travels to the shelves, drifts to the floor, and I see it—the exact moment Sophie encounters the reality of how I work.
I know my office is nothing like Max’s, where everything is organized, not a single thing out of place, not a shred of clutter. Or Finn’s, who has an eye for interior design—with his paintings on the wall and matching leather couches and those plants he somehow keeps alive.
Mine is—well. Mine is a disaster.
Books are everywhere except the shelves.
Stacked in towers on the desk, lined up along the windowsill, piled on the floor beside the filing cabinet I stopped using two years ago because the drawers were full of journals I hadn’t sorted.
There are three whiteboards, two of which are covered in diagrams and equations that made sense to me at two in the morning and will probably need translating by lunchtime.
My desk is buried under a geological layer of research papers, patent applications, and sticky notes in four different colors, each color corresponding to a categorization system I developed in grad school.
There’s a half-eaten protein bar next to my keyboard. A cardigan draped over the back of my chair. A coffee mug from three days ago that I’ve been meaning to take to the kitchen and keep forgetting because every time I pick it up, I notice something on my desk that requires my immediate attention.
Sophie takes it all in. Her expression doesn’t change, but the corner of her mouth twitches, and I can see the amusement seeping through.
“I know it looks messy,” I say, setting my fresh coffee down on the one square inch of desk space not currently occupied by a stack of FDA regulatory frameworks.
“It looks like your brain threw up.”
I laugh, and she smiles in response. It’s such a small thing, but it reaches her eyes and softens her whole face, and I feel something warm settle in my chest that I wasn’t expecting.
“Fair assessment,” I say, clearing a stack of journals from the chair across from my desk so she can sit. “I know where everything is, though. That’s the important thing.”
“Do you?” She picks up the protein bar between two fingers like it’s a piece of evidence at a crime scene. “How long has this been here?”
“That’s... recent.”
“It’s petrified, Ethan.”
“It’s not petrified—”
“If I threw this at someone it would leave a bruise.” She sets it down on the desk with a small, definitive clack that proves her point. “That is not food anymore. That’s a weapon.”
I take the protein bar and drop it in the bin, trying to look dignified about it. “I’ve been busy.”
“Mmhmm.” She sits in the chair I cleared, crossing one leg over the other, and looks at me with those dark, steady eyes, quietly amused at my expense.
“What’s the color system?” she asks, nodding toward the sticky notes.
“You noticed that?”
“They’re in four colors arranged in a grid pattern. Hard to miss.”
“Right. It’s—okay, so yellow is for active hypotheses, green is for confirmed findings, blue is for methodology questions, and red is for things I need to argue with Max about.”
She presses her lips together, but I can see she’s fighting another smile.
“You have an entire color dedicated to arguing with Max.”
“It comes up more than you’d think.”
“I believe you.” Her gaze drifts to the whiteboards. She studies the equations for a moment. “Is that a half-life model?”
I stare at her. “You can read that?”
“I can read the notation. I took a couple of pharmacology classes before I—” She stops. The briefest hesitation. “Before I changed direction.”
Before I changed direction. From what, exactly? And why? But I don’t ask, because I know she won’t answer.
“It’s a suppressant half-life model,” I say instead. “We’re trying to extend the half-life of our next-generation formulation without increasing hepatic load.”
“What’s the current half-life?”
“Fourteen hours. We need eighteen.”
“And the blue sticky note on the corner of the board says ‘what if we’re wrong about the binding site.’”
I turn and look. She’s right. There’s a blue sticky note in the lower corner of the whiteboard that says exactly that, in my handwriting, from a two AM session three weeks ago that I’d completely forgotten about.
“You read that from across the room?”
“You have good handwriting for a scientist. Plus, in my line of work, being perceptive can be the difference between life and death.”
She says it casually. Like living and dying are two things that are interchangeable and equally probable.
“I can imagine,” I say. “So, you took pharmacology.”
“Two years. A long time ago.”
“You still read the notation like it’s your native language.”
“Some things stick.” She looks at me, and for a second she seems almost sad, though I don’t think she realizes it. “You ask a lot of questions, Ethan.”
“Occupational hazard.”
“Of being a scientist?”
“Of being interested.”
The word lands between us. Neither of us says anything. She just holds my gaze for a moment, then looks at the whiteboard again, and I busy myself with the org chart, and the moment passes.
I walk her through the day’s plan while she drinks the coffee I made her—black, no sugar, which I know because I’ve watched her make it in the pack house kitchen.
“The research wing covers early-stage R&D, formulation development, and product design,” I say, pulling up the org chart on my monitor and angling it toward her.
“Diana Quinn is in formulation, on Dr. Yoon’s team.
That’s where you’ll be spending most of your time, but I’ll rotate you through the others so it looks natural. ”
Sophie nods, her dark eyes tracking the org chart. “Who else is on Dr. Yoon’s team?”
“Seven researchers, two lab techs, and Dr. Yoon herself. Most of them are...” I search for the diplomatic term. “Deeply focused individuals.”
“Nerds,” Sophie translates.
“Brilliant, passionate scientists who happen to have limited enthusiasm for social interaction,” I correct, and the corner of her mouth twitches. “You’ll find the research wing is a very different environment from marketing. Less gossip. More silence. A lot more awkward eye contact.”
“I can work with awkward.”
“I know you can.”
The words come out warmer than I intended. To my surprise, she’s smiling when she glances at me.
After coffee, I take her to meet the team.
The corridor to the research wing is long and badly over-lit, and I use it to brief her on what she’s walking into.
“You’ll be sitting next to Evie Wells,” I say. “She’s the office manager. She runs the administrative side of the entire research team. Scheduling, sample tracking, equipment logs, supply orders. If it involves a form or a signature, it goes through Evie.”
“Does she know I’m coming?”
“She’s known since this morning. She’s also told everyone else, so by now the whole wing knows.” I badge us through the first set of doors. “She knows every person in this building, she has access to most of the filing systems, and she’s been here almost as long as I have.”
Sophie’s pace doesn’t change. Something in her attention does.
“She sounds useful.”
“She’s the reason the wing functions.” I hold the door for her. “She’s also extremely friendly. I should probably prepare you for that.”
“I can handle friendly.”
“I know you can handle friendly. I’m saying that Evie’s version of friendly is a category unto itself. She makes Lucy look reserved.”
“That’s not possible.”
“It’s very possible.”
Sophie laughs, and it’s the second time this morning, and I’m aware of exactly how much I’m enjoying that.
The pharmaceutical development lab is on the fourth floor—a long, bright space with workstations arranged in clusters and the particular silence of people who consider conversation an interruption to thought.
When Sophie and I walk in, three of the seven researchers don’t look up.
Two glance over and immediately return to their screens.
One—Dr. Patel, who has the social instincts that can only be likened to a houseplant—raises a hand in greeting without turning around.
Only Diana looks up properly.
She’s at the workstation nearest the window, her dark hair pulled back in a low bun, her lab coat hanging open over a fitted turtleneck.
She’s thirty-two, sharp-featured, with the kind of watchful composure that I’ve always attributed to intelligence but am now reassessing through a different lens.
She stands when she sees us approaching, and her smile is professional.
“Diana, this is Sophie Dysart,” I say. “She’ll be shadowing the department for the next couple of weeks.”
“Of course.” Diana extends a hand, and I watch Sophie take it. The handshake is brief—Sophie the eager assistant, bright-eyed and slightly nervous.
“It’s so nice to meet you,” Sophie says, and her voice is breathy, slightly uncertain sweetness. “Ethan’s told me so much about the pharmaceutical team. I’m really excited to learn how everything works.”
Diana’s smile warms a degree. “We’re happy to have you. It can be pretty quiet up here, so fresh energy is always welcome.”
I watch Sophie lean in slightly, angling her body toward Diana in a way that communicates interest and openness and absolutely zero threat.
She asks a question about Diana’s current project—something she could probably answer herself, given that she can read half-life models off a whiteboard— and Diana begins to explain, and in less than a minute, she’s gotten Diana Quinn to relax.