Chapter 32
Ransom
The first week apart is harder than I expected.
I keep waking up and reaching for Em, expecting the scent of her shampoo on the pillow beside me, the warmth of her laugh echoing from another room.
I even catch myself pouring two cups of coffee.
One black.
One café crème.
I stare at the second mug. “You’re losing it, Ransom.”
But I’m not.
I’m in love.
We talk.
Early morning calls before I start my rounds.
Late-night video calls while she’s curled up in bed.
I leave voicemails. She leaves voicemails.
She sends me photos—snowy sidewalks, half-finished pastries from the café near her lab, and cartons of Chinese takeaway.
“What do you mean you fainted?” There is a thinness to my voice that I don’t recognize.
“Faint might be an exaggeration.”
“Ember?” I growl.
“Ugh! Okay. I was dehydrated. I was in the lab all day and…I blacked out for a second, so—”
“Drink more water and don’t be a dumbass.”
“Yes, sir,” she teases.
“Em, baby.” I run a hand through my hair. “You’ve got to take care of yourself.”
“Why, when I have you to do it?” she chimes.
That makes my heart grow in size.
We have our first fight over the phone.
She’s just finished reading a paper, “Resolving the Faint Young Sun Paradox: A Review of Proposed Mechanisms” in the Journal of Astrobiology. It’s got something to do with how Earth stayed warm billions of years ago, even though the sun was weaker.
She’s excited. Animated. Talking about greenhouse gases and albedo feedback like they’re characters in a television show.
I, unfortunately, make the mistake of saying, “Isn’t that theory kind of outdated?”
There’s a beat of silence on the line. Then, “Excuse me?”
I lean back in my office chair. “I’m just saying. The faint young sun paradox has been around for a long time. I thought newer models ruled out CO? as the main factor—”
“No,” she snaps. “The models have evolved. The principle is still being explored. Just because you last glanced at an Astrobiology article in 2018 doesn’t make you the final word on climate modeling, Ransom.”
“Okay, whoa. I didn’t mean to dismiss your work—”
“You kind of did.”
I hate this distance. I hate that I can’t see her when we’re having a fight. I hate that we won’t be having any Goddamn make-up sex after this little tiff.
“I said the theory was outdated. Not you.”
“Well, that’s a dumb distinction.”
I smile to myself. “Are we fighting about a planetary climate model?”
“No,” she retorts smugly. “We’re fighting because you’ve been short with me for two days, and now you’re casually steamrolling something I care about.”
Ah. There it is.
“Baby, I had back-to-back surgeries.”
She sighs. “I know.”
“I didn’t mean to be short. Work’s been brutal. And you’re right—I was a dick about the paper.”
Silence.
“I loved hearing you explain it,” I add quietly. “I always do.”
More silence.
A sniffle.
“Em?”
“I miss you,” she whispers. “This is…I miss you.”
“I know.”
“And…I may have overreacted. Just a tad.”
For an introvert and a mostly quiet and amiable person, when it comes to her work, Ember can get seriously riled up.
“You’re passionate. I love that about you.”
“You also said my theory was dumb,” she reminds me. But I can hear her low chuckle.
“I said the theory was outdated.” I release a long breath. “I miss you, too. Desperately.”
“This is harder than I thought it would be,” she confesses.
She sounds so sad that I feel compelled to change the mood, make her smile.
“You wanna fight about something else? I’ve got strong opinions on whether Europa or Enceladus is a better candidate for alien life.”
She laughs. “Don’t you dare come for my Europa.”
“How about phone sex?”
She laughs again. “I’m in the lab, and you’re in the hospital.”
“Come on, tell me what you’re wearing,” I tease.
“A white lab coat,” she says breathily in a made-up porno voice, “and…underneath…”—husky moaning sound—”a pair of old jeans and a Metallica T-shirt.”
I burst out laughing.
God, I miss her.
We’re not able to see each other until the end of February.
Finally, she comes to California, wanting ‘a little bit of sunshine,’ she says. Wanting me.
For days before she arrives, I’m like a child waiting for his birthday.
“It’s disgusting how in love you are,” Dr. Shanthi Pillai, a colleague, mocks, rolling her eyes.
I’ve told everyone at work about Ember. This time, I’m not hiding one damn thing.
“Let’s finish this meeting so I can get to the airport on time,” I mutter.
Dr. Li Chen looks at his watch. “I thought she was coming at eight?”
“And?”
“It’s three, now,” he says, incredulous.
“So?”
They laugh at me. I don’t give a shit. I want to see my girl. I want to see Em. I want to….
I meet her at the airport. We kiss so hard and long that someone passing by cries out, “Get a room!”
We do…get a room. Well, we get my whole house, and we don’t leave it for the whole weekend.
We make love. We fuck. We reconnect…in every room, over almost every piece of furniture.
“I think my vagina is broken,” Ember claims after I don’t know how many rounds of sex. She’s leaving in a couple of hours. Back on a plane. Back to Boston.
The pain in my chest has already started to throb.
I’m going to miss her.
The sex is amazing. It’s everything I remember and more. But it’s the conversations afterward that I miss the most, because it’s simply not the same on the phone.
“Mama is asking when we’re getting married.” She licks my nipple.
I nuzzle her hair with my chin. “Tell her that we’ll do it as soon as you say yes.”
She raises her head. “You haven’t asked.”
“If I ask now, will you say yes?”
She frowns. “We’ve only been dating for two months....”
“See.”
She kisses me. I kiss her back.
When I tumble her onto her back and slide into her again—thrusting, feeling, needing—she cups my cheek, her fingers soft, grounding me.
“We don’t need to be married to be together,” she whispers.
No, we don’t. But being in the same city would fucking help.
I don’t say it aloud, but the thought pulses through me.
Doing this every night—loving her like this, holding her afterward, falling asleep with her tangled around me, and waking up to her skin in the morning light—that would be better.
That would be everything.
I hold her hand as I drive her to the airport a few hours later.
It’s hard to let her go. Tomorrow we’ll be back to our everyday rhythm.
There will be times when I’m in surgery and she’s got meetings, which will mean hours without contact.
There will be times when we simply can’t talk, and all we can manage is a text message at the end of the day saying: I love you.
And I do. More every day.
“How do you feel about taking some time off in April?” I ask.
We’ve synced our calendars. We have shared our locations so we can see where we are. I’m mostly in the hospital or at home. She’s mostly in her lab or her apartment.
My life has narrowed to work, home, and talking to Ember.
“I can only do a few days…I have a poster presentation in May.”
“That’s the Paris conference?”
“Yes.” She sounds tremendously unhappy when she says that.
I glance at her. “What?”
“I wish you could come.”
I can’t. May is already packed, and I’m on call for most of the weekends.
This isn’t easy.
“Hey, imagine how hard it must’ve been back when there was no FaceTime,” I joke. “Now I can see your tits during phone sex.”
She rolls her eyes.
“And you like seeing my—”
“Stop!” She laughs. “After this weekend, phone sex is going to feel like even thinner brew.”
I squeeze her hand. “I know. But I’ll see you in a couple of months. I’ll come to Boston. We can go to Martha’s Vineyard and spend a weekend on the beach…naked.”
“I’d like to spend a weekend naked with you, Ransom, but not that time of year at a beach on the East Coast.”
“Fair!”