19. Margot
MARGOT
Mid-January. The paper is due to the committee in three weeks. We have been working all afternoon.
“Can I see the network maps? I need them next to the third section.”
She pulls it up. She turns her laptop toward me, and I pull my chair over to sit beside her. As I am leaning in to see the data, our shoulders touch.
I feel it immediately. The contact registers in my nervous system with a specificity that is disproportionate to the event.
I can feel the shape of her shoulder against mine, the warmth of it through two layers of fabric, her blouse and my blazer, the solidity of another body next to my body.
The contact is professional. The contact is the most significant physical event of my year and possibly my decade.
I do not move away. She does not move away.
I am aware that she is aware. I can feel the awareness in the slight tension of her shoulder, not pulling away, not pressing closer, simply holding.
The discussion lasts eleven minutes. I know this because the spreadsheet has a timestamp in the header and I note the time when the contact begins, 4:34, and the time when it ends, 4:45, when she leans back to stretch and the contact breaks.
The air where her shoulder was is cold. I want the warmth back.
Eleven minutes.
We return to our desks. The afternoon passes. At some point the January light through the window shifts from grey to the deeper grey that means the afternoon is ending. She gathers her things. The bag, the laptop, the cables. She pauses.
“The paper is good, Margot.” She closes her laptop. “It’s better than good. It’s the best work I’ve done.” She pauses. “Working on it with you has been the best part of my year.”
The sentence is simple. The sentence is Priya: direct, warm, unprotected. She is not talking about the paper.
“I know,” I say.
She leaves. The door closes.
I am not pretending anymore.
I do not know when the pretending stopped, whether it was the holiday party or the emails or the also also or the eleven minutes of shoulder contact. I do not know the moment. I know the result.
The result is: I want her. I want her in my life. I want her shoulder against my shoulder and her coffee on my desk and her laugh in my kitchen and her presence in the mornings and her. I want her. Completely, specifically, in the way that reorganizes a life.
I close my laptop. I go home. Sophia is at the kitchen table with her homework. She looks up.
“We dissected owl pellets in science,” she says. “I found three bones. How was your day?”
“No bones, just working on the paper.”
“Was Dr. Anand there?”
“She was helping with the data.”
Sophia holds my gaze for exactly one second. Then she goes back to her homework with the faintest smile. She already knows, and is choosing, generously, not to say so.
“Cool,” she says.