Deep In Love

Chapter 1

Charlie

A cold sweat breaks out across my brow as I stare at a sea of apathetic faces, each student counting down the minutes until the break between summer courses begins. A solitary hand rises, and my mouth turns chalky.

“Yes?”

Oh, Neptune. Please ask a simple question.

“So, like, evolution happens because we have sex?”

I glance at the clock hanging on the back wall of the sprawling lecture hall. Two measly minutes before nine a.m., the time I am no longer obligated to fill in for my advisor’s course.

One additional slide about selective mating could have prevented this question, thus saving my sanity, but I didn’t want to drag the eight a.m. class out any longer than necessary.

Take the teaching position, they said. Mentoring the next generation of scientists will be fulfilling, they said.

Poor decision on my part because now I have to explicate that evolution is not parallel to Pokémon, and we, as humans, do not level up when we jump into bed with someone .

If that were the case, most people would devolve after a hookup.

“I-I’m sorry, could you clarify your question?”

Several heads turn to the student in the last row, with his baseball cap hung low on his forehead. He repeats the question.

His misinformed idea of evolution would almost be funny if I wasn’t caffeine deprived and squirming beneath the attention of two hundred undergraduate students.

I don’t teach large lectures—not my circus—but my PhD advisor, Cheryl, asked me to fill in at the last moment, and my lack of work-life boundaries means I agreed, even though I’m dying inside.

“Yeah, so when people ”—he means himself—“have sex, they evolve?”

Is there a polite way to say “What a stupid question to ask” without facing the wrath of my advisor? She knows who she asked to fill in for her, but I don’t anticipate the response would be well received, regardless of if it was justifiable.

I’m already in choppy waters after receiving a few negative reviews from students who cheated in the biology lab I teach. They couldn’t fathom why I wouldn’t budge on my grade of a big, fat zero.

If you’re going to cheat, the least you can do is remove the AI chat prompt you copied and pasted.

Instead of taking the zero, moving on, and accepting the option of makeup points in the form of cleaning out the lab, they complained to Cheryl and called me a “horrible TA with an attitude problem” and a “nasty hag who needs to pull the stick from my ass.”

I fiddle with the small smoky quartz hanging around my neck, hoping the patience the stone claims to bring will wash over me like a lapping wave along a sandy shoreline.

“Not quite,” I counter, and the kid frowns.

“Evolution revolves around the idea of natural selection, where select individuals in a population possess traits better suited for survival. Those individuals pass advantageous traits to their offspring, who are now better adapted to survive until the trait becomes common among the population and they evolve. Does that help?”

He nods, but his disappointment is evident in the down curl of his mouth. He wanted to power up like a Pokémon, and I single-handedly crushed his every hope and dream.

“Midterms will be graded by the end of the week. I’ll see you all after summer recess.”

I slap my laptop closed and shove it into my tote bag, then race to the coffee shop directly off campus before I’m asked anymore questions that could send me to an early grave, right beside Charles Darwin.

Charlie Bowen: Death by stupid question.

I can see the words etched into my tombstone.

The University of Rhode Island is quiet as I hurry across the main lawn.

A few students are scattered beneath trees, lounging on blankets, but the majority are gone for the summer.

Only university staff, postgraduate students, and undergrads taking intensive courses—like Cheryl’s Fundamentals of Evolutionary Biology—are still on the quaint campus.

Bright-yellow paneling and the cobalt-blue door of the coffee shop come into view, and I sigh with relief as the air-conditioning hits my skin and the aroma of roasted coffee beans fills my nostrils.

Home sweet home. The worn-down wooden tables and colorful metal chairs are uncharacteristically empty, except for the economics professor who should have retired three years ago but refuses to leave.

I respect him. The man told him to retire, and he told the man to buzz off. He lifts his newspaper in greeting, then returns to the daily crossword. He’s the type of person I want to be in fifty years: stubborn to my core but so intelligent that I can do what I want, and no one can say jack shit .

“Oh, Charles! Hello,” Amy sings, leaning over the glass display full of mouthwatering pastries. Her curly bright-pink hair defies gravity as she slides a latte toward me.

Fondness settles beneath my diaphragm for my favorite barista, roommate, and platonic soulmate. We’ve been inseparable from the day we met in the women’s bathroom in the biology building, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. She was a much-needed light when there was only darkness in my life.

“God, Ames, I could marry you,” I moan, sipping on the latte, which is exactly how I like it: four shots of espresso, very little milk. “It’s been a long day.”

Amy arches a brow, the fuchsia stone in her eyebrow jiggling with the movement. “Charles, it’s only nine a.m.”

I roll my eyes.

Two years of friendship, and I haven’t been able to shake the silly nickname.

My mild (see also: massive) obsession with Charles Darwin—world-renowned naturalist and all-around badass scientist—and my full name, Charlotte, gave her the fodder she needed to cultivate the highly creative nickname.

My ensuing annoyance only added fuel to her fire, and now I will forevermore be her Charles.

My beloved Charles, she says when she wants something to go her way.

It works nearly every time.

“And the three hours I’ve been awake have felt like a million years.” I drop my voice. “A student asked me if we evolve after having sex like we’re Pokémon.”

Amy gasps, then releases a booming laugh. She slaps the countertop a few times before she composes herself and pulls a lemon poppyseed muffin from the display. Dr. Yu—the economics professor—gives us an odd look before returning to his paper.

“You need this. You have grumpy face this morning. ”

She mimics a frown, her lips pursed cartoonishly and a deep V etched between her brows. Her interpretation elicits my own frown.

That is not how I look.

I steal a glance at my reflection in the display case. Okay, fine. Maybe it’s an accurate impersonation.

“It’s rude to call customers grumpy,” I say, but snatch the muffin away. She grins broadly, my glare sliding off her shoulders. If I’m a storm cloud, Amy is my ray of sunshine.

“You got free coffee and a muffin, so I can call you whatever I want. You’re my grumpy Charles.” Her fingers hit my cheeks, tugging my lips into a forced smile. “I love you just the way you are.”

Her words strike a chord, and I bite back the tears that spring to the surface. I don’t want to cry, not here—or anywhere else, for that matter—so I mumble “I love you, too” before claiming a table in the back.

I drop the stack of midterms I need to grade onto the table, allowing them to act as an escape from the eddy of insecurity Amy conjured by telling me she loves me. She offers the words so freely, untethered by the weight of uncertainty.

I don’t say it to hear it back. I say it because I mean it, she told me once, which promptly brought on an onslaught of unwelcome feelings and thoughts.

She has the emotional freedom I envy.

I’m midway through the ninth exam when my phone dings and I’m greeted by every PhD student’s worst nightmare: a cryptic email from their advisor.

Are you free to meet at 3 on Wednesday? My office. -Cheryl.

It’s a question, but nothing about its brevity suggests it’s optional.

My fingers tingle as I respond, confirming I can meet with her, before I descend into a death spiral .

“Fucking hell,” I whisper. My to-do list is ten miles long; I have lab work I’ve been pushing off for weeks, I’m far from addressing Cheryl’s last comments on my thesis, and I still have forty exams I need to grade before Friday.

Meeting with Cheryl in two days does not give me time to complete my list so she doesn’t believe I’m lazy or inept.

Anxiety settles in nicely, right beside her old friend, self-doubt. The two of them are a deadly duo.

“What’s going on over there?” Amy’s gentle voice slices through the fog, and she bounds over, slipping into the seat across from me. Her eyes soften with concern as I pick at my nail polish, the once sparkly purple now chipped and littering the pile of exams.

Gah . I hate that look.

“Cheryl emailed me.”

“So? She does that all the time.”

While that’s true, and Cheryl is notorious for sending too many emails, they’re often lengthy and full of detail. This one is brief, and that’s what sets me on edge.

I flip my phone so she can decipher the tone for herself.

“Oh.”

One syllable with a thousand meanings.

The bell above the door chimes before Amy can add more, and she darts back to the counter.

My head lifts on instinct as two young girls, no older than thirteen, enter the coffee shop, but they falter a step when we make eye contact.

And just like that, the lemon poppy seed muffin I ate churns in my gut.

They each steal an uncomfortable peek at the brutal scar slashing across my forehead and down along my right eye socket, where it ends below my cheekbone.

It’s raised where the uneven edges meet unmarked skin, and even years later, it’s still a deep mauve.

The people close to me—Amy, my family, Cheryl— make it easy to forget about the scars that mark my skin, but strangers gawk without shame or remorse.

People believe they’re subtle with their glances, but each one burns like acid.