Chapter 3
Mateo
“It was only a matter of time before Elora fell for the charming pirate. Behind his hard exterior was a man desperate for someone to hold him close. She knew it in her heart.”
What Elora should be concerned about is sexually transmitted diseases and her vitamin D intake. And I don’t mean vitamin dick.
The historical romance drones on in my ear as I scrape soil from a tube and onto a weigh plate. Dump. Weigh. Put it in the dryer. Repeat.
I’ve been going through the motions for the last hour, completing each mundane protocol step while begrudgingly listening to Elora and her adventures with the rogue pirate who stole her away.
I’m seven chapters into the audiobook, and frankly, this feels like my abuela’s version of payback for the last book I chose in our little two-person audiobook club. I found the nonfiction about Earth’s history through fossils fascinating. She said it made her ears bleed.
Well, mine are suffering the same fate thanks to Elora’s poor decisions .
“‘Show me what the world is like,’ Elora said, stroking the pirate’s cheek, reveling in how his hardened skin grazed her innocent flesh.”
Innocent flesh? Is she serious?
If I wasn’t elbow deep in soil and wrapped up in a lab coat and gloves, I would change the audiobook to something far more stimulating, like the new one I bought about fungi communities.
Instead, I listen as Elora explores all the world can offer—on a boat in the middle of the sea in the 1800s, where she has no access to a shower, proper nutrition, or contraception.
I doubt Elora and Dominic—the rogue pirate who stole her—are having any conversation about consent, prior partners, or pregnancy prevention.
I scribble down a note in my lab notebook to call my abuela and tell her this is by far the worst thing I’ve ever listened to, and I’m adding “morally questionable historical romances” to our list of banned genres, right beside “boring nonfiction.”
We’ve listened to historical romance before, but those were outstanding, highlighting characters with complex backstories based on the era they were from. This book is a pile of trash, and my gut tells me she knows and it’s why she chose it.
I release an exasperated sigh when Elora comments that she’s experiencing new emotions around the pirate, but since I wasted twelve dollars on the audiobook, I’m going to listen to every second to get my money’s worth.
It’s impossible to hear anything over Elora’s oblivious internal dialogue. He doesn’t want to show you the world, he wants under your petticoat. Get it together, girl.
Her concerning choices make it easy for a pipette thief to enter the lab, sneak around, and steal the tool used to repeatedly measure small amounts of liquid.
Unfortunately for her, her distinctive scent gives her away—cinnamon, clove, and something I can’t quite place.
I catch her reflection in the glass cabinet above me as she tiptoes toward the far bench where the repeat pipettor resides .
It’s not the first time it’s been stolen, disappearing for a day, then magically reappearing before a department-wide memo could be sent out.
As she scoots closer, her head swings like she’s a meerkat wary of predators. I focus on my task like I’m unaware Charlie has slipped into the lab and is moments away from committing a scientific crime.
When her hand is inches from claiming her prize, I purr, “Hi, bruja.”
She squeaks, her shoulders bunching to her ears as she rips her hand away from the pipette rack to glower at me.
“What are you doing?” I ask, innocence and faux confusion lacing my voice as I pause my audiobook.
Charlie sputters for a response, red creeping up her cheeks all the way to the tips of her ears. Her hands fly around before she glues them to her side.
“I was…” She trails off, searching the lab, looking anywhere but at the pipette. I lean back in my chair, pulling off my gloves to watch her flounder for an excuse like a fish out of water.
The skin beneath her right eye twitches, pulling on her scar, as she continues to scramble before her focus lands on a shelf of preserved specimens. She sticks out a finger, swiping it against the glass jar housing a juvenile giant Pacific octopus.
“Dust,” she declares. “I’m checking for dust. And this place is riddled with it.”
Her nose wrinkles before wiping her hand on her overalls.
“You came into my lab to check for dust?”
Dios, she is pretty .
Her legs stretch beneath her jean overalls, which are covered in a mosaic of quirky patches stitched into the fabric.
She tugs at the frayed edges of her navy URI sweatshirt, covering the abundance of bracelets on her wrists, each a different color of the rainbow.
Piercings filled with colorful stones line her earlobes, framed by wild honey-blond hair.
But it’s her eyes, the brightest shade of Caribbean blue, that captivate.
We engage in an epic stare down, like if we’re locked in some weird tension, I won’t notice her hand wiggling behind her back, blindly searching for her target.
She draws her lower lip between her teeth, and my attention dips.
Right as I shake the urge to pull her lip between my teeth, the pipette disappears.
“You know what,” she says airily, “you’re right . It’s not my place to check the dust in your lab. If you want to keep an unclean space full of points of contamination, it’s not on my conscience to stop you.”
She crab walks toward the door, glowering at me like I’m an error her coding software spit out. Her steps are methodical and slow-moving to prevent her stolen goods from falling out of her back pocket, allowing me time to block the exit.
Charlie glares, crossing her arms over her chest, and my dick twitches.
I’ve been pining over Charlie Bowen since the day we met, and all she accomplishes with her razor-sharp looks is giving me a raging hard-on that I have to banish by reciting mundane lab protocols.
“Where are you going?” I force away a smile and press against the door. Her hand snakes behind her back and jiggles the doorknob .
She sniffles and fakes a sneeze. “Away from all the dust particles.” Another sniffle. “Let me go.”
“And if I were to ask you to…empty your pockets, would you be able to do that?”
Her face pales, but she doubles down.
“Absolutely not.” She peels my hand away from the door, and my skin tingles as she shoves it to my side.
Her touch lingers for a second too long, and then she rips her hand away like I’ve burned her.
Clearing her throat, she says, “Now, if you’re finished holding me hostage, I have tubes I need to fill and no undergrad to pawn the task off on. ”
Instead of letting her sneak past with her stolen treasure, I block the exit again and drop my voice to nothing more than a whisper.
“I’ve always had a thing for thieves,” I tease, tugging at a loose strand of hair, which rewards me with one of her iconic glares—sharp, but intoxicatingly sexy.
“Good thing I follow the letter of the law,” she says, her pitch an octave higher than normal.
Liar.
“Does that law condone the theft of lab equipment?”
I raise a brow, and Charlie sighs in defeat. “Six. Hundred. Tubes,” she groans. “Some noob broke ours, which means I would have to pipette ethanol six hundred times .” She raises the tool into the air like a scepter. “This bad boy will save me hours of work.”
My chest aches as I suppress the urge to laugh, not because she’s attempting to be humorous, but because she’s naturally funny. Though maybe finding her hilarious is a by-product of a two-year-long crush, which grows daily. Regardless, when Charlie’s around, it’s difficult to do anything but smile.
She often frowns in response.
Charlie may be my favorite person, but I am not hers. I don’t even crack the top ten, let alone get close to Sir Charles Darwin. Trying to bump him from the top spot is futile, but I’ve been aiming for a close second since we met.
I reach out a hand to bracket the doorframe, and Charlie slips below my outstretched arm, whooping in victory as she runs down the hall to her lab space, three doors away.
“I’ll bring it back later,” she yells.
I’m hot on her heels when a head of wild, spindly gray hair pops out of an office and stops me in my tracks .
“I thought I heard you. Do you have a minute?” Dan asks, his head tilting as I stand in the hallway, torn between chasing after my little criminal and engaging in conversation with my PhD advisor.
Unfortunately, the unexpected chat with Dan outweighs seeing Charlie’s triumphant smirk.
“Sure.”
I slide into his office, an untidy space cluttered with binders, old books, and half-broken machines he’s convinced he can piece together into one semi-working machine.
Last month, he patched together a fluorometer for cell counting, but its efficacy is questionable, and you have to caress the side of the machine and whisper sweet nothings for it to function.
It’s temperamental but thrives on praise.
Kind of like Charlie, now that I think about it.
The thought pulls a small chuckle as I fall into the sunken armchair in the corner of the office.
“Do you have plans for the break?” he asks, shuffling through a stack of papers on his massive oak desk.
“Just catching up on lesson plans for the laboratory course and completing the extractions on the sediment samples taken from the hydrothermal vent systems.”
“Quite right. It’s going to have to wait.” He extends a piece of paper, but it hangs in the air between us.
Dan’s always been eccentric, as is his wife, Cheryl, and I admire that trait about him.
It was one reason I chose to complete my PhD with him.
He’s laid back in his mentorship, allowing me the space to build my own schedule, and respects work-life boundaries, which I’ve worked hard to establish, otherwise it would take over my life.
The good outweighs the odd, so at times—like now—I look past his unconventional behavior.
With extreme trepidation, I take the proffered paper and scan the words at the top. The first sentence registers, and I reel back in shock. Air lodges in my throat as I read the rest of the printed email. My interest piques with a particular name—one that lights firecrackers in my chest.
“Is this real?”
Dan nods, brimming with excitement. “Do you want to go?”
“Is that a serious question?”
He laughs, but I elaborate, just to ensure there’s zero confusion. “Of course I want to go.”
“Great,” he cheers, handing me a stack of papers and the lab credit card. “Book everything you need. Cheryl is going to meet with Charlie, and if she chooses to go after we discuss details, we can add her to the bookings.”
“It’s on her bucket list. She’s going to say yes.” I tap the logo on the top of the paper—a gray research vessel with the portholes shaped like starfish. It’s the same logo drawn on the scientific bucket list Charlie has tacked on the wall beside her desk. “But it should be a surprise.”
He nods in agreement. “I’ll remind Cheryl to keep quiet until their meeting on Wednesday. She can be a blabbermouth when she’s excited.”
The papers are heavy in my hands as I leave his office and pack up my things at my desk. I’ll have to hide from Charlie before her meeting, or else I may become the blabbermouth.
I’ll watch her rustle through the papers on her desk, then I’ll cave and tell her a secret she didn’t even know I was hiding.
My resolve is weak around her, which is why the lab is always unlocked for her to steal the pipette whenever she needs.
“I need you to water Fergus while I’m gone,” I say, tapping my fingers against the cold beer bottle as laid-back music plays in the background of Bongos.
“I visit you for a month after you assured me your schedule was lighter thanks to the summer break, and a week in, you’re asking me to water your finicky fern while you’re on a boat in the middle of the Pacific Ocean?”
“Fergus is not finicky,” I chide, defending my baby. He’s particular, and he has every right. He’s had a difficult life, and I brought him back from the brink of death after I bought him for fifty cents at the hardware store.
Now Fergus is living his best plant life by the window in my apartment.
“Oliver, I—” I begin to apologize, but he cuts me off.
“I’ll protect your plant with my life,” he mocks, his snappy English accent adding to the comment. “And find ways to occupy my time now that you’re ditching me for a fancy boat and unlimited time with your girl.”
“She’s not my girl,” I grumble, taking a deep swig of my beer.
The words burn like hydrochloric acid.
Oliver squeezes my shoulder. “That could change. Three weeks at sea is a long time.”
“It’s been two years.”
“And you haven’t given up or moved on,” he counters, like it sounds impressive rather than pathetic.
But he’s right.
Two years of flirting with zero reciprocity, and yet, like a fool, I haven’t given up.
I’ve harbored the delusion that one day, Charlie will see me as more than her competitor or the guy who annoys her.
Half the reason I still live in my world of ignorant bliss is I’ve never seen her with someone else.
Never heard her speak of a boyfriend or date. No photos on her desk. No one dropping by, except for Amy .
“Maybe it’s time you tell her how you feel,” he suggests, signaling to the bartender for another round. “Take the time to get to know each other.”
“I know her.”
“But does she know you?”
I pause long enough for him to know he struck a chord.
“Wow her with your personality,” he says with a shit-eating grin, “because you’re not going to win her over on looks alone.” He slides a beer across the bar as he laughs at my frown.
“Very funny.”
“I thought so.” He stares down at his drink, before adding, “If you want to be seen, Mateo, then you need to stand in the spotlight, even if the light may burn your eyes.”
“Is that your way of saying I need to buck up or shut up?”
He beams. “Precisely. Either tell Charlie you’re into her—and have been for a long time—or chuck those feelings overboard and move on.”
I sigh, picking at the label.
If only it were that simple.
Telling Charlie how I feel is easy on paper. But to stand in front of her and slice my chest open for her to root through my emotions and decide if they’re up to par? Well, I don’t know if I’m strong enough.
Because if I show her who I am, and she deems me unworthy, I don’t think I could look her in the eye for the remainder of our long program.