Chapter Five #2
Here goes nothing.
“Actually… I was hoping we could?”
He’s quiet. Too quiet, for too long, like he’s gearing up for another one of those cool but sharp outbursts. But then I spot the crinkles around his eyes. “You want me to pretend to be your boyfriend so that your ex-boyfriend who’s now engaged to another person… does what exactly?”
His right eyebrow flicks up.
Is he teasing me?
His mouth twitches, like he can barely hold back a laugh.
As the measured, professional woman that I am, I clamp down the urge to wipe the grin off his face, and school my features.
“I want him and Vivienne and everybody else, really, to not think less of me for lying and putting my career and any prospects for my future at risk.”
“Right, I see,” he says hesitantly, and lets me wait for what feels like an eternity. Then, finally: “So you want us to fake date?”
“You know what fake dating is?”
“I do.”
“You do?”
He shrugs. “I have an older sister who was a teenager right around the peak of the early 2000s rom-coms.”
I didn’t expect him to be so relaxed about this, as if it’s normal to be asked into a fake relationship by your colleague. Could this turn out to be easier than I thought it would?
“Good, so I don’t have to explain.”
“Not the concept, no.” He shakes his head, a muscle in his jaw ticking and eyes sparkling with what I now understand is silent laughter. Laughter at me because he thinks I’m joking. How could I not be, with this ridiculous proposition?
“I’m serious.” I drag my fingers through my hair, tugging on my scalp to ease the slosh of anxiety in my veins.
If this doesn’t work out, I’m out of ideas.
I’ll have to consider a career change for real.
Apply to some company, hoping academic gossip doesn’t travel into their world and bide my time as a data analyst while dreaming of the days when I tried to uncover the mysteries of human memory.
Lewis scans my face from narrowed eyes. “What even makes you think we could pull this off? All we do is argue.”
“It didn’t used to be this way,” I remind him, expecting him to brush it, and me, off like he did all those years ago when he published that paper. The one that made his career, and could’ve made mine, if not for his actions—or lack thereof.
But to my surprise, he winces, “I know.” His voice sounds tight. Together with the lowered eyebrows, I’d almost say it’s apologetic, if I didn’t know him any better.
“It doesn’t really matter, though,” I go on, pushing his puzzling reaction to the back of my mind and focusing on the matter at hand.
“We might not even have to stop arguing, since whatever fight Vivienne saw yesterday, she took it for chemistry.” I skip over the fact that we might’ve held on to each other’s hands just a little too long, but the thought sticks, and a flush creeps into my cheeks.
Thankfully, Lewis doesn’t point it out, either. He just shakes his head as he bites his lip. “Who on earth could mistake this,” he points at himself, then at me, “for chemistry?”
“But that’s what makes this easy. We wouldn’t even have to do that much.
We’re at a summer school where nobody expects us to be all touchy-feely with each other.
We can sit next to each other in lectures, do a few cute things like pick up coffee for each other, and you’ll put on a smile when you see me. ”
He snorts, as if this is the singularly difficult aspect of the plan.
It takes everything in me not to roll my eyes and force my voice to stay level. He needs to understand that I’m serious about this. “I know you hate me, but it can’t be that hard.”
“What?”
“To smile at me. Here, I can show you.” I lift my hands, threatening to pull up the corners of his mouth manually, but he takes a step back, catching my wrists midair and ducking his head away.
“You really have no idea,” he mutters, close enough that his breath ghosts over my cheek. A prickle slinks up my arms, all the way from the hot grip of his fingers.
I shake him off, but the feeling on my arms lingers. “We don’t negate when people imply that we’re dating. That’s it. It involves zero effort, but it would help me a great deal.”
As he pushes his hand into the pocket of his jeans, he frowns at me, the way he did on the plane when I told him to cut a part of his abstract he seemed particularly attached to.
The way I’m discovering he does when he knows that I have a point but tries to come up with a counterargument, just because.
“And here I thought you think so little of me that you can’t even stand to be in the same room as me,” he observes pointedly.
“As I’m sure you’d understand, I can do almost anything when it comes to science,” I retort. “Including pretending to like you. Besides, it’s not for long. Two weeks, and then we can go back to verbally destroying each other’s papers and hating each other.”
“That’s what you think I was doing?”
“Uhm, yeah.” I swipe out my phone, about to open my inbox and pull up his scathing review. “I’m not sure how short-lived your memory is but I can show you—”
“Aren’t you worried, though?” he cuts me off. “About the optics of dating a colleague?”
Once or twice, or maybe a thousand times, it has crossed my mind that outwardly, our fake dating will look like real dating.
Which means risking my professional independence once again.
A blurring of lines between Lewis’s and my work, to the point that my achievements could be seen as his, which is far from ideal, but less bad than tanking my reputation altogether.
Even if I don’t like putting myself back into this position, at least it would allow me to get the resources I need to continue with my research.
His question is surprisingly thoughtful, though, given that the optics would be worse for me than for him.
“It’s not that uncommon,” I cite the counterargument I’ve used to rationalize myself out of my doubts.
It’s the truth—from fellow students back in grad school, all the way up the hierarchy, academics date each other all the time.
Probably because it’s the easiest way to find someone who understands the drive to ponder the tiniest and trickiest of questions, and the long hours needed to get there.
It doesn’t seem to be enough for Lewis though. “That’s not what I meant,” he says, shaking his head. So, he is worried for himself?
“The alternative would be much worse,” I point out.
“I’d rather have people think you had something to do with any good piece of work I do than be seen as a liar.
Remember that whole paragraph on directionality of replay you made me put into my discussion in the last paper?
The one where I suggest using probabilistic classifiers in future research? ”
His nod sends his hair toppling onto his forehead. “Yeah, that was an important point,” he concedes, but then catches himself. “Though may I remind you that the peer-review process—”
“… is anonymous, yes,” I finish. “I still know it was you. Anyway, that point? I can only do that future research if the grant I submitted works out, or if another lab takes me in and lets me work on my own projects. If word gets through and people doubt my integrity, I won’t be able to answer anything. ”
I pause and wait for his rebuttal, but when it doesn’t come, I go on, “It’s not just about my integrity, though, but my professionalism in general.
Day in, day out, it’s a balancing act. I try not to speak my mind too freely and avoid firm boundaries because then I’d have an attitude problem.
But if I’m too quiet, I get passed over.
Maybe if you were the one who’d slipped out a lie, it wouldn’t matter so much.
” I shrug. “Boys can be boys, right? But if people learn I lied about this one thing, who’s to say I’m not equally dishonest in my research when it suits me?
A change of labels in my data here, a little p-hacking there. ”
When he wrinkles his forehead, no doubt thinking of the many fights we’ve had about whether I’m flashy or not, I quickly add, “I know you have your qualms with how I do my research, but I’d never do anything unscientific.
But letting Vivienne know about my lie would absolutely harm my reputation, and I can’t risk that.
Not when I’m waiting on the outcome of that huge grant I applied for, and not ever. ”
Four years ago, we built an easy connection over email, which he then went on to destroy.
Ever since I met him on the plane, his empathetic side has gleamed through the cracks of our conversation, and it’s that part of him I speak to, when I catch his gaze and say, “I know that what you took away from all our emails four years ago was something else, but you must remember how much my work means to me. Please. I can’t lose this now. ”
Lewis stares back at me, and something shifts in the blue of his eyes, like maybe he’s actually contemplating my words.
But then he breaks his gaze away. When he lifts a hand to push his hair off of his forehead, he presses his eyes shut for a moment, looking almost as exhausted as I feel.
I know I’m probably the cause of his exhaustion, having chewed his ear off and kept him out of the first lecture of a summer school he traveled across an ocean for.
He turns away but stops himself before walking off and sighs. “I don’t think I can lie for you, Dr. Silberstein.”
As he ambles toward the heavy doors of the lecture theater, I call out, “Dr. North.”
He throws me a glance over his shoulder.
“You… you owe me one,” I remind him, though I know what I’m asking of him is nothing compared to the few hours I spent editing his abstract.
He pinches his lips. “I’ll think about it.”