Chapter Fourteen #2
Though I haven’t known Vivienne that long, her questions about Lewis, commiserations about long-distance relationships, and her effort to let me spend more time with him all seem so genuine. I can only hope Jacob has learned from his mistakes and values her kindness, too.
Brady heads off to the bathroom, while I look for Lewis to tell him about the change of plans and to see how he’s doing ahead of his lecture.
As excited as I was about having run into Rosanna Alderkamp, that giddy feeling has died down now that I know I’ll have to figure out how to spend an extra few hours with Lewis tomorrow.
I find him in the empty auditorium, a lone figure at the lectern getting ready for his lecture.
For a moment, I watch him through the window panel of the closed door, ignoring how my heart squeezes in on itself.
While he scrolls through the slides, his other hand alternates between fumbling with the lapel of his jacket, the laser pointer, and the back of his neck.
The giant projections flip behind him, from the squiggly lines of a hippocampal ripple, to the pink and wrinkly surface of an exposed brain, and a black-and-white diagram I recognize from his latest commentary.
When he seems to be done, I push the door open and his head snaps up.
“I see you got rid of your not-so-brief introduction to psychology. Flashy suits you,” I tease, pausing in the doorframe.
“What can I say. I’ve had some last-minute help from the best,” he responds as one corner of his mouth tugs up.
My smile feels inevitable. “I hope you’re not sick of me yet.”
He watches me as I cross the floor toward him, and I’m surprised my body doesn’t short-circuit. “Hardly.”
“Because Vivienne just put the two of us into the same Q and A session tomorrow.”
“Okay,” he simply says, still staring. Something must be weird with my face, although it looked fine in the bathroom mirror.
“How are you feeling about your lecture?” I ask, patting my cheek self-consciously. A wooden plank creaks under my shoe, echoing in the quiet.
“Good, I think. Definitely better after you helped me yesterday. Hey, these are new,” Lewis notes when I reach his side. He brushes a strand of my hair aside to tap the frame of my glasses, which I guess I’m wearing for the first time in his presence today.
“Yeah, turns out that late nights and all that wind are not great for my eyes.” It’s a bit of an understatement. My eyes feel dry and gritty, like someone’s scrubbed them with sandpaper, and though it’s only been a half hour, I already feel the urge to apply eye drops again.
“They look good on you. Although…” He plucks the glasses off my nose, the world around me turning blurry. “Hold on.”
I can just about make out the shape of Lewis tugging up a corner of his shirt, revealing a caramel-colored blob that must be the skin of his stomach.
“What are you doing?” I’m not sure if I’m more annoyed at Lewis for stealing my glasses or at my crappy eyesight for keeping me from getting a good look at Lewis’s torso. Then I realize what he’s doing. “Are you cleaning my glasses?”
“Just making sure you can see my lecture okay,” he teases. He holds the glasses up to his eyes. “I’m surprised you made it here without walking into a wall.”
“I could see fine, thank you very much. Unlike now.”
He greets someone over my shoulder, then steps closer, his facial features sharpening in the process. I can finally see the cocky grin on his face, the tiny freckles on the bridge of his nose.
“Better?” he asks, his breath warm against my forehead.
He’s standing close enough that I wouldn’t even have to step forward to kiss him. Which I won’t, obviously. Humankind didn’t decode the genome by giving into its each and every impulse, so I won’t, either.
“Well?”
“A bit,” I tell him, my voice coming out all croaky.
“Good, I wasn’t sure if you were far- or nearsighted.”
As Lewis slides the glasses back onto my nose, the world shifts back into focus in a dizzying flash. His knuckles brush my temples, and a prickle spreads over my skin where he touches it. “Here you go.”
“Thank you.” I take a step back and barely catch sight of Jacob’s receding shape, and suddenly Lewis’s behavior makes more sense. He was only teasing me because we had an audience.
I push my disappointment aside as he turns to the lectern and join Brady, who waves me over. Lewis is getting too good at this, with his little gestures and lopsided smiles, the snagging gazes and casual touches.
So good that even I am beginning to believe there might be something there.
A quiet hush settles over the auditorium as Jacob introduces Lewis, listing the steps of his academic career and the young investigator’s award he received from the German Academy of Sciences.
Lewis’s blush is strong enough that I can spot it from my seat in the third row, though now I know that his lack of a smile and the tense set of his eyebrows are not because of a stick up his ass, but because he’s trying to rein in his nerves.
What’s worse, now I also feel those nerves bubbling in my stomach as I witness him speed through the first slide of his lecture.
The only reason I can keep track is because after last night’s rundown I know what he’s talking about, but a glance over my shoulder tells me some of the students are struggling to follow his introduction.
I push my hand up and clear my throat.
He pinches his lips together, either annoyed or amused that I’ve barely waited a minute to butt in. “Yes, Dr. Silberstein?”
“Could you go back to this theta-gamma coupling you were talking about?” I ask, then continue with a question he already explained to me in detail yesterday, one that will hopefully slow him down enough to get everyone else back on track.
When he’s done answering my question, the redness has faded from his face, and he blinks back at me with an expression I can only interpret as gratitude.
From then on, his lecture goes smoothly, and people’s arms go up to ask questions stemming from curiosity rather than confusion.
I hold myself back until the last moment to make good on the “more of a comment than a question” remark he requested, which makes him break into a grin.
And then his lecture is over, and it’s easy to imagine the relief he must be feeling, because the tension melts from my muscles, too.
The only thing that gets me through the afternoon workshops is the prospect of a long climbing session in the evening to release all the energy Lewis’s presence stokes in me. For a moment I consider inviting him to come with, but that would defeat the entire purpose of going.
At the gym on 125th Street, with my hands dusted in chalk and my mind puzzling through the different bouldering problems, I gradually start to put Lewis out of my mind, but on the subway ride back, I see a new paper that makes me want to call him.
Academia is a marathon of obsessing over the most minuscule questions, the ones you tackle deep into the quiet hours of the night with only your computer at your fingertips.
It can get lonely inside your brain. Too much time there can fill you with doubts, but then, sometimes, occasionally, a cool result, a new insight, feels like the most potent drug in the world.
When Jacob and I broke up, I didn’t only lose my boyfriend, but the person I considered my scientific partner in crime.
The person I called whenever any of those breakthroughs happened, that were so far and few between.
Before Lewis failed to include me in that paper four years ago, our emails were on course to fill the gap Jacob had left—not that of a boyfriend, but of someone I could share my thoughts and passions with—and now I want to reach for my phone again, to forward him this article and hear what he thinks.
I make a split-second decision. Right before the tunnel swallows my signal, I press send.
Lewis’s call comes through as I’m stepping out of the shower a half hour later, his words racing like he’s just finished reading. “They got such good coverage of the hippocampus. And the whole design? It’s so fucking elegant.”
I’m already whirring with excitement, but I get an extra boost from his enthusiasm.
As we discuss the paper, his voice sounds a little deeper than in real life, and I can’t stop myself from pressing the phone closer to my ear.
I curl my toes to release the electricity buzzing under my skin, but it doesn’t help.
After we hang up and I lie down in bed, my brain colors in the map of my body with all the new places Lewis touched today. It tucks away the new pieces of knowledge I learned about him, then calculates the hours until I’ll get to see him again.
And as much as I want to stamp it off as surface-level attraction, blame the kiss and some overdose of hormones, I know that whatever I’m feeling runs deeper than that.
I’m starting to like Lewis. I want to kiss him again, but I also want to keep talking to him past the eight hours I spend glued to his side daily.
I want to learn everything there is to know about him.
This is what Karo had warned me about when she said fake dating would be messy. Now I know that instead of ignoring her, I should’ve listened.