Chapter Fifteen #2
I wipe my damp forehead with the sleeve of my shirtdress. I don’t want him to be perceptive now. Not when I need to bury all of this sadness and self-doubt and dejection down, or else I won’t function for the rest of the evening.
“What happened?” he insists.
“It doesn’t matter.” I shake my head and walk farther down the sidewalk, if only to put space between him and me. “I just need a moment.”
“Oh, but it does matter,” Lewis says and follows close behind me, even when I take a turn into the alleyway that leads to the brewery behind the bar.
Caged industrial-style lights line the wall above us, and under their dim glow, his gaze skirts over my face again only to settle on my eyes.
“If it’s about the grant, there are other options. ”
He brings up the grant like it’s nothing.
Like I didn’t spend all winter camped out behind my computer writing the damn thing, schmoozing professors to see if they’d put their names on it, then asking people for feedback to get even more of a competitive advantage.
Like I didn’t cut my Christmas holidays short to help my boss with exam corrections, only so he would scrutinize the grant down to the last hypothesis.
I shouldn’t be surprised that Lewis handles a failed grant so casually. All my resentment for him and the advantage that his opinion paper gave him come bubbling back up. Apology or not, the fact is that he’s miles ahead of me in this rodeo.
“What would you know about other options?” I bite out. “Maybe to you, all of this comes easy. Maybe it doesn’t take you ages to work on revisions for a paper, months to come up with the right hooks for grants.”
“But that’s just—”
“You and I?” I interrupt. “We operate in different leagues. You publish higher. You have all your collaborations, your advisors who network to get you hired or mentor you through whatever hurdle you need to take next. But guess what? I don’t.
And this Sawyer’s—I wanted to meet people here, to connect, to see if I could be useful in any other lab, but god.
” I’m long past the point of lowering my voice, suddenly realizing how furious I am, above all, at myself.
“One tiny blip of judgment, and suddenly instead of doing what I came here for, I am obsessing about faking a relationship because otherwise my career would truly be over, never mind how low my chances are at this point at making it in academia. Everyone knows that—”
“That’s not—” Lewis tries to interject.
I raise my voice over him, “Which is one more thing I’m mad about, because, once again, I care too much about what other people think, when I should be more like you.” With the anger coursing hot through my limbs, I rake my fingers through my hair.
He takes a step forward and tilts his chin as if to measure me up. “And you think that’d do you any good?”
“Yes! You’re this insanely driven scientist. You don’t let anything come between you and what truly matters,” I yell.
“And neither do you,” he yells back, and reaches up as if to pluck my hands from my hair. “Otherwise, why would we be doing any of this?” Mid-movement, he stops and stretches his arms sideways instead, encompassing the alleyway, the city, us.
“Frances, let me talk here. You’re nothing like me,” he continues, and something desperate spans his expression and his voice.
His hands bridge those last inches, until he closes his fingers around my wrists and pulls our arms down into the space between us.
“You’re not and that’s a good thing. My only brother is basically a stranger to me and why?
Because I have fucking unresolved daddy issues.
If I were you, with an ex-boyfriend who’s a superstar in our field, organizing this summer school, and—surprise—has also gotten engaged, I wouldn’t even have come here.
But you, you swallow your pride and pack your bags and get on your way.
Because the science matters more to you than any personal stuff. ”
I open my mouth, ready to argue back, until I track that he’s pivoted into complimenting me. I feel outsmarted. “What?”
“Also, this stuff about not having what it takes to make it in academia? It’s infuriating that this broken system makes you doubt yourself that way and believe me—I know I’ve played my role in this.
” His gaze bores into mine as he faces me head-on.
“You know what should matter for making it in academia? That you like to pull other people up, that you’re brilliant and smart and driven and that you have good ideas—I should know because I’ve been admiring your work for years.
So, one decision by one grant committee?
” He breaks off his rant with an exasperated laugh. “Screw them.”
He has admired my work for years?
As I look at Lewis his words echo through my mind, a loop of brilliant and smart and something about having admired my work for years?
I think back to the evening in his hotel room when he told me that he scrutinized my papers because he wanted to understand me. The email he wrote in the library where he said he’s always been eager to hear my thoughts. All his cryptic comments whenever I made assumptions about his opinion of me.
I want to see you succeed.
The memories pull at others, too; how he confessed he liked us together on the deck of that yacht after the graduation party, the way he said, “Hardly,” when I asked him whether he was sick of me yet, even the playful nip of his teeth when he nibbled that cashew off my finger.
Understanding sinks in and sends a heart-racing, palm-tingling, core-clenching twist through my body.
There’s a different feeling nestled against the bite of anger now. It still makes me want to get into his space, but now I want it differently.
From the way he shifts against me, I think he does, too. So, before I can convince myself that this is a bad idea, I push onto my tiptoes and press my mouth against his.