Chapter Twenty-Nine #2
A blush spreads over his cheeks. “That’s how I felt about you. Feel about you,” he adds, and it’s that sentence that brings the swirl of my emotions to a standstill.
I am here and Lewis is here, and his gaze is filled with something that manages to be enormous and intense and tender all at once.
“Falling in love felt like an inevitability, but everything after? It’s hard for me.
I’ve been talking to Ben a lot, when he visited me.
My therapist. My sister. And I’ve been thinking about what I told you that first evening we had dinner.
That love is accepting someone without revisions.
Maybe it’s something I wished for all along, but now I know it’s bullshit.
Because we change, all the time, and relationships require communication and compromise and change.
You can love someone, all their marvelous and flawed sides, but sometimes you also need them to change their stubborn ways, even if it’s just by an inch.
Because life is a fucking peer-review process.
You mess up, and you’re lucky if someone tells you and invites you to do better the next time.
That’s love. Because it’s the way you build things that last.
“So that’s what I came here to tell you, really.
It’s all I could think of doing.” He huffs out in exasperation.
“Do you know how hard it is to respect you and leave you alone but also not let you go? To show you that there’s space for you in my life, that I want to fold mine around yours?
It’s impossible. An unsolvable problem, really.
So I thought I’d do the only thing I knew how, which is talk about brain waves and memory tasks first and see if you’d show up.
I needed to be here as loudly and quietly as possible. ”
Lewis switches to a new slide in his PowerPoint, this one with a paragraph of text.
While North and Silberstein has its issues, I can see the effort put into this collaboration.
Although the origin of this work might go against standards of scientific integrity, I recognize the potential it holds and, moving forward, I’d like to make a few suggestions on how these strengths can be pulled to the forefront.
These changes are substantial enough to warrant a major revision, but I’m convinced that they can be tackled.
My eyes fly over the words. Lewis isn’t here to tell me that we end here, or that we ended in New York. He’s not here by accident. He’s here for me.
Understanding takes hold and dominoes through my body, quieting my heart and soothing my stomach. I’m still free-falling, but now he’s falling with me, holding my hand.
“Did you—” I start, and need to steady my voice. “Did you write me a revision letter?”
“I did.”
I lean my hip against the side of a chair, crossing my arms in front of my chest.
Lewis’s eyes track over my face, the blush on his cheeks deepening, as though he’s overcome by the same excitement I am. “You cannot imagine how much I missed seeing you squint at me like that. There’s something you don’t agree with. What is it?”
“Why does your name come first? In our collaboration?”
He shrugs. “Alphabetical order, I guess?” Pulling out his notebook from an inside pocket of his blazer, he scribbles something onto the page.
“I’m adding it to the list of revision points.
” After setting down the pad, he taps the keyboard again, revealing a numbered list. “Here are all the ones I already came up with, starting off with number 1. I’m sorry.
So sorry for not telling you about the grant.
Historically, when I’ve been honest with people, they didn’t stay around through the tough parts, so I was scared to pop that bubble we had.
I didn’t want to lose you. But that doesn’t change the fact that I’m sorry for not telling you about it. ”
Lewis falls silent, giving me time to read.
1) I will always tell you how sorry I am for the times I’ve hurt you, starting with keeping the grant from you and for pulling a Jacob on you. From now on, I’ll tell you about complicated things as they come up.
2) I promise we’ll figure out a way wherever you end up. At a distance or right here, I’m happy if you’ll have me.
a) We might have to fine-tune our communication a little bit.
3) I will hide all your contact lenses so you need to wear your glasses, and I’ll make sure you see clearly with them.
a) At the risk of sounding like a mind-body dualist here, but I’m obsessed with you, Frances, in and out.
4) I will hold your hand and tell you to breathe whenever you need me to. Let’s remember that not everything in life is a variable to control and I get that that’s a scary thought, but also: look where serendipity has brought us.
5) I promise I won’t push you away when things get tough. Whenever we let each other in about what went on in our minds, it was scary but it always turned out for the better. So how about, moving forward, I’ll make hot chocolate and we talk things through?
6) I will help you paint your walls and nail pictures into them wherever you live. Even if it’s a rental and for a limited time, I want you to feel at home wherever you are. I promise I’ll restore it back into original condition afterward.
7) I will continue asking you to explain to me everything I don’t know (and everything I do), be your safe place to land whenever your determination gets the better of you, and keep asking for all the nerdy jokes.
As I’m reading, Lewis leaves his place at the lectern and comes up the first few steps of the lecture theater. When he stops on the step below me, my pulse is close to tripping over itself from wonder.
“Related to point 3… May I?” he adds, gently touching the metal-wire frame on my temple.
I give him a small nod because I don’t trust my voice right now. A smile creases the corners of his eyes, and it warms me within my heart as he gently pulls my glasses off. When they’re clean, he returns them to me, then holds up his notepad. “I knew you’d have suggestions, so…”
I pull the pencil stub out of the spiral bind of the notepad and add to the list.
8) I will set boundaries in my life, so I get to keep all the things that I love in it, and that, first and foremost, includes you. I’m done pushing people away for the sake of my career.
9) I will not allow you to cut off your hair, ever, but I will give you back your favorite T-shirt if you let me steal other ones.
10) I will engage with you in scientific discussions for as long as you want, but I will also ask you to tell me about your feelings when I know that you’re deflecting. I’m here to take care of you, too, Lewis, so let me make the hot chocolate sometimes.
11) I will help you shorten your abstracts and let you use the wrong emojis because these are things you really don’t need revisions for. They make you the way you are and that’s a good thing.
12) But I also promise to encourage and support you when you need to make changes.
Sometimes things need to get hard before they get better, and I will stand beside you while you figure out your relationship with Ben.
I will hear you out so we can solve complex situations together.
Caring for someone is communicating with them and finding the best way forward as a team, and I promise to make you all the grilled cheese sandwiches so we get there together.
13) I promise to pay attention to you every day and tell you all the ways in which you are enough.
a) Just to name a few right now: your curiosity, attention to detail, that grumbling laugh.
b) Also, that move of your hand.
I hand Lewis the list. Although I saw him reading it upside down as I was writing, he goes through it once again, eyes sharp with focus. He nods as he reads through each item, his cautious smile burrowing deeper.
“Can I?” he asks then, waiting until I hand him the pencil.
“Um. Sure.”
Lewis draws a 14) at the bottom of my list. He tilts up the page so I can’t see what he writes, and I push up onto my toes to get a glimpse, but it’s only when he finally hands me the note that I get to read his words.
14) I promise to tell you every day that I love you.
“Starting with now,” Lewis says. As he takes me in with an infinitely tender expression, he pauses his gaze like each part of me is something precious, Eyes, cheeks, lips, jaw, the frame of my glasses, and back to my eyes again.
“Ich liebe dich,” he whispers. “I love you.”
My heart balloons and this time, I let it fly.
I tug at the paper, drawing him into me until his right hand curves around my hip.
The notebook page crumples when I flatten my palm against Lewis’s chest, and the fingers of my other hand find the nape of his neck, curl into his hair.
But before I can move in to kiss him, I remember there’s something else he needs to know.
“One more thing,” I tell him. “Relating to point 8, setting boundaries. I won’t be taking the job.”
Lewis’s face falls. “I don’t understand.
The job you want, the funding, it’s there.
Even if it’s just to tide you over until you get your own grant, I checked with HR—I wouldn’t be involved in the interviewing process.
Getting the job wouldn’t have anything to do with me.
I made sure, I—” He drags his hand over his face, then fixates on me with what looks like desperation.
“What do you want me to do, Frances? Tell me and I’ll do it. ”
“You don’t have to do anything, you’ve done enough. This is not on you, but on me. It’s my decision how to move forward, and I’ve decided I won’t be taking the job. I need to do this for myself. I need to figure out what’s good for me.”
Lewis squints his eyes pensively. “So, what you’re saying is… you’ll have me, but far away? Did you get any news from the lab in Melbourne?” His hand lifts to the back of my head and he unfurls his fingers, pulling me closer.
“Hold on, no.” I stop him. “Let me finish explaining.”
I take a step away, even though I’d love to stay nestled up to him. But I need to look at him for this, need him to see me. I need to have this conversation without hiding.
“I’m not going to take the job with Rosanna.
In fact, I’m not going to take any other job in any other lab,” I tell him, and it’s the first time I’ve said it out loud.
It’s scary and unfamiliar, and my heart beats furiously in my chest, but it also feels right.
“I’m leaving academia. Hopefully, if it all works out, just for a little while.
If they’ll have me, I’ll work four days a week as a researcher at Codify, Maria’s start-up.
And if I miss academia, I’ll apply for another round of grants, with Rosanna as my mentor, with a project that’s really mine.
If it doesn’t work out, well, I gave it one last shot. But if it does…”
“You’d have enough funding to build up your own research line next year, in Amsterdam,” Lewis finishes my sentence for me.
I nod slowly. “I need to learn how to set boundaries for myself and my career. Like, what I’m willing to do for it and where I need to draw a line for my own sake.”
He brushes my hair out of my face and I can’t help but lean into his touch. “I’m proud of you for doing what you need to do, Frances. I’ll be here to help whichever way I can. And when you get the job, Maria is lucky to have you.”
“If I get the job,” I correct him, because even though I feel good about today’s interview, I don’t want to get my hopes up.
“Nah. When you get it.” His confident tone infuses my chest with a calm energy. Then, his face splits into a shy grin. “Amsterdam, huh?”
His smile is infectious. “I thought it’d be good if I was close,” I muse. “You know, in case you ever need last-minute help for overly long abstracts.”
We stand there, drunk with happiness. Now that I can look at him more closely without fear, I notice the dazzling pop of blue that are his eyes and how long his hair has gotten since I saw him last.
“Can I kiss you now?” he murmurs.
I nod.
And then he does. As his lips move over mine, I can’t believe I ever wanted to run away from this.
Now, all I want is to lean in. To run headfirst into that us we’ve started to build.
Some may call it Murphy’s Law, and others serendipity, but the fact is that sometimes our plans don’t work out and sometimes they surprise us, leading to something beautiful.
When I draw back, I take Lewis’s hand and interlace our fingers. We’re back where we started, with his hand wrapped around mine, reassuring me with a quiet comfort. “So, about item 14 on that list…”
“What is it?”
“I’m not quite sure I understand what you meant.”
“Maybe you’ll get it when I say it a few more times,” he whispers into the pocket of space between us. I want to cartograph the crinkles that form around the corners of his eyes and build a home in the soft hum of his words. “I love you, I love you, I love you.”
He presses our interlocked hands to his heart, trusting me with the steady beat of it.