Chapter Sixteen
Bernie
“When did you come to West Lafayette?” he asks me mid-bite. Why does everything he makes taste so good? Ashish might be a liar, but he is a freaking good cook. Today he made a roasted vegetable wrap with hummus on a whole wheat tortilla. He promised me he packed dessert but left it in the office for later. Because, of course, he made dessert.
I need distance from this man. Desperately.
All week, he’s showered me with his attention. And I need a break before I launch myself across my office and rip his shirt off. They say a man’s heart is through his stomach, but I guess that works across genders. Acts of service are definitely my love language, and Ashish has managed to hone in on that with the precision of, well, an engineer.
Damn him and his perfectly smooth hummus, I think as I swallow my bite.
I answer honestly. “I moved here almost two years ago and started working for Gail a little after that.”
“After your breakup?” he asks, walking too damn close to me. His elbow brushes mine. He’s always touching me—my lower back when we walked toward the staircase, tucking my hair behind my ear, my shoulders when he ‘bumped’ into me when I was coming into the office and he was leaving it. Innocent enough, but also freaking inappropriate for the office and for someone you don’t really know.
I shoot him a side-eye, unimpressed.
“You said you were recovering from a breakup before.”
“I thought we agreed not to talk about before.”
“I didn’t realize that meant we weren’t allowed to talk about any of the information we learned about each other.” He raises his eyebrows like he’s being totally reasonable.
“Yes,” I say through gritted teeth. “After my breakup. I moved here to be closer to Pru.” I take another bite of the wrap.
Does he make his own hummus?
“Pru’s your friend, right? The short one that wears a lot of black?”
I snort at his description. Pru is barely 5’1, and impossible to forget. She sticks to dark colors and embodies her ‘corporate witch’ aesthetic faithfully, despite the stodgy judgment of her department. She may have fit in better at home in the Northwest and I admire the hell out of her commitment to only be herself.
“Yeah. We went to grad school together and then she moved here after.”
“Your ex works at Seattle State?”
I hum in response. I’m not talking about this anymore. It’s hot and I’m frustrated about everything.
Mike Chen, one of the two faculty from engineering, only got back to us yesterday. I have no idea what kind of political fuckery is going on behind closed doors but it’s embarrassing and delaying Ashish’s work. You’d think people would want to work hard for literally millions of dollars. I guess we underestimated how much leaders don’t like to be told what to do.
And Ash—I can admit he’s a distraction.
It’s taking every ounce of my willpower to tune him out. Instead of giving my work the focus it deserves, I’ve felt my attention pulled to the other side of my office, listening to the way he coaches his team remotely, and empowers them to make decisions. The way he chats up my colleagues and wins them over. It’s been a week and everyone already freaking loves him. I could never be that good with people.
Yesterday, I listened as he walked a junior engineer in his firm through some kind of construction software. He was so patient . For two hours, he troubleshooted with her, sharing screens and trying different functions. I don’t know what the hell they were talking about, but he’s a natural teacher. I can see why he had success at MIT and won the grant.
Toward the end of the call, he figured out that there were mistakes in the imported data. The woman apologized, and Ash just brushed it off like it wasn’t a big deal that he’d spent almost two hours trying to fix a problem that didn’t exist. He walked her through how he checked his data before importing it and then asked her to go through the steps to make sure she knew what to do on her own.
My mind automatically compared my experiences with Stephen as my supervisor. When I started, he dumped a whole bunch of raw data on me and asked me to clean it. My dissertation had been qualitative, and I had limited statistics experience, which he knew. I made a mistake by setting up one of the variables incorrectly. He didn’t yell, but he was ‘disappointed.’ ‘ I didn’t realize I’d need to spend so much time reviewing your work, Bernadette. Truly, this was a basic request; it’s a little disappointing how behind you are. It’s fine, perhaps we should meet more than once a week to make sure you’re on track.’
I hate that sometimes I replay those words like they still matter. That sometimes, I do an analysis three or four times before sending it to Gail because the pressure of being wrong has crept up my chest and made my throat ache.
I know some people joke about something being their whole personality. But for me, work kind of is my whole personality. Stephen brought my mistake up as a joke when we went out to dinner with his brother. I guess I had to learn that a mistake made once would certainly not be mentioned only once. I feel so ashamed when I remember how I just sat there while they laughed with a stupid smile on my face like he wasn’t making fun of me. Like his reframing of a learning process was just evidence of being a failure.
I wish I could go back and shake myself. Why couldn’t you see how bad that was for you?
“Do you want to go walk on the indoor track? It’s humid, and there’s not enough shade. I don’t want you to burn.” He balls up the parchment paper he used to wrap our lunch and places his hand on my lower back again, steering me toward the gym. I frown at his thoughtfulness and his touch. I don’t know under what umbrella that’s professional, but I hope he gets sweat on his hand.
“We should get back.” I take my final bite and he promptly plucks the wrapper from my hand.
“If you want, sunshine. But I could use some movement and would love the company.” This man is getting into my head. I bought him a freaking muffin this morning. They’d only had one chocolate left, my favorite. And yet, I somehow found myself putting it on his desk. There is something deeply wrong with me.
“I’m sure you’d enjoy some time alone; we’ve been in each other’s space all week.” I know I need the space.
He chuckles, and I swear his thumb makes an impossibly small circle through my shirt. I tell my nerves to calm the hell down.
“I love your company.” He opens the door to the gym, and we scan our IDs before heading to the elevator. I don’t know why I’m surprised when he hits the button for the fourth floor, he seems to have discovered all of our secrets in the short time he’s been here. The upper track is smaller and quieter. Since class hasn’t started yet, we might have it to ourselves.
We start walking in the blue and gold lanes, and I find myself anxious to fill the silence. “How has it been, working remotely?” I wince at how loud my voice sounds.
“Good so far. We’ll figure it out. I have two junior engineers who have stepped into my shoes to work with MIT and our clients. Plus, Ravi and I still have other clients and projects outside of the grant. It’s nice that we’re able to use the grant to buy out some of my salary, but it’s our business. I can’t just ignore it.”
“Ravi?”
“Ravi’s my little brother, remember? We opened the firm together after I finished my PhD.”
I lick my lips and stick my hands into my pants pockets. It’s surreal to know what someone looks like naked and basically know nothing else about them.
“That’s right. You mentioned him. Are you close?”
“Yeah.” He nods and smiles. “He’s my best friend. Do you have any siblings?”
I shake my head. “Just me and my mom. We talk a bunch on the phone, but she still lives back in Washington.”
“That’s where you’re from?”
“Uh-huh. I did my undergrad and master's in Oregon but moved back to Washington for my PhD. I did two years of postdoc at the same institution after graduation.”
“Why didn’t you look for a faculty job?” My stomach sinks at the question.
“I, umm, I wanted to stay in the area to be close to my mom and thought it would be a good career move. I felt I needed more quantitative experience to be competitive, and my postdoc supervisor had expertise in that area. He was in an administrative position and had research support dollars from the university for research assistants. It was kind of an extension of my dissertation since it was the original site for my research.” I shrug my shoulders and try not to be bitter. “Seemed like a natural progression. What about you?”
“Industry was always the plan for me. I like doing things.”
“Why even get a PhD?” I think most people get a PhD because they want to work at a university, but maybe engineering is different.
“I don’t really know?” He laughs. “I was working in an R&D government research lab and a lot of the guys there had a PhD. My mom’s a professor, and she’s had to deal with a lot of bullshit working in higher ed. The academy never appealed to me. My dad’s an engineer and has always worked in industry, so it just seemed like the better option.”
“Your mom’s a professor?”
“Yeah, she’s an anthropologist. She studies court systems and public policy. But started out in a school of criminology back in the late eighties, so there was a lot of sexism that she had to deal with.”
“I can imagine,” I say dryly, and he smiles and shrugs.
“She’s retired now and mostly does consulting with police departments and victim service agencies, but growing up, I could see that she struggled with how political the university was.”
“Why didn’t you stay working in a lab?” I ask because I’m genuinely curious. It makes me think of the night we met—when he told me he wanted to know anything, everything about me.
“Well, Ravi and I always wanted to work together. When he decided to get a business degree instead of becoming an engineer, we thought we’d try opening our own firm. He said he wanted to get his MBA, so I decided to go back to school as well, but in the UK. A fully funded, full-time PhD in the UK typically takes three years because you don’t waste time on coursework like you do in the States. My dad’s from the UK, so I have dual citizenship and I had some family over there I could live with.”
“Your dad’s British?” I ask, surprised, and Ashish laughs at me.
“Where did you think he was from?” he teases me, and I flush, realizing how ignorant I must sound.
“Sorry.” My cheeks are on fire.
“It’s fine.” He cups my shoulder and gives it a squeeze before dropping his hand between us. “His parents are from Bihar, in Northern India, but he was born and raised in the UK. He met my mom when she was studying abroad for her master’s and followed her back to the US.”
“He followed her back to the US? Just like that?”
Ash winks at me. “What can I say? Knowing what we want runs in my family.” His hand brushes my hip,and I realize how closely we’re walking together. I take a step to the side and get back in my lane. He doesn’t say anything, but then again, he doesn’t have to, I was the one who got closer to him.
“My mom’s in real estate,” I blurt out, not really sure what else to contribute.
“Oh yeah? She likes it?”
I nod. “Yeah, she’s been selling residential property since I was a kid. She made a killing during the COVID housing boom before they racked up the interest rate, so now, she’s semi-retired.”
“She didn’t want to move out here?”
I bite my bottom lip trying to consider my words. In truth, my mom didn’t support the move or the breakup. She loves Stephen and still talks to him. Her relationship with him has created a rift between us. The past few years have been the first time in my life I haven’t felt close to her. It’s why I came here, to be with Pru instead of staying with my mom.
“I said semi-retired,” I say dryly and he chuckles.
“Yeah, I hear that. When my mom retired and moved to consulting, she kept telling my dad it would be like a part-time gig. I think her first year she regularly worked sixty-hour weeks and was traveling so much that they barely saw each other. My dad ended up dropping down to part-time so he could travel with her. He missed her too much. It was a rough adjustment.”
“Hmm,” is all I can think to say. I can’t imagine what it would be like to have parents who loved each other like that. I haven’t talked to my dad in years. Mostly we just exchange cards on Christmas and birthdays.
“Your dad?” he asks, always reading my mind.
“We’re not close. My mom and dad got divorced when I was little, and I didn’t really grow up with him. I think he tried when I was a kid, but once I was a teen, I didn’t want anything to do with him and I guess he didn’t want to try anymore.”
“Hmm.” He brushes that hand along my shoulder before dropping it to swing by his side. Comforting me with an effortlessness that makes it hard to keep my distance. “I’m glad you have Pru,” he says quietly, and I nod.
“We should head back. I have some reading to get done before I go home.” I abruptly turn toward the exit before he can put that magic hand on my lower back. Each time he touches me, I find it harder to remember why I was so mad in the first place.