Chapter Eleven #2
“Yeah. I think. I don’t know, though. Because they’re conversations we didn’t get to have. It’s crazy to think about all the things that get taken from you. But you still get to have your issues with your parents.”
“I guess they’re preferable to yours.”
“I guess. Or we can just decide they’re two different things and call it a day.”
“Well. That’s probably for the best. How did you come from a family like that?”
“I don’t know. I think I’m more like my mom’s dad. He was really into science. But he died when I was ten. So we never got to talk about it really. Or dig into it. But I did inherit a few things from him.”
“That’s really special.”
“Yeah. It is. I wish that I would’ve had more of a chance to know him. Genuinely. Maybe I wouldn’t have felt so singularly weird.”
“Well, I definitely relate to that.”
“I know. And you’re really gorgeous, so that’s kind of amazing.”
“You’re beautiful. And smart, interesting. I think you’re fifty times more interesting than your mom. Just based on the snippet of conversation that I heard. You’re weird, and I like it.”
“That is the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”
“That is a low bar.”
“Yeah. Well, as you can see, I’m surrounded by that kind of person.
” It was maybe the saltiest thing she’d ever said about her family to anyone.
But she felt like she deserved it. He served the spaghetti, and they sat at the table together, and she had never really thought about men doing any kind of domestic labor for her before, but it was hands down the most attractive thing she’d ever seen.
Genuinely. A sight to behold. It was nice to have him taking care of her, instead of telling her she should be less invested in her work and take care of herself.
But he was taking care of her. In all her state. And that seemed like the nicest thing anyone had ever done for her.
“Are you going to spend the night with me?”
He looked up from his plate of spaghetti. “If you want me to.”
“I really want you to.”
And tonight, she was going to be bold with him.
* * *
Ernestine jumped to do the dishes after dinner, but he didn’t want to let her.
What he wanted was for her to have a nice evening.
His blood was still boiling after listening to that conversation with her mom.
It was just incredible. Incredible to him that somebody could be related to Ernestine, and not be invested at all in the things that she was doing.
She was so smart. So clever and unique, and not understanding that, not investing in that, was wild to him.
And yes, her parents had given her things.
That much was clear. They had done the things they needed to do to get her where she was.
But they didn’t have a personal interest in her.
“When did your parents realize you were a genius?”
She laughed. “I’m not sure that they did. I mean, I wouldn’t call myself a genius. There are a lot of things that I am bad at. Or at least more on par with my peers.”
“But how did you graduate early?”
“I won’t lie, I think some of that was teachers who saw what I was so good at, and they gave me a pass on a lot of things like literature.
I love reading. I really do. And I love fantasy novels.
But I’m really not the one to go to about symbolism.
And I hated writing essays about it. I can write endlessly about science, or I can write fiction, but I really don’t like writing about fiction. ”
“Oh, that’s right. You’re writing a book.”
“I’ve gotten better with symbolism. But in school I wasn’t that good at it.
But I think that what they really wanted was for me to be great and special.
And my parents were into that. So when I had a science teacher who said that I was achieving and understanding concepts at such a high level, they were flattered.
It got them a lot of attention in the community.
I was in the local news. I’m not saying they didn’t do a lot.
But it’s complicated. For a while, I was accomplishing things that they valued.
My profile was high where we lived. Because where we lived I was the youngest student to get into college.
The youngest doctorate. And all of those things reflected all this glory onto them.
But when you get into the more granular things—things that people in the community won’t hear about or care about, they care about a lot less.
Mind you, I’m sure that my mom is bragging to her cribbage club as we speak.
But again, it doesn’t matter the substance of what I do. Maybe that’s being overly picky.”
“It’s not being overly picky,” he said. “You want somebody who understands how important this is to you to congratulate you. I see it, Ernestine. Congratulations. What you’ve done is really amazing.”
She looked at him with deep emotion in her eyes, and he felt something shift in his chest. “I don’t know why all of this feels like such a big deal right now.
What I should care more about is the discovery.
Not the reaction to it. Particularly not from people who are never going to understand what it means.
They don’t need to. I need to understand what it means.
That’s all. The end. I don’t know why this feels just so… ugh. But it does.”
“It just does. And that’s enough. You don’t have to try to explain yourself.”
She looked at him like that idea was radical. “I guess because I misunderstood so often I’m always wanting to explain myself. But you never seem to misunderstand me.”
“I don’t find it difficult.”
“Well, I don’t find your past difficult. I think it’s sad.”
“Most people feel so confronted by it when I tell them that—”
“Well, what’s the point of trying to bring it into the present? Doesn’t seem like that’s something you want to do with it.”
“No. It’s really not something I want to do with it.”
“Well, I don’t need to do that with it.”
They did the dishes side by side, and when they were finished, it was Ernestine who took his hand. “I’m going to try to be bold,” she said.
“You’re pretty bold.”
“Yeah, but…this way.”
She stood in the middle of the room, and stripped her T-shirt off.
She was wearing a bra that had cats in space on it.
And it was just very her. There was a lot to her.
A lot more than people could see. This was evidence of that.
His heart was pounding fast, anticipation igniting in his blood.
What a weird thing. That this woman, this woman who was a virgin until just a few days ago, had the power to do this to him.
To make him feel like he was experiencing something entirely new. Like he was maybe the virgin.
He’d let sex become something perfunctory. An appetite that he was trying to satiate, rather than something sacred or intimate. Something that filled him with any kind of deep awe, but she did that to him.
She pushed her shorts down her hips, and revealed that her underwear matched the bra.
“I love the cats,” he said.
“Do you really love the cats?”
“I really do.” He moved toward her, and pressed his thumb over one of the flying cats, which just happened to be placed on her nipple.
He dragged his thumb over the top of it, and shuddered.
“Girl, you are something else. Yes, I love the cats. I love the cats because they’re not scientific.
Cats in space, that doesn’t make any sense.
That’s never going to happen. They’re unexpected.
Like you. Because you’re all about science, until you’re about fantasy.
Until you’re about watching the same show, over and over again.
Until you’re about thinking that maybe there are endless dimensions and lives and unexplained things out there in the universe. And I love that. So, yeah. I love it.”
The smile on her face was dreamy, and he wished that he was worthy of it.
Damn, he really wished he was. But he was just a guy.
Just a guy who had been through so much shit, he didn’t even know what was normal or functional.
Just a guy who was never going to make a scientific discovery that was going to change the world.
A guy who had made tons of money hitting strangers in the head.
A guy who had never felt like he belonged much of anywhere until he met this weird bone scientist.
“Do you have any Jurassic Park underwear?”
She frowned. “You know I don’t.”
“Maybe you should.”
“You are ridiculous.”
“Yeah. I’m kind of ridiculous. But so are you.”
And then her smile lit up the room. It was the stars and the moon, and all the planets they’d looked at through her telescope. It was this broad, expansive world that he had only ever seen with her.
And that was pretty amazing.
She pulled at his shirt, jerked it over his head, her movements inexpert, but wonderful. She moved her hands over his chest, down his stomach, down to his belt. Then she undid it slowly. “You’re not uncovering a fossil,” he said. “I’m not going to break.”
“That’s not why I’m taking my time.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m afraid. I know what I want to do, but I don’t know how to do it. And you can imagine how often I’m not the expert.”
“Probably not very often.”
“No. Not often.”
“And so what if you aren’t the expert?”
“I might do it wrong.”
“What exactly are you afraid of doing wrong?”
“I believe the colloquial term is blow job.”
He felt like he’d been slugged in the stomach. He had a feeling that was what she was talking about, but actually hearing her say it was another matter altogether.
“You know that I can’t give you any secret paleontological information.”
“I know. That’s not why I want to give you one.”
“Well, let’s start with the fact that there’s no such thing as a bad blow job. But also, you could never disappoint me.”
Her eyes looked shiny. “I could never disappoint you?”