Love on the Brain

ONE HOUR, TWENTY-FOUR minutes, and seventeen seconds.

Eighteen.

Nineteen.

Twenty.

That’s how long I’ve been in this Nissan Altima that smells faintly like lemon and faux leather and Levi’s delicious, masculine scent. And that’s how long we’ve been silent. Thoroughly, wholeheartedly silent.

It’s going to be a craptastic weekend. We’re going to play 007 while barely talking to each other. I see no flaw in this plan.

Is this my fault? Perhaps. Perhaps I initiated this—remarkably immature, I must admit—standoff, when I didn’t say “Hi” back to him this morning. Perhaps I’m the culprit. But I don’t give a flying squirrel because I’m mad. So I’m leaning in to it. I’m hoarding all of my grievances against Levi and bulking them up into a big, withering, incandescent supernova of silent treatment that . . .

Honestly, I’m not sure he’s noticed.

He did lift his eyebrow after I refused to say “Hi,” in my best impression of an eleven-year-old just done rereading The Baby-Sitters Club. But he shrugged it off pretty quickly. He put on a CD (Mer de Noms by A Perfect Circle, and God, his amazing musical taste is like a knife to my ovaries) and started driving. Impassible. Relaxed.

I bet he’s not even thinking about it. I bet he doesn’t care. I bet I’m here, playing nervously with my grandmother’s ring, sulking to the rhythm of “Judith,” while he’s probably pondering the laws of thermodynamics or whether to join the No-Poo movement. What do dudes even think about all the time? The Dow Jones. MILF porn. Their next date.

Does Levi date? I’m sure he does, given the number of people who seem to think of him as a Sexy Guy™. He might not be married, but maybe he’s in a long-term relationship. Maybe he’s deeply in love, like Shmac. Poor Shmac. My chest hurts in a messy, confusing way when I think about what he said. About Levi feeling similarly intense, scary, powerful things for a woman. About Levi doing the things Shmac talked about doing to her.

I shiver, wondering why stray memories of Levi pressing me against a wall are still popping up in my head. Wondering whether the girlfriend he might not even have would be extraordinarily lucky or the very opposite. Wondering why I’m even wondering—

“I’m sorry.”

I turn so fast I pull a muscle. “What?”

“I’m sorry.”

“For what?” I massage my neck.

He stares at the road and lifts one eyebrow. “Is this some educational technique? ‘Apologizing for dummies’?”

“No. I’m honestly befuddled.”

“Then, I’m sorry for calling the meeting without asking for your approval.”

I squint. “. . . Really?”

“Really, what?”

“Are you . . . actually apologizing?”

“Yep.”

“Oh.” I nod. “To be precise, then, you did ask for my approval. And I explicitly did not give it.”

“Correct.” I think he’s biting the inside of his cheek to avoid smiling. “I didn’t heed your explicit advice. I wasn’t trying to undermine your authority, or to act like your opinion is irrelevant. I think . . .” He presses his lips together. “Actually, I know I’m overly invested in BLINK. Which makes me overly controlling and bossy. You’re right, it was the second time I didn’t discuss important issues with you.” He finally looks at me. “I’m sorry, Bee.”

I blink. Several times. “Wow.”

“Wow?”

“That was an excellent apology.” I shake my head, disappointed. “How am I supposed to keep up my very adult silent treatment for the next three and a half hours?”

“You were planning to stop once we got to New Orleans?”

“I wasn’t, but realistically: well-executed cold shoulders require an enormous amount of upkeep, and I’m first and foremost lazy.”

He laughs softly. “Should we switch albums, then?”

“Why?”

“I thought late-nineties grunge might fit your mood, but if you’re outgrowing your wrath, maybe we can listen to something a little less . . .”

“Angry?”

“Yeah.”

“What are our options?”

There’s something exquisitely weird about Levi Ward telling me his phone’s passcode (338338) and letting me poke around his music folder. His collection doesn’t include a single embarrassing Nickelback song (I hate him). It’s a mix of nineties bands—my decade of choice—except that they’re all . . .

I opt for shuffle, settle back into my seat to gaze at the beautiful landscape, and give him the only criticism I can think of. “You do know women make music, too, right?”

“What does that mean?”

“Nothing.” I shrug. “Just that the entirety of your music library is angry white boys.”

He frowns. “Not true.”

“Right. That’s why you have exactly . . .” I scroll down for a few seconds. More seconds. A minute. “. . . a grand total of zero female-performed songs on your phone.”

“That’s not possible.”

“And yet.”

His scowl deepens. “It’s just a coincidence.”

“Mmm.”

“Okay—I’m not proud of it, but it’s possible that my musical taste was influenced by the fact that in my formative years I, too, was an angry white boy.”

I snort. “I bet you were. Well, if you ever want to work through that rage productively I could recommend some singer-songwriters—” There’s something on the side of the road. I crane my neck to see better. “Oh my God.”

He gives me a worried look. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing. I just—” I wipe my eyes. “Nothing.”

“Bee? Are you . . . crying?”

“No,” I lie. Poorly.

“Is it about female singer-songwriters?” he says, panicky. “I’ll buy an album. Just let me know which one is best. Honestly, I don’t know enough about them to—”

“No. No, I— There was a dead possum. On the side of the road.”

“Oh.”

“I . . . have issues. With roadkill.”

“Issues?”

“It’s just . . . animals are so cute. Except for spiders. But spiders are not really animals.”

“They . . . are.”

“And who knows where the possum was going? Maybe she had a family? Maybe she was bringing home food to kids who now wonder where Mommy is?” I’m making myself cry harder. I wipe my cheek and sniffle.

“I’m not sure wildlife abides by the rules of traditional nuclear family structure—” Levi notices my glare and instantly shuts up. He scratches his nape and adds, “It’s sad.”

“It’s okay. I’m fine. I’m emotionally stable.”

His lips curl up. “Are you?”

“This is nothing. Tim used to make me play this stupid ‘Guess the Roadkill’ game to toughen me up, and once I literally ran out of tears.” Levi’s jaw hardens visibly. “And when I was twelve we saw a family of splattered hedgehogs on a Belgian highway and I cried so hard that when we stopped to get gas, a Federale Politie agent questioned my uncle on suspicion of child maltreatment.”

“Got it. No stops until New Orleans.”

“No, I promise I’m done crying. I’m an adult with a shriveled, hardened heart now.”

He gives me a skeptical glance, but then says, “Belgium, huh?” and his voice is curious.

“Yeah. But don’t get too excited, it was the Flemish part.”

“I thought you said you were from France.”

“I’m from all over the place.” I take off my sandals and push my legs against the dashboard, hoping Levi won’t take offense at my bright yellow nail polish and my incredibly ugly pinkies. I call them the Quasimotoes. “We were born in Germany. My father was German and Polish, and my mother half-Italian, half-American. They were very . . . nomadic? My dad was a technical writer, so he could work anywhere. They’d settle in one place, stay for a few months, then move to a new one. And our extended family was very scattered. So when they died, we—”

“They died?” Levi turns to me, wide-eyed.

“Yeah. Freak car accident. Airbags didn’t work. They’d been recalled, but . . .” I shrug. “We’d just turned four.”

“We?” He’s more invested in my life story than I expected. I thought he just wanted to fill the silence.

“Me and my twin sister. We don’t really have memories of our parents. Anyway, after their death we were sent from relative to relative. There was Italy, Germany, Germany again, Switzerland, the US, Poland, Spain, France, Belgium, the UK, Germany again, a brief stint in Japan, the US again. And so on.”

“And you’d learn the language?”

“More or less. We were enrolled in local schools—which, total pain, having to make new friends every few months. There were times I thought in so many languages I didn’t even speak, I couldn’t understand the inside of my own head. Not to mention, we’d always be the kids with an accent, the kids who didn’t really get the culture, so we never properly fit in, and— Shouldn’t you be monitoring the road instead of staring at me?”

He blinks repeatedly, as if shaking off the shock, and then looks straight ahead. “Sorry,” he mumbles.

“Anyway. There were lots of countries, lots of relatives. Eventually we landed in the US with my maternal aunt for the last two years of high school.” I shrug. “I’ve been here ever since.”

“And your sister?”

“Reike’s like my parents used to be. All wanderlustful. She left as soon as she legally could, and for the past decade she’s been going from place to place, doing odd jobs, living day by day. She likes to . . . just be, you know?” I laugh. “I’m positive that if my parents were alive they’d gang up with Reike against me for not loving to travel like they do. But I don’t. Reike’s all about seeing new places and making new memories, but to me, if you constantly go after new things, there’s never enough of anything.” I run a hand through my hair, playing with the purple tips. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m just lazy.”

“It’s not that,” Levi says. I glance up. “You want stability. Permanency.” He nods, as if he just found the missing piece of a puzzle and the resulting picture suddenly makes sense. “To be somewhere long enough to build a sense of belonging.”

“Hey, Freud,” I say mildly, “you done with the unsolicited therapy?”

He flushes. “That will be three hundred dollars.”

“Seems like the going rate.”

“Are you and your sister identical?”

“Yes. Though she insists that she’s prettier. That dumbass.” I roll my eyes fondly.

“Do you see her often?”

I shake my head. “I haven’t seen her in person in almost two years.” And even then, it was two days, a layover in New York on her way to Alaska from . . . I have no clue. I’ve long lost track. “But we talk on the phone a lot.” I grin. “For example, I bitch to her about you.”

“Flattering.” He smiles. “Must be nice to be close with your sibling.”

“You’re not? Did you drive a rift between you and your brothers with your bad habit of doing stuff without clearing it with them first?”

He shakes his head, still smiling. “There is no rift. Just . . . what’s the opposite of a rift?”

“A closing?”

“Yeah. That.”

Whatever the state of his relationship with his brothers is, he doesn’t seem happy about it, and I feel a pang of guilt. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to imply that your family hates you because you’re a control freak.”

He smiles. “You’re just as much a control freak as I am, Bee. And I think it has more to do with the fact that I’m the only member of my extended family who’s not in some military career.”

“Really?”

“Yup.”

I bend my legs and angle myself to face him. “Is it an unspoken rule in your family? You must be in the armed forces, or you shall be a failure?”

“It’s absolutely spoken. I’m the official disappointment. Only cousin who’s a civilian—out of seven. The peer pressure is intense.”

“Whoa.”

“Last year, at Thanksgiving, my uncle publicly asked me to change my name to stop bringing shame to the family. This was before he guzzled a case of Blue Moon.”

I scowl. “You are a NASA engineer with Nature publications.”

“You kept track of my pubs?”

I eye-roll. “I don’t. Sam just likes to blabber about how amazing you are.”

“Maybe I should bring her to Thanksgiving next year.”

“Hey.” I poke his bicep with my index finger. It’s hard and warm through the sleeve of his shirt. “I know we’re . . . nemesi?”

“Nemeses.”

“—nemeses, but your family doesn’t. And I usually spend Thanksgiving trying to see how many vegan marshmallows I can stuff into my mouth. So if next year you need someone to explain exactly how amazing you are at your job—or even just to bitch-slap them—I’m available.” I smile, and after a few seconds he smiles back, a little soft.

There is something relaxing about this. About here. About the moment we’re having. Maybe it’s that Levi and I know exactly where we stand when it comes to each other. Or that for both of us, the most important thing in the world right now is BLINK. Maybe there is a connection between us. A very odd, very complicated one.

I lean back in my seat. “That,” I muse, “is the one pro of being an orphan.”

“What is?”

“Having no parents to disappoint.”

He mulls it over. “Can’t argue with that logic.”

After that we go back to our Hostile Companionable Silence™. And after a little longer I fall asleep, Thom Yorke’s voice low and soothing in my ears.

•   •   •

I HAVE BEEN at HBI for three and a half minutes when I meet the first person I know, a former RA in Sam’s lab who’s now a Ph.D. student at—I glance at his badge—Stony Brook. We hug, catch up a bit, promise to get together for drinks over the weekend (we won’t). By the time I turn around, Levi has met someone he knows (an elderly guy with a fanny pack and an eyeglass chain that scream “engineer” from the top of the Grand Canyon). The cycle lasts about twenty minutes.

“Jesus,” I mutter once we’re alone. It’s not as though we’re famous, or anything like that, but the world of neuroimaging is very insular. Incestuous. Inescapable. And lots of other I adjectives.

“I had more social interactions in the past twenty minutes than in the last ten months,” he mumbles.

“I saw you smile at least four times.” I pat his arm comfortingly. “That can’t have been easy.”

“I might have to lie down.”

“I’ll get an ice pack for your cheeks.” I look around the crowded hall, suddenly reminded of why I hate academic conferences. “Why did we come today, anyway? MagTech’s presentation’s not until tomorrow.”

“Boris’s order. A feeble attempt to look like we’re not just here to snoop, I believe.”

I grin. “Do you ever feel like we’re super-spies and he’s our handler?”

He gives me a half-amused, half-withering look. “No.”

“Come on. Boris’s totally the M to my James Bond.”

“If you’re James Bond, who am I?”

“You’re the Bond girl. I’m going to seduce you in exchange for blueprints and stab you while I sip on my martini.” I wink at Levi, then realize that he’s flushing. Did I go too far? “I didn’t mean to—”

“There are a couple of engineering talks I want to go to,” he says abruptly, pointing at the conference program and sounding remarkably normal. I must have imagined it. “You?”

“There’s a panel at four that sounds interesting. Also, it’s my sacred duty to go out for a drink. Big Easy and all that.”

“Oh. Did you want to . . .”

I cock my head. “Want to?”

He clears his throat. “Did you want company? Were you already planning to go with your friend, or—”

“My friend?”

“That friend of yours.”

“Who?”

“I forgot her name. That girl who was in Sam’s lab? Dark hair, did fNIRS research, and . . .” He squints. “Nah, that’s all I remember.”

“Are you talking about Annie Johansson?”

He glances back at the program. “Maybe? That sounds right.”

I can’t believe Levi forgot Annie’s name after she pursued him mercilessly for ages. She knew his damn blood type, for cake’s sake. Probably his social security number, too. “Why would I go for drinks with her?”

“I just assumed,” he says absentmindedly. “You two were inseparable.”

My heartbeat picks up. Probably for no reason. “But she’s not here.”

Levi’s still reading the program, not really paying attention to me. “I thought I saw her a minute ago.”

I whirl around. Yes, my palms are starting to sweat, but just because sometimes they do. All palms sweat sometimes, right? I look about frantically, but I’m sure that Annie’s not here. She can’t be. Levi didn’t even remember her name—he can’t be right about this. He probably thinks that all women with dark hair look the same and—

Annie.

With a shorter haircut. And a pretty lilac dress. And a big smile on her pretty lips. Standing in line at the badge reclamation station, chatting with someone, someone who just walked up and is handing her a cup of coffee, someone who—

Tim.

Tim. I see Tim, but only for a second. Then my vision blurs, large black dots swallowing the world. I’m hot. I’m cold. I’m sweaty. I’m shaking like a leaf and my heart is pounding and I’m flying away.

“Bee.” Levi’s voice grounds me for a second, warm and deep and worried and solid and thank God he’s here, or I’d be scattered all over, debris in the wind. “Bee, are you okay?”

I’m not. I’m dying. I’m fainting. I’m having a panic attack. My heart and my head are exploding.

“Bee?”

Levi is holding me now. Holding me again and I’m in his arms and it feels like I’m safe, how is it possible that when he’s around, only when he’s around, I really feel sa—