SWNOVELS : Chapter 14
THIS IS NOT my hotel room.
First of all, it has a way better view. A busy, picturesque New Orleans street, instead of that cluttered courtyard with stacked patio furniture. Second, it smells faintly like pine and soap. Third, and perhaps most important: it’s not messy, and if I have one talent in the world, it’s turning a hotel room into complete non-vandalic chaos within the first three minutes of my stay.
Your girl has some serious splinter skills.
I sit up in the bed, which I assume is also not mine. The first thing I see is green. A particular brand of green: Levi Green™.
“Yo,” I tell him, a little stupidly, and immediately slump back on the pillow. I feel drained. Exhausted. Nauseous. Out of it. How did I get here, anyway?
Levi comes to sit next to me, on the side of the bed. “How are you?” The rich rumble of his voice is a hint of sorts. The last time I heard it was very recently. And I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t breathe because . . . ?
“Did I lose consciousness?”
He nods. “Not immediately. You walked with me to the elevator. Then I carried you here.”
It comes back to me at once. Tim. Annie. Tim and Annie. They’re here at the conference. Talking. To each other. I must be in Levi’s bed and the inside of my head is rotten and I’m losing it again and—
“Deep breaths,” he orders. “In and out. Don’t think about it, okay? Just breathe. Steady.” His voice is just in-charge enough. The perfect amount of commanding. When I’m like this, a hairbreadth from exploding, I need structure. External frontal lobes. I need someone to think for me until I’ve calmed down. I don’t know what’s more upsetting: that Levi is doing this for me, or that I’m not even surprised about it.
“Thank you,” I say when I’m more in control. I turn to my side, and my right cheek brushes against the pillow. “This was . . . Thank you.”
He scans my face, unconvinced. “Are you feeling better?”
“A little. Thank you for not freaking out.”
He shakes his head, holding my eyes, and I take more deep breaths. Seems like a good idea. “Want to talk about it?”
“Not really.”
He nods and does what he did weeks ago, after saving me from the almost-pancaking: he puts his warm hand on my brow and pushes my hair back. It might be the best thing I’ve felt in months. Years. “Is there anything I can do?”
“No.”
He nods again and makes to stand. The dread in the pit of my stomach is back with a vengeance. “Can you—” I realize that I slid my finger through one of the belt loops in his jeans and immediately flush and let go. Still, all the embarrassment in the world isn’t enough to keep me from continuing. “Can you stay? Please? I know you’d probably rather be—”
“Nowhere else,” he says, without skipping a beat. “There’s nowhere else I’d rather be.” We stay like that, in the Hostile Companionable Silence™ that’s as much a part of our relationship as BLINK, and peanut-butter energy balls, and arguing about Félicette’s existence. After a minute, or maybe thirty, he asks, “What happened, Bee?” and if he sounded pushy, or accusing, or embarrassed, it would be so easy to shut him down. But there’s only pure, naked concern in his eyes, and I don’t just want to tell him. I need to.
“Annie and I had a falling out in our last year of grad school. We haven’t talked since.”
He closes his eyes. “I’m a fucking asshole.”
“No.” I close my fingers around his wrist. “Levi, you—”
“I fucking pointed her out to you—”
“You couldn’t have known.” I sniffle. “I mean, you are an asshole, but for other reasons.” I smile. I must look ridiculous, my cheeks glistening with sweat and tears and smudged mascara. He doesn’t seem to mind, at least judging from the way he cups my face, his thumb warm on my skin. It’s a lot of touching for two nemeses, but I’ll allow it. I might even welcome it.
“Annie’s at Vanderbilt,” he says with the tone of someone who’s talking to himself. “With Schreiber.”
“You do remember her, then.”
“Seeing you like this definitely jostled my memory. Other things, too.” He doesn’t move his hand, which is totally fine by me. “Is that why you’re not working with Schreiber? Why you’re with that idiot, Trevor Slate?”
“Trevor is not an idiot,” I correct him. “He’s a sexist, imbecile dickhead. But, yeah. We were supposed to do our postdocs together. We even timed our graduations so we’d move to Nashville at the same time. And then . . .” I shrug as best as I can. “Then that mess happened, and I couldn’t go anymore. I couldn’t be with her and Tim.”
He frowns. “Tim?”
“All three of us were supposed to work with Schreiber.”
“But what does Tim have to do with this?”
This is the hard bit. The part I’ve only said out loud twice. Once to Reike, and later to my therapist. I tell myself to breathe. Deeply. In and out. “It was over Tim, the falling out Annie and I had.”
Levi tenses. His hand moves lower, to cup the back of my neck. Somehow it’s exactly what I need. “Bee.”
“I think you know how Tim was. Because everyone knew how Tim was.” I smile. The tears are flowing again, quietly unstoppable. “Well, except for me. I just . . . I met him in my freshman year of college, you know? And he liked me. And that winter I had nowhere to go, and he asked if I wanted to spend it with his family. Which, of course, I did. It was amazing. God, I miss his family. His mother would knit me socks—isn’t it the loveliest thing, knitting something warm for someone? I still wear them when it’s cold.” I wipe my cheeks with my wrists. “My therapist said that I didn’t want to see. To admit how Tim truly was, because I overinvested in our relationship. Because if I acknowledged that he was a jerk, then I’d have to give up on the rest of his family, too. Maybe she’s right, but I think I just wanted to trust him, you know? We were together for years. He asked me to marry him. He invited me into his life when no one else ever had. You trust a person like that, don’t you?”
“Bee.” Levi’s looking at me in a way that I cannot comprehend. Because no one has ever looked at me like that.
“So, there were all these other girls. Women. I never blamed them—it wasn’t their job to look after my relationship. I only ever blamed Tim.” My lips taste like salt and too much water. “We’d been engaged for three years when I found out. I confronted him and took off my engagement ring and told him that we were done, that he’d betrayed me, that I hoped he got gonorrhea and his dick fell off—I don’t even know what I told him. I was so mad I wasn’t even crying. But he said that it didn’t mean anything. That he didn’t think I’d be so upset about it, and that he’d stop. That if I’d been . . .” I can’t even bring myself to repeat it, the way he twisted everything to make it my fault. If you fucked me a little more frequently, he’d said. If you were better. If you knew how to enjoy it and make it enjoyable. You could at least put in some effort. “We’d been together for seven years. No one else had been in my life that long before, so I took him back. And I tried harder. I put more effort in . . . in our relationship. In making him happy. I’m not a victim—I made an informed choice. Figured that if getting married, if stability was what I wanted, then I shouldn’t give up on Tim too quickly. You reap what you sow.” I let out a shuddering sigh. “And then he and Annie—” My voice breaks, but Levi can imagine the rest. He knows enough already, probably more than he ever cared to. He doesn’t need it spelled out, that I was such a needy, pitiful doormat that not only did I take back my cheater of a fiancé, but I also never realized that he kept cheating on me. With my closest friend. In the lab where I was working every day. I don’t think about Annie too often, because the pain of losing her, I never quite learned how to manage. “I don’t know why she did it. But I couldn’t go with them to Vanderbilt. It was career suicide, but I just couldn’t.”
“You . . .” Levi’s hand tightens on my nape. “You didn’t marry him. You never married him.”
I smile, rueful. “The worst thing is, I tried to forgive him for a long time. But then I couldn’t, and . . .” I shake my head.
Levi is blinking, a dumbfounded expression on his face. “You’re not married,” he repeats, and I sit up as his shock finally penetrates my brain.
“You—you thought I was?” He nods, and I let out a wet laugh. “I was sure you knew, since you and Tim collaborate. And I let Guy believe it, because I thought you were trying to give me an out, but”—I lift my left hand—“this is my grandmother’s ring. I’m not married. Tim and I haven’t spoken in years.”
Levi mouths something I cannot make out and pulls his hand back, as though all of a sudden my skin is scorching him. He stands and walks to the window, staring outside as he runs a hand through his hair. Is he angry?
“Levi?”
No reply. He rubs his mouth with his fingers, as if deep in thought, as if coming to terms with some seismic event.
“Levi, I know you and Tim collaborate. If this puts you in a weird position, you can—”
“We don’t.” He finally turns around. Whatever just happened, he seems to have collected himself. The green of his eyes, though, is brighter than before. Brighter than ever. “Collaborate, that is.”
I sit up, legs dangling over the mattress. “You and Tim don’t collaborate anymore?”
“Nope.”
“Since when?”
“Now.”
“What? But—”
“I don’t feel like going to the conference,” he interrupts. “Do you need to rest?”
“Rest?”
“Because of the”—he gestures vaguely at me and the bed— “fainting.”
“Oh, I’m fine. If I needed rest every time I fainted, I’d need . . . a lot of rest.”
“In that case, there’s something I’d like to do.”
“What is it?”
He doesn’t answer. “Want to join me?”
I have no idea what he’s referring to, but it’s not as though I have a busy schedule. “Sure?”
He smiles, a little smug, and a terrible thought occurs to me: I’m going to regret whatever’s about to happen.
“I HATE THIS.”
“I know.”
“What gave it away?” I push a sweaty purple strand from my forehead. My hands are shaking. My legs are twigs, but made of slime. There’s a distinctive taste of iron in my throat. A sign that I’m dying? Possibly. I want to stop but I can’t, because the treadmill is still going. If I collapse, the walking belt is going to swallow me in a vortex of clammy darkness. “Is it the wheezing? The near-puking?”
“Mostly the way you’ve said it eight times since starting to run—which, by the way, was exactly sixty seconds ago.” He leans forward from his own treadmill and hits the speed button, slowing it. “You did great. Now walk a bit.” He straightens and keeps on running at a pace I wouldn’t achieve even hunted by a swarm of maggots. “In three minutes, you’re going to run sixty more seconds.” He’s not even short of breath. Does he have bionic lungs? “Then you’ll walk three more minutes, and then you’ll cool down.”
“Wait.” I tuck my hair behind my ear. I need to invest in a headband. “That’s it?”
“Yup.”
“I only run for two minutes? That’s my training?”
“Yep.”
“How do you know? Have you ever done a Couch-to-5K? Have you ever even been on a couch?” I give him a skeptical once-over. He looks upsettingly good in his mid-thigh shorts and Pitt T-shirt. A patch of sweat is spreading on his back, making the cotton stick to his skin. I can’t believe there are people who manage to look hot while running. Screw them.
“I did some research.”
I laugh. “You did research?”
“Of course.” He gives me an affronted look. “I said I’d train you for the 5K, and I will.”
“Or you could just release me from our bet.”
“Nice try.”
I shake my head, laughing some more. “I can’t believe you did research. It’s either incredibly nice, or the most sadistic thing I’ve ever heard.” I contemplate it. “I’m leaning toward the latter.”
“Hush, or I’ll sign you up for the Meat Lovers 5K.”
I shut up and keep on walking.
Three hours later, we end up in a bar in the French Quarter.
Together.
As in, me and Levi Ward. Getting drinks. Sipping Sazerac at the same table. Giggling because the waitress served mine with a heart-shaped straw.
I’m not sure how it happened. I think some googling was involved, and intense skimming of a website called Drinking NOLA, and then a five-minute walk in which I determined that one of Levi’s steps equals exactly two of mine. But I’m blanking on how we came to the decision that venturing out together would be a good idea.
Oh well. Might as well focus on the Sazerac.
“So,” I ask after a long sip, whiskey burning sweetly down my throat, “who’s engaging with Schrödinger’s anus this weekend?”
Levi smiles, swirling the amber liquid in his tumbler. After his shower he didn’t dry his hair, and some damp wisps are still sticking to his ears. “Guy.”
“Poor Guy.” I lean forward. The corners of the world are starting to get fuzzy in a soft, pleasant way. Mmm, alcohol. “Is it difficult? Who taught you? Does it require tools? Does Schrödinger like it? What does it smell like?”
“No, the vet, just gloves and some treats, if he does he hides it well, and awful.”
I take another sip, fully entertained. “How did you end up with a cat who needs . . . expression, anyway?”
“He didn’t when I first got him, seventeen years ago. He spent fifteen years long-conning me into loving him, and now here I am.” He shrugs. “Expressing once a week.”
I burst into more laughter than is probably warranted. Mmm, alcohol. “You got him as a kitten? From the shelter?”
“From under the garden shed. He was chomping on a sad-looking pigeon wing. I figured he needed me.”
“How old were you?”
“Fifteen.”
“You guys have been together most of your lives.”
He nods. “My parents aren’t exactly pet people, so it was either bringing him wherever I went or leaving him to fend for himself. He came to college with me. And grad school. He’d jump on my desk and stare at me all accusing and squinty-eyed when I slacked off. That little asshole.”
“He’s the real secret of your academic success!”
“I wouldn’t go that far—”
“The source of your intelligence!”
“Seems excessive—”
“The only reason you have a job!” He lifts one eyebrow and I laugh some more. I’m hilarious. Mmm, alcohol. “It’s so nice of Guy to do this for you.”
“To be clear, Guy’s just feeding Schrödinger. I did the expressing before leaving. But yeah, he’s great.”
“I have an inappropriate question for you. Did you steal Guy’s job?”
He nods pensively. “Yes and no. He’d probably be BLINK’s lead if I hadn’t transferred. But I have more team-leading and neuro experience.”
“He’s awfully graceful about it.”
“Yup.”
“If it were me, I’d stab you with my nail filer.”
He smiles. “I don’t doubt it.”
“I guess deep down Guy knows he’s cooler.” I take in Levi’s confused expression. “I mean, he’s an astronaut.”
“. . . And?”
“Well, here’s the deal: if NASA were a high school, and its different divisions were cliques, the astronauts would be the football players.”
“Is football still a thing in high school? Despite the brain damage?”
“Yes! Crazy, right? Anyway, the engineers would be more like the nerds.”
“So I’m a nerd?”
I sit back and study him carefully. He’s built like a linebacker.
“I actually played tight end,” he points out.
Shit. Did I say it out loud? “Yes. You’re a nerd.”
“Fair. What about the neuroscientists?”
“Hmm. Neuroscientists are the artsy kids. Or maybe the exchange students. Intrinsically cool, but forever misunderstood. My point is: Guy’s been to space, therefore he’s part of a better clique.”
“I see your reasoning, but counterpoint: Guy has never been to space, never will.”
I frown. “He said he worked with you on his first space mission.”
“As ground crew. He was supposed to go to the ISS, but he failed the psychological screening last minute—not that it means anything. Those tests are ridiculously selective. Anyway, most of the astronauts I’ve met are very down to earth—”
“Down to Earth!” I laugh so hard, people turn to stare. Levi shakes his head fondly.
“And to become an astronaut, you’re required to have a STEM degree. Which means that they’re nerds, too—nerds who decided to take on additional training.”
“Wait a minute.” I lean forward again. “You want to eventually be an astronaut, too?”
He presses his lips together, pensive. “I could tell you a story.”
“Oooh. A story!”
“But you’d have to keep it secret.”
“Because it’s embarrassing?”
“A little.”
I pout. “Then I can’t do that. You’re my archenemy—I have to slander you. It’s in the contract.”
“No story, then.”
“Oh, come on!” I roll my eyes. “Fine, I won’t tell anyone. But FYI, it will probably kill me.”
He nods. “I’m willing to risk it. You know how my family isn’t happy with me?”
“Still looking forward to kicking their collective ass at Thanksgiving.”
“Appreciated. Once I started working for NASA, my mother took me aside and told me that I might be able to redeem myself in my father’s eyes if I applied for the Astronaut Corps.”
My eyes widen. “Did you do it?”
“Yep.”
“And?” I’m leaning closer and closer. This is engrossing. “Did you get in?”
“Nope. Didn’t even make it through the elimination round.”
“No! Why?”
“Too tall. They recently tightened the height restriction—can’t be taller than six two, or shorter than five one.”
I briefly contemplate the notion that neither Levi nor I fall within astronaut height requirements, but for dramatically different reasons. Wild. “Were you heartbroken?”
“My family was, yeah.” He looks me straight in the eye. “I was so relieved, my friend and I got passed-out drunk that night.”
“What?”
He tips back his head and downs the rest of his drink. I’m not staring at his Adam’s apple, I’m not. “Outer space is fucking terrifying. I’m thankful for the ozone layer and the gravitational pull of the moon and whatnot, but they’d have to tie me like a spit-roasted pig to send me out there. The universe keeps expanding and getting colder, chunks of our galaxy are sucked away, black holes hurl through space at millions of miles per hour, and solar superstorms flare up at the drop of a hat. Meanwhile NASA astronauts are out there in their frankly inadequate suits, drinking liters of their own recycled urine, getting alligator skin on the top of their feet, and shitting rubber balls that float around at eye level. Their cerebrospinal fluid expands and presses on their eyeballs to the point that their eyesight deteriorates, their gut bacteria are a shitshow—no pun intended—and gamma rays that could literally pulverize them in less than a second wander around. But you know what’s even worse? The smell. Space smells like a toilet full of rotten eggs, and there’s no escape. You’re just stuck there until Houston allows you to come back home. So believe me when I say: I’m grateful every damn day for those two extra inches.”
I stare at him. And stare at him. And stare a little more, open-mouthed. I stare at this man who is six four and two hundred pounds of muscle and just vented to me for five minutes about the fact that space is a scary place.
God. Oh, God. I think I like him.
“There’s one single format in which space is tolerable,” he says.
“Which is?”
“Star Wars movies.”
Oh, God.
I jump out of my seat, grab his hand, and pull him out of the bar. He follows without resisting. “Bee? Where are we—?”
I don’t bother looking back. “To my hotel room. To watch The Empire Strikes Back.”
“YODA’S A BIT of a dick.” I lean over to steal a handful of popcorn from Levi’s lap. My own bag, sadly, is long gone. Should have paced myself.
“All Jedi are dicks.” Levi shrugs. “It’s the forced celibacy.”
I can’t believe I’m on a bed. With Levi Ward. Watching a movie. With Levi Ward. And it doesn’t even feel weird. I steal more popcorn, and inadvertently grab his thumb. “Sorry!”
“That’s not vegan,” he says, a hint of something in his voice, and I am mesmerized by the shadows the TV light casts on his face. His elegant nose, the unexpected fullness of his lips, his black hair, blue-tinted in the dark.
“What?” he asks, without taking his eyes off the screen.
“What, what?”
“You’re staring.”
“Oh.” I should avert my gaze, but I’m a bit drunk. And I like looking at him. “Nothing. Just . . .”
He finally turns. “Just?”
“Just . . . look at us.” I smile. “It doesn’t even feel like we hate each other.”
“That’s because we don’t.”
“Aw.” I tilt my head. “You stopped hating me?”
“New rule.” He turns more fully toward me, and his ridiculously long legs brush against mine. In the swampy forests of Dagobah, Yoda’s torturing poor Luke under the guise of training him. “Every time you say that I hate you, you have to come over and express Schrödinger’s glands.”
“You say it like it wouldn’t be enjoyable.”
“Since you clearly have a fetish: every time you mention this nonexistent enmity I supposedly feel, I’ll add a mile to the race you owe me.”
“That’s crazy.”
“You know what to do to make it stop.” He pops a kernel into his mouth.
“Hmm. Can I say that I hate you?”
He looks away. “I don’t know. Do you hate me?”
Do I hate him? No. Yes. No. I haven’t forgotten how much of a dipshit he was in grad school, or that he reprimanded me about my clothes on my first day of work, or any of the dickish things he’s done to me. But after a big day like today, when he saved me from total, catastrophic implosion, it all seems so distant.
No, then. I don’t hate him. In fact, I kind of like him. But I don’t want to admit it, so while Han and Leia bicker about how much they love each other on the screen, I punt.
“What are you wearing tomorrow?”
He gives me a puzzled look. “I don’t know. Is it relevant?”
“Of course! We’re spying.”
He nods in a way that clearly showcases how full of shit he thinks I am. “Something inconspicuous, then. A trench coat. Sunglasses. You brought your fake mustache, right?”
I smack his arm. “Not all of us have a long history of espionage—by the way, what’s the story behind the MagTech pics?”
“That’s a secret.”
“Did you really risk your career, like Boris said?”
“No comment.”
I roll my eyes. “Well, if you did . . . thank you.” I settle back into my pillow, focusing on the movie.
“Hey, Bee?”
I love Wookiees so much. Best aliens ever. “Yeah?”
“If tomorrow you see Annie and Tim and feel . . . like you felt today. Just take my hand, okay?”
I should ask what that would even accomplish. I should point out that his hand is not a powerful brand of instant-release benzodiazepines. But I think he might be right. I think it might just do the trick. So I nod, and steal the entire bag of popcorn from his lap.
He does have a point. Space is kind of scary.