SWNOVELS : Chapter 19
I’D LIKE TO take back everything I’ve said so far.
Well, not everything. Just the whole I’m going to dedicate my life to the pursuit of neuroscience and forsake all bodily pleasure with the sole exception of vegan Nutella bit I’ve been going on about. I’d like to take that part back: having a friend-slash-coworker-slash-whatever with benefits suits me. Deliciously, fantastically, magically so. I am unbothered. Moisturized. Happy. In my lane. Focused. Flourishing. I suspect I’m having the best weeks of my adult life—including the one spent as a Donuts & Art Camp counselor, where the extent of my duties was to stuff my face with frosting and keep an eye on ten-year-olds as they proclaimed that Cézanne’s paintings were “cute, but very orange.” Maybe it’s the mind-altering sex. I’m sure it’s the mind-altering sex. Undoubtedly it’s the mind-altering sex, but there’s more than that.
Take BLINK, for example: the demonstration is set for next Friday. Would I feel a tad more relaxed if I had four more weeks before Boris drags half of Congress in front of me? Of course. I’m obsessive and like to be overprepared. But every single test we ran since our breakthrough gave us excellent results. We’re moving to a stage that feels less “thankless grueling groundwork” and more “groundbreaking scientific advance,” and most of the balls are in my court. Each helmet has to be customized for the astronaut who’ll wear it based on the mapping of their brain. It’s a lot of fine-tuning, and I love every second of it. Everyone does: seeing something we’ve been working on tirelessly yield results is a big morale boost, and the engineers have been arriving early and staying late, buzzing around Levi and me with constant questions, and . . .
We’ve been keeping it secret. This thing Levi and I are doing. Obviously. There’s no point in telling the engineers. Or Rocío. Or Guy—who mostly alternates between questions about my nonexistent husband and inviting Levi out. On Wednesday it’s: “Basketball tonight?” On Thursday: “Beers?” Friday: “What’s going on this weekend?” I’d feel guilty at Levi’s standard response (“Sorry, man, I’m swamped.”), but it’s only temporary. Just one of those things: girl with no interest in relationships meets dude who was into her years ago and they take up the horizontal mambo—no strings attached. In a few weeks I’ll be home, and Guy will have Levi all to himself. In the meantime, we’re stocking up on time together like camels. Time and sex. Have I mentioned the sex? I must be twenty hours behind on sleep, but somehow I’m not tired. My body might be evolving into a sophisticated bioweapon capable of converting orgasms into rest.
“You should just move in,” Levi tells me on Friday morning. I blink bleary-eyed over coffee he poured me, my brain struggling to decipher the words.
“What do you mean?”
“Bring your stuff here.” He just got home from his run and looks sweaty, disheveled, and disturbingly good. “Pack a bag. Then you won’t have to go back and forth to get a change of clothes. It’s not your real apartment anyway.”
I study him over my mug. Maybe he’s suffering from heatstroke. “I can’t move in with you.” I’m pretty sure there’s language about that in the fuckbuddying contract.
“Why?”
“Because. What if you need to . . .” Watch pornography? He probably wouldn’t—I’d be his live-in pornography. Bring home other girls? I don’t see him doing that, either. Man cave it up? It’s a big house. Walk around naked? He already does it. I can’t believe I’m having sex with someone with a six-pack.
“I’m serious,” he continues. “I have a better bed. Better cat. Better hummingbirds.”
“Lies. There are no hummingbirds in your garden.”
“They show up when you’re not around. You’ll have to move in to see them.”
“Rocío might notice.”
He is quiet, waiting for me to elaborate. “And?”
“Then Kaylee would. And she might tell others. If I’d found out that Sam was screwing Dr. Mosley on the side, I’d have hollered it to the winds.” I frown. “I’m a monster. Poor Sam.”
“If Kaylee tells others, then she tells others. That’s not a problem.”
I rub my eyes. “I’m not sure I want your entire team to know that I’m having a thing with a colleague. It sounds like the type of thing . . .”
“. . . for which women in STEM get unfair shit all the time?”
“Yup.”
“Fair. But even if Rocío noticed, she wouldn’t know that you are at my place. Plus she might have other stuff on her mind, given the number of times I’ve heard her and Kaylee call each other ‘babe’ in the last week.”
“True.” I bite my lower lip, actually considering moving in. Am I insane? I don’t think so. I just like him—like this, being with him. Fuckbuddyship with Levi Ward suits me, and I just want . . . a little more of it. “FYI, I wear a retainer at night.”
“Sexy.”
“And your bathroom will be stained purple forever. Seriously. Five showers and your bathtub will be a giant eggplant emoji.”
He gives me a solemn nod and pulls me closer. “It’s everything I ever wanted.”
IT’S SATURDAY MORNING and we’re cooking together—by which I mean Levi’s making pancakes and I’m standing next to him, stealing blueberries and telling him about The Mermaid’s Tale, the Young Adult book idea I’ve been nursing since grad school (nothing like a nanoscopic office and perennially skirting the poverty line to stimulate a gal’s imagination for escapist fiction).
“Wait.” He frowns. “Ondine doesn’t know she’s half mermaid before joining the swim team?”
“Nope, she doesn’t know she was adopted. She finds out on the first practice, when they throw her in the water and she swims one lap in . . . I’ll have to research how long it takes to swim one lap, but she’s as fast as . . .”
“Michael Phelps?” Levi flips a pancake.
“Sure, whoever that is. And Joe Waters, cutest senior in school, sees her and becomes her faithful sidekick in her journey of self-discovery.”
“Do they end up together?”
“Nope. He goes to college, she sprouts a tail.”
“Can’t they do long distance?”
“No. I won’t lie to impressionable youths about the durability of human relationships.”
He scowls. “That’s a bad ending—”
“It’s not—it’s mer-mazing!”
“—and long-distance relationships are not a lie.”
“Happy-ending long-distance relationships sure are. Just like all other happy-ending relationships.”
He pins me with a look. The corners of the pancake are darkening dangerously. “And ours will end poorly, too?”
“Nah.” I wave my hand. “We’ll be fine, because we’re casual.”
He stiffens, lips thinning. “I see.” He relaxes with visible effort, and . . . there’s something odd about his expression.
“What’s that face?” I ask.
“What face?”
“That one. The one you put on when you’re about to try to convince me that Nirvana is better than Ani DiFranco.”
“I’m not going to try to convince you.”
“Ah. So you admit that I’m right.”
“You’re not right. You’re stubborn, and misguided, and often wrong—about music and other things. But there’s no use in trying to reason with you.” He leans closer and kisses me—lingering, soft, deep. I lose myself a little. “I’ll just have to show you.”
“Show me wh—?”
Levi’s phone rings. He takes a moment to turn off the stove before picking up. “Yes?”
The voice on the other end is almost familiar—Lily Sullivan.
“Hey. I’m with Bee.” I give him a curious look. Why would Lily know who I am? “Sure. Of course . . . I’ll ask.” He presses his phone against his shoulder, looking at me. “Any interest in spending a few hours hanging out with a six-year-old who wants to be a spider vet and has strong opinions on Pokémons?”
I’m briefly confused. Then I realize what he’s asking and my face splits into a grin. “Lots of interest. But, Levi?” I whisper as he puts the phone back to his ear. “Pokémon is uncountable.”
LILY SULLIVAN IS warm, personable, and sweet in a delicious Southern way that has me instantly liking her and feeling welcome in her beautiful Early American home. Penny Sullivan, though . . . I fall in love with Penny the second I lay my eyes on her.
Not true. I fall for her when she looks up from lying facedown on the living room rug and moans with wide, pleading eyes, “My kingdom. My entire kingdom for a Twinkie.”
“She’s on her fourth day of Keto,” Lily whispers. “For her epilepsy.” She gives me the doleful look of a mother who’s been feeding her kid eggs and avocados for too many meals. “I don’t think she ever asked for a Twinkie before today.”
I remember the cravings of nine-year-old Bee, who was brutally informed by her cousin Magdalena that gummy bears are made with animal bones and didn’t find out about vegan alternatives for years. “Yeah, diets are funny like that.”
Though Penny seems fine now that Levi’s here, laughing uncontrollably when he picks her up, throws her over his shoulder, and starts making his way across the house. “Penny Lane and I will be in the backyard, if you want to join us.” It’s clear that they have a routine, which consists of Levi pushing a long swing that dangles from the branch of a tall tree, and Penny yelling, “More! More!” as Lily sits on the patio and smiles fondly at them. I take the chair next to hers, and thank her when she pours me a glass of lemonade.
“I’m so glad you came over. Penny was supposed to have a sleepover tonight, but we postponed after the seizure earlier this week. She didn’t take it well.”
“I’d be grumpy, too. And it’s no problem at all—your home is so lovely, thank you for having me.”
She smiles, covering my hand with her palm. “Thank you for not thinking that”—she gestures vaguely to herself, the house, Levi, and even me—“all of this is weird. Having this woman who’s always calling the man you’re dating—”
“Oh, it’s not like that. We’re just—” My eyes dart to the swing. Can I talk about sex within one hundred feet of a child? Is there a law against it?
“It must be uncomfortable, considering that Levi and I once . . .” She gives me an apologetic look. I want her to stop talking about this for many reasons, including the fact that while I have no right to be jealous, judging by the little pang in my stomach I . . . apparently am? A little bit? Yikes, me. “It’s long over,” Lily continues. “And it was just a few weeks. We met here in Houston when he came to spend the summer with Peter, before the last year of his Ph.D. Then he went back to Pittsburgh. We were supposed to try long distance, but he said he met someone else. . . .”
The pang turns into a thud. Who did Levi meet in his fifth year? Well, me. Duh. But he can’t have broken up with someone like Lily for—
“When he told Peter that we’d split, Peter admitted that he liked me and asked me out.” She spreads her hands, as though she cannot believe her own story. “We got married two months later, and I got pregnant right after. Can you believe it?”
I smile. “It’s so romantic. I’m so sorry about what happened to Peter.”
“Yeah. It was . . . It’s not easy.” She looks away. “Thank you for what you’re doing for BLINK. I know it’s high security and you can’t talk about it, but when you came on board, Levi mentioned what an asset you’d be. It means a lot, having someone like you carry out Peter’s legacy. And thank you for sharing Levi with us.”
There’s a lump in my throat. “He’s not mine to share.”
“I think he might be, actually. Oh, that little— Penny, you need a hat! You can’t be in the sun like that!”
“Levi said I could!”
Levi lifts one eyebrow, clearly having said no such thing. Penny sullenly stalks to her mother, only to stop in front of me with a shy, hesitant look.
“Does that hurt?” she asks, shifting her weight from one foot to the other.
“What— Oh, my nose piercing. Just a tiny bit when I first got it, many years ago.”
She nods skeptically. “Is your name really Bee?”
“It is.”
“Like the bug?”
“Yup.”
“Why?”
Levi and I laugh. Lily covers her eyes with a hand.
“My mom was a poet, and she really liked a set of poems about bees.”
Penny nods. Apparently, it makes as much sense to her as it did to Maria DeLuca-Königswasser. “Where’s your mom?”
“Gone, now.”
“Oh. My daddy’s gone, too.” I can feel the tension in the adults, but there’s something matter-of-fact about the way Penny talks. “What’s your favorite animal?”
“Will you be disappointed if I don’t say bees?”
She mulls it over. “Depends. Not if it’s a good one.”
“Okay. Are cats good?”
“Yes! They’re Levi’s favorite, too. He has a black kitty!”
“That’s right,” Levi interjects. “And Bee has a kitty, too. A see-through one.”
I glare at him.
“My favorite animals are spiders,” Penny informs me.
“Oh, spiders are, um”—I suppress a shudder—“cool, too. My sister’s favorite animals are blobfish. Have you ever seen one?”
Her eyes widen, and she climbs on my lap to look at the picture I’m pulling up on my phone. God, I love children. I love this child. I look up and notice the way Levi’s staring at me with an odd light in his eyes.
“Is your sister a child?” Penny asks after making a face at the blobfish.
“She’s my twin.”
“Really? Does she look like you?”
“Yep.” I scroll to my favorites and tap on a picture of the two of us at fifteen, before I started what Reike calls my “journey of soft-core body modification.” “Wow! Which one is you?”
“On the right.”
“Do you get along?”
“Yeah. Well, we insult each other a lot, too. But yeah.”
“Do you live together?”
I shake my head. “I actually don’t see her in person much. She travels a lot.”
“Are you mad that she’s gone?”
Ah, children. And their loaded questions. “I used to be. But now I’m just a bit . . . sad. But it’s okay. She needs to travel just as much as I need to stay put.”
“My friend said that if you’re a twin, your children will be twins, too.”
“You have a higher probability, yes.”
“Do you want twins?”
“Penny,” Lily reprimands her gently, “no grilling guests on family planning before lunch.”
“Oh, that’s fine. I would love to have twins.” I used to dream of it, actually. Even though at this point I probably won’t. For obvious reasons. That I won’t bother Penny with.
She smiles. “That’s good, because so does Levi.”
“Oh. Oh, I—” I feel myself go crimson and look at Levi, expecting to find him just as embarrassed, but he’s staring at me with the same expression from before, only about twenty times more intense, and—
“Does anyone want sherbet?” Lily asks, clearly picking up on the weirdness.
“Mother,” Penny says darkly, “must you torture me?”
“I got special ice cream at the store for you.” Penny’s eyes widen and she runs inside the house. “Poor girl,” Lily mutters as we follow her inside. “Keto ice cream’s probably disgusting.”
“You underestimate how desperate she might be,” I tell her. “There are things I used to find appalling after going vegan that I started loving out of—”
“Bee! Bee! Look, I want to show you something!”
“What’s that?” I smile and crouch to her height.
“This is Shaggy, my—”
My eyes fall on the stuffed tarantula plush toy in her hands, and sound recedes. My vision fogs. I’m hot and cold at the same time, and all of a sudden, everything goes dark.
“THAT WAS SO cool! Levi, I love your girlfriend soooo much!”
“I know the feeling.”
“Goodness. Should I call 911?”
“Nah, she’s fine.” Everything’s foggy, but I think I’m in Levi’s arms. He’s patiently holding my head up, no concern in his tone. In fact, he sounds weirdly charmed. “This happens to her every other day.”
“Slander,” I mumble, fighting to open my eyes. “Lies.”
He smiles down at me and—he’s so handsome. I love his face. “Look who’s gracing us with her presence.”
“Is it low blood sugar?” Lily asks apprehensively. “Can I get you anything to—?”
“Bee is like me!” Penny is saying, clapping her hands excitedly. “She has the same bursts of electricity in her brain! She has seizures!”
“It’s a bit like seizures,” I say, straightening up.
“Bee has a useless parasympathetic nervous system, which is an endless source of entertainment,” Levi explains to Penny.
“Excuse me.” I scowl. “Some of us don’t have the luxury of stable blood pressure.”
“I didn’t say it wasn’t cute,” he murmurs inaudibly against my temple. The scratch of his stubble against my skin is rough. His lips, soft.
Penny seems to be a fan, too. “Does your twin faint, too?”
“Nope. She got all the best things.” Like the ability to burp the French national anthem.
“It’s so cool!”
“It’s actually a very maladaptive autonomic response.”
“Can you do it again?”
“Not really, sweetie. Not on command.”
“When do you do it, then?”
“It depends. Sometimes it’s highly stressful, surprising situations. Other times it’s just seeing things that I’m afraid of, like snakes or spiders.”
Penny’s eyes widen. “So if I show you Shaggy again—”
Levi and Lily yell, “No!” at the same time, but it’s too late. Penny whips the toy back out from behind her back, and everything goes dark again.
WE STAY WITH the Sullivans all day, and after Shaggy gets locked in an out-of-reach cupboard, we have a blast. By the time we’re ready to leave, I know more about Pokémon than I ever cared to, and Penny has tried to make me faint again approximately twenty times by drawing spiders on every available piece of paper.
That little monster. I love her to death.
But when we say goodbye in the entrance, agreeing that we should do it again soon, it’s a bit like a pianoforte crashing on my head.
“How long will you be in Houston?” Lily asks.
All I can do is burrow farther into Levi’s side. “Unclear. The project was originally supposed to last around three months, but things are going very well, so . . .” I shrug. Levi’s arm tightens around me. I’m fully aware that Levi and I are the Merriam-Webster definition of transitory. But I’m enjoying this so much. His company. His friends. His food. I’ll be sad when this is over in a couple of weeks.
“Are your parents still going to be in town next week?” Lily asks.
Levi’s arm tightens again, this time in a completely different fashion. Before it was possessive, comforting. Now it’s just tense. “Yeah.”
“Ugh. Sorry about that. Let me know if you need anything.”
Curious, I bring it up as soon as we’re alone in the truck. “Your family will be here?”
He starts the truck, looking straight ahead. I’m beginning to recognize his moods, but this one I’m not familiar with. Yet. “My parents. There’s some event on the Air Force base here.”
“And you’re going to see them?”
“We’ll probably have dinner.”
“When?”
“Not sure. My father will let me know when he’s free.”
I nod. And then I hear a voice that sounds a lot like mine ask, “Can I come?”
He puffs out a laugh. “Are you a fan of strained silences interrupted by the occasional ‘Pass the garlic salt’?”
“It can’t be that bad. Otherwise you wouldn’t even get together.”
“You’d be surprised by the lengths my father will go to let me know the depth of his disappointment.”
“What about your mom?”
He just shrugs.
“Listen—I can drop hints on how amazingly BLINK is going. I can say that you’re the go-to engineer for most neuroscientists. I can print out your Nature publication and use it to gently dab my mouth after the first course.”
“There better only be one course. And, Bee—” He shakes his head. “It’s not that I don’t want you to meet them, or that I’m embarrassed. It’s just that it’s going to be truly bad.”
At least you have a shitty family to hold on to, I think, but I don’t say it. I’m almost positive that Levi’s parents are not as horrible as he says. I’m equally positive that he experiences them like that, and that’s all that matters. “I don’t want to be pushy, but I also really want to be there. I could come, and we could pretend that I’m your girlfriend.”
He gives me a puzzled look. “There wouldn’t be much to pretend.”
“No—we can pretend that we’re an inch from marriage. I can put on my lotus septum ring and leave my tattoos out. I’ll wear my AOC top and ripped jeans. Think how much they’ll hate me!”
I can see how little he wants to smile, and how little he can help it. “No one could hate you. Not even my father.”
I wink at him. “Game on, then.”