Love on the Brain

LEVI’S FATHER, AS it turns out, is perfectly capable of hating me. And so are Levi’s mother and his eldest brother, who join us for dinner in a less-than-pleasantly-surprising plot twist.

But first things first. Before The Dinner there are days of intense prep for the upcoming BLINK demonstration. Bolts are tightened; stimulating frequencies are adjusted; Guy is prodded, poked, and shocked on his scalp. He’s a trooper: the demonstration is about the helmet, but as test subject number one he’ll be front and center, and it’s clear that he’s nervous about it. In the past couple of days he’s been moody, anxious, and more tired than ever. I think he’s been keeping his fears to himself to avoid disrupting morale, which makes me want to hug him. The other night I stopped by his office to check on him: he startled like a coil spring and quickly closed all his tabs. I guess even astronauts de-stress on YouPorn?

Rocío and Kaylee are getting chummier and chummier. I overhear them in the break room while heating up the stir fry I made yesterday in an attempt to impress Levi with the one dish I can cook—which resulted in the painful realization that I can cook zero dishes.

“If she’s willing to say a few words about how the movement started, that would be amazing,” Rocío is saying.

“She seems pretty private.”

“We could blur her face. Auto-tune her. Use a helium voice app.”

“Baby, that would undercut the seriousness of the message.”

“What about a Guy Fawkes mask?”

“I do love V for Vendetta—but no.”

“What are you guys talking about?” I ask, spearing a piece of carrot that manages to be at once burnt and undercooked. Amazing. This has to be a transferable skill set.

“You know #FairGraduateAdmissions, right?” Kaylee asks.

I drop my carrot back into the Tupperware. “Ah . . . vaguely.”

“It’s about guaranteeing inclusivity in the admission process. Student organizations are really active in the movement, but Ro and I are technically not students, so . . .” She turns her laptop. “We’re making the #FairGraduateAdmissions website! Not ready yet, but we’ll launch it soon. There will be information, resources, mentorship opportunities. And we’ll ask Marie Curie for an interview.”

I finish chewing and swallow. Even though I never put the carrot in my mouth. I must be eating my tongue. “Marie Curie?”

“Not the real Marie Curie! That would be hilarious, though!” Kaylee giggles at the misunderstanding for about half a minute. Rocío stares at her for the entire duration, heart-eyed. Ah, young love. “It’s the person who started the conversation. We want to launch the website with her interview, but she’s pretty anon.” She spreads her hands. Her nails are an iridescent baby blue.

I clear my throat. “She might agree to do it via email.”

“This is actually a great idea!” Ro and Kaylee exchange an offensively impressed look. Then Kaylee licks her thumb and wipes something from the corner of Rocío’s eye. “Hang on, baby. You have a smudge.”

I walk out of the room holding Rocío’s gaze and mouthing, “Goodbye, baby.” I cannot overstate how much I love this relationship development.

With so much at stake for Friday, everyone’s too frantic to notice that Levi has taken to bringing coffee to my workstation; to making sure that I don’t go too long without a break; to smiling faintly and asking if I’m going to pass out whenever a bug flies into the lab; to teasing me about the little mounds of treats I leave for Félicette.

I have noticed. And I know he’s just being a friend, a kind person, an awesome collaborator, but it hurts a little. Not hurt hurt. But those pangs? Those little twinges I experience when Levi stares at me? When we’re running together and he effortlessly matches his pace to mine? When he leaves me the yellow vegan M&Ms because he knows they’re my favorites? (Yes, they taste better than the red.) Well, those little twinges are starting to get a bit painful. Knifing at my general chest area.

Weird. Odd. Strange. Peculiar. I make a note in my Reminders app: Visit primary care doc in Bethesda. I’m overdue for a checkup.

Anywho. Work’s fantastic, sex is even better, and #FairGraduateAdmissions is about to shake things up in academia, the last bastion of the medieval guild apprenticeship model. Things are going great, right?

Wrong. Let’s loop back to The Dinner.

The first hint that it might possibly not go super well (or, as I think of it, my first Uh-Oh™) comes when I find out that Levi’s family suggested having dinner at an upscale steakhouse. And when I say “suggested,” I mean decided. I’ve no problem with people eating meat, but the complete disregard for Levi’s dietary preferences seems less than fatherly.

The smell of grilled steak envelops us the second we step inside. I glance up at Levi and he says, apologetic, “I’ll make you dinner afterward.” Which causes a bit of a . . . tsunami inside me. Seriously. The pangs? Those are nothing. I’m being swept over by a ridiculous surge of affection for this vegan man whose probably annoying parents invited him to a steakhouse, and whose first concern is that I don’t go hungry tonight. It’s a warm feeling that threatens to explode inside my chest, which is why I stop him in the entrance with a hand on his gray button-down and pull him to me for a kiss.

We don’t exactly kiss in public. And even in private, I’m not usually the one who initiates contact. His eyes widen, but he instantly bends to meet me halfway.

“I’ll also, um,” I murmur against his lips, “do stuff for you. Afterward.” Whoa. Very sexy, Bee. Very smooth, you temptress.

He flushes with heat. “You . . . will?”

I nod, suddenly shy. But we kiss, and that’s my second Uh-Oh™. Because a throat clears behind us, and I immediately know whose it is.

Oops.

Levi’s father is a shorter, slightly less handsome, slightly less built version of him. His mother is where he gets his wavy hair and green eyes from. And the third person . . . There’s another man with them, and it’s clear that Levi’s surprised. Given the resemblance, it’s also clear that he’s Levi’s brother.

Oh my God. This is Levi’s family. Levi’s life. I find myself incredibly curious. I want to know everything about him. Which is probably why I’m staring a little too hard and missing the introductions. Possibly, a third Uh-Oh™.

“. . . my eldest brother, Isaac. And this is Dr. Bee Königswasser.”

I smile, ready for my brightest Nice to meet you, but Levi’s father interrupts me. “A girlfriend, huh?”

I try not to stiffen. “Yup. Coworker, too.”

He nods indifferently and heads for the table, tossing an indifferent “I told you he probably wasn’t gay” to his wife, who follows him with a healthy dose of indifference. Isaac goes next after a brief smile to the two of us, a touch less indifferent. The kicker is, when I glance up at Levi, he seems indifferent, too. He just takes my hand and leads me to the table.

“You can leave anytime, okay?” I wonder who he’s telling that to.

Levi and I need about half a second with the menu before settling on our order (house salad, no cheese, olive oil dressing). We’re silent as his parents continue a conversation with Isaac that clearly began in the car. No one has asked Levi so much as “How are you?” and he seems . . . disturbingly fine with it. If anything, he looks elsewhere. Staring in the mid-distance, playing with the fingers of my left hand under the table, like I’m a miraculous anti-stress toy. I’m no expert in family dinners—or in families—but this is fucked up. So when there’s a moment of quiet I try to remind the Wards of our existence.

“Mr. Ward, do you—”

“Colonel,” he says. “Please, call me Colonel.” Then immediately turns to say something to Isaac. How’s that for a fourth Uh-Oh™?

The first interaction is after the food arrives. “How’s your salad, Levi?” his mother asks. He finishes chewing before saying, “Great.” He manages to sound sincere, as though he’s not a six four, two-hundred-pound brickhouse who needs four thousand calories a day. I study him in disbelief and realize something: He’s not calm, or indifferent, or relaxed. He’s closed off. Shuttered. Inscrutable.

“All good at work?” Isaac asks.

“Yup. Couple of new projects.”

“We recently had a breakthrough on something that has the potential to be great,” I say excitedly. “Something Levi’s leading—”

“Any way NASA will reconsider your application for the Astronaut Corps?” the Colonel asks, ignoring me. Uh-Oh™ five. Should this have been a drinking game?

“I doubt it. Unless I cut off my feet.”

“I don’t like your tone, son.”

“They won’t reconsider.” Levi’s voice is mild. Unbothered.

“The Air Force has no height restrictions,” Isaac says with his mouth full. “And they like people with fancy degrees.”

“Yes, Levi.” His mother now. “And the Air Force will only take you until you’re thirty-nine. The Navy is . . .”

“Forty-two,” Isaac supplies.

“Yes, forty-two. You don’t have a lot of time to make the decision.”

I thought Levi’s parents were probably not as terrible as he made them out to be, but they’re ten times worse.

“And the Army’s thirty-five—how old are you, Levi?”

“Thirty-two, mom.”

“Well, the Army probably wouldn’t be your first choice—”

“What about the French Foreign Legion?” I ask, twirling a lock of purple hair. Forks stop clinking. Three pairs of eyes study me with distrust. Levi’s just . . . alert, as though curious at what might happen. God, what have these people done to him? “What are the age requirements for the French Foreign Legion?”

“Why would he want to join another country’s army?” the Colonel asks icily.

“Why would he want to join the US Army?” I quip back. I cannot believe that rotten Tim Carson spawned from a loving, perfect family, and someone who’s as perfect and loving as Levi comes from such rotten relatives. “Or the Air Force, or the Navy, or the Boy Scouts? It’s obviously not his calling. It’s not as though he works as an accountant who money-launders for a drug cartel. He’s a NASA engineer cited by thousands of people. He has a high-paying position.” I actually have no idea how much Levi makes, but I lift one eyebrow and carry on. “He’s not wasting his life in a dead-end job.”

Uh-Oh™ number six. The drinking game was totally a missed opportunity. It sure would make the silence more bearable as it stretches. And stretches. And stretches.

Until the Colonel breaks it. “Miss Königswasser, you are very rude—”

“She’s not,” Levi interrupts firmly. Calmly. But forcefully. “And she’s a doctor.” Levi holds his father’s gaze for a moment, and then moves on to his brother. “What about you, Isaac? How’s work been?”

I lean back in my chair, noticing the suspicious, hateful way the Colonel is looking at me. I give him a fake, bright smile and tune in to what Levi is saying.

•   •   •

THE SECOND WE’RE in the truck I take off my Converse, push the soles of my feet against the dashboard, and—Quasimotoes in full sight—I explode. “I cannot believe it!”

“Mm?”

“It’s unfathomable. We should make a damn case study out of this. Science would publish it. Nature. The New England Journal of damn Medicine. It would get me a Nobel Prize. Marie Curie. Malala Yousafzai. Bee Königswasser.”

“Sounds lovely. What’s ‘it’ again?”

“At the very least we’d get short-listed! We could take a trip to Stockholm. See the fjords. Meet up with my wayward sister.”

He turns up the AC. “I’ll take you to Stockholm whenever you like, but you’ll have to give me a topic if you want me to follow this conversation.”

“I just cannot believe how—how well-adjusted you are! I mean, okay, you and I have had our . . . issues when it comes to social interactions, but I’m befuddled that you haven’t turned out a titanic psychopath despite the family you came from. There has to be a miracle in there, no?”

“Ah.” He half smiles. “Do you want to get ice cream?”

“You had neither nature nor nurture on your side!”

“So, no ice cream?”

“Of course yes ice cream!”

He nods and takes a right. “There was some therapy involved.”

“How much therapy are we talking about here?”

“Couple years.”

“Did it entail a brain transplant?”

“Just lots of talking through how my inability to functionally communicate my needs stemmed from a family that never allowed me to. Same old.”

“They still don’t allow you! They’re trying to—to erase you and turn you into something else!” I am incensed. Enraged. Incensedly enraged. I want to mutate into Beezilla and pillage the extended Ward family at the next Thanksgiving. Levi better invite me.

“I’ve tried to reason with them. I’ve yelled. I’ve explained myself calmly. I’ve tried . . . a lot of things, believe me.” He sighs. “Eventually I had to accept what my therapist always said: all you can change is your own reaction to events.”

“Your therapist sounds great.”

“He was.”

“But I still want to commit patricide.”

“It’s not patricide if it’s not your own father.”

An angry scream bubbles out of me. “You should never talk to them again.”

He smiles. “That will send a strong message.”

“No, seriously. They don’t deserve you.”

“They’re not . . . good. For sure. I’ve considered the possibility of cutting them off many times, but my brothers and my mom are much better when my father isn’t around. And anyway . . .” He hesitates. “Today wasn’t that bad. It might have been the best dinner I’ve had with them in a long time. Which I’ll chalk up to you telling my father to can it and shocking him into temporary speechlessness.”

If that dinner was “not bad,” then I’m a K-pop idol. I gaze at the dusky Houston lights, thinking that the way his family treats him should diminish him in my eyes, realizing the truth is just the opposite. There’s something patient about the way he quietly stands up for himself. About the way he sees others.

Another pang near my heart. I don’t know what they’re about. I just really . . . “Levi?”

“Mm?”

“I want to tell you something.”

“I told you: your lungs are not shrinking because you’re training for a 5K—”

“My lungs are totally shrinking, but that’s not it.”

“What, then?”

I take a deep breath, still staring out the window. “I really, really, really like you.”

He doesn’t reply for a long moment. Then: “I’m pretty sure I like you more.”

“I doubt it. I just want you to know, not everyone is like your family. You can be . . . you can be you with me. You can talk, say, do however you want. And I’ll never hurt you like they did.” I make myself smile at him. It’s easy now. “I promise I don’t bite.”

He reaches over to take my hand, his skin warm and rough against mine. He smiles back. Just a little.

“You could rip me to shreds, Bee.”

We are silent for the rest of the drive.

•   •   •

SCHRÖDINGER BURROWED INTO my backpack, tore a package of kale chips, decided they were not to his liking, and went for a nap with his head pillowed on the half-empty bag. I burst into laughter and forbid Levi to wake him up before I can take a million pictures to send Reike. It’s the best thing to happen all day—a reminder that while Levi’s actual family might suck balls, his chosen one is the best.

“I’m very impressed,” I coo to Schrödinger while petting his fur.

“Don’t cuddle him, or he’ll feel rewarded,” Levi warns me.

“Are you feeling rewarded, kitty?”

Schrödinger purrs. Levi sighs.

“Whatever Bee’s doing, do not experience it as cuddles. Those are punishment pets,” he says in what he probably means as a firm tone but is instead adorably helpless, and I get another pang, to my heart and my ovaries. I do hope he’ll have kids. He’d be an amazing dad.

“Those chips were on my desk for days and Félicette never managed to open them.”

“And that’s not at all because Félicette doesn’t exist,” Levi yells from the kitchen.

“You should teach Félicette your ways,” I whisper to Schrödinger, and then join Levi in the kitchen just in time to see him throw away what’s left of my unjustifiably overpriced Whole Foods chips.

“Are you still hungry? Should I make you food?”

I shake my head.

“You sure? I don’t mind making—”

He falls silent as I fall to my knees. His eyes widen as my smile does.

“Bee,” he says. Though he doesn’t quite say it. He mouths it breathlessly, like he often does when I touch him. And now my fingers are on his belt, which qualifies as touching. Right? “Bee,” he repeats, a little guttural this time.

“I said I’d do stuff,” I tell him with a smile. The clink of his belt buckle bounces off the kitchen appliances. His fingers weave into my hair.

“I figured you meant . . . watching sports with me. Or another of your burnt—ah—stir-fries.”

I take him out of his boxers and wrap my small hand around him. He’s completely hard already. Huge. Shockingly warm against my flesh. He smells like soap and himself, and I want to bottle his delicious scent and bring it with me always. “I’m not very good at stir-fries.” My breath is on his skin, making his cock twitch. “This, I hope I can do well.”

I’m not exactly confident, and maybe I’m a little clumsy, too, but when I softly lick the head there is a quiet, surprised groan coming from above me, and I think that maybe I’ll be fine. I close my lips around him, feel Levi’s hands tighten on my scalp, and my insecurities melt.

I don’t know why we haven’t done this before. It has to do, perhaps, with how impatient he usually is, impatient to be in me, on me, with me. There is often an undercurrent of haste with us, like we both want, need, deserve to be as close as physically possible, as quickly as physically possible, and . . . It doesn’t leave much time for delays, I guess.

Levi wants it, though. It might not be something he’d ever ask for, but I can see the shape of pleasure on his face, hear his intakes of breath. I suckle right beneath the head and he lets out a sound of shocked, overwhelming pleasure. Then he threads his fingers through my hair and starts guiding me. He’s too thick for me to do much, but I try to relax, to let myself enjoy this, lose myself to the taste, the fullness, his soft, deep groans as he tells me how good it feels, how much he loves my mouth, how much he loves this, how much he loves . . .

“Fuck.” Softly, with his thumb, he traces the bulge of his cock through the skin of my cheek. My lips, stretched obscenely around him. “You really are everything I’ve ever wanted,” he mutters, gentle, reverent, hoarse, and then he’s angling me again, this time a rhythm that’s deeper, purposeful, working my jaw for his pleasure. When he holds me close and says, “I’m going to come in your mouth,” like it’s inevitable, like we both need this too badly to stop, I whimper around his flesh from how much I want this for him.

He loses control a little when he comes, his grunts deep and unusually rough, his grip viselike, and I feel his orgasm course through me as if it were my own. I suck him gently through the end of it, and when I look up at him I’m wet and swollen and I feel empty, trembling, a messy lump on the floor.

“Open your mouth,” he rasps.

I blink at him, confused. He cups my cheek.

“I want you to open your mouth and show me.”

I comply, and the sound he makes, possessive and hungry and pleased at last, travels through me like a wave. He massages the back of my neck while I swallow, his thumb caresses my jaw, and when I smile up at him, he stares at me like I’ve just gifted him with something divine.

It’s a long night, this one. Somehow different from all the others. Levi takes his time undressing me, stopping often, lingering, losing track of his progress as if distracted by my flesh, my curves, the sounds I make. I moan, I squirm, I beg, and he still won’t slide inside, too busy tracing the swell of my breast, pressing his tongue against the bump of my clit, nuzzling against the skin of my throat. I teeter on the edge for too long, and so does Levi, immobile within me, then thick and delicious and slow, slow inside and then slow out, long, drugging kisses stretching the pleasure between us, making my body twitch for his own. And then he looks down at me, hands twined with my hands, eyes twined with my eyes, breath twined with my breath.

“Bee,” he says. Just my name, half gasp, all heated plea. He stares down at me as though I own him. As though his future hangs from my hands. As though everything he’s ever wanted, I hold it within me. It makes my chest hurt and leap with a dangerous, thunderous kind of joy.

I close my eyes not to see and let the liquid heat swell inside me like the tide, high and low all night long.