I know I’m not competing with Vivienne. I don’t want Jacob, not anymore, and won’t gain anything if I hate her out of pettiness. But it still hurts, seeing how he’s come out of our breakup unscathed and not only built a successful lab but replaced me with someone better, too.
“Sure.” Lewis’s voice sounds far away, drowned out by the rush of my blood. “Thank you for inviting us.”
Vivienne says something that I barely register, something about wanting to talk to me and something she needs to get over with, and then she waves her hand through the air, only to catch it in front of her again and that’s when I see what she’s been fumbling around with all this time.
There’s a ring on her finger, one with a fine diamond that catches the sunlight slanting in through the windows. One she starts twirling again, and before she even opens her mouth, I know what’s about to happen.
“Jacob and I—we’re engaged,” she says, her tone hesitant despite the smile blooming on her face.
Something feels phenomenally off.
I try to breathe past the dizzying hurt stabbing at my lungs, but oxygen has gotten rare in this room, and my pulse shows no signs of slowing down. Like on the plane, except now I know I’m not objectively in any danger. I’m in an office with my academic rival and my ex’s fiancée, not a metal can that could fall out of the sky at any moment.
And yet lights flash in my brain telling me to get out of this roomnow.
I’m frozen as they both look at me, Vivienne expectantly, Lewis with an expression I can’t quite read, but softer than a moment ago. Like, he’s sorry? I don’t need him to feel sorry for me. There’s nothing to feel sorry about.
Wiping my clammy hands against my jeans, I force my vocal cords into action, yet all they manage to croak out is a weak, “Um.”
Fuck, I didn’t know my heart could even beat this fast.
I’m contemplating how I’m going to finish that sentence when of all people, Lewis comes to my rescue. He steps around his chair to stand closer at my side, and when his fingers graze against mine, I grab his hand, desperate for a tether to reality.
“Congratulations. We have to check if we’re free tomorrow, but thank you for inviting us,” he says, keeping his eyes on her face as he squeezes my hand. His words from the plane come back to me, a quiet and reassuringbreathe with me, and I focus on counting the ins and outs of my breath while pretending Vivienne’s news hasn’t just shaken me to my core. Though my pulse keeps thudding maddeningly, my inhale for two, exhale for four has finally channeled enough oxygen to my brain to attempt stringing a few words together without sounding completely out of breath, and I bring out a low, “I’m so happy for you.”
My response seems to be convincing enough to Vivienne, because relief settles on her face as she crosses the room toward us. “Please, if there’s anything I can do, let me know. I was really excited to meet you and now that you’re here—well, I hope we’ll have some opportunities to talk. If you would like that, too, of course.”
I’m so focused on masking the panic that has whirred my organs into chaos that I barely listen to what she’s saying, instead taking the path of least resistance by nodding along. I hope that whatever is happening on my face resembles a convincing smile. “Sure.”
Lewis clears his throat, and as he steps toward the door, he pulls me with him. “We need to get going.”
“Of course!” Vivienne rushes to say. “You must be jet-lagged. I’ll see you tomorrow—if not at the conference, thenat dinner.” She squeezes my shoulder in goodbye and when she looks at our joined hands, she gets the same expression as when she spotted us outside her office, the lines around her eyes crinkling with the depth of her smile. Then she gives me a conspiratorial wink. “Frances, I’m so glad we finally got to meet. It makes me feel better, knowing you won’t be coming alone tomorrow, but in the company of someone as lovely as Lewis.”
My body still on autopilot with the only goal of finally getting me out of this room, I do my nod and smile again, and even manage a weak-sounding “Yeah.”
Then, Lewis tugs me out of the office and pulls the door shut behind us.
Chapter Four
Jacob and I started dating well into my second year of grad school. He was a postdoc in the same group, and though we worked on different projects, I’d sat across from him for many lab meetings and admired him from afar for publishing papers in the big journals and seemingly running the lab whenever our advisor was traveling. But one evening, I ran into him as I was catching up with paperwork for a study. He’d stayed in the lab late to test out new equipment, and took pity on me, asking me to grab a bite for dinner.
What started with me complaining and Jacob giving me advice soon became a tentative friendship over a shared love for the grilled cheese sandwiches in the deli around the corner. At first, we didn’t act on the attraction between us, but then, after weeks of talking in and out of the lab, and finding excuses to spend time together in the evenings and on weekends, it bloomed into full-on love.
Where I used to rarely come up for air from my research and only quickly catch up with fellow grad students, my time at the lab morphed to a companionship of two. I’d drop by Jacob’soffice to steal a kiss after TAing, share glances with him during lab meetings, or stroll with him across campus to pick up a triple-shot latte at the coffee cart on Broadway that would snap me into the focus needed for my data analysis.
As a second-year PhD student struggling with my place in the world of elite academics, Jacob drew me in with his easy confidence. He wasn’t stingy with it but extended it generously, handing out the compliments I was so eager for. After being at the top of my class in undergrad, my confidence had plunged when I got into grad school, where I met the limits of my knowledge and capacity daily. I was far from home in a new, loud, and busy city. I wasn’t the only one—several students in my cohort quickly dropped out, spiraling into anxiety and self-doubts. But in the crowd of postdocs and professors with their paradigm-shifting papers and opinionated social media posts, Jacob’s trust in me was soothing. Not only did he see the person and scientist I yearned to become, but he also inspired me with the high expectations he set for himself and everybody else around him.
The intellectual and supportive bubble of our relationship made it easy for me to ignore the double standards we were being held to: the interns who whispered behind my back but not his, the sly looks I got from professors at conferences while he was being congratulated for his newest achievements, the comment I got from another grad student that my paper had only been accepted by a prestigious journal because of Jacob’s name on it.
But through it all, I held steadfast to the belief that their view of our relationship was wrong. Nobody wastakinganything, advantage or otherwise. We were only adding, giving so we could both grow into the best versions of ourselves. Long days at the lab were bookended by nights helping him out with the grant that would go on to get him his professorship. Dinnerswould get swallowed up by discussions to strengthen his proposal. On weekends, I’d find pockets of time between my own research to transform his ideas into clear, colorful figures. I was all in, helping him pave the way to his future. I thought he’d be willing to pave mine, too, if I ever needed his help.
I thought that this was what romance between scientists looked like.
It was only when he got the grant and explained how he had neatly slotted me into his future that I understood he’d taken me for granted. Between the shelves of all-purpose flour and maple syrup at Trader Joe’s, he told me how perfectly I fit into his plans. According to him, it was a win-win situation. He’d hire me as a postdoc once I graduated, so we could stay together, and he’d get a computational neuroscientist in his lab that he trusted. Job security fresh out of grad school,Isn’t that what you wanted?
Except, no. I did not.
I wanted to find my own path in life and identify the gap in knowledge thatIcould fill. To change some tiny thing in this world, to be the one flipping a switch fromunknownto understanding.
