“I looked them up before I came here,” he explains. “Don’t look at me like that. We have to consider these things to every last detail.”
Is this another one of his hidden jabs at how much more detail-oriented I should be?Building bridges, building bridges,I remind myself in an attempt to let the comment slide. “Well, Idon’t mind. In fact, I’m looking forward to you not being able to tell me what to do with my statistics anymore.”
“And here I thought I was helping you make the best out of your publications. Anyway, I also needyourhelp, which brings me to my third and last point.”
“I’m all ears.”
He tucks his notepad into the back pocket of his chinos and pushes himself off the door. With hunched shoulders he wanders to the opposite wall and taps a hand on one of the tables, before he turns around to me. “Do you have any formal clothes? Here?”
Odd. “I brought the dress I wore at my sister’s wedding before coming here.”
“Your sister lives in Berlin? That’s why you were on that flight?” He squints at me, waiting for my nod, before he continues, “Wednesday evening—it’ll be my brother’s graduation. And I’d like you to come.”
“As your date?”
“As my girlfriend,” he clarifies.
Wow. Things must be bad with his family if he’s willing to pretend to be my boyfriend and risk his career in the process just so he doesn’t have to go to this graduation alone. But also, who am I to question it when he’s agreeing to help me out.
“So you decided to go, after all?”
“Let’s say… The decision was made for me,” he answers, cryptic and half-hearted, like it truly is a chore to see his family.
“Shouldn’t I know a little more about your family if I’m to act as your happy girlfriend?” I make another attempt at puzzling out what can be so bad about them, but he doesn’t take the bait and just stands there with his cuffed shirtsleeves and muscular forearms, the unanswered question bothering me like an incomplete line of code. I’m going to accept all of his conditions, of course. It’s a no-brainer. But I’m also dying tofind out what the deal with his family is—and with that defined body shape of his. Between putting my research under the microscope and working on his own, when does he have time to work out?
He presses his fingers to the bridge of his nose. “I can’t believe we’re doing this. ThatI’mdoing this.”
I rise to meet him at the windows, the nervous tone in his voice tapping into some unknown reserve of confidence within me. “It’s going to be fine,” I say. “And fun, maybe. And helpful for both of us.”
“I’m not so sure about that.”
I force some cheer into my voice. “Well, I am. P-value smaller than 0.001 sure. Bonferroni-corrected sure. This Sawyer’s will be a blast, you wait and see.”
But doubt is etched into his features, mirroring the unease I feel deep inside.
Chapter Seven
From the curb, Vivienne and Jacob’s townhouse in the West Village looks like any of the other ones on the street. White, brown, or red bricks, iron fire escapes snaking down the fronts, large windows that let in the light and frame glimpses of life: corners of bookshelves, edges of cushioned armchairs, the terra-cotta red of potted indoor plants.
Back when we were dating, Jacob lived closer to campus, on the Upper West Side, in an apartment his parents bought back in the seventies when his dad was in med school in the city. Unlike me, who functioned on a tightly calculated budget in which every last cent was accounted for, Jacob had the luxury of a wealthy family background that afforded him a two-bedroom apartment on his own—when I was sharing with two, sometimes three, roommates (one of which would often “accidentally” eat my emergency ramen)—and a safety net if science didn’t work out. Not to forget about the trump card that was his father, a medical director at a hospital in Hartford, whose tennis partners and colleagues and Yale secret society members hold sway over the country’s most importantresearch foundations, either by donating to them or sitting on their boards.
It’s not that Jacob isn’t also a capable, smart, and meticulous scientist, or that his work hasn’t furthered our understanding of pattern separation in the hippocampus. But the leap to discovery is a little less scary if you have a soft place to land.
I scan over the set of names on the doorbell panel, spotting theirs at the bottom.Duchamps & Bellingham.Like the author line on their recent paper inComputational Biology, which I read on the way over, only here it signals their private life together. Their shared home.
“There you are.” Lewis appears behind me, his hand hovering in the air as if he was about to tap me on the shoulder. In the short time between the end of this afternoon’s program and now, he’s changed into a white T-shirt and dark blue jeans. A gray blazer dangles over the crook of his arm, and his mouth is pressed into a tight line.
“Dr. North.” I wick away the bead of sweat that trickles down my hairline and waffle between the greeting options. Step into the arc that his arm forms in the air? Or give him a peck on the cheek? I have no clue. Why did we fail to talk about the etiquette for saying hello to your fake boyfriend, and waste our time with useless research-related stuff?
He takes a step back. “You’re late,” he says, aggravated, as I sink back onto my heels. If I know anything, it’s that this greeting was a few degrees too cold to pass for an authentic relationship. A peek over his shoulder tells me the sidewalk is empty, and the panel beside the door is old-fashioned, just an intercom and no camera. Nobody here to witness our awkwardness.
“Sorry. I was on the phone to my parents. What are you doing out here?”
“Waiting for you. I figured it’s not quite convincing if we arrive separately.”
I close my eyes. Have I been single this long to forget relationship 101? “Right.”
“I also picked up a bottle of wine,” he continues and lifts up his navy canvas backpack, “so that one of us keeps track of basic decency.”
