“It must be,” Brady quips, “since I’ve only ever seen the two of you fight online.”
Painfully aware of how I’m blanking, I pull my hand from Lewis’s chest and put it on his arm, where I dig my fingers into his skin, hoping he’ll get the message:Help me out here.
“We met on our way to a conference. The flight was pretty turbulent,” Lewis jumps in.
Jacob knits his brow. “That doesn’t sound like it’d be funny, especially for you.”
I’m not sure how to feel about the fact that he remembers my fear of flying. “It wasn’t. But luckily, I sat next to this guy.”
“And I had to distract her through the turbulence,” Lewis continues. So far, so good. In the back of my mind, I replay our encounter, looking for moments where romance could’ve sparked.
“You were sat next to each other?” Vivienne’s gaze jumps back and forth between the two of us. “Such a coincidence!”
“It was.” Lewis takes a long swig of his drink, and I hope it’s not as obvious to everyone else that he’s stalling for time. “I started a discussion about the role of sleep in memory consolidation. You know, if it has an active contribution or if all it does is to protect the brain from interference of new incoming input.”
“Active role, definitely,” I state. “The alternative option is ridiculous. During sleep we see a repetition of those same patterns of activity that a rat exhibits when it’s learning the layout of a new environment.”
“Yeah, but that’s not conclusive evidence, is it?” Lewis smirks down at me. “The rat also shows this sort of activity when it’s awake and relaxed.”
I narrow my eyes at him and that glint in his eyes. “What about strengthened synaptic connections? The fact that memory performance is better after sleep?”
Lewis pats my hand, the one that’s gotten far too comfortable on his arm. “And this,” he says, turning to the others, “is how she captured my heart.”
Brady smiles into her drink. “I can see how that would distract from turbulence.”
“Here we are questioning you about all these details. You must feel like you’re in a job interview. But we’re just very curious. At least I am, for my part. I love to ask couples how they’ve met, it always makes for such entertaining stories—thank you for telling us yours.” Vivienne crouches down and picks up the bottle of wine she left at her feet. “More, anyone?”
My arm shoots out, holding up my stress-drained glass.
Jacob takes the bottle from Vivienne and, angling his arm over her shoulders, tops us up. “I hear you work in Berlin, Lewis? Nice city.”
“It’s amazing, but the winters are really gray.”
“Oh right, you’re from Berlin, aren’t you, Frances?” Vivienne asks.
I nod. “My sister still lives there, and my parents, too.”
“How’s Karo doing?” Jacob wants to know as he’s raising his glass.
“She’s—uh.” I study his face, searching for an ulterior motive, but his tone is relaxed and not the fake-friendly kind he puts on when he wants to hide his true feelings. “She just got married, actually. We went to the wedding right before flying over.”
“Really?” Brady butts in, gaping at Lewis. “You don’t even like weddings.”
Lewis smiles good-naturedly. “We don’t get to spend a lot of time together. And I get along well with her parents, so…”
Oh no.
I register Lewis’s mistake the exact same moment as doubt settles into Jacob’s face.
I forgot to tell Lewis. And he’d know, too, if he’d actually met them. My parents don’t speak English. They learned Russian as a second language back in the days in East Germany and it’s not like that’d help Lewis to get to know them, unless he has hidden talents I don’t know of.
“That’s great. Send them my best wishes,” Jacob tells me, then turns to Lewis. “How do you talk to them, if you don’t mind me asking?”
In fact,Imind him asking. Especially after my parents stammered through a language they barely spoke just to get to know him while he didn’t even show a modicum of motivation to pick up a few words of German to make things easier on them. I mind a lot, so much that I need to squeeze my hand into a fist, trying to dilute the sudden anger.
“I’m not sure I understand your question,” Lewis says, stepping into what I suspect was a trap on Jacob’s behalf.
Of all things, I can’t believe that it’s my parents’ language skills that mess up this entire farce.
