Huh.
I guess that explains the callused fingertips, the corded tendons on his forearms, the sculpted chest.
Lewis steps out of the bathroom. “You do, too?”
I nod. “Only once since I’ve arrived here, though.”
“Me, too. It’s not like we’ve had tons of free time. Here.” He places a stack of fluffy white towels into my hands, topped with a pair of maroon sweatpants and a forest green T-shirt. “You can shower if you want to, and I’ll see if I can get a second set of towels. These are clean, don’t worry. They changed them this morning.”
“Don’t worry about—”
“Frances,” he interrupts and nudges me to the open bathroom door. “It’s no problem. Fake girlfriend or not, I don’t want you to get sick.”
I open my mouth to protest some more, but Lewis gives me a stern look. “How are you going to give me a ‘more of a comment than a question’ remark at my lecture on Thursday if you’re home in bed with a cold? I’ve been looking forward to this all year. Don’t let me down.”
Fifteen minutes later, I’m showered, dried off, and finally warm, my hair tied into a damp braid, and my skin smelling like a forest full of pine trees. I cuff up Lewis’s sweatpants and pull on his University of British Columbia tee, the fabric worn soft over the years. As I catch my own eye in the mirror, I wonder how I’ve gotten here, into the bathroom and the loungewear of my academic nemesis, but the warm water has lulled me into an easy state of mind and the thought dissolves easily.
The rain hasn’t let up when I get out of the bathroom. Lewis sits on the floor with outstretched legs, back propped against the wall opposite his bed, a mug of tea in his hands. He gives me a lopsided smile, his eyes following me as I cross the room. I deposit my ball of wet clothes in the laundry bag he’s laid out and retrieve the mug he left on the table for me.
“Great—”
“This is—”
We speak at the same time, and he nods for me to go on. “This feels much better, thanks. You were saying?”
He blushes. “Great shirt.”
“It is,” I say, ignoring the way my belly warms up under his attentive gaze. “Very comfortable.”
Lewis pushes to his feet, sets down his mug, and grabs a stack of clothes from the duvet as he heads toward the bathroom. “Don’t get too attached. It’s my favorite.”
The door clicks shut behind him. Under the rumbling thunder, I nurse my mug of peppermint tea and check my purse to find its contents have thankfully stayed dry. My phone is devoid of new messages, the grant committee is still undecided,and Karo is still hiking through the phone-free wilderness of California. What would she say about this situation? This weird blurring of battle lines between Lewis and me that is not quite collegiate anymore, but too fresh to be considered friendly?
Behind the bathroom door, the shower stops running and minutes later, Lewis pads out. “We should talk,” he says as he towels off his hair. From my cross-legged position on his bed, I grant myself a look at him. Just one, even if it’s a long one. Hair damp and curling against the nape of his neck and feet bare, he’s wearing black sweatpants and a sleeveless sports shirt that shows off the full glory of his shoulders.
Suddenly feeling parched, I drain the rest of my tea in one scalding gulp. “What do you want to talk about?” I ask.
He clears his throat. “Us.”
Anxiety zips through me. Did he notice the way I just looked at him? At his hair, his eyes, his arms? I’m grasping for some smart comment to deflect, play the ball back into his court and watch him flush, when I note the serious set of his eyebrows.
“It’s true what Brady said.” He presses his lips together. “About my advisor. About not crediting you on that paper.”
“Ah,” I exhale, relieved. Lewis is talking aboutusas in colleagues. As in, the giant clusterfuck our communication has been thus far. The revelation that maybe he didn’t mean for things to go this way.
He sits down on the far edge of the bed and I watch the cream duvet ripple under his weight. “That paper, four years ago… I should’ve handled that whole situation differently.”
“You should’ve,” I agree.
“I wanted to include you, but the professor I was working with needed it out quickly, for an important grant he was preparing. And you know, more coauthors mean longer delays to get the paper out, since everyone whose name is on it getstime to read, comment, and needs to give their approval. All of that takes time—time my advisor convinced me we didn’t have.” Lewis sighs. “I should’ve fought harder. I suspected it the moment I submitted the paper, but then it got so much traction even before it was officially published, and I knew. It shouldn’t have mattered what he said and wanted, I should’ve put you in regardless. But by then it was too late.”
“Why didn’t you say something?”
“I wanted to get in touch and tell you how sorry I was, but everything I typed out seemed so callous. No matter what, no matter how I tried to make up for it in other ways, I had still made the wrong decision to go ahead with the publication, and I couldn’t change anything about it.” He pinches the bridge of his nose. Like back at the restaurant, the guilt is etched into his upturned eyebrows. “So let me tell you now, Frances. I’m so sorry.”
It’s an apology I didn’t ever think I’d get. It doesn’t make it okay what he did, but his serious tone loosens something in me. A knot, right between my shoulders, one that has been tightening for the past four years.
The falling rain outside and our quiet breaths are the only sounds in the room as I loop back through his words. “Hang on,” I finally say, hugging my legs to my chest, “you think dissecting my each and every turn of scientific thought is a way to make up for what you did?”
