Where I was antsy to explore the world, moving from our small town outside of Berlin to the big city was enough for Karo. I used to think she was playing it too safe by staying close to home and settling down with the boy she met in high school, but I’m not so sure anymore. More security in my life, fewer unknown variables? It doesn’t sound that bad.
Fresh coffee in hand, Lewis leads me through a throng of students to a free high-top table. “Sounds like you two are close, though.”
“We are. I don’t know what I’d do without her. She’s more like a big sister, really.” I stir the sugar into my coffee. “She’s the one constant I have, with all the moving I’ve done in the last few years. Though my parents have been supportive, too.” He asks me about them, and I tell him how they met (as summer camp counselors when they were nineteen), how I grew up in a farmhouse that they renovated themselves, and how Sundays were a reliable routine of a long walk in the woods, followed by an elaborate home-cooked meal and one of my father’s favorite vinyls playing in the background.
While he’s listening to me Lewis sets his elbows on the table and traces the rim of the coffee cup with his index finger. As a strand of his hair flops forward, a forlorn expression ghosts over his features, and in response, something contracts in my chest. Something that makes me want to brush the golden strand off of his forehead. He grew up with money in a way that I only know from the TV shows of my teenage years, but it’s not that. Although my family doesn’t understand what Ido for a living, much less why I’m willing to pack up my things and move across the world for it, they’ve never wavered in their support. What must it be like to be constantly pushed by your parents, to fulfill some image they draw based on a perfect idea rather than their child’s personality?
Lewis lifts his gaze, and some of my sympathy must show on my face, because he blinks and pushes himself to his full height, as if to shake off his family’s weight.
“Tell me about your time in Singapore,” he prompts.
I look up at him, confused, until the coin drops. Just like I’ve tracked the changing universities under his name on academic papers, he’s paid attention to mine, too, to the journey that has taken me across three continents. I tell him how I fell in love with the mountains in Switzerland, the street food markets in Singapore, the easy accessibility by bike in Denmark, and the blissful winter sun in Arizona.
After another set of back-to-back lectures, we eat lunch at the deli on Amsterdam Avenue. Lewis orders a chicken salad. The grilled cheese is as good as I remember, a thick layer that’s perfectly melted in the middle, the bread crispy but not too oily.
I nudge my plate across the table. “Do you want some?”
Lewis shakes his head without looking at my sandwich. “Lactose intolerant.”
The deli is tucked into the basement unit of a Columbia housing building, and from our vantage point at the window, we can only see the feet of people walking by. The Crocs of hospital staff at the end of their shift, the white sneakers, the leather sandals showing off freshly manicured nails. Only two other patrons are in the deli and, from the scrubs they’re wearing, I deduce that Lewis and I are safe to catch up without tipping off any Sawyer’s attendants.
Gradually, throughout the morning, my body got drunk on the pressure of Lewis’s fingers, the warmth of his breath, theblanket of his scent. I’d hoped I could breathe a little deeper now that Lewis isn’t glued to my side anymore, but my intoxicated state shows no signs of disappearing. There’s something awake in his eyes, an unwavering focus, when he listens to me talk. I feel his attention like a touch to my temple, a nudge to my chin, a physical connection that grounds me in the here and now.
“So, what about your brother?” I ask. “You’ve only told me about Ada so far…”
Lewis stabs at his lettuce. “We’re not really close because I’ve been living abroad for so long,” he explains. “He’s eleven years younger, so by the time he started being a person, I was already on my way out.”
“Wow, that’s difficult to imagine.”
“I know,” he says and wipes his fingertips on a paper napkin. “We share genetics, but not much else.” He takes a sip from his water, the corners of his mouth weighing down. “I wish it would’ve gone differently, but I couldn’t stand being around my parents and their expectations for my life anymore. I was tired of pretending for them. So I left.”
His words from last night come back to me.
What’s more loving than telling someone you accept them the way they are?
They were uttered in passing, but now I understand that there might be a deeper layer there, something Lewis has wished for but never gotten.
“Is that when you moved to Vancouver?”
He shakes his head. “Nah, that was later. This was still in undergrad. I was bored out of my mind in my econ classes, dreading the summer internship they’d arranged for me at my father’s friends’ firm. I realized it would never end—if I fulfilled one of the plans they’d set out for me, it would trigger the construction of the next.” He drops his napkin into hisempty bowl. “No satisfaction, no words of appreciation, no end point. It would go on and on. All for something I didn’t even want.” He’s silent for a moment, following the path of a skateboard gliding across the pavement. “Which is why I broke off contact with them, changed my major, and finished college.”
My heart squeezes together as I try imagining that kind of distance between Karo and me. “That sucks, I’m sorry. What’s it like being around them now?”
He shrugs. “I don’t know. Except for Ada, I haven’t seen them in ten years.”
I almost choke on my water mid-sip. “Jesus.” I gape at him. “So I’ll be part of the joyful family reunion today?”
Lewis grimaces. “Something like that.”
“But they know I’m coming, right?”
“Something like that,” he repeats. “Ada does. Maybe Ben, too? She told him I’d be in the city, though I explicitly asked her not to since I hadn’t decided if I was going to the graduation party or not, and after the earful I gave her about that, I’m not sure she relayed the information about you.”
We fall into silence as we walk back to campus, but a sense of unease swells inside me. We’ll have to perform really well tonight if we want Lewis’s family to believe us. Even if they’ve never bothered to know him for who he truly is, they haven’t seen him in years. They might be more attentive than our fellow academics, who would rather think about new control conditions to add to their experiments than a relationship between colleagues.
Lab-based workshops are on the schedule this afternoon, so Lewis and I decide to skip the regular program and work in the library instead. After swiping our IDs at the entrance, we quietly make our way down a carpeted corridor between tall bookshelves.
“Are you sure you want to get back in touch with your family with a lie?” I whisper, searching for a free table to set up camp. “Karo would kill me.”
