“I was asking if our tempo is okay for you,” he repeats.
I force my gaze up and find him observing me. “Oh. Um. Yeah.”
He looks at me quizzically. “Why don’t you take the lead? I wouldn’t want you to miss your step.”
“Alright,” I say begrudgingly, and as I step around him, the forest finally seeps into my awareness. The ground is softenedby fallen pine needles and moss, and the air around us is heavy with the earthy scent of tree bark, the sweetness of dried sap, and a freshness I haven’t breathed since landing in New York City. As we hike farther from the trailhead, the noise of the nearby road gets swallowed up by the crowns of the trees. For a while, we walk below a stone ridge, until our path cuts right up the incline and soon, I lose myself in the rhythm of looking for stable footholds, placing my feet, and pushing myself upward.
This morning, when Lewis pulled up outside my stoop in his sister’s SUV, I’d been unsure if this weekend was a good idea. Spending more time with the person I’m horribly and unrequitedly attracted to, who also happens to be my colleague, and up until a week ago, my nemesis? It didn’t sound smart at all. But Lewis promised me lots of outdoor time to pull me out of my head, and I’m beginning to feel grateful that he urged me to come along.
Halfway up, our hiking path starts meandering parallel to the ridge and we find a small outcrop of boulders in a patch of sunlight. I take a bite of the apple I brought and Lewis hands me a bagel he must’ve picked up earlier this morning. The sun-dried tomato cream cheese is already a little runny from the heat, but I’d take this over any starred restaurant. From Lewis’s easy smile and the way he leans back onto his elbows, I gather he feels the same way.
Our break is peaceful and unhurried until he whips out his notebook from the pocket of his hiking shorts. I raise my eyebrows. Before we said good night yesterday, we swore to leave our jobs behind this weekend and take a break like normal people would. We even went as far as unlinking our work accounts from our phones and leaving our laptops behind in the city.
“Hey!” I shout as he places the tip of his pencil on the page. “I thought we said no science.”
“I had an idea,” he says, ducking his head. “For a way of analyzing the data Selin will start collecting.”
“Last I checked, this definitely counts as science.”
Lewis tucks the pencil back into the metal loops of the notepad. “But this is analogue.”
“You went against your own rules,” I insist.
His cheeks grow pink, but he meets my gaze with a challenging expression that heats up my body more than the sun-warmed rock underneath my thighs. “Oh, is that right?”
“Remember how you made me desync my Notes app on my phone?”
“Alright.” He opens up his arms. “What’s my punishment?”
“Truth or dare,” I state, because apparently I’m fifteen years old.
“Truth.”
Shame. Even with yesterday’s rejection, I think I would’ve dared him to kiss me.
“Okay, let’s see…” I’m a bit surprised by what my mind settles on when I hear myself ask, “What made you switch over from econ to science?”
He scrunches up his forehead. “Last I checked,thatalso counts as science.”
“This is science adjacent. Your origin story.”
“Who do you think I am, Iron Man?” He drops the paper wrapping of his bagel into the plastic bag knotted to his backpack. “It’s not all that exciting, but okay. I loved my science classes in college, how it was all about asking questions and how addictive that was to me. But when I was interning at my father’s firm, I realized that like many other careers, this deep search for knowledge stops the second you graduate. Or maybe it never starts in the first place if you just want to get through your classes.”
He shrugs. “That summer of the internship, one of the guysfrom my suite, Jerry, was helping out in one of the neuroscience labs. One weekend, I had to pick up some stuff on campus, and I ran into him. Jerry was going to the primate lab, and he invited me to tag along.”
Lewis looks up. “When I heard that first sputter of a spiking neuron, that noise, right out of the brain, a cell working on some complex computation we’re only really beginning to understand… that’s when I knew I needed more of this.”
His enthusiasm draws out my smile.
“The neuroanatomy labs were a magical place for me, and I tried to spend as much time there as I could the next semester. Practical courses, interning after class.” He continues telling me about how he finally felt at home in the dark lab, and how, there and then, he fell in love with the mystery of the brain. “It looked like art. It was wild to me that this is the organic matter that makes us think and feel andlive.” He exhales as wonder lights up his face. “Still is, actually. Sometimes I lose track of it, because the politics of academia get exhausting, or I’m frustrated that my experiment isn’t working out the way I want it to. But then it hits me again, how fucking cool it is that our experience of all this”—he draws an arc through the air, encompassing our view of the Catskills, the vast sky, the soundscape of crickets and birdsong—“comes from here.” He taps his temple. “It’s amazing what a headful of cells and blood vessels can do.”
As he looks out at the landscape below, I wrestle down the sense of connection that warms me from the inside. We may have different approaches to playing the game of science and may have gotten here on different paths—while he was squinting through microscopes, I was trying to understand hidden layers of deep neural networks—but we’ve ended up at the same point. In this weird space where you pick the one question you find interesting, and you don’t let go. Even if itdrags you to other continents, implodes your romantic relationships, and jeopardizes those with your family. Because it’s intoxicating, knowing you’re thinking about something nobody has thought about before. Any tiny little question you might answer could help solve something bigger down the line.
Lewis picks up his backpack, and when I straighten to shoulder mine, our gazes meet. “You know, you could’ve just asked, and I would’ve told you how I got into science. I’d tell you anything you want to know.”
After a couple of hours and a climb so rugged it leaves us breathless, we reach the summit of Sugarloaf Mountain. My legs wobble after the strenuous hike, the air moves hard through my lungs, and the lookout over the valley is humbling. Beyond us, a carpet of green stretches over the lower hills, and a lake shimmers slate gray in the distance. Lewis was right. A weekend out of the city was absolutely what I needed.
“You okay?” Lewis squints against the glare of the sun, forehead glistening with sweat.
