“Can I quote you on that? Print it out and hang it up in my office?”
He glares at me. “Will you help me or not?”
The satisfaction that he needs my help is almost enough to make me say yes. But not quite. No way am I going to let him take advantage of me again. “You didn’t have the decency to credit me when I helped you back then,” I point out, narrowing my eyes.
His mouth ties into a dissatisfied knot. “Do you want to be on the abstract?”
It needles me how the same person who just talked methrough my panic can say this so carelessly, as if he’s joking about his action that brought on our rivalry. Even if being credited on a conference abstract for the minuscule help of cutting down on words is laughable, he’s failed to credit me for my work before.
“No. But—” As I sit down, different options shoot through my head. Access to the data of that paper he published last spring, a truce on social media, a formal apology for what he did. But the truth is, I barely have enough time to analyze the data I’ve been collecting, and as annoying as our public discussions are, they put me and my papers on people’s radar. As for the apology? He just showed how little he cares about his actions four years ago, so it’s highly unlikely I’d get an apology even if I spelled it out for him. “I’m not sure yet. But you owe me one.”
His eyes swivel to the corner of his screen and he grimaces as though he realizes how little time he has left until his deadline. “Alright,” he finally agrees and angles his laptop so I can see the mess on his screen.
The flight attendant wasn’t kidding: 1,045 words.
“Did you write this while you were asleep?” I scoff, skimming through the text.
“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” he grumbles.
“Why all of these details?” I highlight three sentences and delete them with a satisfying smack on the backspace key. Lewis’s fingers twitch as if to restrain my hands. “Doesn’t feel so great to have your work criticized, does it?”
“Without introducing this concept first, the rationale won’t make any sense.”
“Theodore—”
His gaze sharpens murderously. “Don’t call me Theodore.”
“What should I call you then?” I hiss out a laugh. “Your friends call you Lewis. Don’t you think describing us as friends is a gross misinterpretation?”
“We can make an exception.”
Lewis.The name gets stuck somewhere between my vocal cords and my lips. Lewis is the man who kindly let me squish his hand through a panic attack and who smells of pine needles and blushes easily. He of the incredible hair. Definitely not the person who pulled that stunt four years ago, and whose idea of a fun Saturday night is to tear apart every piece of work I produce in long threads that make me wonder if I’m cut out for this career.
Lewis. I try again.
Nope, not going to happen.
“Dr. North,” I settle on instead, to which he turns his eyes to the ceiling. “In its current form, nothing in your abstract makes sense. Save all those things you have to say for your lecture.”
“I know what an abstract is and isn’t supposed to do.”
“Wellduh, Dr.Nature Neuroscience. But this abstract is too long, and it needs to be accepted first. And for that we’ll need to spin it into a nice little story.” I smile sweetly.
“Jesus.” He winces, pinching the bridge of his nose. I pull two sentences into one, then condense an entire paragraph into a relative clause. Next to me, Lewis takes a deep breath. “Fine. Do whatever you need to do.”
Forty-five minutes later, with three minutes to spare, Lewis uploads his abstract, now at 498 words—499, if you count hyphenated words as two. Now that we’ve finally stopped arguing about whether he violated one of the commandments of science (correlation is not causation), the hum of the airplane seems quiet.
Lewis slips his laptop into his backpack, folds up his table,and reaches up to fiddle with the controls of the AC outlets. This close, I notice the curve of his biceps and my fingers twitch as if remembering the firmness from accidentally touching it earlier.
“Wake me up if there’s turbulence,” he tells me, sinking against the headrest. It takes me by surprise, how he has slipped back into this thoughtful version of himself—which is inconveniently also the one that slowly chips away at my base of anger and frustration.
His eyes look droopy, like he can barely keep himself awake, but only when I nod does he blink them shut.
How is it that only a few hours ago I was racing to catch this flight, and now I’ve worked with my competitor and get to watch him sleep, after hand-holding and entrusting him with my deepest vulnerabilities?
A blush climbs into my cheeks as I tear my gaze away from the softened expression on his sleeping face. I pick at my veggie stir-fry and distract myself with the movie playing on my screen, but I’m still mortified about the fast-track intimacy with Lewis when another bout of baby turbulence hits, so I take deep breaths on my own and let him sleep.
At the airport, Lewis gives me a micro-nod when we get off the plane and I lose sight of him when I queue for immigration. I’m relieved to have him out of my sight, but the confusion about our encounter dominates my thoughts. With my passport freshly stamped, I wait for the air train as I activate my international data plan and scroll through my contacts until I find Karo; her picture showing a white beach and sparkling blue sea in the background, smiling gray eyes, and curly hair in the red dye she’s been using since she was nineteen. I snapped the photo on St. Lucia thirteen months ago. Our last holiday together, between dreamy beaches, seafood buffets, and refills of rum. Or, in my case, fresh coconut water becauseI’d get up early the next morning to draft the paper I was writing at the time.
