Her smile turns tense. “I’m sorry to hear that. Have you applied for any more funding?”
“I have, but none of the grants have come through. I had this idea to use the design of my last study, which was more of a proof of concept, really, and apply it to detect signals of memory reactivation.”
She nods slowly. “That’s very interesting,” she says and pulls her curls back into a knot. “What about a rebuttal, for the rejected grant?”
I thought about this, too. After rejections to grants or papers, it’s an option to contest the jury’s decision, to argue against their comments and hope for a change of mind, but it’s rarely successful.
I shake my head. “I don’t think I have a convincing angle.”
“I see,” she says, pressing her lips together.
“I will try again, I will figure it out, but in the meantime…” I let out a long breath and push the worries about someone unmasking Lewis’s and my charade aside. “I know it’s a long shot, but I am looking for open positions now. Postdocs, lectureships, anything. If any funding becomes available in your lab, I would be interested in working with you.” I go on to tell her how I’ve thought about reanalyzing some of her old data from a different angle. It would be partially out of curiosity, and partially because any publication with her name next to mine would bolster my CV and jump-start my citation index, which might, in turn, increase my chances for future grant applications. I don’t say it out loud, but we both know it. It’s the nature of the game.
“I can’t give you a definitive answer,” Rosanna tells me once we’re out on the sidewalk. “But it looks like we might have funding coming in. I’ll see what I can do. We’ll keep in touch, okay?”
My heart jumps into somersaults. “Thank you.”
I watch as Rosanna heads to the subway before my hand finds my phone in my tote bag, and I’ve already scrolled to Lewis’s number when my conscience catches up with my lizard brain.
Is it really such a good idea to share my joy with him?
Friday looms ahead, the day Lewis will fly back to Germany. I hadn’t thought I’d dread it this much, but after the intimacy of the last days, the pending deadline knots my gut into a tight ball of nerves. Even though I should be occupied with the chase for the missing notebook, my mind also keeps slipping into pictures of the future. Pictures of us, situations where we continue to be awe.Detailed answers toWhat if we didn’t stop things right here?
Weekends spent hunkered down in bed trying to watch movies but getting distracted by each other. Grilled cheese sandwiches after bouldering, warming my fingers on Lewis’s skin after a bike ride out in the cold. Eating stacks of pancakes while we discuss some new paper, our legs tangled on the couch.
They’re not going to happen, but a girl can dream, right?
I navigate to Karo’s name in my contacts instead.
“What’s holding you back from telling him?” she asks me as I trudge back across campus. A brown shape on the side of the path makes me halt in my tracks, but it’s just trash. A napkin.
I hoist the strap of my tote higher on my shoulder. “Telling him what?”
“You know what I mean,” she says. “You’ve got it bad.”
“I already told you what’s holding me back.”
“You’re colleagues, and you can’t risk dating one of those again,” Karo rattles off.
“Um, yes,” I concur. “Plus, I don’t even know where I’ll be a few months from now. I’ve been talking to people from labs all over. Japan, Australia, Canada.” All possible, although only if they don’t find out about the ridiculous scheme Lewis and I came up with. “Starting a relationship when we’re in cities separated by a seven-hour train ride is already ridiculous, given how short a time we’ve known each other. But time zones and flights? It’s insane, nothing less. You know how much I hate flying.”
“Please don’t tell me you’re considering moving that far away again.” Karo sounds a little desperate. “I love you and I know you love your job, but isn’t it a bit much? Moving to yet another continent for your career?”
The day I got the grant rejection I would’ve agreed with her, but over the past days, Lewis and the conference have reignited my passion for my research. They’ve reminded me thatthe pure exploration that’s at the core of science has a stronger pull than the comfort of a home. Moving to a different continent is the price I have to pay for getting to figure out how the universe works, even if it’s only a tiny, minuscule cog of it.
I sink onto the stairs leading up to Low Memorial Library, the stone warm under my thighs, thinking about how much my life has changed in a little over a week. The grant rejection, my growing feelings for Lewis. Both open up questions for the future I didn’t have before. “I want to go back to how it was. I didn’t feel lonely until I got here,” I admit. “It’s like I noticed that something is missing. Some… connection. Someone else. But what’s the point, really, to yearn for something like that. It’s not going to happen for me,” I continue, knowing deep down that it’s not justsomeoneI’m missing. It’s him.
I can hear her shrug in the rustle of her hair against the phone. “It’s only human to want that.”
“But isn’t that scary? What about being your own person and all that?”
“Franzi,” Karo says. “Are you telling me I’m not my own person because I’ve been with Lennart for twelve years? Because we’re married now?” She doesn’t sound offended, but her stern question pulls things into focus. “You can be your own person and have goals in your life and in your career and still want to share them with someone else. And let me tell you, it doesn’t matter if you live on different continents or just down the road from each other, if you’re in the same career or do something vastly different—fitting two lives together always requires some tinkering and a lot of communication.”
I sit in silence, pondering her words. The South Lawn spreads out in front of me, a carpet of bright green grass banked by the stone colonnade of Butler Library, and I watch the crowds of students wander between classes. It’s silly, really. I know enough examples of people who lead the lives they want,not alone, but together with another person. And yet, in my mind, success and love are the opposite sides of a coin, two things that are mutually exclusive.
“It’s up to you,” Karo says after a while, her voice quiet. “But when you talk about Lewis, something in you appears that I haven’t seen in a long time. So if he’s worth it—and it sounds like he is—maybe you can figure out the rest.”
I do not tell Lewis. Every successful conversation with a professor or fellow postdoc on potential openings in other labs pushes me one step further from telling him how I feel. I’m an interview away from getting any of these positions, but the reality is that all are farther away from Lewis than I am now. And no matter where I’ll end up, the fact remains that he’s a colleague.
