“… is your breakup with Jacob, all over again,” Vivienne finishes my sentence, and my jaw?
It drops.
“What? Youknowabout that?”
And yet you’re still with him?I don’t say it, but it hangs there in the air, together with the piercing scent of disinfectant.
Vivienne sighs. “Let me help you.” Too stunned by the change of direction in this conversation, I let her step closer to me. I stay put when she rummages for something in her purseand then starts dabbing it under my eyes. “A little magic from mymamie,” she says, her touch on my skin careful and surprisingly soothing.
When she’s done, my face is not only clean and practically glowing, but the roil of emotions in my stomach has quieted down a little, too. Except now my head is full of questions.
“Voilà, much better. My grandmother was a stunning woman. A bit enigmatic sometimes. But before leaving the house, she would always put a little dab of tan lotion under her eyes. That was her little trick,” Vivienne tells me, pursing her lips as she leans sideways against the wall and finds my gaze in the mirror. “Look, Frances. Believe it or not, I was nervous before the Sawyer’s and before I met you. Think about it,” she adds when I frown, “you’re the only person Jacob has ever been in a proper relationship with. Five years! I haven’t even known him for that long, so maybe you understand that I was intimidated by this woman who spent so much time with my fiancé.”
Her perspective is one that hasn’t crossed my mind at all yet, but as she takes me through it, I see her overfamiliarity that first day and her extra dose of kindness ever since for what it truly was: her way of dealing with her nerves in an awkward setup. She truly was just trying to be kind in a situation that was as uncomfortable for her as it was for me.
“I feel like we have a lot in common,” she continues, “but also, and this is horrible, I feel like I owe you? Jacob told me how things between you ended, that he was responsible for it, and I know that may be hard to believe. I can’t fault you for that, really. He didn’t treat you well, and I so wish you didn’t have to go through that.
“But at the same time,Ididn’t have to go through that because you changed him for the better. It’s complicated, and,” she swallows hard, “as I said, it probably doesn’t paint me in the best light, but I’m grateful for it. For you.”
I appreciate her honesty, but at the same time, it’s salt in a wound that’s already burning strong with dejection, and now jealousy, too. Maybe five years from now, I’ll run into Lewis’s new partner at a conference only to hear howhefinally learned from his mistakes.
That is, if I’m still in academia then.
“You don’t owe me anything,” I say quietly, and even though I’ve been in this bathroom for a year too many, I pull my hair tie out of the frizzy leftovers of my braid and pile my curls into a knot.
“When I saw you with Lewis that first day, it was a relief. It looked like things had worked out for you, too, and it made me feel better to see you’d landed in such a good place.” Vivienne pushes herself off the wall before following me to the door. “Though maybe I was too quick to judge.”
My heart stops for a moment, fearing she means Lewis and me faking it as a couple, but she adds, “I know it’s hard to figure out how to run this beast of a marathon that is academia… How to push and pace ourselves, balance ambition with the things that make us happy. It seems like an impossible situation that you’re in, but I’m confident you’ll find a way.”
Out in the corridor, the motion-sensitive lights blink on again as they lead us back to the foyer, where the music and chattering voices from the picnic are dialed up louder.
“I’m not so sure. But thank you,” I tell Vivienne, even though, clearly, she resolved her impossible situation in a way that’s out of the question for me.
She pushes the button that unlocks the door. “I know you will. You know, Jacob and I were long distance for almost two years before I finally moved here. I refused to work for him—wanted to do my own thing.”
“What made you change your mind?”
Ahead of us, the doors open up to the balmy summer night and Jacob, who’s waiting for us under a lamp pole, thumbscrolling through his phone. Before she heads back to her fiancé, Vivienne turns and catches my gaze. “I didn’t,” she says, a furrow on her forehead.
“You didn’t what?” I ask.
But her next words don’t give me any clarity. “I didn’t change my mind,” she says, and then Jacob notices us and comes to meet her halfway, and it’s too late to ask her what she meant.
Once Vivienne and Jacob have ambled off and I’ve decided I’ve had enough of this event, I wander aimlessly around Morningside Heights, my brain flipping through the memories I’ve formed with Lewis this past week. How long has he known? When we went for our hike? When we slept together that first night? When I opened up to him about Jacob, sipping on the hot cocoa we made in the middle of the night?
I wish I could Control + z my way back to the point when I heard about Jacob’s engagement and correct Vivienne. Fast-forward to now, and it’d just be my long-standing rival offering me a position. It would still be a mess, but a more straightforward one.
I try calling Karo again, and this time, she finally picks up.
“Thank god,” I exhale.
“Franzi, are you alright?”
“No,” I tell her. “Everything’s all messed up.” The end of my sentence gets jumbled by a sob, but I swallow it down, eager to push out the words so Karo can help me sort it all out. She doesn’t say it, but I hear her familiar words in my ears.Start from the beginning, and then I’ll tell you if it’s fixable. “Professor Alderkamp, the job. She offered it to me, but it turns out that the funding… it’s the same situation with Jacob all over—”
“Franzi,” Karo interrupts me. “Are you hurt? Didsomething happen to you?” It trickles through to me then how tight her voice sounds. Worried. I’d be, too, if I had four missed calls from her. “Or is this, once again, about work?”
Tight. Angry.
