“Lewis, it’s fantasy, not her PhD thesis! It’s not like there is an objectively true explanation for how werewolves evolved.”
“Whatever,” he grumbles, and finally seems to find a somewhat clear spot to drop his hammer on, effectively messing up my carefully laid-out chaos.
“Now, Dr. North,” I growl at him, but he sweeps me up with a hand around my waist. His hair smells fresh, like the rain that started pelting down this morning right after he left to give his lecture.
“What are you doing here?” I wonder. “Should I be worried?”
But the look in his eyes is fierce, not troubled.
“You,” he says decidedly, “should check your email.”
“Oh.” I gulp down the burst of nerves his words set off.
When I submitted my second grant with Rosanna two months ago, I started treating my inbox like a bomb that’s about to go off. At first, I was ready to just abandon it, but I’ve been working on my coping mechanisms with my therapist. Now, I open it only when I feel centered enough to deal with the havoc it could wreak.
Even though I have a safe job at Codify, and I enjoy working on the module that’ll teach our younger users how to code a simple memory game, it’s Fridays when I can’t wait to get out of bed in the mornings. When I get to stay at home, work on my independent research projects or prepare new applications with Rosanna. On Fridays, it feels like my whole heart is in everything I do: the mind-bending questions and the dreary formatting of figures alike. Turns out that leaving academia has reignited my love for it, now that it has become a choice. Now that I’ve understood it’s not just about answering my questions but getting to ask them in the first place. I miss the wonder andconfusion in my day-to-day, the exhilarating feeling of thinking about things nobody else has thought about before.
I still want to make a difference, but the process of getting there has become almost as important.
After the rejection of the first grant, I struggled to keep up my hopes for this second one. It comes with more funding and, in consequence, is more competitive. To prepare, I squeezed in time during the winter holidays; on the train ride home to my parents’ before Christmas, on the flight to New York where Lewis and I celebrated New Year’s with Ada and Ben (and I snuck off to have brunch with Vivienne the next day). But I’d kept my laptop closed that weekend in January when Karo and Lennart came to visit and my sister shared the news that she was pregnant.
Angling my laptop toward me, I finally compute why Lewis has left the lab at this random time on a workday.
The results must be out.
I’m scared, to say the least. Because if this doesn’t work out, maybe it’s time to give up academia for good. Staying at Codify would be a nice kind of future, but I don’t think it’s the one I ultimately want.
“Give me your hand,” Lewis orders gently now. Surely he would tell me if it was bad news. He wouldn’t leave me hanging like this, would he? Or maybe he doesn’t know yet, either?
“Tell me if you know already.” Fizzy unease pumps through my veins and makes my fingers jittery. Some grant agencies announce the awardees publicly at the same time as they send out the individualized decision letters. “Or wait, no. Don’t tell me.”
He only nods at my laptop and waits as I swivel the cursor over the mail icon at the bottom of my screen. Once. Twice. By now it has almost become a routine, Lewis holding my hand through something I’m afraid of, me saying, “This doesn’tchange anything between us,” and him patiently replying, “It doesn’t.”
“And if it’s a rejection,” I continue with a glance at the hammer, “please don’t destroy my laptop.”
Today’s email changes things between us. Massively.
Lewis cheers and I can’t believe my eyes.
“You knew!” I stab an accusatory finger at him.
He catches my hand and ghosts his lips over my knuckles. “Only that there was an email. Rosanna wouldn’t let me open it with her. But I had a hunch.”
“This is insane,” I say, eyes drawing back to my computer screen and the number with enough zeros to cover research expenses, publication costs, salaries. Mine and two PhD students. For the next five years. “I can’t believe this.”
Lewis looks at me, eyes sparkling and voice brimming with pride. “You did it,” he confirms, then lets go of me as he hands me the package he brought. “This is for you.” I tear through the paper and find a picture frame inside, holding a simple line drawing of a brain. One hemisphere is chaos, a thread unspooled and muddled up, the other one a clean rendering of cortical ridges.
“You know what this means,” Lewis says. His eyes are a mirror for the happiness pumping through my body with each beat of my heart.
“I do?”
“This is your home now.”
With his words, the realization hits me. This one-bedroom apartment on a second floor of a narrow building in De Pijp is, in fact, my home now. Permanently.
“You’re right,” I say and look around. The crooked living-room wall with a slowly growing collection of Polaroids and postcards, the herringbone parquet flooring, the backsplash of pale yellow tiles in the kitchen. And beyond that, too; themarket popping up every day down the street where one of the green grocers has started to recognize me and helps me practice my Dutch skills. Mila and the rest of my friends at the bouldering gym who I meet for climbing sessions, and for coffee, walks in the park, and Friday night drinks. All of it feels like I’m slowly arriving somewhere. Five years of funding means I can take the time to settle down for real. “This is my home now.”
Lewis brushes a strand of hair behind my ear. His voice is quiet as he says, “Ours, if you want it to be.”
