“Is he some guy I dated who’s trying to reach me because he has gonorrhea?”
“Huh? No. He’s someone I met in grad school.” I open the cupboard where I keep the Whiskas. “He was getting a Ph.D. in engineering in my lab, and was in his fifth year when I started—”
“The Wardass!”
“Yep, him!”
“I remember! Wasn’t he like . . . hot? Tall? Built?”
I bite back a smile, pouring food in Finneas’s bowl. “I’m not sure how I feel about the fact that the only thing you remember about my grad school nemesis is that he was six four.” Dr. Marie Curie’s sisters, renowned physician Bronis?awa D?uska and educational activist Helena Szalayowa, would never. Unless they were thirsty wenches like Reike—in which case they absolutely would.
“And built. You should just be proud of my elephantine memory.”
“And I am. Anyway, I was told who the NASA co-lead for my project will be, and—”
“No way.” Reike must have sat up. Her voice is suddenly crystal clear. “No way.”
“Yes way.” I listen to my sister’s maniacal, gleeful cackling while I toss the empty pouch. “You know, you could at least pretend not to enjoy this so much.”
“Oh, I could. But will I?”
“Clearly not.”
“Did you cry when you found out?”
“No.”
“Did you head-desk?”
“No.”
“Don’t lie to me. Do you have a bump on your forehead?”
“。 . . Maybe a small one.”
“Oh, Bee. Bee, thank you for waking me up to share this outstanding piece of news. Isn’t The Wardass the guy who said that you were fugly?”
He never did, at least not in those terms, but I laugh so loud, Finneas gives me a startled glance. “I can’t believe you remember that.”
“Hey, I resented it a lot. You’re hot AF.”
“You only say so because I look exactly like you.”
“Why, I hadn’t even noticed.”
It’s not completely true, anyway. Yes, Reike and I are both short and slight. We have the same symmetrical features and blue eyes, the same straight dark hair. Still, we’ve long outgrown our Parent Trap stage, and at twenty-eight no one would struggle to tell us apart. Not when my hair has been different shades of pastel colors for the past decade, or with my love for piercings and the occasional tattoo. Reike, with her wanderlust and artistic inclinations, is the true free spirit of the family, but she can never be bothered to make free-spirit fashion statements. That’s where I, the supposedly boring scientist, come in to pick up the slack.
“So, was he? The one who insulted me by proxy?”
“Yep. Levi Ward. The one and only.”
I pour water into a bowl for Finneas. It didn’t go quite that way. Levi never explicitly insulted me. Implicitly, though . . .
I gave my first academic talk in my second semester of grad school, and I took it very seriously. I memorized the entire speech, redid the PowerPoint six times, even agonized over the perfect outfit. I ended up dressing nicer than usual, and Annie, my grad school best friend, had the well-meaning but unfortunate idea to rope Levi in to complimenting me.
“Doesn’t Bee look extra pretty today?”
It was probably the only topic of conversation she could think of. After all, Annie was always going on about how mysteriously handsome he was, with the dark hair and the broad shoulders and that interesting, unusual face of his; how she wished he’d stop being so reserved and ask her out. Except that Levi didn’t seem interested in conversation. He studied me intensely, with those piercing green eyes of his. He stared at me from head to toe for several moments. And then he said . . .
Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
He just made what Tim, my ex-fiancé, later referred to as an “aghast expression,” and walked out of the lab with a wooden nod and zero compliments—not even a stilted, fake one. After that, grad school—the ultimate cesspool of gossip—did its thing, and the story took on a life of its own. Students said that he’d puked all over my dress; that he’d begged me on his knees to put a paper bag over my head; that he’d been so horrified, he’d tried to cleanse his brain by drinking bleach and suffered irreparable neurological damage as a consequence. I try not to take myself too seriously, and being part of a meme of sorts was amusing, but the rumors were so wild, I started to wonder if I really was revolting.
Still, I never blamed Levi. I never resented him for refusing to be strong-armed into pretending that he found me attractive. Or . . . well, not-repulsive. He always seemed like such a man’s man, after all. Different from the boys that surrounded me. Serious, disciplined, a little broody. Intense and gifted. Alpha, whatever that even means. A girl with a septum piercing and a blue ombré wouldn’t conform to his ideals of what pretty ladies should look like, and that’s fine.