19

BASOLATERAL AMYGDALA: ARACHNOPHOBIA

I’D LIKE TO take back everything I’ve said so far.

Well, not everything. Just the whole I’m going to dedicate my life to the pursuit of neuroscience and forsake all bodily pleasure with the sole exception of vegan Nutella bit I’ve been going on about. I’d like to take that part back: having a friend-slash-coworker-slash-whatever with benefits suits me. Deliciously, fantastically, magically so. I am unbothered. Moisturized.

Happy. In my lane. Focused. Flourishing. I suspect I’m having the best weeks of my adult life—including the one spent as a Donuts & Art Camp counselor, where the extent of my duties was to stuff my face with frosting and keep an eye on ten-year-olds as they proclaimed that Cézanne’s paintings were

“cute, but very orange.” Maybe it’s the mind-altering sex. I’m sure it’s the mind-altering sex. Undoubtedly it’s the mind-altering sex, but there’s more than that.

Take BLINK, for example: the demonstration is set for next Friday. Would I feel a tad more relaxed if I had four more weeks before Boris drags half of Congress in front of me? Of course. I’m obsessive and like to be overprepared. But every single test we ran since our breakthrough gave us excellent results. We’re moving to a stage that feels less

“thankless

grueling

groundwork”

and

more

“groundbreaking scientific advance,” and most of the balls are in my court.

Each helmet has to be customized for the astronaut who’ll wear it based on the mapping of their brain. It’s a lot of fine-tuning, and I love every second of it. Everyone does: seeing something we’ve been working on tirelessly

yield results is a big morale boost, and the engineers have been arriving early and staying late, buzzing around Levi and me with constant questions, and .

. .

We’ve been keeping it secret. This thing Levi and I are doing. Obviously.

There’s no point in telling the engineers. Or Rocío. Or Guy—who mostly alternates between questions about my nonexistent husband and inviting Levi out. On Wednesday it’s: “Basketball tonight?” On Thursday: “Beers?”

Friday: “What’s going on this weekend?” I’d feel guilty at Levi’s standard response (“Sorry, man, I’m swamped.”), but it’s only temporary. Just one of those things: girl with no interest in relationships meets dude who was into her years ago and they take up the horizontal mambo—no strings attached.

In a few weeks I’ll be home, and Guy will have Levi all to himself. In the meantime, we’re stocking up on time together like camels. Time and sex.

Have I mentioned the sex? I must be twenty hours behind on sleep, but somehow I’m not tired. My body might be evolving into a sophisticated bioweapon capable of converting orgasms into rest.

“You should just move in,” Levi tells me on Friday morning. I blink bleary-eyed over coffee he poured me, my brain struggling to decipher the words.

“What do you mean?”

“Bring your stuff here.” He just got home from his run and looks sweaty, disheveled, and disturbingly good. “Pack a bag. Then you won’t have to go back and forth to get a change of clothes. It’s not your real apartment anyway.”

I study him over my mug. Maybe he’s suffering from heatstroke. “I can’t move in with you.” I’m pretty sure there’s language about that in the fuckbuddying contract. “Why?”

“Because. What if you need to . . .” Watch pornography? He probably wouldn’t—I’d be his live-in pornography. Bring home other girls? I don’t see him doing that, either. Man cave it up? It’s a big house. Walk around naked? He already does it. I can’t believe I’m having sex with someone with a six-pack.

“I’m serious,” he continues. “I have a better bed. Better cat. Better hummingbirds.”

“Lies. There are no hummingbirds in your garden.”

“They show up when you’re not around. You’ll have to move in to see them.”

“Rocío might notice.”

He is quiet, waiting for me to elaborate. “And?”

“Then Kaylee would. And she might tell others. If I’d found out that Sam was screwing Dr. Mosley on the side, I’d have hollered it to the winds.” I frown. “I’m a monster. Poor Sam.”

“If Kaylee tells others, then she tells others. That’s not a problem.”

I rub my eyes. “I’m not sure I want your entire team to know that I’m having a thing with a colleague. It sounds like the type of thing . . .”

“. . . for which women in STEM get unfair shit all the time?”

“Yup.”

“Fair. But even if Rocío noticed, she wouldn’t know that you are at my place. Plus she might have other stuff on her mind, given the number of times I’ve heard her and Kaylee

call each other ‘babe’ in the last week.”

“True.” I bite my lower lip, actually considering moving in. Am I insane? I don’t think so. I just like him—like this, being with him. Fuckbuddyship with Levi Ward suits me, and I just want . . . a little more of it. “FYI, I wear a retainer at night.”

“Sexy.”

“And your bathroom will be stained purple forever. Seriously. Five showers and your bathtub will be a giant eggplant emoji.”

He gives me a solemn nod and pulls me closer. “It’s everything I ever wanted.”

• • •

IT’S SATURDAY MORNING and we’re cooking together—by which I mean Levi’s making pancakes and I’m standing next to him, stealing blueberries and telling him about The Mermaid’s Tale, the Young Adult book idea I’ve been nursing since grad school (nothing like a nanoscopic office and perennially skirting the poverty line to stimulate a gal’s imagination for escapist fiction).

“Wait.” He frowns. “Ondine doesn’t know she’s half mermaid before joining the swim team?”

“Nope, she doesn’t know she was adopted. She finds out on the first practice, when they throw her in the water and she swims one lap in . . . I’ll have to research how long it

takes to swim one lap, but she’s as fast as . . .” “Michael Phelps?” Levi flips a pancake.

“Sure, whoever that is. And Joe Waters, cutest senior in school, sees her and becomes her faithful sidekick in her journey of self-discovery.”

“Do they end up together?”