Beginner's Luck
Page 20
Kit smiles at my reaction, but then her face falls again, remembering my question. “No. But that’s not really that weird, I guess. He travels a lot for his job. He’s a photographer.” She pauses, takes a bite of her sandwich, but I think talking about her brother has taken some of the pleasure out of this for her, and I’m sorry to have brought it up. After a minute, though, she continues. “When he was here, I tried to give him money.” She shakes her head, breathing out this soft, sad laugh. “I suggested that he move here. I’m an idiot.”
“Why does that make you an idiot?”
She shrugs, takes another bite, and I wait her out. “He’s a complicated guy. We’re complicated, together, I guess. He raised me, from the time I was a baby, basically. I mean, I mentioned the thing with my mother—that’s not Alex’s mother; she died when Alex was four. And my dad—he’s not very reliable, so Alex kind of had to take over.”
“He sounds like a good guy,” I say, but this is grudging. I don’t know two shits about Alex other than I hold him responsible for Kit crying, and I hate the thought of her crying, hated the sight of it more.
“You know when I was twelve, he took me to buy my first training bra, which you’d think would be completely mortifying, but it wasn’t. Or if it was, for him, he knew it was worse for me. So he—I don’t know. He just did it. Marched us right into that department store’s lingerie section, asked the woman at the counter to point us in the right direction, and fifteen minutes later, we’re out of there. When it was time for me to apply to colleges, he worked doubles so he could pay for my application fees. He drove me to scholarship competitions all over the state. He’s always been that way, a problem-solver.” She picks up a chip, sets it down, picks it up again. “Or at least he always solved my problems. So it sucks that he won’t let me solve his.”
“What do you think his problem is?”
That seems to land in a place that hurts her. She sucks her bottom lip into her mouth, her eyes falling back to her plate, and goddamn, this is hard. Maybe I should have kept her at home, taken her to bed again. But Kit waits, thinks, then speaks again. “I guess I don’t know. I thought it was money, or maybe I wanted to believe that it was. I think maybe I’m his problem, or at least the fact that I was his problem for so long. He needs a break from me, maybe.”
This sends a shock of anger so acute through me that I clench my hand around my bottle of beer. I’m white knuckling this sucker like it’s done me wrong. “Then he’s an asshole,” I say, and I don’t even care if I don’t have a right to that sentiment, about someone who’s known her way longer than me.
“No,” she says, so serious that she sets an hand on my forearm, across the table. “I don’t want you to think that. I really, really don’t.” She says this as if it matters so much to her, those black cherry eyes right on mine. So I move my arm, take her hand and squeeze it briefly, and she smiles at me, sweet as all hell, and I wish I was sitting right next to her, on the other side of the booth. I don’t care how cheesy it would look. I feel restless, unsettled, a little, and I know it’s because Kit just—she just puts herself out there, telling me this thing about her and her brother, and I’m still dammed up. I try and imagine what she’d say if I told her how I took it about Dad and Sharon. That’s new, that imagining—because while I’ve been told by more than one woman that I had problems communicating, I don’t think I’ve ever thought once about how I might go about doing it better.
We finish our sandwiches and when we get outside, I take her hand and hold it all the way back to her place. Inside her house, up in her bedroom, I swipe at least four of the crazy throw pillows she has arranged on this bed onto the floor, and then I take all the time I didn’t take the first time, last night. I lie on top of her, kissing her and learning all the shapes of her through her clothes first, until we’re both a little crazy with it, moving against each other like a couple of teenagers, so that when I finally start removing our clothes, piece by piece, it feels as if we’ve crossed a new threshold. When the skin of our stomachs touches, she gasps, her hands rubbing up and down my sides, her kisses growing deeper, more frantic. I slow her with my mouth, moving down her neck, across the fine shelf of her collarbone, down the center of her stomach.
I did this for Kit last night too, tasted her, felt her come against my mouth before I took her the second time. But I think now it was selfish, some other way for me to have her, to make her mine, even for that small slice of time. Tonight—I don’t know—I’m trying to give her something, something I can’t say, something I don’t know how to feel. I pay attention to every hitch of her breath, every line of tension in the muscles along her inner thighs, every clench of her hand in my hair. Despite the tight, pulsing protests of my dick, I focus on nothing but her and the way her body twists when she comes, her back arching off the bed, her mouth open in a silent cry. Every ounce of energy in my body is concentrated on the need to rear up and drive into her, but I don’t. I kiss my way up to her stomach again, rest my forehead on her sternum and wait, breathing as if I’ve run flat-out for miles, just from the desperation of it.
And it’s only when she tells me to come to her, come into her, that I can settle down again.
Chapter 15
Kit
“I mean I’m not saying you have to narrate it. But I am saying I haven’t had sex in eight and a half months, so if you did…”
It’s Sunday morning, and instead of brunch, Zoe, Greer, and I have met for a walk in Hazleton Park, one of the historic gardens not too far from Zoe’s condo. It’s a gorgeous day, a perfect, clear blue sky and a breeze that carries the smell of roses from the west garden, and it’s finally, finally, not too hot for a mid-day walk. Brunch was out on account of the fact that I’d overslept, waking up after nine with Ben’s chest pressed against my back—the way I’d woken up most of the mornings since I’d found him on my stoop six days ago. I wasn’t the type to cancel plans for a guy, ever, so I’d been prepared to throw on whatever clothes were closest to me and go to brunch with the worst case of bedhead I’d ever had in my life, but when I texted Zoe and Greer to let them know I’d be late, Zoe had sent a bunch of hot pepper emojis and told me to stay in bed for another hour, that we’d meet up later. Although now I realize the error of my ways. Clearly she thinks I owe her details.
“I’m not going to tell…”
She’s not even really listening at this point, just pressing on. “I mean think about it,” she says. “I could have gestated a human being in the time since I’ve had sex.”
“It’s only a dry spell,” Greer says. “You’ll get back out there.”
I seize this opportunity. “You know, Zoe, there’s some very nice men at the university…”
“Who, like your pal Diego from the English department? Nope.”
I have to laugh, thinking back to my one ill-fated attempt to date someone from the university. Diego had been sweet, soft-spoken, but he clearly had some kind of clinical impostor syndrome about being a professor. He smoked a pipe even though he confessed to hating it, and he had at least one sport coat with elbow patches. Then on our third date he’d taken me to a poetry reading, and I’m an open-minded person but frankly I draw the line at Diego doing an open mic rendition of the poem he wrote about the infant trauma of losing his foreskin.
“I saw him kiss her,” says Greer, out of the blue, and I shoulder-check her off the path. She laughs, coming back, linking her arm through mine.
“Tell me,” says Zoe, her eyes going comically wide.
Greer shrugs casually. “Yeah, last weekend. He leaned right in and laid one on her. It looked good to me.”
“You guys. I don’t need your assessment.”
“Because it’s so awesome, you mean? Like we couldn’t even possibly assess something that awesome?”
The smile I try to hide is the only answer Zoe requires. “God. I’m so jealous,” she says.
“Jealous and really, really happy for you, Kit-Kat,” says Greer.
“Well, we’ll see.” Suddenly, I feel—not embarrassed, not with these two, but—cautious, I guess. I’ve spent a lot of time with Ben this week—at my house, at the salvage yard, even one evening spent at his dad’s house, where we ate pizza with Henry and Sharon, who showed me an old picture of Ben wearing frog-printed swim shorts over a pair of sweatpants. But in all that time, we’ve never said anything about the fact that Henry’s moving around pretty well now, scheduled to be out of his arm sling full time next week and in a walking boot that allows him to get around pretty easily. There’s no way Ben doesn’t have to get back to Texas soon, but every time I’ve tried to talk to him about his home there, his work, how it’s going with his partner, he gives me a noncommittal answer, telling me work’s fine, everything is fine. I’d press him, but I’m not even sure I want to know. I only want to keep going on this floating, perfect island of Ben—sex with Ben, laughter and conversation with Ben, light home improvements with Ben, just Ben in general.
“So has he given up recruiting you?” asks Greer.
“Yeah—conflict of interest, I guess. Anyways I think I’d pretty much convinced him already that I wasn’t interested.”
“You weren’t even a little interested?” says Zoe. “I mean, that thing he said, about you being the gem? That was pretty convincing.”
I pause where I am on the path. Greer stays with me, her arm linked to mine, and she seems to know, instinctively, how I’d take this, because she draws herself a little closer to my side. “Did you—did you think I should have been?”
Zoe stops, turns to look back at me. “Kit, you are insanely talented. You love what you do more than anyone I’ve ever met. All I mean is that it’d be perfectly understandable if you thought about going to do it somewhere where you’d have a lot more opportunity.”
“I don’t think about it,” I say, too quickly for it to be convincing. “I’m really happy here. I don’t want to leave.”
Zoe’s brow furrows in concern, her eyes serious. “I know you don’t. And I’d never want you to. God, I’d probably have to be sedated for weeks if any one of us ever moved away. But sometimes…” Here, she breaks off, looks toward Greer, maybe hoping she’ll take over, but Greer just looks down at her feet.
“Sometimes what?”
“Well, you know the paper you told us about, with Dr. Singh?”
My face heats. I have to give my answer to him tomorrow, and it still makes me feel edgy and unsure. I don’t want to upset the balance I’d created at my job. I don’t want to change the relationship I have with Dr. Singh. All this week, I’d let myself be distracted from thinking about it, which was easy enough, really, given what I’d been up to with Ben.
“Just thinking about something doesn’t mean you have to do it. And putting your name on this paper, it doesn’t mean you have to start—I don’t know—totally changing the way you do your job. You get to decide what you do with your life, Kit. That’s the best luck we got on the day we bought that ticket. And considering things, trying new things—actually letting yourself take credit for something you worked really, really hard on—that doesn’t force you to decide one way or another. And whatever you’d decide—even if there was some light sedation involved—it’d be okay. We’d all be okay.”
Gah, Zoe’s speeches. They always hit you right in your soft parts. I look toward Greer, who nods in agreement. I breathe out a sigh, and we set to walking again. After a minute, I say, “It doesn’t always feel that way, though. It feels—I just want to stay in my lane, you know? And if I get in the passing lane, even for a little bit, what if there’s no room for me to get back over?”
Greer unlinks her arm from mine, but only so she can grab my hand, squeezing slightly. Then Zoe moves to my other side, grabs my other hand so that the three of us are walking all together along the path—it’s silly, what we’re doing, swinging our arms as if we’re kids in the park, nothing to do or think about but play. “Kit-Kat,” Zoe says, after we walk a bit. “You can get in that passing lane whenever you want. With us, there’s always room for you to get back over.”
* * * *
Dr. Singh is frowning at his computer screen when I knock on his open door on Monday morning, but as soon as he raises his head and sees me there, he smiles the way he always does.
I first met Dr. Singh when I was twenty-one, on a campus visit I’d done in my senior year of undergrad. There were three schools on my list for master’s programs, all of them top ten in materials science, all of them with a PhD program too, in case I’d decide to go that route. It should’ve been an exciting time—I was top of my class, had one of my summer research projects headed toward publication, and had full fellowship offers for all three schools.
But, predictably, I’d been terrified. I’d stayed in Ohio for college, at least close to the general region of my nomadic childhood. I hung out mostly with other students within my major, dated a little, had a boyfriend for all of junior year until he got sulky about how high my GRE score had been compared to his. At the time, it’d seemed I was maybe making my way, finding a community, and the thought of moving on, uprooting everything to go to a new place, had me up late at night, every night, reading everything I could about my prospective schools.
When I’d come here, though, I’d realized quickly that I didn’t have the community I thought I did at college, and it was Dr. Singh who showed me that. The first night, he’d had me and the four other visiting students over to his and Ria’s house for dinner. We’d all sat around a big dining room table and talked about everything from Feynman’s lectures to our favorite movies. The next day, Dr. Singh and Dr. Harroway had taken us on a tour of the labs, then they’d handed us off to some second-year grad students who’d shown us around town. By then, I’d been sold—the facilities weren’t state of the art, but we were seeing them during the height of the semester, busy and full of small groups of students, and then I’d loved Barden itself, how much history it had, how many neighborhood enclaves there were, each with its own character. When I’d had my one-on-one meeting with Dr. Singh on my last morning, he’d been the first professor I’d ever had to really ask after the way I went about learning. He paid attention to what I liked best about the science, thought hard about what projects I’d work best on.
When I’d moved here, he’d been a steady, calm presence, giving me exactly the right amount of guidance and freedom. He was an incredible teacher, an ideal mentor, and just a good, kind person who wanted the best for me.
I keep my mind on that as I sit in my regular seat across his desk and tell him that I’m okay with being lead author, and as he clasps his hands together and does this cartoonish victory shake with them, which makes us both laugh.
“I’m so glad,” he says. “I thought I overplayed my hand last week, threatening to pull the article.”
“You wouldn’t have?”
He shrugs. “I wasn’t kidding about being uncomfortable publishing it as it is. But it is such good work—it would have been hard to pull it. So I’m so glad you’re going this route.”
“Me too,” I say, and I am.
Last night in bed, as we were drifting off to sleep, I’d told Ben about the paper, and he’d gone from drowsy to awake faster than I’d ever seen, propping himself up on his elbow and asking me question after question. “Do it,” he’d said. “You’ve got to do it. Finally, it’ll be you out front!” He’d sounded so proud of me. I hadn’t known what to do except to kiss him hard, delaying our sleep for even longer. It may have been Zoe and Greer to convince me to say yes, but it meant something to me to have Ben in my corner too.
We talk about some light revisions to do, and when I turn to go, I notice Dr. Singh looks a little tired. “Everything okay?” I ask.
“Sure, sure. I didn’t get the Handel grant, though. So it’s back to the drawing board.”
“Ah, it’s part of the job,” he says, but I know it’s more than that—of the faculty here, he lags behind in funding, and it’s important for his upcoming review for promotion. But he’s already cleared his face of any strain, and he’s looking across the desk at me fondly. “Ekaterina, I must say, I’m very happy about the paper. Very proud to have my name after yours.” This is too new for me to be cool and collected about, and I know my face has pinked up. So I’m grateful when Dr. Singh waves a hand and says, “Now wrap up your day early today. Get out there and celebrate.”
* * * *
Ben, too, insists that we celebrate. He picks me up after closing down the yard, a bottle of champagne tucked in between our seats in his truck. “Where are we going?” I ask, fiddling with the radio. I find a top 40 station and beam in triumph across the seat at him. He hates it when I pick the music. Last week when he taught me how to switch out the wall boxes for my electric, I’d had a full-on girl group playlist blaring, and Ben had complained so much I thought he’d pull a muscle. “You have the worst taste,” he grumbles.
My answer is to sing back, off-key, rolling my window down.
When he can’t keep a straight face anymore, I nudge him again, ask him where he’s taking me.
“Just this place I know about. You’ll love it.”
“Is it the science museum?”
“No. I figure you’ve been to the science museum at least ten times.”
“Oh, twenty, probably. I gave a lecture there once, for an exhibit they had on railway construction. It was awesome. I met this man who has two and a half total miles of miniature rail built all around his backyard.”