Swagger

by Liz Lincoln

  “Babe, calm down. She’s not worth it.”

  “Parents butting in where they’re not wanted?” Marcus said. “No, I wouldn’t know anything about that.” He made sure the sarcasm in his voice was beyond obvious, hoping to diffuse Celia’s rant.

  Matt chuckled as he started to pull pieces out of the box. “Yeah, what’s the latest in the world of CTE research?”

  “Wouldn’t know,” Marcus said, stacking the pieces neatly as Matt unboxed. “Didn’t read the article my mom sent me yesterday. Just like I haven’t read the last eight dozen before that.”

  Celia sat in the rocking chair. “What about brain injury research?”

  The connection clicked in Marcus’ head. “Of course. I should put you in touch with my mom. She’s a neurologist at the University of Minnesota. She doesn’t specialize in CTE, but she does work a lot in brain injury, I think.”

  “Wait. James…Minnesota. Ralene James is your mom?” Celia stared at Marcus, looking stunned.

  Marcus rolled his eyes, old annoyances surging to the surface. “I know, how did a neurologist end up with a kid who collects concussions for a living?”

  Celia leaned back at the vehemence in his words. “That’s not what I meant.”

  Matt took the empty box and tossed it into the hall. “Nothing personal, babe. It’s kind of a sore topic between Marcus and his mom.”

  “And the Oscar for biggest understatement goes to…” Marcus ran a hand over his tense jaw. “Sorry I snapped. It’s not like she hates me. She just disapproves of my career choice. My sisters are both big brainiacs like my parents, and they wanted me to be a doctor or a lawyer too. And I think my mom sees it as a personal affront that I’m in a sport with so many head injuries when she’s a neurologist.” Marcus shrugged. “But I’m terrible at basketball. And I’m slow as fuck at swimming.”

  “And tennis is boring as shit” Matt added.

  “Hey!” Celia glared at Matt. “I played tennis.”

  “I know,” Matt said. He started taking the pieces for the crib out of the thin foam they were wrapped in. “And I’m sure you were very good. And I’m sure your parents were bored out of their minds at your matches.”

  “Anyway,” Marcus said, hopefully heading off any sort of tennis-related argument they were about to start, “I can talk to my mom about your new project. I may need a few more details first, but I’m sure she’d be happy to advise you, or give you thoughts on how to get started, or I don’t even know. Whatever you might need from a prominent neurologist. Hell, she’ll probably shit her pants that I’m even peripherally involved in something remotely academic sounding. Even if that involvement is through my teammate’s wife.”

  “Not wife yet,” she said.

  “In less than a week. And I probably won’t get around to talking to her before that.” Marcus studied the crib assembly instructions as he spoke.

  Celia’s face glowed as she beamed at Marcus. “That would be awesome.”

  “Text me your work contact information, and I’ll put her in touch.”

  “Absolutely. Wow, I sort of feel like you’ve already more than paid me back for making you dinner. Maybe I should let you off the hook for the cribs.” She pulled out her phone and started tapping at the screen.

  Matt held up his hands. “Hey now, let’s not get crazy. These cribs need to be built, and we all know that’s not happening if I do it myself.”

  Marcus went to work assembling the furniture. It was fairly easy, with all the screws and bolts and other necessities included and the holes predrilled. It could’ve been a one-man job, but at times it was easier to have Matt hold something than to try and do it himself.

  He was almost done with the first crib and ready to move on to the second when a thought occurred to him.

  “There might be something you could do to return the favor.”

  “You’re not sleeping with my girl,” Matt said so quickly it was like a reflex for him.

  “Seriously, why do you put up with this guy?” Marcus asked Celia. He loved his friend, and when it came to leading the team, Matt seemed older than his age. Moments like this, though, it was like they were in high school.

  “I ask myself the same question several times a day,” she replied, deadpan.

  “You think you’re going to need any medical physicists for your research group?” Marcus asked.

  Over lunch last week, Bree had explained more about what sort of work she wanted to do in medical physics. Marcus knew very little about medical physics, or any physics really, but he was pretty sure it involved imaging technology. And Matt had said at the dinner on Monday that improving imaging technology for earlier detection was one of the aims of their center.

  So he was asking purely to help Bree. It was a total coincidence that working with Celia’s group would mean Bree stayed in Milwaukee rather than moving away in a few months.

  You’re an asshole.

  His conscience was right, but at the moment, he couldn’t bring himself to care. He was just asking. Finding out for her if the option was even there. It wasn’t like he was committing her to something without asking her.

  “I’m not really sure, to be honest,” Celia said. “The announcement the other night was very early. I’m still assembling my executive team. And we’ll figure out the positions we need to hire. I doubt we’ll be bringing anyone new on until January or February.”

  “Bree does medical physics?” Matt asked. He set the hammer in the palm of his hand and tried to balance it.

  “It’s one area she’s looking at. She’s supposed to finish her PhD in December.” Jesus, that seemed so far away. He hadn’t been able to stop imagining what could have happened the other night when they kissed. If she weren’t his teacher and he weren’t her student and she hadn’t stopped him.

  Because damn. That woman could kiss. She’d lit him on fucking fire. Once they did finally get naked together, they’d probably need to keep a fire extinguisher by the bed.

  “Next week I should know more. But I’ll definitely let you know.” Celia gave him a long look, enough to make Marcus just a little nervous. “You like her a lot, don’t you?”

  A lot didn’t cover it. As much as he wanted her, he also liked spending time with her. He’d come to look forward to their standing Friday lunch-date-that-wasn’t-a-date.

  But he wasn’t ready to discuss it with anyone. Especially not Matt, who had the emotional maturity of a golden retriever. So Marcus just shrugged. “She’s helped me out a lot in her class. She’s basically carrying me through with sheer force of will, even though she should be working on her dissertation.” She’d never said it directly, but he knew she didn’t really have time to tutor him as much as she did. She frequently mentioned how stressed she was about finishing her dissertation on time. He felt terrible that he needed so much help, but he wouldn’t pass the class without it. And if he was going to graduate in December too, he needed at least a C.

  “I’m just trying to return the favor for her. She grew up in Wisconsin and her family is all still around. So I think she’d rather stay close to home.” That was bullshit—she had the same problems with her family as he did. But she had expressed multiple times how much she would miss Reina. “Last she mentioned, her best job lead is in North Carolina.” He absolutely hated the idea of her moving that far away. Even though he had no claim on her. They were just friends who had shared one amazing kiss.

  But damn, he wanted so much more.

  *

  —

  Bree stood in the hall outside Dr. Bryant’s office, trying to work up the nerve to knock. She was three minutes early for their weekly meeting, though her advisor had canceled it the past four weeks. She hadn’t heard from him today, so she had worked herself into a state of near panic.

  She could do this. She just had to, you know, do it.

  The old Nike slogan popped into her head. “Just do it,” she muttered to herself. Yet she continued to stand there, staring at the c
losed door.

  Fucking hell. She was such a coward.

  Another deep breath, and she forced herself to lift her arm. Her knock was so wimpy there was no way Bryant heard it.

  She made herself try again. Harder this time. Then her arm jerked back, like the door was on fire.

  “Come in!” Bryant barked.

  Having to force herself to make every movement, she turned the handle, pushed the door open, and stepped into the demon’s lair.

  Dramatic much, Bree?

  Bryant didn’t bother hiding his sneer as he looked up from his computer. “Oh. You. Are we meeting?”

  Bree clutched the papers she held to her chest, trying not to visibly shake. She could not let her anxiety take over until after the meeting. “Yes, sir. One o’clock on Friday. We just haven’t met for a few weeks.”

  Bryant grunted, then nodded at the chair in front of his desk.

  Bree perched on the edge of the seat, her papers in her lap. Back when she was working with Anna, their weekly meeting had been the two of them sitting in front of Bree’s laptop, going over the work on the computer. The first time Bree met with Bryant, he’d instructed her to bring printed copies of all her work. He didn’t like staring at the computer screen all the time.

  She set the stack of paper on his desk. “I brought everything with me. Everything’s done, except a few final graphs. Of course, I still have plenty of revising to do. But the first draft is done.” She slid the pages across the desk toward him.

  Bryant shot a glare at them. “Why do I want this?”

  What the fuck? “You said…” she stammered.

  “I said what?” he snapped.

  Oh God. Oh God. Oh God. Breathe, Bree.

  “You said I should bring a printed copy of what I had,” Bree managed to say. Her voice barely sounded shaky. Go her.

  Bryant pushed the papers back toward her. “I don’t need to read it. It’s not going to be any good.”

  “Excuse me?” What the hell was going on?

  “Look, I know I have to go through this charade of advising you so you can get your little degree and get the hell out of my hair. You’ll pass your dissertation, because it looks terrible for the department if you don’t. And it’s good for our statistics that we graduate a few girls from time to time. But let’s face it, you don’t belong here. You’re just here to do something so you don’t have to get a real job, biding your time until you have your babies. I’ve seen it a million times. You and your little friend who shares your office will take your degrees, get some silly little postdoc position for a couple years and take jobs from men who could really contribute something, and that’s it. Maybe you’ll teach community college once the kids are in school.”

  Bree didn’t even know what to say. What was there to say? This was the most preposterous thing she’d ever heard. Sure, she knew of a handful of women who had chosen to stay home with their kids, but that wasn’t unique to physics. That happened in every field. And she knew dozens of women in physics, and engineering, and all kinds of other sciences, who took six weeks off to have a baby, then were right back at work. Plenty more chose not to have kids.

  Bryant was so full of shit.

  “I don’t…I don’t understand how my hypothetical future career path has anything to do with my dissertation.” Panic and fury warred inside Bree. How dare he make these assumptions? And how dare he ignore his responsibility to help her finish her dissertation? It was his fucking job.

  “It has everything to do with it, because you are wasting my time.” He stabbed his finger into his chest. “You are taking money away from graduate students who care about making a difference in this field. Who won’t throw their careers away five years from now. You should be leaving the serious academics to serious academics.”

  Bree stared unseeing at her printed dissertation. Four years of her life, summed up in eighty-five pages. And this asshole was going to sit there and say she wasn’t serious, that she was just spinning her wheels until she could go land a husband and have some babies? Fuck him.

  “As I said, you’ll graduate. The department doesn’t care if your dissertation is drivel. It looks too bad if we don’t get you out of here at this point. So you can keep teaching your class, and I’ll show up for your defense. But until then, I see no reason we need to meet.” He flicked his fingers toward the door, shooing her out.

  Stunned, Bree stared at him for a long moment. She was too shocked to move, plus she was terrified that if she tried to stand, her knees would be shaking so hard she would collapse.

  “You can go now. I have class in a few minutes.” Bryant turned back to his computer. Effectively dismissing her.

  Bree willed her legs to work as she snatched her dissertation from Bryant’s desk and rose. Look at that, she could stand and everything. She made her way to the door, shut it behind her, then stumbled down the hall to her office, keeping one hand on the wall so she wouldn’t fall.

  Reina and Tomás were in her office when she got there, as was Kevin.

  “That was fast,” Reina said.

  Bree dropped the thick stack of papers into the recycling bin. She wouldn’t need those anymore. She did all her work on her computer. What a waste of trees.

  The panic was intensifying, the darkness of an attack lurking around the edges of her brain, creeping ever closer. Trying to take over. She needed to do something to distract herself or she was going to have a full-blown panic attack. She could take her medication, but it wouldn’t kick in right away, and this attack was only a few minutes off if she didn’t stop it.

  She dropped into her desk chair and started rummaging through her desk drawer for the bottle of essential oil she kept there. It wasn’t foolproof, but sometimes smelling the lavender and clary sage mix at least gave her a starting point. Something to focus on outside her head.

  “You okay?” Kevin asked.

  “Something happen in your meeting with Bryant?” Tomás asked.

  “Shit,” Reina said.

  Bree could hear the sound of Reina’s wheels across the linoleum, but her focus remained on her desk drawer. There was the stupid bottle. She yanked it out, slammed the drawer, unscrewed the top, and took a long, deep sniff. She leaned her head back, holding the small bottle near her nose, and took three more deep breaths.

  The feeling she was going to lose control receded, but only a little. She needed something else. A solid distraction.

  Reina’s hand covered Bree’s, jerking her back to the moment. Which was good. Being present in the moment would help her stay out of her head, where the panic was.

  Reina’s eyes were full of concern as she looked at her friend. “What happened?”

  Bree swallowed hard, unsure she could make her voice work well enough to answer Reina’s question. “He—” Her voice came out in a froggy squeak. She cleared her throat and tried again. “He basically said women shouldn’t be in academia because we have babies. He doesn’t want to see my dissertation, he doesn’t want to meet again, he doesn’t want to have anything to do with me because it’s a waste of his time.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Tomás said.

  “Asshole,” Kevin said.

  Bree couldn’t disagree with their assessments.

  “You need to talk to Dr. Rippon about this,” Kevin said, referring to the department chair. Who was also Bryant’s close friend. “He can’t get away with that shit.”

  “He also said I’ll inevitably still graduate. Because it looks too bad for the department to have me flunk my dissertation. And they need to graduate ‘girls’ every so often,” Bree said bitterly, making air quotes when she said girls. “I’m not sure it’s worth my time to complain. What can they even do? If I’m going to graduate, and Bryant is retiring at the end of this year, nothing will happen anyway.”

  “You don’t know that,” Tomás said. “If nothing else, he’s not doing his job. No PhD student should write their dissertation with zero feedback.”

  Bree t
ried to think, but her brain was still too muddled. Talking was a welcome distraction, and it held back the creeping panic, but it didn’t make it go away completely. And she’d never been fully able to explain to anyone who didn’t experience anxiety how exhausting it was at times like this to hold back a panic attack. The problem was, the attack itself was even more exhausting.

  “Maybe I can send it to Anna,” Bree said. “After all, she was my advisor for ninety percent of it.”

  “Didn’t you say she has a new boyfriend?” Kevin asked. “Between her job and a new boyfriend, you think she has time to advise on a dissertation from halfway around the world?”

  “On the other hand,” Reina said, “she was a woman in this department for five years. She was Bryant’s colleague. Maybe she would have some advice on dealing with him.”

  “I still don’t see why you can’t report this to someone,” Tomás said.

  Bree and Reina exchanged glances. At least Reina understood why Bree couldn’t. Or why she could, but it wouldn’t help anything.

  “What was that look?” Tomás asked.

  “Everyone knows Bryant’s reputation.” Reina moved her chair so she could address Tomás, but also stayed near Bree. “This department knows full well what he’s like. And you know how these guys are. Especially Dr. Rippon. Sure, there are more women in physics now. But it’s still an old boys’ club. An old white boys’ club.” As Latin Americans, Reina and Tomás both understood the discrimination built into academia and the sciences, Reina triply so.

  Bree took another sniff of her oil. “If they haven’t done anything about him in the past thirty years, they’re not going to in his last six months. The Time’s Up movement hasn’t fixed everything.”

  Tomás frowned, nodding thoughtfully. “I guess you’re right. Still seems like you shouldn’t have to just suffer through this. But I get it.”