Cure for Insomnia

by Laina Villeneuve

  I sprinted to my office, calling up Valerie’s number. “You won’t believe this!”

  “You’re pregnant!”

  I couldn’t help but guffaw. The noise caused Ashleigh to look up from her work. I waved an apology and slipped into my office. “Idiot, that’s you! Guess who is going to IDAC this weekend! Me! Judy asked me to do the talk for our lab!”

  “Ace! How’d you score that?”

  “Judy has to meet with the FDA.”

  “Great exposure for you.”

  “Right? You’re a good friend, you know. Better than me. I would hate you if you called to tell me you got a talk.”

  Valerie laughed. “Yeah, well we already know your career is roses and mine is crap. Now that you’ve found your mystery woman, I’m fucked.”

  “Shit.” I fell back in my chair.

  “What?”

  “Remi. We had plans this weekend.”

  “Nothing that can’t be rescheduled, right?”

  “Right,” I said, though my mind was still spinning.

  “Call me when you’re back. I want to hear how brilliant you were!”

  I agreed and hung up. I had to text Remi. She had been on my mind all night, and I had just been thinking about talking to her, yet now I dreaded texting. I had to go through the slides and get back into Judy’s office. But first I had to face the fire.

  Have to cancel Saturday

  I hated to hit send, but I pulled up my big-girl chonies and did it.

  Will explain later

  Going to a conference was not me blowing off our plans. She would understand what a huge opportunity it was, right? The longer my two texts sat unanswered the more convinced I was that the cancellation was going to create a big problem. She’d been so excited when Neil agreed to my joining them for their monthly Saturday movie night. I worried that changing the plan again wouldn’t go well. I tapped my phone against my thigh. I had to get back to work.

  Really really sorry! I typed out before shoving the phone in my pocket.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “No Maricela?” Valerie asked on Tuesday when we met up for our workout.

  “Her mom has an appointment.”

  “She went back to see her nurse friend? Ballsie! I like that one.”

  “Maybe she’s trying to convince her mom that she wasn’t flirting. I don’t know.”

  “Someone’s a misery bag today,” Valerie chastised.

  “Sorry. Too many nights of bad sleep.”

  “Don’t say that to a pregnant lady.”

  “You’re barely pregnant. Not even showing pregnant. Why are you complaining about sleep?”

  “Heartburn, mate. Getting up three times during the night to pee. And every time I get up, I have to shut down all the mental questions about pregnancy and parenting that fire up the second I open my eyes.”

  “Think about how it’s preparing you for how often you’ll be getting up with an infant.”

  “You’re not helping.”

  “At least you have a reason and a prize that makes it worthwhile.”

  “C’mon. I’d call your insomnia experiment a hellofa good way to get Remi into bed. If I were you, I’d be talking to her about needing to gather enough evidence to achieve statistical significance!”

  I hmphed and sped up.

  “What’s that about?” Valerie easily kept in step with me.

  “I would love to talk to her about gathering some more evidence to back up Rosa’s findings that I sleep better when I’m not alone, but we haven’t really talked since I got back from the conference.”

  “What happened? Did she have to cancel something significant or something?”

  “Plans with her brother.”

  Valerie rubbed her finger in her ear and scrunched up her face. “Sorry. She had tickets to what?”

  “We had plans with her brother.”

  “Sorry, mate. I’m not following on why that would cause a row.”

  “He’s big on consistency. She’d already talked to him about doing something different than they usually do, and then she had to change it all again.”

  “Is she punishing you, then? For having to present your work at a major conference?”

  “I don’t think so. She said she understood that I had to go, but remember that thing you said way back about checking out the competition?”

  “At Sloan’s?”

  “Yeah. She told me that for some people, her brother could be seen as the competition. Since I got back, she hasn’t had time for us to get together, and it makes me see how someone could feel like Neil comes first.”

  “Did she say that she’s having to deal with fallout from her brother?”

  “No, she’s been super busy at work, which I get. I was busy with work over the weekend, so it’s just bad timing, right? You and Emma said that having someone who was as equally invested in her work as I am in mine is what I needed.”

  “Maybe,” Valerie said.

  We walked in silence for a few beats. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I don’t know. It sounds more…complicated than that.” She sounded apologetic.

  For Valerie, calling something complicated was a step away from saying the downsides outweighed the benefits. I wasn’t one to hold a set of scales in my head like that. “Not complicated,” I said. “I get that things are different with her brother. He’s autistic and routines are super important. I asked to interrupt his routine and then didn’t follow through, so it probably made things difficult for her.” I put myself in her shoes, trying to smooth things over with Neil. Was what was happening with us worth the trouble I’d caused? “Shit.”

  “What?”

  “What if she thinks like you and is weighing whether I’m not dependable enough to invest any more of her time?”

  “You two can’t have been dating long enough for her to feel like your flakiness outweighs the sex.”

  “Punctuality is important to her, and I was running late the day that we went horseback riding.”

  “You work in a lab. It’s not always easy to predict when you’re going to wrap up and walking away without finishing can cost you weeks of work. That was sort of hard for Emma to understand. Her class ends, and she comes home. It doesn’t unexpectedly go twenty minutes over.”

  “Maybe she should meet Emma, so she can explain how it comes with the territory.”

  “Great idea. Invite her to dinner. Emma would love to meet her.”

  “Thanks. That might be exactly what I need to break through this awkwardness.”

  * * *

  The dinner was perfect. I could not have asked for anything more. Valerie was cranky pregnant but engaging. Emma was warm and welcoming, and Remi and Emma fell into an easy discussion about how dance could be used with children with autism. She fit in as if we had all been friends for years. Catching Valerie’s eye across the table, I could tell she was thinking the same thing. We had learned to keep our shoptalk to a minimum, but typically had to remind ourselves. Tonight, the only time Valerie brought up work specifically was when she called me a lab rat.

  “I am not a lab rat. I get outside plenty,” I argued.

  “Now that we’re mates, but before that was a different story. I have proof of how far gone you were when I met you.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Valerie ignored me, thumbing through her phone. The width of her smile when she found what she was looking for finally engaged my memory. “Don’t,” I said, cringing without even needing to see the picture again.

  “Remi, you’re going to want a copy of this one,” Valerie chortled. “What’s your number?”

  I could see Remi’s eyes on me through my hands covering my face. She squealed after her phone pinged and she opened the image. “Is that you, Karla?”

  I moved my fingers a smidge. “That was a long time ago.”

  Valerie showed Emma, and they all laughed together at my extreme science getup: gown, goggles, and face mask, gloved
hands holding a Geiger counter. “You don’t wear all that, do you?” Emma asked Valerie.

  “I don’t even wear all that normally,” I interjected. “Back then I was trying to make a transgenic mouse and was attempting a Southern blot. Once! And I made the mistake of sharing that picture with Valerie. You promised you wouldn’t show anyone.”

  “Did I?” she asked innocently, tucking the phone away.

  Remi reached out and casually placed her hand on my thigh. “I think you’re adorable. You know my thoughts about a woman in a lab coat.”

  Both the words and contact brought a blush to my face. Emma and Valerie shared a look. They’d seen the gesture and my reaction, and I could tell they approved.

  “At the risk of sounding like an arse, I have to say how much fun you are,” Valerie said to Remi.

  “How exactly does that make you sound like an arse?” I asked.

  “I have to admit I completely hated the toad you dated before.”

  Laughter filled the room. “Like that was ever a secret,” I said.

  “As happy as I am that Karla has found you, I have to agree,” Emma said. “If you’d been in the picture when we met Karla, I would have had to hate her.”

  Remi turned a confused expression my way. “Whatever would make you hate her?”

  Emma’s lips were pinched in a tight line before she said, “Envy. I don’t know if Little Miss Lucky has filled you in on how many roadblocks we’ve hurdled in the last few years.”

  “I understand getting pregnant was difficult,” Remi said, her voice gentle.

  Emma reached over and placed her hand on Valerie’s growing belly. “It was, but we stuck with it and finally had our luck turn there.”

  “And you got that Cell paper,” Valerie said. “You joked about it that night you found Remi, and I laughed it off, but it’s kind of hard not to get jealous when your bestie gets every single thing she wants.”

  I didn’t have a snappy comeback for that because Judy’s sending me to the conference was yet another step in the direction of achieving what I wanted.

  Emma continued. “I don’t know how you feel about being a work widow, if Karla’s as bad as Valerie was. Before she got pregnant, Val was putting in all these hours, gone before I got up, back way after dark…” She and Valerie shared a look. “It’s one thing when those kind of hours end up with a paper in Cell. It all feels worth it, but Val’s lab…It was like she was putting in all the same effort and getting nothing.”

  “Till I got pregnant.”

  “You told Seonwoo? You didn’t tell me that!” I exclaimed. I clarified for Remi. “Seonwoo is her PI. I thought he was going to flip when he found out that Valerie was pregnant.”

  “Just the opposite. I had the most amazing talk with him. He was so excited! We planned out the rest of the experiments I need to complete for my paper, and he said he doesn’t see a problem with me finishing it this summer. This summer! I thought it would be December at the earliest, but he pulled it all together.”

  “That’s not even the best part,” Emma interrupted, “He was happy to map out what needs to be done before maternity leave and will save Val’s project for when she goes back. He actually asked Val if she preferred partner or wife when they were talking about me! Now when she’s at the lab late, he reminds her that she needs to be kind to her body, so she’s making it home for dinner a few nights a week.”

  “I feel bad for all the times I’ve criticized him. What I thought was laziness is looking more like better balance between life and work.”

  “That’s such good news,” I said. I hoped I sounded more enthusiastic than I felt. For so long, I’d been the one with the coveted boss in the cutting-edge lab pushing for the big papers. Holding the two bosses side by side now, I envied Valerie’s less flashy PI who valued more than the lab work. I recalled Judy’s reaction when I told her about Valerie’s pregnancy. She didn’t see pregnancy as something to accommodate. She defined it as a problem that sidelined a career. What if success was not excelling to the exclusion of all else but having a life worth living as well? I didn’t realize how long we had sat in silence until Remi ran her hand along my thigh.

  “You okay?” she asked.

  “Sorry, I spaced out there for a minute,” I said.

  “What’s up, mate?” Valerie leaned forward from the awkward posture she’d been holding in an attempt to get comfortable.

  I grasped for words. “I’m surprised Dr. Seonwoo’s being so supportive. I’m trying to wrap my head around it.”

  Valerie laughed. “Exactly! Blew me away talking to him.”

  “There’s no way I could go to Judy with something like that. When I told her a friend of mine was pregnant, she said ‘thank goodness it’s not you.’”

  Emma and Valerie wore twin expressions of surprise.

  “The Goddess?” Emma asked.

  “Goddess?” Remi asked.

  “You haven’t met her?” Emma feigned a swoon in her chair. “She is so sexy. And the fact that she’s driven on top of that? Val and I both don’t get how Karla can see her every day and not jump her bones.”

  “You never said she’s attractive,” Remi said.

  “I have never shared their obsession,” I said.

  “That’s the truth,” Valerie said. She looked concerned about the turn the conversation had taken. “Karla’s always said I’m a disgusting pig for talking about her boss like that.”

  Despite Valerie’s attempt to swing the conversation to lighter topics, I could not dispel the dark mood I had been struggling to suppress. I was happy to let Valerie continue until she began to yawn, signaling that we should go and let her get to bed. It should have made me happy to hear Remi and Emma talking about getting together again soon.

  Valerie leaned in for a hug and dropped her voice. “Sorry to be crass about your boss. I don’t know what I was thinking. Is Remi going to chuck a hissy fit about it?”

  “Not at all. You saved it saying I’ve never crushed on her.”

  “You sure it’s okay? You don’t seem right. I can talk seriously if you need to.”

  “I know.” I hugged Valerie goodbye. “I appreciate it. Tonight was great.”

  “First rate!” she agreed. She was smiling happily with her arm around Emma as we parted.

  Remi crept through the beach traffic, occasionally glancing in my direction. “I enjoyed meeting your friends,” she said, breaking the silence.

  “They loved you.” I peeked at her to see if she had reacted to the word “love.” Why had I said that when I hadn’t even used the word myself? She kept her eyes on the road ahead. If we were talking love, we were going to talk about priorities and whether Remi had a problem with the increased hours I might have to keep. I had noticed that she looked at me when Emma said that she was excited to have Valerie at home for dinner a few times a week. Was Remi someone who expected her girlfriend at home for dinner every night?

  “What made your ex a toad?”

  I thought carefully about my answer. “You know Valerie is a researcher too.” Remi nodded. “She felt like my girlfriend didn’t support my research enough.”

  “How so?”

  “Mostly in the hours I keep. For both of us, science comes first.”

  “Still? It seems like she has had to become more flexible.”

  I couldn’t deny that. But I remembered when Valerie first talked about getting pregnant. “She was definitely flexible about switching ovens,” I said. “But it scared her. When I asked what she would do about work, she said she’d jump off that bridge when she got to it. I’m glad she got so lucky with her jump. I’m glad her PI has made a plan with her, but not everyone would be as accommodating.”

  “Not yours?”

  “No.” Her comment frustrated me. Inviting her to dinner was supposed to have given her a look at how Emma and Valerie balanced their relationship with Valerie’s demanding career. The safety net Valerie had fallen into had skewed that message. “Judy said a pregnancy at
this stage of our research would sideline my career.”

  She drove in silence for a block. “You think she would say the same about a relationship.”

  I bit at a rough spot on my lip. “If it impacted my work, yes.”

  “For example, if you weren’t able to go to a conference at a moment’s notice.”

  There was no use in arguing. “Right.”

  Remi was quiet for a long time, and what she was likely thinking stirred up a mushroom cloud of panic. I was sure some of it was sorting through Neil’s reaction. To me, it sounded like he’d accepted the change in plans fairly well, but I didn’t know him like his sister did, and I also didn’t know whether Remi had given me all the details.

  I leaned my head against the soft leather of the Ferrari’s seat and soaked in Remi’s beauty. Her thick hair was tucked behind her ear, exposing the clean line of her chin and a particularly intricate dangly earring. Her delicate features contrasted her fiery strength, and picturing her eye to eye with hard-ass school administrators to advocate for special-needs children made me smile. She broke the silence.

  “What a risk,” she said.

  I’d been swimming in my own thoughts for so long that I didn’t follow. “Risk?”

  “Valerie took such a risk getting pregnant. To say she would jump off a bridge when she got to it…That is a leap of faith, one she made for her wife because she loves her. That is a beautiful thing.”

  I wasn’t sure how to respond. It was a beautiful thing. I had often admired the strength of my friend’s relationship. Was Remi asking whether I was capable of making a leap like that? I honestly didn’t know myself. Nothing I had ever done in my life had required that kind of blind leap. Since I didn’t know what to say, I said what I did know. “I’m am so incredibly sorry that the timing of my conference sucked so bad.”

  “I know you are,” Remi said.

  She didn’t sound mad. I hoped she understood how important it was that I was able to stand in for Judy when she’d needed me. I hadn’t told her how she was angling to begin a new project and I would have even more responsibility, even more demands on my time. I shifted my gaze out the window. Driving solo, you only had to think about where you were going. Adding a passenger added the question of whether both people wanted to go to in that same direction. I could only hope that she would understand the importance of the road I was traveling.