I’d spent the morning talking to my section about how a large chunk of jobs within biology these days involved using molecular lab techniques, having finally given into my desire to be frank with them. I told them if they tried to get summer projects that increased their experience with said techniques they’d be far more likely to find employment after graduation or get onto the more interesting PhD placements.
Despite this, come 2pm when the lab ended, it seemed as if most of the students couldn't wait to get rid of the knowledge that had been pushed into their brains for the past month. ‘What use is PCR or protein purification to marine biologists?’ they told each other. I had to stop myself laughing every time I heard the students say such things. They’d find out soon enough that what I’d said was the truth.
As usual, my eyes found the group that sat on the same bench as Dylan as they tore off their lab coats and headed for their lockers. I supposed they were actually friends with him; they laughed and joked together as if they were, at least. Or, rather, Dylan smiled and nodded along to their loud conversations.
There was something about the careful way Dylan held himself – the smallest of distances he kept between him and the rest of the people on the bench, even Max – that told me he didn't consider them friends in the same way they considered him a friend. I wondered how they couldn’t see it for themselves. To me it was obvious, like there was a gulf between them.
Dylan was unreachable.
In some ways that made me feel better, though in many more ways it made me feel worse. For if his supposed friends didn’t appear to mean that much to him then how could I, a random girl Dylan had never spoken to, hope to get closer to him?
I had to give up on my obsession. Three weeks was more than enough. I had never found the courage to bridge the silence between us and that was on me.
It was time I moved on.
There was no motivation left within me after the lab to even try and make some progress with my thesis, so I decided to head to the gym once I was finished teaching instead of going to the library. At least then I could say I’d done something productive with my afternoon rather than heading home and crashing out.
As I exited the lab, however, I noticed that David was leaning against his locker waiting for me. His friends were standing a little ways further down the corridor, watching us. David waved, indicating for me to join him.
“I thought you’d all had enough of me and my love of protein purifications,” I joked, for lack of anything better to say.
David chuckled, pushing his glasses back up the bridge of his nose when they slipped a little. At the beginning of the lab he’d worn contacts but after a close call with some acid he’d opted to switch to glasses for the rest of the lab. I had told him that’s what safety goggles were for – I wore contacts, after all, and had never even come close to getting anything terrible in my eyes – but the near miss was enough of a fright for him to abandon lenses in favour of glasses nonetheless.
“We’ve had enough of the protein chat, sure,” he said, “but somehow not of you. Shocking, I know.”
“Lovely.”
“Join us for lunch?”
That was when I noticed David was nervous. His legs were crossed one in front of the other, and he shifted his weight from his left foot to his right every two seconds. There was a hopeful cast to his face that I didn’t want to crush. Truly, I didn’t. But after spending the morning surrounded by people the last thing I wanted to do was spend even more time with them. And besides, I wasn’t hungry.
“I’m sorry, David,” I said, making sure my expression was suitably apologetic. “I’m actually just on my way to the gym. Another time, maybe?”
A moment of disappointment, then David configured his features into a completely manufactured, unbothered smile. “Didn’t have you pegged as a gym bunny, Miss Ferguson.”
Because I’m not. I put on just as manufactured a smile as David’s. “People can surprise you. Anyway, I best be off –”
“Grace.”
David grabbed my elbow as I began to move past him, though he dropped his hand immediately and grimaced when he realised what he’d done. I knew he hadn’t meant any harm but the shock of his hand gripping my arm sent my brain into a wild state of panic. I forced myself to swallow down my uncalled-for fear.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to grab you,” he said, very quietly. He leaned forward, clearly not wishing for his friends to hear what he was about to say. “I just…I don’t know how to ask this without seeming weird. Can we keep in touch? As friends?”
I begged my heart to stop thumping so hard. I needed friends, and I liked David. That he was literally asking permission to keep in contact with me rather than pushing his own agenda regardless of how I felt deeply endeared him to me.
If only I wasn’t so damn anxious all the time.
“Of course,” I replied, crafting my previous smile into a far more genuine one. “I’d love that. But I really do want to get to the gym whilst there’s a post-lunch lull. First dibs on equipment and all that.”
David laughed nervously. “Of course. I’ll – see you around, I guess. Or I’ll message you!”
“I look forward to it.” And then, because I didn’t think I could handle any more, I gave the rest of David’s friends a perfunctory nod before scurrying past them. I could hear them making fun of David behind my back, which suggested he’d wanted to ask me to lunch for a while. It made me feel terrible for reacting the way I had when all he’d done was simply try to stop me from running off long enough to ask me a damn question.
I was the worst.
By the time I reached the gym I no longer had even the slightest iota of energy to exercise. My skin was itchy and wrong, which was how I always felt after bad social interactions. I needed to relax – preferably alone for hours and hours and hours – and exercise was anything but relaxing to me. Yet I was already here, and I knew fine well that leaving without doing anything would make me feel even crappier than I already felt.
So I slid into my swimming costume and braided back my hair, relieved to see that the pool had just three people currently using it. One was an older man I thought might have taught me chemistry back in my undergrad; the other two were girls younger than I was taking selfies by the edge of the pool. I clucked my tongue in disgust. I wasn’t in the mood for people like that.
Glancing at the steam room I realised I could relax instead of exercise, so long as it wasn’t full of people. So I padded across the wet floor around the pool, a blast of balmy air hitting my face when I opened the opaque glass door to the steam room an inch. I was beyond relieved to see that nobody was inside the small, dark space.
Thank god, I thought, gladly entering the safety of the steam and closing the door behind me. Some peace and quiet.
I winced at the scorching ceramic of the tiled seat I lowered myself onto, though it wasn’t long before I got used to the heat emanating from it. With a sigh I reclined against the wall. The steam was full of eucalyptus, which calmed my nerves and cleared my sinuses.
Since most of my previous visits to the gym coincided with the swim team being present, the steam room had always been full of laughing, pushy lads winding down after practice whenever I thought I might like to use it. I could never face going in there with a group of strangers…even less so had Dylan been one of them.
Ugh, I had to stop my thoughts from always leading back to him.
I forced myself to think of something else and inevitably ended up on the not-so-pleasant topic of my uncertain career prospects. But as I breathed in another heady quantity of steam and allowed the heat all around me to relax my muscles, I discovered that I could broach such a subject without going into a panic.
The marine biology students were the last group I was teaching this semester. Now there was nothing between me and my ever-looming thesis deadline and the ordeal of applying for jobs. I was such a hypocrite; I’d only just been criticising the undergrads and their unwillingness t
o get the right experience for a good job when in truth I had no bloody idea what I wanted to do with my ‘sensible’ PhD.
Did I want to pursue a post-doc? Move into industry? Medical technology? Or did I want to settle for some kind of technical writing or corporate job that had little if anything to do with the years and years I’d spent studying a field I was so enthusiastic about?
It was hard to remember being enthusiastic about my subject area now. The drudgery of finishing a PhD and trying to remember research I’d completed three years ago in order to write it up had taken its toll on my love of molecular biology. I wondered if all I needed was some time off – a proper break spent doing anything but applying for jobs – for my adoration of the subject to renew itself.
“I could move back to Largs,” I whispered, the words billowing the steam in front of my face. I knew my dad would eagerly let me do so. My mum, on the other hand…she was enjoying her semi-retirement too much to have to deal with an adult child. A flash of irritation caused my temples to twitch at the thought. I was their only child. Surely they had to help me find my feet, even if only for a while.
But then I let out another sigh, and all my anger faded into the darkness around me. It wasn't fair to push myself on my parents. My dad climbed up the ranks of a phone company with no higher education to fall back onto. He’d worked tirelessly, and endlessly, to save up the money to leave the firm at the age of fifty-three. My mum was a private accountant and could definitely have afforded to retire completely if she hadn’t enjoyed her job too much to give it up entirely.
I was proud of them. Of course I was. But the notion that they didn't need me in their lives haunted me. I wondered if, when Louisa returned from Australia – if she ever did – she would no longer need me, either. Was I destined for a life of anxiety whenever I was faced with the prospect of making friends for myself, even when they literally did all the hard work for me, like David? I didn’t want that. I wanted to change.
It was so easy to think that. It was another thing entirely to do it.
When the door to the steam room opened and a shadowy figure sat down opposite me I immediately closed my eyes and tilted my head back against the wall. It was the only way I could continue to sit in comfortable silence with a stranger in such a situation; so long as I kept my eyes tightly shut I could enjoy the steam as it detoxed my mind and body as if I were still alone.
After several minutes of deep breathing I finally allowed myself to fall into a kind of semi-slumber. My muscles truly relaxed, and I wondered for how long I could remain in such humid conditions before collapsing from the heat. But, then, though there was no reason to believe such a thing, the atmosphere around me changed.
I became all too aware of the person sitting opposite me. It was not as if they were breathing heavily – in truth I could hardly hear them breathing at all – nor were they shifting on the spot or fidgeting with their hands or feet. No, there was nothing that had transpired to make me more aware of them in the past two minutes. But something had changed nonetheless.
I opened my eyes.
Through the steam I saw Dylan.
He was unabashedly staring at me as if challenging me to explain my presence there, sharing the steam room with him. Fearfully I imagined what he was going to say now that I knew he was there. ‘Why are you following me? Why were you asking Max about me? What are you doing stalking one of your students?’
That last question I’d rationalised to myself time and again on the pretence that I couldn’t be more than four or five years older than Dylan, but I knew that wasn’t the point. If I discovered one of my teachers was watching me the way I’d been watching him I’d have been scared and upset.
Yet Dylan said nothing. He remained completely and utterly silent, staring at me through fronds of steam with grey eyes that appeared to suck up what little light there was in the room. I opened my mouth to speak to him, instead, only to discover that my throat and tongue were so parched I seriously doubted I could’ve talked at all even if I’d known what to say.
There was plenty I could have said. Plenty I should have said, especially if I was a completely normal lab assistant who was not in the least bit thinking inappropriate thoughts about the oblivious tormentor of her heart currently sitting mere feet away from her.
I could have said, ‘Hi, you’re from the lab, right? Did you enjoy it?’ It was a valid question. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more I realised how weird it was that I hadn’t said something like that already. It was the kind of thing teachers said when they found themselves in bizarre situations with a student they saw every day.
I knew this from personal experience; a few months ago I’d run into the head of molecular biology in the bakery aisle of my local supermarket. Another time, three years ago, Louisa and I met one of our lecturers singing his heart out at a karaoke bar we’d gone to for her birthday.
‘What did you think of the experiments?’ was another thing I could have said. ‘Is there anything that could be improved? Do you think you might be inclined to get into the genomics side of marine biology?’
Just like Dylan, I remained silent.
Overwrought with painful chest constrictions and a heart that threatened to burst, it took me an excruciatingly long time to fully absorb the situation I had found myself in. But as the silence stretched out further and further between us, I found that I was – unbelievably – beginning to calm back down. I realised that I was sitting bolt upright, hands protectively clutched to my chest and my legs pressed together as tightly as I could physically manage. I wasn’t even aware I’d assumed such a position.
Dylan, on the other hand…Dylan was the picture of ease, reclining on his seat with his legs outstretched. They were so long my feet would have been touching his had I not blindly recoiled the moment I’d opened my eyes.
Steam clung to his hair, plastering it to his forehead in dark, heavy curls. Dylan’s expression gave away nothing of his intentions, and when I found my eyes wandering from his face to take in the rest of his disgustingly fit body he did not turn away.
What is going on? I wondered, finding myself slowly but surely relaxing back against my seat. My hands fell to my lap, then to my sides, and I opened my legs just an inch. It felt as if my attraction to Dylan must have been obvious – I was mirroring his body language, for god’s sake – but still, he said and did nothing.
Except stare. I stared right back, challenging him to give away his intentions. Had he been the one following me this time? Or had he come to the steam room right after me by chance? I was torn between the logical part of my brain saying that coincidences happened and the desperately lonely part of myself that wished nothing more than for Dylan to have directly sought me out.
And it was so hot. Steam swirled around me, turning my vision hazy and indistinct. Sometimes I could hardly see the lines of Dylan’s body at all, but I could always see his eyes. A burning filled my core that had precisely nothing to do with the steam. I wanted him; I knew I did.
I wanted him to know I wanted him.
Then, just as I consigned myself to finally say something, Dylan turned his gaze away. He got to his feet, stretched his arms above his head like a lazy cat waking from a sun-drenched nap, and left.
That was it. With a blast of cold, chlorine-scented air as he opened the door he was gone.
I bashed my head against the wall and my foot against the floor, chewing the inside of my mouth to hold in a frustrated scream. “You fucking idiot,” I said, close to tears. I had been given a perfect opportunity to talk to Dylan – my first and perhaps my last – and I'd absolutely squandered it.
I could never forgive myself for this.
Chapter Four
I never used to go to the university library. I always studied well enough at home. But studying and writing your thesis were two entirely different things, and I found it impossible to sit in my flat, alone, with nobody working beside me for company.
So I began going to t
he library…only to discover that it was so busy during the day that I couldn’t find a single seat next to a plug socket for my laptop charger. Thankfully I found it easy to adjust my sleep schedule to become a bit of a night owl, and in this way confirmed that the library was much emptier later in the evening.
I had, of course, shamefully scoured each of the thirteen floors of the building whenever I visited just on the off-chance that Dylan was there. He was a good student, after all. It was reasonable to think he might be there. But I’d not once run into him – not even in the week after our strange encounter in the steam room – much to my dismay.
On this occasion my visit to the library occurred at midnight. I hadn’t been able to sleep, tossing and turning in bed and restless beyond belief. The air outside my flat had been too still. Too quiet. It had unnerved me past all reason. So I got dressed, wrapped myself up in my favourite black, fluffy jacket, grabbed my laptop bag and walked the thirty minutes to the library through dimly-lit, abandoned streets.
Nearly every floor of the library was almost empty at this time of night – it closed at two in the morning – but I took the lift up to the tenth floor, anyway. There was a table I liked in the annexe there, surrounded by shelves of barely-if-ever-read books that was also, conveniently, close to a plug point. Some anonymous saint had actually plugged in an extension cord the previous week. If I ever found out who it was I swore I’d buy them a coffee or a Red Bull or something.
I crashed down onto a chair without looking to see if anyone else was sitting at the table first. It was large enough for eight people, after all, and I liked my regular spot here too much to give it up because someone else may or may not have been present. It was in this way that I got out my laptop, brain serenely filled with the sound of early 2000s Pop Idol music, and began reading over the progress I’d made the night before on my thesis.
For around half an hour I managed to focus. But when the playlist I’d been listening to ended and I had to choose some new music to listen to, I became aware of the sound of a pen scrawling across paper. It wasn’t the regular strokes associated with writing, though; it sounded more like the person in question was drawing.
The Boy from the Sea Page 3