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“That’s sexist and gross, and I have friends in STEM and—” And I’m not going on that rant. I can hear myself breathing heavily, even though I’ve done nothing more strenuous than sit in his car. I inhale long and slow, willing my heart rate to come down.
He folds his arms. The drizzle is collecting on him, beading on his skin. “Are you done?”
“No,” I say. “Because it shouldn’t matter. Saying, ‘I didn’t know you knew math, so I’m sorry I treated you like a nonperson’ is also fucked up. People who don’t know math also deserve respect.”
He looks at me for a long time. “Of course,” he says coldly.
Laser-like doesn’t begin to describe him. I feel like he’s laying me bare. Like he knows everything about me.
He folds his arms. “My apology stands as given. I don’t take back anything else I said last time. I think you’re distracting your brother.”
“Thanks,” I manage.
“I’m serious,” Jay says. “Your brother needs to focus. Let him fucking digest his bamboo.”
“Criticism noted. My answer still applies.”
“That being said,” Jay continues, “I should...” He hesitates, and then looks down. “Fine, whatever. You’re right about two things. I…have some thinking to do about…stuff.” He frowns as he says this. “Second, that plankton shit today was uncalled for. I play to win, but that was unfair on my part.”
“You mean I’m slightly more developed than protozoa?” I look over at him.
His eyes dip down, briefly. Momentarily. My throat tightens.
“Yes,” he says. “You are. It doesn’t mean I like you.”
Our eyes meet briefly. I know he doesn’t like me. I know it the way I know he can’t look away. I know it the way I can see his lip curl when his gaze dips down to my shoes—sensible flats with a filmy bow, my late-night get-work-done shoes.
“Fuck you,” I say calmly. “Fuck your apology. And fuck your holier-than-thou fake British accent.”
He shakes his head.
“I’m not the one you need to apologize to, anyway,” I tell him. “You know who you really messed with back there? Rachel.”
His eyes narrow. “Bullshit.”
“Because you just sent her a really clear message, Three Sigma. She’s going to wonder if you’ll turn on her if she shows up to lab looking nice because she has a date. She spent an hour and a half listening to you make fun of another Latina, and she was so upset that she left halfway through. She has to work with you. How is she ever supposed to trust you again?”
His expression doesn’t change. He stares at me as if he were carved from a block of ice, before finally he shakes his head. “I’m out of here. I have research to go over. Grant proposals to write.”
“Be careful. Actuarial tables defeat grant proposals.”
His eyes don’t move, but I still have the impression that he’s taking me in. All of me, from head to toe. I have the distinct feeling that if he let himself, he’d take a step toward me.
Maybe he thinks the same thing, because he rolls his eyes. “No shit. You’re not just distracting your brother.”
With that, he gets in his car and pulls away.
Maybe it’s wishful thinking, but part of me wants him to be distracted by me. Not because I’m attracted to him in anything other than an abstract, physical sense.
No, my desire is much crueler. I want him to want me because I want him to not have me. I want him to know that I’m completely, utterly out of his league. That there’s nothing he can do that will ever make things better.
I want to distract him from science by existing without him.
I want him to regret being a jerk to me. I want him to beg me for forgiveness for misjudging me.
And when he does, I want to squash him like the cockroach that he is and walk out of his life.
I swipe the rain out of my eyes and head home. On foot.
8
JAY
I park my car in the driveway, my thoughts boiling. I don’t like what just happened with Maria. I don’t like it at all. Right now, I just want to talk to someone who will tell me that I’m okay. That I haven’t fucked up.
Em comes to mind. You’re enough just as you are, she told me. And I still haven’t forgotten.
I get out my phone in front of my house and type. How does this soup thing work? I think I need soup.
The neighborhood seems silent and still.
I don’t know if Em’s around right now. She goes out, after all. But a half-minute later, three little dots appear.
Are you okay? she asks.
I’m fine. I just fucked up, is all, and I hate fucking up.
She doesn’t ask for details, and I don’t provide them. I don’t really want to have to explain to Em that someone I didn’t want to respect just pointed out that I was a dick. I hate even more that Maria was right.
I have always considered myself… I don’t know, one of the good guys. My first grad student was female. My study groups always had women in them. My perpetual coauthor had to cancel our last in-person work session because her daughter got pneumonia, and that’s just the way things are. My mom has a master’s in computer science, and I’ve seen all the bullshit she went through to get to the top of her field. I believe in birth control and expanding the STEM pipeline, and dammit, I think of myself as a feminist.
Except apparently, I’m not as good as I thought I was. I knew that Rachel was upset, but until Maria said those words, I didn’t realize how upset.
I feel like shit.
Sorry, I type. Just a case of wanting cookies I don’t deserve.
She sends back one character: ?
You know. I feel even worse explaining this to her. Cookies. The praise people expect for being a basically decent human being. Except apparently I’ve been awarding myself cookies and doing it wrong.
I know what cookies are. I just didn’t think you did.
I frown, and type. Why?
Not to stereotype, but cookies are usually transparent to men. Men think they always deserve them.
I’m frustrated. Unhappy. My sentences come out choppy. Yeah. Probably. I fucked up.
I don’t realize how much I was hoping for Em to forgive me until she doesn’t.
I’m not really in a mood to offer soup or cookies to men who fuck up right now, she writes. I know I should be a good friend or something and tell you that it’s okay, but you know what? Maybe it isn’t okay, and maybe it’s your fault, and maybe I’m not going to be your magical female scientist friend right now. If you fucked up, don’t whine to me about it. Do better next time.
Now I feel shittier than ever, because that is exactly what I wanted her to do—make me feel better.
I grimace. You know what? You’re right. I’m just going to shut up.
I should…read papers or something before I go to sleep, but I can’t. When I got out my phone, I had this image of texting Em. Of her offering support. Telling me that I’m not that bad, that one little mistake doesn’t make me a bad person.
r /> And it doesn’t. But the truth is, this is not a little mistake. I keep thinking of the look on Rachel’s face when she left. I keep hearing Maria’s voice. How is she ever supposed to trust you again? I can still see the curl in Maria’s lip. People who don’t know math also deserve respect.
I hate that Maria is right. I hate it. I hate that I’m not as good as I believed myself to be, and I hate that I let Rachel down. I hate that it’s going to take me months to build up trust again. I fucked up, and I hate it.
* * *
MARIA
* * *
It’s almost eleven, and I’m home and in bed and warm, before I get out my phone again. The guilt hasn’t gone away, which means…dammit. I text an apology.
Hey. I’m sorry about earlier. I snapped at you because I was upset about something else.
I’m sitting on my bed. I have an eight AM class. Still, I haven’t been able to wind down for the night yet. I don’t know if Actual Physicist is awake still, but…
Heh. His response is almost immediate. I was just about to apologize to you. You implied you were upset earlier. I ignored it because I was mad about discovering I was imperfect.
I don’t say anything for a little while. I don’t like fighting with him, not like this. It’s stupid to care what a pseudonymous physicist hidden somewhere in the world thinks of me, but I do.
I was a dick, he says. You basically told me someone was a jerk to you, and I kept going on about me. Are you okay?
There are so many things I can say to that. I start typing, and delete, and start again three times.
I keep waiting to discover the conditions on our friendship, I type. I don’t hit send.
I delete a fourth time and try again. There aren’t many people who know me well, I type instead. I usually don’t let myself get too angry with people I care about.
I don’t realize what I’ve said until the words are contained in a little green bubble, with no way to call them back.
The words are meaningless enough. “I care about you” doesn’t specify how much. It doesn’t tell him that his texts make me smile. That I’ve been worrying about him snapping at me or not writing back or…
