Page 22 of Researching the Pole

“I do not care about my fucking study! I care about YOU! You dumb, pea-brained idiot!”

His eyes went huge and round.

“More than your study?”

“Of course, more than my study!” I yelled at him.

“But… but I thought that… I didn’t want your experiment to fail. Then you would never come back here. You would never want to work with me. You would never want to look at me again, and I would lose you before I even had—”

“Shut the fuck up.” And then I just launched myself at him. I covered his idiot mouth with mine and kissed him within an inch of his life.

“I’m going to kill you. Promise me you’ll never again do something like that.” I pulled back and looked into his eyes.

He still looked confused.

“You are the thing that I care most about. I was stupid back in high school. In denial. Assuming things about you because I liked you too much. I didn’t know I was attracted to you. Somewhere very deep in my heart, I knew it. But to protect myself, I’d made up all these false ideas about you being arrogant and you looking down at me, when that was never true. You didn’t ever do anything like that. And now, after meeting you, after getting to know you, after being in your arms and being loved by you, how can you even think that I don’t care about you?”

I was breathing hard by the time I finished my rambling monologue. And feeling slightly stupid. The words came pouring out before I could stop them.

Grant blinked a few more times, and then suddenly a jubilant smile spread on his face.

“What the heck are you smiling about?” I grumbled. “I’m yelling at you for being stupid.”

“You like me, Doc?”

“Of course, I like you. What’s there not to like? You’re annoyingly handsome, tall, strong, you remember what I drink, you understand my experiment, you… you’re a freaking dream come true for any gay man.”

His eyebrows rose.

I laughed. “And yeah, that’s me. I’m gay. Happy?”

He raised his hand and made a fist and pumped it in the air like a lunatic. “Yes!” He yelled into the silence of our cabin. Then, with a huge grin, he picked me up and spun me around.

“Yes, I am very happy, Adrien Cole. You have made me the happiest man.”

11

Epilogue

4 years later

I stood at the edge of the ballroom, champagne flute untouched in my hand, watching Grant’s broad back across the room. Even in a sea of tuxedos, he stood out—taller, broader, moving with an easy confidence. The elderly Dr. Morrison leaned in and laughed at something he said.

The first time I’d brought Grant to one of these events, I had lasted exactly forty minutes before I realized I needed to make an announcement. Grant had been surrounded by a cluster of academics vying for his attention like a gaggle of high schoolers. People touched his arm, slid up to him, offering him tenure even though he was not a scientist.

The spike of possessiveness had been so sharp I’d walked straight over onto the stage and announced, “Excuse me, I need to introduce everyone to Grant Reeves, my boyfriend and research partner.”

The room had gone quiet before exploding into congratulations and grumblings. Grant, though, was the happiest attendee that night. I’m pretty sure the extra shine in his eyes was unshed tears.

Over the years, we’d become “that duo”—the bioacoustician and his diver, traveling to remote locations, gathering data nobody else could access, publishing papers that made waves in marine mammal research.

I twisted the ring on my finger, the metal warm from my skin, and pulled the folded speech from my pocket for what had to be the twentieth time. The Rising Star Science Award. The announcer’s voice cut through the ambient conversation, and a spotlight swung across the room to land directly on me. My heart kicked against my ribs. Grant turned immediately, finding me across the crowd, and the small smile he gave me was the same one he’d worn that first morning in the cabin.

I walked to the podium, legs steadier than I expected. “Four years ago, my first attempt to record the male leopard seal’s mating song in its entirety resulted in disaster. But I managed to collect enough data to secure funding for a second trip. The accident with the hydrophones resulted in a new version of anchoring system.”

My eyes landed on Grant. He was leaning against the bar, arms crossed, watching me with that expression I knew so well—pride and heat and something deeper that still made my pulse spike even after all these years. “This award… I’ve been chasing it since middle school. It doesn’t belong to me. It belongs to the innumerable people who have helped me, starting from my seventh grade biology teacher.” I opened my sheet and thanked each person by name.

“But the irony isn’t lost on me that what has actually made me famous is the viral video of that leopard seal courting me in the water, its massive body circling closer, and it offering me dead fish after dead fish.”