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Marissa scoffs, exasperated. “Yeah, not happening, Dr. Delusional.”
I make a mock-wounded face. “Merciless, Mayer.”
She smiles at me, and I love how we’re slowly going back to effortless banter, with inside jokes and witty comebacks.
“Anyway.” I kick a fallen leaf out of the way. “Since tomorrow is Thanksgiving, I wanted to give you a heads up that I’m hosting the celebrations at my house.”
“Why?” She stops walking abruptly and I have to backtrack a step.
“Everyone thought it’d be cool to do it at the old house.” I shrug.
“You haven’t told your sister or your parents about us? About the baby?”
“No, I told you. I want to wait for whenever you’re ready. If you’ve chosen to do it at Christmas, that’s okay.”
Marissa ponders for a second. “All right, keep the curtains drawn and we should be fine.”
“Sure,” I say, and I’m about to resume walking when I see she’s still rooted to the spot.
She raises a menacing finger at me. Uh-oh. “And don’t even think of bringing over a basket of muffins, cornbread, gravy, or whatever you horrible foodie people home cook.”
I grin. “Not even Nora and my world-famous pecan pie?”
“Especially nothing your fantastic daughter has made with her adorable, tiny hands.”
“Gotcha. We’ll keep to our lane. But if you happened to be in the mood for a slice of said famous pecan pie at the end of the day, I could smuggle you in from the backyard once everyone is gone.”
Marissa stares at me for a long time. “I’ll think about it.”
At least it’s not a hard no.
We start walking again and, soon, we reach the corner before her office building where we kiss goodbye like we do every morning. I watch her go inside, waiting for her to turn back and look at me like she does every day before stepping into the elevator.
Our eyes meet across the lobby, across the glass walls of the ground floor of her building, across the busy street but it’s like there’s no space between us at all. Marissa smiles and blows me a kiss. I grab it and keep it with me as I head to work for the last day before the long weekend.
“Gosh, your constant smiling is obnoxious,” Amada greets me as I enter the lab. “I preferred you when you were sulking in misery.”
“Your positive thinking and deep human empathy are as heartwarming as always.”
She scoffs, not removing her eyes from the microscope. “We can’t all use the lab minions to impregnate our significant exes and tie them to us forever.”
“For the millionth time, I had nothing to do with that.”
“So you keep saying. I’ll stick to my conspiracy theories. Ready to do some work, boss?”
I sit on the metal stool next to her. “Yes. But first, I went over your paper draft last night and found a tiny computational error and two typos.”
Her head snaps up. “Impossible, I’m perfect, I don’t make mistakes.”
“A bag of peanut M&M’s says you do.”
“I’ll take that bet, boss.”
Half an hour later, I’m walking back into my office popping M&M’s with victorious satisfaction when my phone pings with a notification.
From Marissa:
Just so you know, I’m drinking real coffee tomorrow. This half-caf thing you have me on isn’t cutting it anymore
