Loathe to Love You (The STEMinist Novellas #1-3)(42)

I expect Erik to get angry again. To tell me that I’m being foolish. To make one of those dry jokes of his that made me laugh every time. Instead he takes me by surprise: He looks away guiltily. Then he presses his thumb and forefinger in his eyes, like he’s suddenly, overwhelmingly exhausted, and murmurs quietly, “Fuck, Sadie. I’m sorry.”





Six


Three weeks ago

I have a grand total of zero superstitious rituals centered around dating.

And I promise I’m not saying this to brag. There is a simple reason I haven’t convinced myself that I need to chug down a Capri Sun or do seven jumping jacks before going out with someone, which is: I do not date. Ever. I used to, of course. Once upon a time. With Oscar, the Love of My Life.

Like Hannah often points out, it’s a little misleading for me to refer to the guy who met another woman at a data science corporate bonding retreat and two weeks later called me in tears to tell me that he was falling for her as the Love of My Life. And I swear, I do get the irony. But Oscar and I go way back. He gave me my first kiss (with tongue) when we were sophomores in high school. He was my date to the senior prom, the first nonfamily person I went on vacation with, the one whose shoulder I bawled on when he got accepted to his dream school in the Midwest, exactly seven states away from me.

We actually made it work pretty well during four years of long distance for college. And we did get to spend summers together, except when I was on internships, which was . . . well, yes, every summer but junior year, and I had that coding boot camp at UCSB then, so . . . yup, every summer. So maybe there were no summers together, but I did end up with a killer CV, and that was nice. Better, even.

When we graduated college, Oscar was offered a job in Portland, and I was going to follow him and find something there, but I got into Caltech’s Ph.D. program, which was too good an opportunity to pass up. I really thought we could do five more years of long distance, because Oscar was a great guy and so, so patient and understanding—till the beginning of my third year. Till the day he FaceTimed me, crying because he’d met someone else and had no choice but to break up with me.

I wept. I stalked his new girlfriend on Instagram. I ate my weight in Talenti gelato (salted caramel truffle, black raspberry vanilla parfait, and, on a particularly shameful night, mango sherbet melted into a pot of Midori sour; I am filled with regrets). I cut my hair short, to what my hairdresser dubbed the longest bob in the history of bobs. I couldn’t bear to be alone, so I slept in Mara’s bed for a week, because Hannah tosses around way too much and I’m pretty sure she changed the sheets twice in the five years we lived together. For about ten days I was utterly, soul-smashingly heartbroken. And then . . .

Then I was more or less fine.

Seriously, considering that Oscar and I had been together for almost a decade, my reaction to being one-sidedly broken up with was nothing short of miraculous. I aced all my classes and my lab work, spent the summer touring Europe by train with Mara and Hannah, and a couple of months later found myself shocked to realize that I hadn’t checked Oscar’s girlfriend’s Twitter in weeks. Huh.

“Could it be that it wasn’t real love?” I found myself asking my friends over Midori sours (sans mango sherbet; I had regained my dignity by then).

“I think that there are lots of kinds of love,” Hannah said. She was nestled next to me at our favorite booth at Joe’s, the grad student bar closest to our apartment. “Maybe yours with Oscar was closer to the sibling variety than to anything resembling a passionate affair between soul mates? And you’re still in touch. You know that you still love each other as friends, so your brain knows that there’s no need to mourn him.”

“But initially I was really, really devastated.”

“Well, I don’t want to armchair-psychologize you . . .”

“You totally want to armchair-psychologize me.”

Hannah smiled, pleased. “Okay, if you insist. I wonder if maybe you were more devastated at the idea of losing your safe harbor—the person who was there for you since you were kids and promised to be there for you forever—than at the idea of losing Oscar himself. Could it be that he was a crutch of sorts?”

“I don’t know.” I poked at my garnish cherry. “I liked being his girlfriend. He was so . . . there, you know? And when we were apart I missed him, but not too much. It was . . . easy, I guess.”

“Could it be that it was too easy?” Mara asked before stealing my lime.

I’ve been pondering her question ever since.

But there hasn’t been anyone after Oscar. Which means that he still technically retains the title of Love of My Life, even if two months ago I got an invite to his wedding—pretty glaring clue that I’m not the Love of His. I could have gotten out more, I guess, especially in grad school. I could have tried harder. “When one door shuts, another opens,” Hannah and Mara would say. “Now you can date around. You missed out on so many hot dudes in the past few years—remember the guy we met in Tucson? Or the one who always asks you out at conferences? Oh my God, the guy in fluid dynamics who was clearly in love with you? You should hit him up!”

Of course, whenever the topic of my love life comes up, and because dragging is a sacrosanct part of the covenant of friendship, I never hesitate to point out that even though both Hannah and Mara have been mostly single ever since starting grad school, they barely take advantage of their amazing dating opportunities. It usually ends with Mara defensively muttering that she’s busy, and Hannah rebutting that she’s on a break from hooking up with people, because her last two fuck buddies were Can I Jizz in Your Hair and Human Skull on the Nightstand Girl, and they would put anyone off sex. It usually ends with us collectively deciding that no relationship could ever compete with our jobs, guinea pigs, or . . . Netflix, maybe? If the idea of staring at blueprints is more appealing to me than hitting the club (whatever that even means; what even is a club, really?) then maybe I should just hang out with the blueprints. Not that things cannot change, since Mara is now embarrassingly, fantastically in love with her Formerly Asshole Roommate.