Love on the Brain by Ali Hazelwood

            “You know I don’t despise you,” he insists with a hint of accusation.

            “Sure I do.”

            “Bee.”

            He says my name again, with that voice, and all I see is red.

            “But of course I know. How could I not know when you’ve been so relentlessly cold, arrogant, and unapproachable.” I stand, anger bubbling up my throat. “For years you have avoided me, refused to collaborate with me without valid reasons, denied me even minimally polite conversation, treated me as though I was repulsive and inferior—you even told my fiancé that he should marry someone else, but of course you don’t despise me, Levi.”

            His Adam’s apple bobs. He stares at me like that, stricken, disconcerted, like I just hit him with a polo mallet—when all I’ve done is tell the truth. My eyes sting. I bite my lip to keep the tears at bay, but my stupid body betrays me once again and I’m crying, I’m crying in front of him, and I hate him.

            I’m not mad at him—I hate him.

            For the way he’s treated me. For having the solid career I don’t. For concealing the politics of this damn septic tank of a project. I hate him, hate him, hate him, with a passion I thought I could only reserve for defective airbags, or Tim, or the third move of the year. I hate him for reducing me to this, and for sticking around to see his handiwork.

            I hate him. And I don’t want to feel so much.

            “Bee—”

            “This is not worth it.” I wipe my cheek with the back of my hand and walk past without looking at him. Of course he has to be massive and make that hard, too.

            “Wait.”

            “I’ll tell NIH about what’s happening,” I say without stopping or turning back. “I can’t risk my superiors thinking that the project failed because of me. I’m sorry if that puts you in a bad position, and I’m sorry if that means delaying BLINK.”

            “That’s okay. But please, wait—”

            No. I don’t want to wait, or to listen to even one more word. I keep on walking in my pretty daisy sandals until I can’t hear him anymore, until I can’t see through the blur of my tears. I walk out of the Space Center and fantasize that I’m leaving Houston, Texas, the United States. I fantasize about getting on a plane and flying to Portugal to get a hug from Reike.

            I fantasize all the way home, and it doesn’t make me feel any better.



* * *



            • • •

            I’M STARING AT my phone—just that: brooding and staring at my phone—when a Twitter notification pops up on my screen.


@SabriRocks95 Second year geology Ph.D. student going through a rough patch, here. @WhatWouldMarieDo if she felt like the universe is trying to tell her to give up?



            Ouch. This one hits a little too close. My sense of helplessness reached critical mass earlier today, halfway through Alanis Morissette’s discography and well past my second tub of orange sherbet. I feel like I was run through a paper shredder. Like a used Q-tip. A flushable wipe. Not fit to give advice to the moth that’s been fluttering against my window, let alone an intelligent young woman with career trouble. I retweet, hoping that the WWMD community will take care of @SabriRocks95.

            “Maybe I should quit academia,” I muse, leaning back in my chair, staring across the open-plan kitchen to Dr. Curie’s magnet. “Should I quit my job?”

            Marie doesn’t reply. Silent approval? There are things I could do. Brush up on the German accusative and meet Reike in Greece, where olive oil tycoons would hire us to instruct their teenaged heirs. Shop that sitcom idea I once had: a Bayesian statistician and a frequentist become reluctant roommates. Write my mermaid YA series. Move under a bridge and ask riddles in exchange for safe passage.

            Maybe I shouldn’t quit. At least one Königswasser twin needs a stable job, to post bail when the other gets arrested for indecent exposure. Knowing Reike, that’s any day now.

            Then again, I’m fairly sure that without BLINK, Trevor won’t renew my contract anyway.

            My career is the ultimate unrequited love story, littered with well-reviewed grants that never got funded for political reasons, a shitty boss instead of the rock star I was promised, and now NIH and NASA petty-fighting like cousins at Thanksgiving. When your supposed big break turns into a losing game, that’s when you cut your losses, right?