A Symptom of Love (GERI Labs #1)

26. Unpretending

26

Unpretending

“ E llie, we don’t have to pretend to be together anymore,” Aiden says as they reach the GERI parking lot, studying her carefully. Since leaving the airport he’s been quiet, reserved, deep in thought. They are back. Back to DC. Back to work. Back to reality. And his voice sounds like they’ve reached the end of the road. “Maybe it’s for the best.”

“Right,” Eleanor says, trying to hide the disappointment in her voice with a cough. She’s spent her career studying temporary epigenetics modifications: methylation, acetylation, on- and off-switches. And despite what Aiden might think, his feelings have a switch too, because it certainly sounds like he’s changing his mind.

And maybe this can all be blamed on the San Diego air. Or her fever, and the cough medicine, and dehydration, or all of these combined, that made her believe there was something more.

That they were more.

But when Aiden lets go of her hand and puts a distance between them instead of pulling her close, and the beautiful blue in his eyes travels thousands of miles away, it feels like the world might be falling apart. And maybe it’s her imagination, but he hesitates before he enters the lab and lets her in first, long before he does, as if making it seem like they hadn’t just spent the night tangled in each other’s arms. Hadn’t just had their hearts close together, pulsing and pounding out of control. Hadn’t just arrived there together, holding hands on a flight from San Diego.

The end of their pretend fairytale. Prince Charming has just willingly turned into a frog. And it’s time to go back to real life. Only nothing about it feels right, or real, or compatible with life.

Yet, instead of protesting or telling him her side—which is obviously pointless, plus he waived all rules, which could possibly include the ‘honesty’ one—she pulls back.

There once were two people who had been pretending there wasn’t an unbelievably incredible pull drawing them together—because they couldn’t be together. The pull grew so strong that they decided it would be a good idea to pretend they were together. A fake-relationship—the perfect excuse. But now they’re back to pretending they are not . And were not . And will not . This is not how fairytales work. And despite Eleanor’s dislike for fairytales, this is way too anti-climatic. Next level confusing. And mostly just… sad.

But it’s also Aiden’s lab meeting time and she has to pretend, yet again, that life is back to normal. A new kind of unwanted normal. And it’s Eleanor’s turn to present her latest data. So she tapes this bleeding heart of hers sort of together, picks up her head high, and goes into the conference room.

“I want you to treat me like everyone else tomorrow.” She had made Aiden promise on their flight back. He was holding her hand and gently rubbing her knuckles in that special way that made her heart beat a little stronger. “No favoritism at the lab meeting, judge my data as harsh as you would anyone else’s.” And as the perfect mentor and her perfect pretend boyfriend, he reluctantly agreed.

And he does. Maybe he's a bit too harsh. And when feeling under attack, even if she’s not really being attacked, Eleanor’s survival instincts kick in and she attacks back. Harsher. And Aiden raises his voice, and she does the same. It’s not personal, or maybe it’s too personal, but their scripts adhere closely to everything science, despite really meaning everything else.

“Outside of germline and pathologic processes, genomic imprinting in somatic cells is irreversible,” he insists.

“As far as we know,” Eleanor argues. “But our conclusion is only as good as the current knowledge we base it on.” And she means it, but the passion in her voice has very little to do with methylation, or genomic imprinting, and everything to do with them . Her past relationship with a guy with reversible feelings, and Aiden—who has so insistently claimed his own feelings for her are irreversible, yet he’s just fake-broken up with her in his car. And that’s a perfect example of how romantic distractions can interfere with careers, especially for people with Eleanor’s temperament. Because Aiden is correct—until proven otherwise, genomic imprinting in somatic cells is still considered very much stable. But this knowledge doesn’t stop her from snapping at him. In full force.

“Obviously you have no understanding whatsoever of what irreversible means,” she shouts. Because he promised to keep choosing her. Promised that what he had for her had no off-switch. Yet it feels like he’s pulling away. And even if he isn’t, her defense mechanisms are already kicking in, reminding her why she had swore off relationships to begin with. “You’re teaching theories that you know deep inside can’t be true,” she argues. ”That’s irresponsible.”

“Dr. Benjamin,” Aiden says, his voice a warning. “It’s not the place—“

“So now I’m Dr. Benjamin, Professor Kowalski? I’m so sick of your formality. Do you think your students would have less respect for you if you addressed them by their first names? Or God forbid let them call you by yours? Or have a chance to sleep in on Wednesdays instead of making your goddamn seven-thirty meetings on time?”

“Eleanor, that’s enough,” he says between clenched teeth. And it may be the first time he calls her that.

“Enough? You’re the one talking about permanent modifications, while hiding—"

“I said enough!” he seethes.

Alannah gives her a ‘Babe—you better shut up’ look, because she knows her roommate well enough by now to tell she’s about to lose all filters. Yeah, she’s just warming up. Eleanor hates it when people give in to an argument and in the heat of the moment say things they’ll never be able to take back. Yet she can’t help herself this time around and does exactly that. And even Zoe, who is known to enjoy a good fight, is caught off-guard by Eleanor and Aiden’s fiery exchange. Or rather—Eleanor’s fire.

But luckily for Eleanor, Aiden decides to be the mature person in the room, and instead of dragging her out by her hair, he finds a scientific compromise that allows her to get off that anti-permanent genomic imprinting tree she’s single-handedly climbed on and stay silent about the rest of the stuff—the personal stuff. The lab meeting ends with confused expressions on her peers’ faces.

“My office,” Aiden says in a low voice under his breath. She follows behind him as he spreads a furious commanding whirlwind across the open space.

“Jesus Christ. What was that all about?!” he grunts, slamming the door behind them. His face raging, but his voice is measured and impressively controlled. “Were you talking about science or about us ?”

“Both,” she admits, head still held high.

“I’m sorry I went a little rough on you in there,” he says, “it just took me a while to realize you weren’t talking about your data anymore,” he sighs. “Or rather, you were talking about our own personal life worth of data, not the data coming out of your lab experiments.” He takes a strained breath. “Our own private stuff shouldn’t be discussed at a lab meeting.”

“Our own private stuff? The way you said we could stop pretending ? Your distance? Your hesitation? Your formality? You acted like us never even existed.”

He hesitates again. Then says, “I guess I have to figure out how to just be your mentor. It caught me off-guard.”

“So first we pretend we’re not, then we pretend we are, and now you want to pretend none of it ever happened?”

With confused expression, he says, “I thought that’s what you wanted.”

“Well, things change. I wanted you to treat me like you treat everybody else, but that was a ridiculous request.” That’s what she had asked, and he’d done exactly that. Maybe a little too well. Because it felt like a blow to the stomach. And she just can’t bear the thought of him not looking at her through soft, admiring blue eyes, not touching her passionately, not holding her possessively, not kissing her like every kiss was their first and their last.

“Maybe you need to treat everyone the way you treat me.”

His eyebrows crush together, as he’s trying to follow her impossible logic.

She gives it some more thought, “No, actually I take that back. That won’t work for me either. I just… I think you were forgetting who I was in there.” She tries to stay composed but can’t help the rising volume of her voice.

“I think you were forgetting your place in there.” He matches her enraged tone. This anger about him is a look she can hardly recognize.

“Excuse me?”

“It’s one thing when we’re alone. But around my students—you can’t fucking talk to me like that!” His glare is a warning. He looks furious, and mad, and hurt, and… she can’t stop thinking that whatever it was, pretend or not, whatever feelings he might have had for her—those are all gone. Left in San Diego.

“Like what? Like your fake girlfriend?” That angry inferno is growing stronger. All those pretty words Aiden had said back at the hotel, they must have been her high fever and exhaustion talking. He couldn’t have seriously said those words she’s committed to memory and played on an endless repeat since.

“No, that’s not what I meant—" he tries to say, but she’s too mad now to listen.

“You know, you really didn’t have to say all those cute pretty words and be this most amazing pretend boyfriend to get me into your bed. I would have happily opted in for this mind-blowing sex with you months ago, if it weren’t for your stupid ‘no seduction’ rule. All you had to do was not stop me. ”

“These weren’t pretty words. I meant everything I said.”

“Meant. As in past tense. You were the most amazing pretend boyfriend. But looks like now you’d rather pretend that part never happened. Hide whatever happened.” And despite how painful the thought is, she says, “I guess it’s time to let things go back to the way they were.”

“Ellie, that’s not—” he tries to plead, but she’s crashing so fast she can’t stop.

“No, you know what? Maybe you’re right—not everything is reversible.”

Because there’s no way she can go back to how things were before. No way she can go back to work like this. No way she can look at him every day without… shattering.

“Let me spare us both the trouble—you don’t have to be my fake boyfriend nor my mentor. I have no intention of being your secret fake girlfriend in a past hidden relationship you don’t want anybody to know about. I fucking quit!” Her own words take her by surprise as the look on Aiden’s face.

A new symptom appears on her already too-long-to-keep-track-of list. But this one is different. And it overshadows everything preceding it, thousands of needles piercing her chest, pressing, and twisting. And it doesn’t stop even when she turns on her heels and opens his office door.

“Ellie, don’t… Ellie—" His voice tries to pull her back in, hand reaching out to stop her. But she steps out quickly and runs away from him, her sobs bursting out uncontrollably. Had she known a breakup from this pretend boyfriend could feel this way, she would have avoided it at all costs.

Her mind drifts to the last few months, reeling through her shared moments with this infuriating man. Well, she couldn’t have avoided it even if she’d wanted to. This thing between them—it’s way beyond her willpower. Especially after their incredible week of fake relationshipping in San Diego. Of having this spectacular man by her side, all to herself. A whole week of fearlessly calling him her boyfriend and allowing him to take care of her until she was well enough to travel back. Because fake relationshipping sounded safe. Safe from involving feelings. Right?

The thing is, at some point in this fake relationship, Eleanor forgot she was pretending, and worse—she forgot she had a rule against falling in love. Or maybe she had already forgotten about that rule a while back, when she fell into Aiden’s lap, and then again, every single day after. It all felt so real. And having a fake boyfriend was easy, and safe, because it didn’t go against her ‘no relationship’ rule. And if anything, it showed her how stupid she was for thinking she didn’t want anything more from Aiden. Because she wanted everything from him. She doesn’t want to sit in lab meetings and pretend there’s nothing going on between them. She doesn’t want a fake relationship. She wants a real one. The real fucking deal.