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So fun, that Brian. She turned to face him. His dark hair was sticking out every which way and his face was unshaven. He looked stressed-out, which wasn’t unusual but generally didn’t bode well for her. “Hi Brian,” she said, trying to find the pleasant but deferential tone that seemed to edify him. She hated that she couldn’t just talk to him like a normal human, but apparently there was something about her that had led him to tell Dr. Taketami—the lab’s Primary Investigator, and thus Ledi’s boss—that she was “giving him attitude.” Ledi couldn’t afford to be labeled as a problem.
She was like a faulty piece of Velcro; people tried to stick to her, but there was something intrinsically wrong in her design. Twenty plus years of data, starting from that first foster family, supported that hypothesis.
Still . . . she wondered what it would be like to let someone in. Not Clarence, who’d been a Break Glass In Case of Emergency kind of boyfriend, but someone who might actually prove her hypothesis wrong. That would be terrifying.
“Oh, you’re already helping customers? That’s great, showing initiative,” she said. Her brain had registered that he fell into a group labeled “Nope,” but all of her cylinders still weren’t firing. She was trying to sound bright and in charge, but her vocabulary center was stuck on “Damn, he fine,” making forming sentences a bit difficult. “Um. Here.”
She sighed, but released her grip on her key and pulled out her phone. “I’m telling my friend I’m having dinner with some asshole named Jamal who is definitely an arsonist and may or may not be a serial killer. So if you try to make lemon sage Ledi instead, the police will be here before you have time to book it to LaGuardia.”
but he’d seemed unsure of himself as he stood before her in the hallway. Chagrined. She’d told him what an ass he’d been, and he hadn’t even tried to turn it around and explain to her how she had made him behave like an ass. And now he was trying to make it up to her. She wondered if this was some new species of fuckboy, an evolved version that was more effective at luring women into its trap before showing its true nature. If that was the case, it was working.
considered. “Because men make life harder for women who say no, especially women who look like me,” she said. “STEM is already hard to navigate—being marked as someone who doesn’t work well in teams or contribute enough could tank my career.”
She inhaled deeply. He didn’t understand just how much of a risk she’d already taken just by talking to him. Just by not running away as soon as she realized his effect on her. She had exams and a possibly fucked-up practicum to worry about. There was no time for a handsome, bearded foreign man who wanted to cook for her. Wait, when you put it like that . . .
“I know you’re very busy, Ledi. If you can fit me in, I’d be honored to be one of the many things that take up your time.”
Apparently, oh-sure-I’ll-do-that Ledi had been incinerated by the flames of her frustration and I-wish-a-motherfucker-would Ledi had risen from the ashes.
“This is the lab,” Ledi said in a flat tone, spreading her hands out like a lethargic museum guide. She refused to listen to any more of his lies, especially when it was so tempting to believe them. “Science stuff happens. Kind of like magic, but with more paperwork.”
Caring was the worst, despite its evolutionary necessity.
“That’s the thing, Naledi. That the people who love you will hurt you the most is one of the great conundrums of the human condition. My philosophy tutor said so, and he had about five degrees on the subject, so I guess it holds some water.”
