Chemistry Lessons

by Meredith Goldstein

  Bryan had wanted to take me into Harvard Square to get a new outfit, but I explained that it was better for the experiment if I looked “normal.” No new wardrobe or special makeup or accessories. I wound up in my most average outfit—​a pair of jeans and a black T-shirt. I put my hair up in the usual ponytail, pushing all the loose frizz behind my ears, and allowed myself minimal makeup.

  “Hey,” I said, sliding into the booth to face him.

  “Hey,” he said back, prolonging the eye contact until I had to blink.

  His hair was different, or, more accurately, missing. He’d basically shaved his head.

  “It’s easier like this,” he said when he saw me staring at it, my jaw hanging low.

  “I like it, I think,” I said, trying to figure out whether I actually did. Now there was just an almost invisible red stubble on his skin.

  “Bryan would hate it,” Whit said, grinning.

  “He’d despise it,” I said.

  “Don’t tell him,” he said, laughing as he rubbed the top of his scalp with his palm.

  He was wearing the pink Historic Plymouth T-shirt I got for him during my trip to Aunt Cindy’s more than a year ago. I smiled, noticing how tightly it fit. He had gained a little weight living in the dorms this year. The white P was beginning to crack under the pressure. It was cute.

  We started talking like the night wasn’t a big deal, slipping into our old routine, like the last few months hadn’t happened. We avoided all discussion of Andrea Berger. We never referenced our breakup.

  I asked him what he thought of Bryan’s show, and he went on and on about how impressed he was with his performance.

  “He’s got that thing, you know? It’s so natural for him. Really, there aren’t many people who can star in a musical and then do Shakespeare. He really gets it.”

  “I know,” I said, teeming with pride.

  Then Whit mentioned Asher, and all my breath left my body at once.

  “He was serviceable, but can you explain why that guy is such a big deal? I’ve never even heard of him, but the minute he walked onstage, these girls behind us started shrieking. One girl was actually crying. We were so confused.”

  I flinched at the we.

  “He’s sort of an online phenomenon,” I said as a server came over and placed bowls of miso soup in front of us. “He makes viral videos, and now he’s acting. The videos get about a million views apiece.”

  “He should find a day job,” Whit said, grabbing a spoon. “I mean, the fact that the guy has the lead role in a professional production is just offensive. It’s one thing to put him in the kids’ cast, but in the adult production? Come on.”

  “He’s actually in the running to star in a play in New York, off-Broadway,” I said, feeling the need to defend Asher. Whit could be so judgmental.

  “Good for him, I guess,” Whit said, starting on his soup.

  “So,” I said, changing the subject, “I got my first choice for room assignments next year. A single in Simmons Hall.”

  “Which one was that?”

  I googled the dorm on my phone and showed Whit the crazy architecture. “Remember? It’s the weird-looking one—​the building that looks like a big sponge.”

  “I’ve always thought that building looks more like a prison,” he said, laughing. “I can’t wait to see your room, though. Thank god it’s a single.”

  My stomach dropped as I tried to process what that could mean.

  I fought the urge to ask for clarification and brought up his writing instead. He told me that he’d spent the summer writing a new short film about a man who lives his whole life in a cubicle.

  “It’s a commentary on office culture,” Whit said.

  My mind wandered as he spoke. I couldn’t focus.

  Instead, I was thinking about what would happen next—​whether I’d be able to extend the evening. This dinner hadn’t given us much opportunity to get close.

  He grabbed the check, refusing to let me contribute.

  “You came all the way into Boston. My treat,” he said, throwing down two twenties.

  Outside the restaurant, the Green Line train bellowed and then squeaked to a stop in front of us.

  “T or bus?” he asked.

  “Bus will be faster,” I said, defeated.

  “I’ll walk you to a stop,” Whit said, running his hand across his head the way he always did. It was a strange move without the hair.

  “You don’t have to.”

  I stared at him then, my eyes darting from his forehead to his nose to his mouth. I had been so starved for the look of him, and now that we were standing face-to-face, under the bright lights of the nearby bodega, I reacquainted myself with all of his features—​his crooked bottom teeth, his high cheekbones, and the small scar under his lip that he got from falling on his face during his twelfth birthday party at an ice-skating rink.

  So much had happened since he’d broken up with me. I wanted to be the person I was months ago, before all this had started. I wanted to curl up with him and feel like things were simple.

  “Let me walk with you,” he said. “It’s late. Come on.”

  We were mostly silent as we walked along Commonwealth Avenue toward Mass. Ave. Twice I felt my hand accidentally skim his.

  I was thoughtful about my pace, moving as slowly as I could without it being weird. With Kyle, we had always been in rooms together, in close proximity, with the windows closed. There had been more variables with Asher, but we had had a long walk around the pond and had settled in that Narnia clearing, where there was nothing else to get in our way.

  This walk with Whit was more difficult. The street was crowded with college kids who kept pushing their way between us. I couldn’t tell whether Whit was getting anything chemical from our interaction.

  “What are you thinking?”

  His question startled me, and I realized we were steps away from where I could pick up the bus to get back home.

  I stopped and looked up, sensing his pensiveness, and began to laugh at his question. I had asked him once, at the start of our relationship, “What are you thinking?” and he had answered with a lecture. “Never say ‘What are you thinking?’ Ever. It’s an awful girlfriend question, and I like you because you are not the kind of girlfriend who asks that question,” Whit had said.

  I remember trying not to freak out because it was the first time he had called me his girlfriend.

  “You just asked me the horrible girlfriend question,” I said through my laughter, prompting Whit to join me. “What am I thinking? What are you thinking?”

  “Wow. You’re right.”

  “Don’t worry, I don’t mind the question,” I said, grinning.

  “Hey,” he said, and tilted his head to his shoulder, “do you want to see my apartment before you go home? It’s only a few blocks away.”

  He was doing my work for me. I had thought about asking to see his place, or at least meeting there before dinner, but I was afraid Andrea Berger might be sitting in his living room, waiting for his return. Or that evidence of her existence would be all over the apartment.

  “Sure,” I said, trying to keep my tone breezy.

  I followed him to a beautiful brownstone on a less noisy side street in the neighborhood. For a moment, I wondered how he could afford this kind of apartment, but when he opened the door, I saw that it was less pristine inside. The paint on the walls in the hallway was yellowed and peeling. There were about twenty pairs of shoes in the front hallway, some blocking the door. Whit kicked them out of the way and led me to the stairs.

  We were both out of breath by the time we got to his place on the fifth floor.

  “The stairs are a beast, right?” he said, panting as he fiddled with his keys. “I’m hoping to get in better shape living here.”

  All my concerns about whether he’d notice my pheromones evaporated when we entered the apartment. It was small and hot; I could almost see the moisture in the air. Whit’s apartment was basically a
larger version of the warm room in our lab. I couldn’t have designed it any better.

  “You guys need an air-conditioning unit,” I said. “My dad probably has an old one.”

  “No, thank you,” Whit said, shaking his head. “We actually have one and kept it running throughout July and wound up with a four-hundred-dollar electric bill. I think Nate never turned the thing off when he left for the day. Now we’re surviving without it for the rest of the summer.”

  I nodded as I walked through the place, surprised by the Dali print of melting clocks in the living room, which I figured Whit would have vetoed because it was such a stereotypical dorm-room print—​the kind of art he’d say was for people who didn’t know anything about art.

  There were also three framed vinyl records—​Fleetwood Mac, the Black Keys, Kings of Leon . . . bands I wasn’t even sure he liked. Nothing in the place seemed to go together.

  I found the bathroom and went in, pulling the shower curtain back like a police detective. I wondered if Andrea Berger might have left any products in the apartment, but all I saw was one industrial-size bottle of dandruff shampoo.

  “My bedroom is over there,” he said, pointing.

  Whit’s room was more his style. Only one print hung on his yellowing wall, a framed black-and-white photograph of a wistful-looking clown that we’d found at a flea market when we first started dating. I don’t know why we loved the photo so much; now it looked extra pitiful as the centerpiece of the room.

  “It’s really good to see you in this room,” Whit said. “It’s weird, but it’s good. I’m happy you’re here.”

  I whipped around to face him. He leaned against the door frame, his facial expression matching the one on the bummed-out clown.

  I paused before I spoke as I considered the strangeness of being estranged. As natural as it felt to be with him, the almost two months that had passed since our breakup felt like a year. I didn’t know him now. Not really.

  “Being with you—​and not being with you—​it feels unnatural,” I confessed. “I don’t know what my place is here.”

  “Come sit down,” he said, walking to the bed.

  I joined him there and he leaned over, reaching into the drawer of his nightstand. For a second my whole body tensed as I wondered what he might be retrieving, but then I recognized the small yellow pouch that held the Bananagrams.

  I couldn’t keep myself from laughing. “Cool college guys do not keep Bananagrams in their nightstands. You’re supposed to have condoms and drugs in there.”

  “The condoms come out after the Bananagrams,” he said, smirking. “You have to work up to these things, Maya.”

  I flagged the comment in my head as a possible sign that things were working. Something was happening.

  I looked for more specific evidence as he set up the game. His eyes were a little red, but not quite dilated. He wasn’t mirroring my behavior as much as he was falling into our old routine.

  We sat across from each other on the bed, like we used to at my house, more focused on winning than anything else. We played round after round, mostly silent as we raced to build words with the game pieces. It was peaceful, just fumbling for the small lettered squares, occasionally glancing up to see whether his words were better than mine.

  At some point I glanced at the clock on his nightstand and saw that it was late. After eleven. If I waited much longer to go home, the buses would stop running. We’d made progress, but I’d have to do this again for more results. I would ask Ann for more time with the serum. This was the part of the experiment that counted, and I needed to get it right.

  “I should go,” I said as Whit finished spelling out QUIT, which seemed appropriate.

  “Maya,” Whit said, interrupting before I could say any more. “Can I ask you a weird favor?”

  I looked up, and his eyes were glassier.

  “Of course,” I said, watching his shoulders collapse like he had given up on something.

  He scratched his head again and looked frustrated. Watching all those familiar expressions pass over his face made me want to grab his shoulders and yell, “Don’t you miss this?” But I kept my hands in my lap and watched him, trying to make sense of his changing mood.

  “Listen,” he said, leaning in like he was telling a secret. “Can we just lie down in bed and talk before you go? Like we used to? I sort of want to be close right now, if that’s okay with you. I can’t explain it.” His voice cracked.

  I nodded, too surprised to speak.

  He began adjusting the pillows while my brain spun like a centrifuge. My plan was to start slow, just spending time with him on his terms. Maybe he’d exhibit signs that the experiment had worked; maybe I’d have to continue to see him before results were clear. No matter what, I hadn’t planned on anything physical happening with Whit. I didn’t want to be part of a cheat; that would pollute our whole relationship.

  I had checked Andrea Berger’s Instagram account before dinner, looking for any indication that their relationship had changed, but there was nothing. Her bio quote was the same, and there were no sad messages, just rehearsal updates and a few posts of quotes from actresses and writers she liked. She and Whit still seemed to be together, at least online.

  But all he wants to do is lie down, I rationalized. It wouldn’t be a cheat, not if we just talked.

  The mattress shifted as he turned off the light and scrambled to stretch out next to me. I could’ve asked him why it was necessary for it to be dark, but I didn’t. Instead, I turned on my side and went horizontal, my chest tightening as I felt him move to spoon me from behind, resting one arm on my waist.

  My ethics—​both personal and professional—​went out the window as I involuntarily pulled the arm that was on my waist in front of me so we were even closer.

  He dove in, nuzzling my ear on the pillow.

  “You smell so good.”

  “That’s the word on the street,” I said, my body tense all over.

  He pushed his hips into my backside and kissed my neck.

  “Whit,” I said, my voice strained, “what are you doing?”

  “Missing you,” he said, kissing my ear. “Being happy that you’re here.”

  I turned around to face him, and he kissed me. I didn’t move my lips, but I didn’t pull away. He shifted so he could place his head on my chest, and I stroked what was left of his hair.

  I closed my eyes, and all I could see was Andrea Berger’s name, like it was etched on the backs of my eyelids.

  “We can’t do this,” I whispered. “I know it’s confusing, but we just can’t.”

  I stopped talking when I noticed that my T-shirt felt wet. I looked down to find Whit’s head shaking—​because he was crying.

  “Whit?” I tried to unlink his arms from my back so I could shuffle down the bed to see his face, but he held me where I was and wiped his nose on my T-shirt. He was crying so hard that his shoulders shook too. I’d never seen him get teary at all, and this was a full-on sob, and it was my fault. He had asked for a simple dinner, and I had manipulated him into wanting more. Now he was confused and hating himself because he had fallen into bed with his ex-girlfriend. I should never have come back to the apartment. I should never have joined him for Bananagrams. I did feel like Dr. Frankenstein now—​like I had created a monster. I was the monster.

  “It’s okay,” I said, rubbing circles on the top of his back. “This isn’t your fault.”

  “She won’t talk to me,” he said, shuddering.

  “I know this is confusing.”

  “It is, and I can’t—​I can’t fix it. I can’t fix her. I can’t fix us. It’s like everything I touch is cursed.” His body jerked. “She won’t even text me back.”

  “Wait,” I said, repeating his words to myself. “Who won’t text you back?”

  Whit looked up at me, the tears drying up, like he had just tightened the faucet.

  “Andrea,” he said, as if the answer should be obvious.

 
Without giving his response a second thought, I grabbed his shoulders and pushed him from my body. “Andrea Berger won’t text you back?”

  Whit closed his eyes after I said her name, like it hurt to hear it.

  “We broke up. It’s over. She doesn’t want anything to do with me. I’ve just been—” he shook his head. “I’ve been a little lost. It was going so well, and then she said I was moving too fast, and that she wasn’t ready for a big relationship. I don’t know how people dial it back. If you’re into someone, why wouldn’t you be all in? What’s the point in playing games?”

  My brain tried to catch up. He was crying about Andrea Berger. They had broken up at some point before our dinner. He had dragged me here and was now asking me for advice. Like I might want to help.

  Every profanity I knew gathered at the tip of my tongue, ready to be screamed.

  “You kissed me” was all I said, my voice sounding far away.

  He reached for me then, but I had already bounded off the bed, my body moving faster than my brain. I placed my hand on the wall next to me and found the switch for the ceiling light. It was bright and fluorescent and made both of us squint. I spotted a spider floating in a web above the door. The paint on the walls was peeling. All of a sudden, Whit’s small bedroom was the bleakest place in the world.

  Still on the mattress, Whit kicked his legs in front of him to untangle himself from his brown sheets. Then he sat up and leaned his back against the wall so that his face was just under the portrait of the sad clown.

  “I probably shouldn’t be kissing anyone,” he said, his eyes on the floor.

  “You’re right; you shouldn’t,” I responded, my voice as sharp as I could get it. “Especially not me!”

  “I know this is selfish,” Whit continued. “I just miss talking to you. You’re my best friend, and I miss telling you things. Can’t I miss telling you things?”

  “You broke up with me!” I yelled. “That’s what happens—​you lose the friendship! You don’t get to pick and choose what parts of our relationship you want at any given moment.”

  I reminded myself of Yael now, blunt and confident.