friends. Sports they loved. Places they wanted to see. It felt good. It felt natural. Max was pretty sure there was no one else he would rather eat cold pizza with while naked in bed. One day, he would have a son, and his son would ask him what was life, and Max would tell him this. This was life. This is what made every day worth getting up for.
“This thing with you has been a very pleasant surprise,” he said, after they’d exhausted all the important topics.
“It’s fantastic,” she said, through a mouthful of pizza. “This must be what winning the Mega Millions lottery feels like.” She tossed down the end crust. “What’s that?” she asked, and indicated with her chin as she picked up another slice.
Max looked across his room. On the wall next to a chair, he’d tacked some of the calculations and lab results he’d run as part of his research. “That,” he said, “is my rehearsal for my presentation of my tenure dossier to the committee.”
“Oh,” she said, looking at him with bright eyes. “Like, in an auditorium?”
“In a conference room. It’s not a lot of people—the committee members, the department head, and . . . well, the other professor up for tenure.”
“The professor with the amazing research?”
“Yep, the one with the amazing research.” He sighed. “She’ll be there to see my presentation. And I’ll see hers.”
Carly chewed thoughtfully a moment. “That seems kind of brutal, to be honest. If it were me, I’d be obsessing more over what my competition thought of my presentation than the actual committee.”
“You have no idea,” Max muttered, his gaze still on his graphs and charts.
Carly giggled. “Really? Why?”
Funny, but there was no hesitation in him to tell her the truth. “My situation is particularly awkward. I didn’t know I had any competition until recently, and I only found out because of a unique situation.”
“What, did she fly a plane with one of those message banners across the sky?”
“Not quite.” Max laced his fingers with hers. “The thing is . . . we sort of hooked up one night.”
Carly stilled. Her brows rose, and for a moment he thought he’d blown it. But then she burst into laughter. He didn’t know what he was expecting, but it wasn’t gales of laughter. “What’s so funny?”
“I don’t know. It’s just that you don’t seem the type, Max. Like, not at all.”
“I’m not. I’m not for all the reasons I’m not great at dating. But, you know, it was one of those things—we had a couple of drinks, too many drinks, and she said we were being too scientisty, which I took to mean we were overthinking it, and one thing led to another, and, okay, yeah, it happened. And it was . . . it got the job done,” he said, and felt himself blush a little. “But the next morning?” He shook his head. “It was obvious that neither of us was going to use the occasion as a jumping-off point to anything else, and I was hungover and miserable, and I didn’t know how to get out of it, but then she said that it was really a bad idea because she was up for tenure. That was the first I knew there was anyone else up for tenure this year. She didn’t know, either.”
Carly gasped. “No! Oh my God, Max—that’s unbelievable!” She laughed again. “I’m so sorry! I’m not being insensitive, I swear it, but . . . but that is the worst.”
“Tell me about it,” he said, chuckling a little, too. “I probably shouldn’t have told you, but at least you’ll know the truth about my rocky path to being denied tenure.”
She settled in next to him. “You haven’t been denied yet, pal. You should listen to my favorite podcast, Big Girl Panties. Megan would tell you to pull them up and believe in yourself, and until the door is shut, it’s still open. I’ve never done it, by the way,” she said. “The one-night thing.”
“I wouldn’t advise it,” he said, putting his arm around her. “It’s fun in the moment, but afterward, in my experience, you definitely have to face some feelings about yourself you’d rather avoid.”
“Oh, interesting,” she said. “What feelings did you have to face?”
“I’ll just say I’m not that guy, and in the light of day, I didn’t like that I’d been that guy. But it happened, and life goes on, and I’m going to present my findings to the full departmental committee