Entertainment Circle11 min read
My Lab, My Neighbor, My Heart
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"You missed so much," Drake said, shoving my name into his phone like it was a prize.
I looked up from the lab gate and smiled without meaning to. "What did I miss?"
"You'll see," Drake replied. "Heard a whole class went quiet. The new substitute? Wow."
"Substitute who?" I asked, and felt them all watching me like a minor scandal.
Drake laughed. "You're the guest star, Jovie."
I didn't answer. I kept my stride and pushed open the lecture hall door. The room smelled of chalk and coffee and winter air. I had taught this course before; today I filled in for Professor Moretti. They called me in because he was abroad. It should be routine. It wasn't.
"Good morning, everyone," I said. "Let's start."
My voice found the front and the noise dropped. Someone in the back muttered, then the whole room leaned in. It always felt strange—being noticed in a room full of men whose faces were used to being the loudest. I turned and saw four boys in the back, two of them with whistles of disbelief. They had the hungry look of people who had seen something rare.
After class they flooded the hall.
"Jovie—wait," one of them called. He smiled wide, like a boy who had found treasure.
"Hi—" I said, and for politeness we walked to the staff dining hall. They talked fast and loud, and I answered quick. When my phone rang, I excused myself.
"Jovie, could you—" It was my mother. I promised to come home that night. We agreed.
I barely had time to put my bag down when Gage tugged my sleeve. "Jovie, they said the boys from your cousin's friend group are here. Can they come by this Friday? World Cup. We can watch at your place."
I hesitated. My apartment was small. "Okay. But you tidy up."
"Promise!" Gage said, and his grin told me he might forget.
Friday afternoon they came—Drake, Rafael, and Emmett. Drake had a laughing face, Rafael had a loud appetite, and Emmett—he was tall and quiet, the kind of quiet that made the air around him thinner.
He set his bag down like he owned a piece of space in the room. He was taller than Gage by goodness knows how much. His eyes were dark and direct. When I first saw him there was a slow, small tug at the inside of me that I could not name.
"You must be Jovie," he said, meeting my eyes. "I'm Emmett."
"Nice to meet you," I said, and I believe my voice could not hide the surprise.
They were gone by morning—sleeping on my sofa, empty bottles and crisps on the table. I opened the door at eight and found three strangers splayed across my living room like a messy constellation.
"Get out," I said, but my voice was soft. I made them coffee, handed them towels, and watched their sleepy faces—especially Emmett's—as he woke.
"Sorry," Gage mumbled. "We tried to be quiet."
"I'll charge you five for the cleaning fee," I said, then I couldn't help smiling.
I went back to the lab and thought about the messy room and the quiet man. I told myself it was theatre—people flare and fade. But Emmett stayed. He texted that morning: "Thanks for last night. I made a note on your fridge memes." He sent a tiny winky face.
A week later my brother—Gage's uncle, but we call him brother—had insisted I move into a flat near campus. The moving boxes were still open. Emmett showed up with a suitcase.
"You're moving in?" I asked, opening the door.
"Roommate," he answered. "You said I might be useful for your... research."
I blinked. "Research?"
"Your project. You study behavior when you are near different people. You said you might need study candidates. I can be one."
We were both professionals in a small comedy of excuses. I had not asked anyone to live with me. I had not planned to let anyone in. But Emmett's eyes were calm. He had offered before in a different way—quiet, sure. I told myself I could use the help. The field notebook goes a long way when you can watch a subject twenty-four hours a day.
"Only if you follow the rules," I said. "No guests, no mess, and you have to keep your phone off during my work hours."
"Deal," Emmett said. His voice was small and fierce.
"Also," I added, "we keep things professional."
"Professional," he repeated, but there was a softness that did not match the word.
Days folded into a rhythm: I in the lab, Emmett cooking downstairs and leaving a tidy note on the table. He was careful, and his small acts of care—boiled eggs in the morning, a napkin placed just so—unnerved me. I wrote clinical notes about respiration and posture, but my pulse kept taking notes of its own.
"How do you sleep?" I asked one night, because I needed a neutral question.
"I sleep like a child," he said. "And I wake up thinking about which tea to make you."
"That's oddly detailed."
"I notice small things. You left a ribbon on your lab bag yesterday. It looked worn. You kissed it like it was a reminder."
"That is private," I said, and then we both laughed.
The laughter softened us. It let me study him with a pen and with a quieter instrument—my heart.
A rival arrived in the form of Henry Moretti. Henry was a senior scholar, patient and calm in the way that makes petals fall under their own weight. He came back from the exchange and immediately slipped back into my timeline—late night emails, long discussions about data that left me breathless and awake in the best way. He had a steady hand and a steady silence that fit the lab like a glove.
Emmett watched him the way a small animal watches thunder. He drank at every chance Henry came close. When Henry gently put a hand on my shoulder to explain a method, Emmett's jaw tightened like someone who had swallowed a stone.
"He's good for your work," Emmett said later in the kitchen. His fingers traced a meaningless line on the table. "He thinks in long lines. You like that."
"I like clarity," I said. "Not choices."
He smiled a private smile, the kind that keeps a secret.
I tried to be clinical about my feelings. I tried to treat my heart like a lab sample. But Emmett did things that blurred my test lines: he made me tea when I was exhausted, he practiced ball drills in the yard because I said "exercise helps cognition," and once, when I fell asleep at my desk, he carried a blanket and covered me like I was a small animal.
Then the day of the basketball match came. Emmett was on the court. He moved like a player and a poet at once. He scored point after point. Girls screamed. The game shifted like a tide. During one play a rough man hit him hard—someone who lost control for a moment—and Emmett went down.
When he lay on the gym floor and called my name, the sound in his voice made a thin thread snap inside me.
"Jovie!" he breathed when I reached him. "My hand—it's wet, it's hot—"
"Hold still," I said. "Can you lift it?"
He tried. His face squeezed and then he hissed. "My wrist. It burns."
"We'll go to the clinic," I said. Gage and the others helped. Emmett kept looking for me even as a doctor examined him.
At the hospital a doctor pronounced no fracture but a bad sprain. He recommended rest and careful care. I said, "He can stay with me. I'll look after him."
Emmett's eyes were huge. "Can I? Stay?"
"Yes."
That night, when we were back home, he kept talking as if words could stitch bone: "You were there. You came," he said. "You came and I called you and you came."
"You told me to come," I said. "I didn't think—"
"You always think," he said, and his voice was full of something like hurt. He reached for my hand in an instant and I did not pull away.
It was small at first—a brush of fingers—but then he turned my hand with both of his and pressed his lips against the back of my hand like it was a sacred thing. His lips were warm and quick. The breath left me.
"Emmett," I whispered.
He leaned his forehead to mine. "I like you. Not like a friend. Not like a small easy thing. Like the center of a map."
"Emmett," I said again, because the lab had taught me how to repeat measures when uncertain. "You promised. We keep things professional."
"I know," he said. "But I can't pretend I don't feel this. And if you feel a thing, it's okay to say it."
I thought of Henry's steady hand and of the fierce, messy way Emmett occupied moments. I thought of the way he drew his eyebrows when he was worried and how small he became when he asked for help. I was my own experiment and the data was messy.
One night, after a long day of tests, Henry came to my flat to discuss a paper. He saw Emmett making tea and looked surprised. He did not scold but he did ask, gently: "Jovie, you okay with him staying?"
"I am," I said. "He helps with recovery data."
Henry stayed longer than he needed to. He helped me reorder a set of samples, and he pointed out a flaw in my controls. His presence comforted me. When he left, he paused at the door, turned, and said quietly, "If you ever need anything, you know where to find me."
It was the right thing to say. It also smelled like a choice.
Emmett watched everything with a thin, hard face. He began to drink too much coffee at odd hours and pace the apartment. One night he snapped at a mistake on a lab sheet as if I had written it.
"Emmett," I said. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing that matters," he said. But his fingers trembled and the small tremble made him look younger than his size.
That day I decided to run the full set of observations: heart rate, gaze focus, proximity thresholds. I sat with him and listed the variables. He let me. He held the study like a mountain might hold snow. He did not move to charm or to dodge. He was steady under my observations in a way that made me both proud and tender.
We kept the rules, mostly. There were small slips—too many meals together, too many shared silences. He learned my coffee and I learned the way he read adjacent faces in the crowd. He learned that I kept a tiny, worn ribbon on my bag. He refused to throw away the old ribbon when it fell off my bag one day. He fixed it with a small stitch.
"Why do you stitch it?" I asked.
"Because it matters," he said. "It told me you are the kind of person who keeps things. I like people who keep things."
"Do you like me that way?" I asked.
"I like you in dangerous ways," he said, and then he turned away to hide a smile that felt like sun.
The mountaintop day arrived. Henry had invited me on a field trip for the weekend. Emmett and Drake and Rafael begged to come. I thought it was impossible; Henry had reserved seats in the field van. But he agreed, and we all went to the site. On the hike Emmett walked close to me and sometimes took my hand to help over roots, and the feel of him there was both forbidden and straightforward.
At the peak Henry stepped to the edge and looked at the valley and said, "We can change this if we share data. If we work together and not for a private lab, we can—"
He had a way of opening the future and it made my chest flex. Emmett watched him like a lover watches a winger who steals the light.
That night we camped. Emmett refused to sleep. He sat awake and told me about the things he remembered being a child—sports, the smell of his mother's sweater—and he told me why he loved quiet people. I told him about the conferences and the late nights, about how I feared my work would never be enough.
He reached across the small lamp light and touched my face. "You are enough," he said. "Not for the number of papers. For now. For this."
It hurt because it was true.
At the next lab review season Henry asked me to present a model he had discussed with me. After the talk Henry pulled me aside.
"Jovie," he said, "I respect whatever choice you make. If you want help with the grant, I will support your lead. Not as a rival. As a friend."
It was a generous surrender, and I felt guilty and free. Emmett watched me when I said yes to the plan. He hugged me simple and tight that night.
We had a fight later, not loud but a collapse. Emmett was jealous and I was tired. He walked into the kitchen and slammed a cabinet. I turned, startled.
"You're not mine," he said. "I know that. But I can't watch you give parts of yourself away."
"I never give myself away," I said. "I decide where pieces go. I make choices."
He stood still. Then he sat and said, "Prove it to me."
"By doing what?"
"By choosing."
"What if I choose the work?"
"Then it will be our work," he answered. "Be selfish with me."
I laughed, half-cry. "That's ridiculous."
He stood and kissed me then—not that gentle, careful kiss from before but a hungry one that took breath and steadied me. When he pulled back his eyes were wet.
"I'll wait," he said. "But I don't want to wait and watch you fall into someone else's arms just because it was steady. I want to be the steady."
I looked up at him. "Why would you want that?"
"Because I love you," he said plainly. He had never said so to me that plainly until the air hummed.
The rest of the semester measured out as adjustments. Henry offered mentorship but not pressure. Emmett studied with a zeal that made him tender and a storm. I learned to align my day with both love and labor.
The courting was not a parade. There were small tests. Once a reporter tried to reach me about the boys staying at my place. He sniffed for scandal, for the angle that sells. I refused comment. Emmett handled the calls with a dry joke and a warning: "She is my neighbor, and my roommate. None of your business." The reporter slunk away.
In the lab my grant was accepted. We would not just test survival of plants in altered gravity; we would test social bonds in long missions. Henry presented the model to the council and gave the floor to me to lead the fieldwork. He shook my hand in front of everyone and said, "Lead."
Emmett whooped and hugged me until I could hardly breathe. He had been with me every step—messy notes, late-night parks to test walking patterns, and cups of tea when my head hurt.
After the acceptance party, I found Emmett on the rooftop, looking at the city like he was memorizing its edge.
"I was scared," he said when I sat. "I thought you'd choose him. He is good. But I wanted to try."
"You had to try," I said. "You were brave."
He took my hand. "Will you choose me?"
I thought of Henry's steady care and Emmett's fierce devotion. I thought of the ribbon on my bag and the little stitch Emmett had made. I thought of quiet nights and of being held.
"I choose us," I said.
He swallowed. "Say it for real."
"I choose you," I said. "Not because you are perfect, but because you are honest."
He laughed and kissed me in the way that made the city hush down. We sat there long after the party had thinned and the lights pooled like small moons.
Months passed. Our life was a messy ledger of lab and love. We argued, then we learned. I learned how to be soft and still retain my edge. He learned how to be steady without becoming a stone. Henry visited the lab often, and he always left us with a smile that held no claim.
The hardest test came when an outside company offered to buy our research. Their money was large and their terms were sharp. The board wanted quick profit. I could have sold and left the work to someone else. Emmett put his hand on my arm when I read the offer.
"What's your heart say?" he asked.
I closed my eyes and pictured the swing on our balcony where I had slept sometimes and where he had wrapped a blanket around me. I pictured him pressing his lips to my hand that day at the clinic when I was raw. I pictured Henry, who had offered hands and then stepped back.
"My heart says we keep it," I said. "For the people who need it, not the pockets that want it."
We took a vote, presented a counter-offer, and Henry sat by my side during the board meeting. He spoke in a way that made the room see the good beyond the gold. We won. We kept the project independent.
After that, people in our field began to talk about our models. They referenced our charts and our careful social measures. Our work was used to plan long missions and to design habitats. Emmett and I became a team in a new way—both public and private partners in a small revolution.
One night, months later, I found Emmett standing in the doorway with a small ring box between his fingers. He looked nervous in a way that remembered the boy who had come to the class that first day.
"I don't have a speech," he said. "I have a bad father joke and a promise."
He opened the box. Inside was a simple band. He took a breath. "Jovie Brown, will you marry me?"
I laughed and cried and said yes in a dozen quiet ways. Henry watched from the kitchen doorway and smiled like someone who had been part of our team from the start.
"Will you help them plan?" he asked. "I will take the grant meetings if necessary."
"I will," I said, grateful.
We did not make a grand scene. There was a small dinner for close friends, a quiet promise, and a kiss that tasted of lab coffee and late-night bread. Emmett stood up and whispered, "We built this together."
We had built it with small hands and long nights and arguments that ended in tea. We had kept the work true and held our private life in the same gentle care I used for samples. We learned that love could be a controlled experiment—if you let the variables be messy and honest.
The swing on my balcony is worn now, the ribbon is stitched, and Emmett calls me "my scientist" when we argue about papers. Gage still shows up with friends for the game, but now they know better than to leave the apartment a mess. Henry comes by with new data and new jokes.
One day, standing in the lab with Emmett at my side and Henry across from us, a graduate student asked, "How did you do it? How did you balance everything?"
I looked at Emmett, then at Henry, and I smiled. "We didn't balance. We held each other up. We stayed honest."
"And chocolate helps," Emmett added, grinning.
We laughed. The lab hummed with the small steady music of machines and people who care. Outside the window, the city kept moving. Inside, we kept building something more stubborn than the rush for profit—a life of work and the messy, certain joy of choosing one another.
The End
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