Page 30 of Love in the Lab
“Really? A wonder I’ve never heard your name before. Wait a minute … Jonathan, did you say?”
I sigh and close my eyes. I know my mother just made the connection between my coworker talking to her now and the coworker I constantly complain about to my family.
“Yes, ma’am,” Jonathan answers. “I’m surprised Molly’s never mentioned me.” He slides his eyes toward me and smirks. Ugh. He knows, too, that if I have ever talked about him to my mother, it wasn’t complimentary.
“Well, maybe in her way, she has. Molly, honey, I’ll let the two of you go. I’m sure you have lots ofworkto do,” she says slyly.
“No, Mom, it’s—”
She cuts me off before I can finish my protest. “I’ll text you the details for this weekend. Bye!”
I stare at my phone as she disconnects the call. Just great. Now she’s going to think, or hope, there’s something going on romantically between me and Jonathan.Isn’t there?An unhelpful voice inside my head asks.Of course not, I argue back.
“Well, that was nice,” Jonathan says. “Your parents are visiting this weekend?”
I spin my chair to face him, my hands in fists. “Did you not see me motioning for you to go away?” I stand, trying to minimize the height difference between us.
His smile is soft; he reaches down and tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. “I did, but I wanted to see if you were hungry. You’ve been working over here for hours without a break.”
My stomach growls. I relax my hands and smooth them down the front of my shirt. “And if I am? Hungry, I mean.”
He grins. “Then you’re in luck. I just so happen to have a picnic ready to go, if you’ll join me outside.”
A … picnic? I hesitate, but my stomach growls again, sealing my decision. I’m voting with my tummy. “Okay.”
Chapter twelve
Jonathan
“Yeah?” I ask, barely containing the glee in my voice.
The picnic idea was a gamble. When five o’clock came and went and Molly was still in her cubicle, swiveling in her chair and oblivious that everyone around her had packed up and gone home, I figured she was so absorbed in whatever she was doing that she didn’t realize what time it was and that she hadn’t eaten since lunch.Hyperfocus,time blind,internal cues going unnoticed. Buzzwords from the articles I’ve been reading on adults with ADHD bounce around in my head. They also say that no two ADHD brains are the same, so withouttalking to Molly directly to better understand her experience of this “fingerprint” condition, I’m really just guessing.
Tonight isn’t the first night I’ve noticed Molly working for long stretches of time without a break, though. It’s why I started coming to the lab more on weekends, when Molly seemed to be fitting a week’s worth of work into two days. I knew that if I came in and interrupted her, she would stop and eat something. Maybe drink some water. On the weekend evenings I stopped by and didn’t find her in the lab (rare), I just checked on a few things in the lab area and went home. When Molly was there, I stayed longer, even inventing things to do to stick around.
I take Molly’s hand and lead her toward the elevator. She doesn’t pull away.
When we pass my cubicle, she turns her head to peek inside. “You took it all down.”
“Yeah. I’m sorry I had to. I saved all the sticky notes though.” I wish I could have left them up. I took plenty of pictures when I got to work this morning because seeing my cubicle, desk, computer monitor, and desk chair covered in sticky notes in perfect rainbow order is something I never want to forget.
It must have taken her hours to place each of the three thousand sticky notes individually. That feels significant. She could have played any prank—something quicker or less thought-out—but she didn’t. The prank she chose was tedious to execute and loud in its final product. No one missed seeing my rainbow cubicle this morning. Knowing how Molly values her time and her invisibility, I can’t help but think maybe she felt I was worth the sacrifice.
I found something interesting while taking the sticky notes down, too. A tiny heart was drawn on the back of one of the yellow ones. I don’t know what that means, but I know what I want it to mean. I want it to mean that Molly is just as captivated with me as I am with her.
I duck into the breakroom to grab the bags of food I stashed there earlier. I had just returned to the lab with food when I heard Molly on the phone.
We go down the elevator, out the front doors, around the side of the building. I gesture for Molly to take a seat on the bench in my grassy alcove spot. We have some time before sunset, though the sunlight is already dimming as dusk approaches.
I sit next to Molly with enough space between us to set the bags of food.
I start pulling containers out of the bags. “It’s from Cafe Beignet. I didn’t know what you’d want, other than beignets, of course, so I got a few different things.”
“Smells amazing.” She inhales, and I hear her stomach rumble again.
Better work quicker. “This is the royal croissant: ham-and-cheddar sandwich on a croissant. The Decatur club: turkey, bacon, and Swiss on French bread. Red beans and rice. Jambalaya. And a muffaletta.”
Molly chuckles. “That’s half the menu.”
