Page 26 of Away With You
My hands smooth out the wrinkles on the white cotton tablecloth in front of me while I attempt to put together a response that will make sense and not make me sound like a whiney baby.
“If you take what I do as a whole, research that may ultimately help detect cancer at an early stage and therefore help with both early treatment, or even prevention, then yes, it sounds amazing.”
“It does.”
“But in reality, what I do day to day adds minuscule information into a small piece of an enormous pie. Science moves in increments, taking one step forward and then ten steps back. I spend most of my time out of the lab writing papers and applying for grants to fund my research, and every year there’s a chance it will all fall over. My salary is guaranteed for the next twelve months, after which I have to secure more money to pay for not just my existence, but the lab supplies and, if I’m lucky, a research assistant. If I want to remain in academia, doing pure research, I also need to teach and am expected to grow my lab at the same time. That means supervising PhD students and finding grants to support their projects as well. So yeah, in theory, I’m out here finding a cure for cancer, but in reality, I’m an exhausted, very overworked lab rat who’s always begging for money.”
I take a large sip of water, shocked that all of those words came out of my mouth. Not because they aren’t true, but because I’ve never verbalised them before.
“Sounds rough,” he says after a moment of silence. “And it seems like the world has got it all backwards.”
Half of my hair falls out of its bun, and I give up, pulling the rest out and sweeping it over my shoulder and out of the way. “What do you mean?”
He twirls the wine glass in his hand, focusing on the light sparking from the candle in between us. “I mean, I get paid a ridiculous amount of money to drive a race car around for ninety minutes every other week, and you’re here trying to make an actual difference, and you’re struggling to make it happen. Society has it backwards if we think we’re allocating money and resources appropriately.”
In my heart, I agree with him. Not that I think what he does can be reduced to ‘driving a car around for ninety minutes’—what he does is so much more and means a lot to many peoplearound the world—but there should be more equity in how society views what is important and where money should be spent. In my mind, medical research should be something the public is clamouring to fund, and yet in my experience, it’s quite the opposite.
“Well, in an ideal world, we’d both be getting the exact amount of money we need to do our jobs well. But we don’t live in that world, and if I want to continue doing what I know I was called to do, I have to suck it up and make it all work.”
He looks so put-out by what I’ve said, I want to reach over and comfort him. “It’s not right,” he repeats. “I wish I could make it better for you.”
I shrug. “Enough about me and my sad stories of woe. I want to hear more about you and your life. It’s infinitely more exciting than mine.”
Two large plates of creamy, steaming hot pasta are placed in front of us, and I mentally high-five my past self for ordering correctly. There’s not a vegetable in sight; just a mountain of cheesy, carby goodness.
“My life seems exciting, but for the most part, it’s just a job,” he says after several minutes of quiet eating.
Quiet except for my small moans of pleasure.This pasta is amazing.
I twirl a long strand of spaghetti around my fork and pop it into my mouth, chewing quickly while delighting in the flavours dancing over my tastebuds. “I don’t know about that. The life of an F1 driver seems pretty perfect,” I admit.
He frowns into his bowl. “Like everything, it has its highs and lows. The good parts are on display; you can see what they are. But there’s also the constant travel, the never being in one place for long. It makes it hard to maintain any sort of relationship…”
I swallow a mouthful and stare at him. His plump lips are tipped down, and I sense a sadness lingering in his eyes that hasme wanting to jump up and hug him. Sitting across from me, he looks like both the successful athlete with the world at his feet and also the loneliest man I’ve ever seen.
“The travel would make it hard,” I say, choosing my words carefully. “But if you’re with the right person, it shouldn’t be a deal breaker.”
His smile is bleak and tinged with bitterness. “I had thought I was with the right person. But I guess I was wrong.”
An image of his last girlfriend flashes through my mind. Tall, glamorous and perfect looking, she was like a lab-designed cutout of the person Nathan should end up with. The pictures of the two of them together showed a couple brimming with good looks, wealth and happiness. But now, knowing what I do about the end of his relationship, I guess it was a case of looks being deceiving. The camera actually lying. Because it turns out, those two were not the perfect couple; not even close.
“I, ah, am sorry about what happened. With Victoria.” I rip the band-aid off, bringing the elephant in the room very much into the spotlight.
His lips twist. “You heard about that, hey?”
“I mean, I live in the world. It was pretty hard to miss.”
He nods. “Yeah, gosh, the press loved that story. They love bringing down a hometown hero. It’s got to be something to do with that whole tall poppy syndrome. They were practically salivating to report all the salacious details.”
I know all about this, having read all the salacious details. I guess by consuming this content, I’m feeding into the media beast he seems to despise so much.
“It must have been hard. Not just going through all of that but going through it in the public eye.”
His light brows scrunch up, his nose wrinkling with distaste. “The whole thing was awful.” He sighs, a wistful sound, gazing off to the side, like he’s looking back on his life. “I was in lovewith Victoria. We were together for so long; I could picture a future with her. She made it so that our relationship worked, travelling the world with me, rather than complaining about being left behind. And that’s what I think cut the deepest when she broke up with me. She said she wanted a life I couldn’t give her. The picket fence and the babies and the mother’s groups. Things she’d never spoken of before. Things, it seems, my brother is more than willing to give her.”
My heart aches at the pain in his voice, and I can see no matter how desperate he is to be over it, over her, that he’s not there yet. The hurt on his face makes me want to find this woman and poke her in the eye for the havoc she’s wreaked. Not only did she break up with him, but she did it while hitting him in a sore spot, a vulnerable spot, by making their break-up be his fault. And then she added a cherry on top by choosing his brother to give her all the things Nathan can’t instead.
She’s a rat.
