Page 102 of Tips and Trysts

“I’m so fucking sorry,” he reiterates. “You know me. If I had known—”

“It’s not—”

“It is,” he insists, slamming his hand on the table. “I haven’t lied to you since, and I’m never going to lie—”

“I know,” I cut in before I reach over and grab his hand. Once we’re touching, his shoulders relax. “Everett, I know. Let’s just get through this.”

Everett swallows hard before he nods. “You’re right. Keep going.”

“We were supposed to write the findings report together, but Felix was a shit research partner. He’s rash. Impulsive. Quick to post conclusions without much scrutiny. I ended up doing the work by myself, so you can imagine how surprised I was to see my name omitted from the report Felix sent to Carlin, as well as Felix’s name on our lab logs. When I confronted Felix about taking credit for my work, he flipped out. He tried to gaslight me and tell me he did everything. When I said I was going to tell Dr. Carlin the truth, he brought up a really good point.”

“Which was?”

“Nobody would believe me over him,” I finish. “Felix has a lot of power. He’s attractive, wealthy, and entitled. And I…” I trail off. “Well, I wasme. There were eleven PhD candidates in our lab, and I was the only woman and the only one who wasn’t white. You do the math.”

Everett looks away. “I know. I mean,I don’t know…”

“You’re the walking embodiment of privilege,” I fill in, and he doesn’t argue. He knows it’s true.

“You’ll be proud to hear that despite Felix’s attempts to gaslight me, I gave it a shot,” I go on. “I told Carlin that Felixwas a liar, and there was a time when I thought he was going to believe me. Then Felix lied. Again.”

“Jesus fuck,” Everett mutters.

“He showed Carlin that picture of us and said I photographed him without his knowledge in an attempt to blackmail him.”

“But you didn’t, obviously.”

I shake my head. “We were secretly dating. We took the pictures consensually.” I clear my throat. “I had, like, a little photography fetish.”

For the first time in the conversation, Everett chuckles. “Alright. So, then what?”

“Carlin dropped me. I tried to fight the decision, but at the end of the day, I couldn’t take down Felix. He was a five-generation legacy. His father is a trustee. Even if he weren’t the university’s golden boy, he was loaded. His trust fund alone…” I trail off.

Everett snickers. “Surely my trust fund is bigger.”

“Maybe not,” I admit. “But your cock definitely is.”

“Your cock, you mean.”

“Mine,” I agree. “Anyway, that was that. I lost a year of research and got transferred to another advisor. Maybe it could have worked out, but at the time, I was still in contact with my parents. They were furious with me for losing my spot with the famous Dr. Carlin and said none of this would have happened if I had kept my clothes on.”

“Why didn’t they believe you?”

“My parents are immigrants. The pressure that comes with being the child of immigrants…Everett, I can’t articulate it.”

He runs his thumb along the back of my hand. “Do you want to try?”

The question surprises me. Usually, this topic comes across as off-putting. Countless times at Harvard, people asked about my family and clearly regretted it when they realized how heavy my baggage was. But Everett is nodding encouragingly. And then Iremember: Everett may know more about the futile quest for perfection than I do.

I let out a slow exhalation, eyes shut while I try to find the right words. I blink. “Imagine sitting on a stage under a spotlight with Shakespeare’s complete works in front of you. Your parents are in the front row, watching you and telling you to recite all that iambic pentameter perfectly. They can’t do it. They can’t even help you do it. They can’t comprehend how rare it would be for someone to do it. They just expect you to nail it: every sonnet, every rhyme, every intonation has to beperfect. If not, you’ve squandered an opportunity they claim they would have wanted when they were your age. You’ve disgraced them. You’ve let them down.

“No matter what I did, there was alwaysmore. My grades were perfect, and my mother would still ask why my teachers weren’t offering me extra credit assignments. Then I would get extra credit, and my father would ask why I wasn’t tutoring other students—as if anyone wanted that. It was incessant. I couldn’tbreathe.

“I pretended to be the daughter they wanted, but when they weren’t around, I did everything I wasn’t supposed to. Sex, drugs, drinking. At some point, when you’re pretending to be two different people…”

“It’s impossible to figure out which version is real,” Everett fills in.

“Or if either of those versions are real at all. So, when my parents blamed me for losing my place in Carlin’s lab, I finally realized they didn’t love me. They loved a person who didn’t exist, and I was tired of pretending to be that person. So…I emailed the department a video of Felix and me fucking.”

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