Page 1 of Deep In Love
Chapter 1
Charlie
A cold sweat breaks out across my brow as I stare at a sea of apathetic faces, each student counting down the minutes until the break between summer courses begins. A solitary hand rises, and my mouth turns chalky.
“Yes?”
Oh, Neptune.Pleaseask a simple question.
“So, like, evolution happens because we have sex?”
I glance at the clock hanging on the back wall of the sprawling lecture hall. Two measly minutes before nine a.m., the time I am no longer obligated to fill in for my advisor’s course.
One additional slide about selective mating could have prevented this question, thus saving my sanity, but I didn’t want to drag the eight a.m. class out any longer than necessary.
Take the teaching position,they said.Mentoring the next generation of scientists will be fulfilling,they said.
Poor decision on my part because now I have to explicate that evolution is not parallel to Pokémon, and we, as humans, do not level up when we jump into bed with someone.
If that were the case, most people woulddevolveafter a hookup.
“I-I’m sorry, could you clarify your question?”
Several heads turn to the student in the last row, with his baseball cap hung low on his forehead. He repeats the question.
His misinformed idea of evolution would almost be funny if I wasn’t caffeine deprived and squirming beneath the attention of two hundred undergraduate students.
I don’t teach large lectures—not my circus—but my PhD advisor, Cheryl, asked me to fill in at the last moment, and my lack of work-life boundaries means I agreed, even though I’m dying inside.
“Yeah, so whenpeople”—he means himself—“have sex, they evolve?”
Is there a polite way to say “What a stupid question to ask” without facing the wrath of my advisor? She knows who she asked to fill in for her, but I don’t anticipate the response would be well received, regardless of if it was justifiable.
I’m already in choppy waters after receiving a few negative reviews from students who cheated in the biology lab I teach. They couldn’t fathom why I wouldn’t budge on my grade of a big, fat zero.
If you’re going to cheat, the least you can do is remove the AI chat prompt you copied and pasted. Instead of taking the zero, moving on, and accepting the option of makeup points in the form of cleaning out the lab, they complained to Cheryl and called me a “horrible TA with an attitude problem” and a “nasty hag who needs to pull the stick from my ass.”
I fiddle with the small smoky quartz hanging around my neck, hoping the patience the stone claims to bring will wash over me like a lapping wave along a sandy shoreline.
“Not quite,” I counter, and the kid frowns. “Evolution revolves around the idea of natural selection, where select individuals in a population possess traits better suited for survival. Thoseindividuals pass advantageous traits to their offspring, who are now better adapted to survive until the trait becomes common among the population and they evolve. Does that help?”
He nods, but his disappointment is evident in the down curl of his mouth. He wanted to power up like a Pokémon, and I single-handedly crushed his every hope and dream.
“Midterms will be graded by the end of the week. I’ll see you all after summer recess.”
I slap my laptop closed and shove it into my tote bag, then race to the coffee shop directly off campus before I’m asked anymore questions that could send me to an early grave, right beside Charles Darwin.
Charlie Bowen: Death by stupid question.
I can see the words etched into my tombstone.
The University of Rhode Island is quiet as I hurry across the main lawn. A few students are scattered beneath trees, lounging on blankets, but the majority are gone for the summer. Only university staff, postgraduate students, and undergrads taking intensive courses—like Cheryl’s Fundamentals of Evolutionary Biology—are still on the quaint campus.
Bright-yellow paneling and the cobalt-blue door of the coffee shop come into view, and I sigh with relief as the air-conditioning hits my skin and the aroma of roasted coffee beans fills my nostrils.Home sweet home.The worn-down wooden tables and colorful metal chairs are uncharacteristically empty, except for the economics professor who should have retired three years ago but refuses to leave.
I respect him.The mantold him to retire, and he toldthe manto buzz off. He lifts his newspaper in greeting, then returns to the daily crossword. He’s the type of person I want to be in fifty years: stubborn to my core but so intelligent that I can do what I want, and no one can say jack shit.
“Oh, Charles! Hello,” Amy sings, leaning over the glass display full of mouthwatering pastries. Her curly bright-pink hair defies gravity as she slides a latte toward me.
