To: Erin Walsh
From: Nick Acevedo
Date: November 29
Subject: Check your mailbox
Hi, Skip.
I sent you a few things before you head out next week. Looks like the box should arrive today or tomorrow.
When can we talk this week? I want to see you, even if I have to rearrange my schedule.
How goes it in the climate change trenches these days?
Nick
To: Nick Acevedo
From: Erin Walsh
Date: November 29
Subject: Check your mailbox
The trenches are wet, the trenches are warm, and the trenches are not regaining much perennial ice. The trenches have also seen a small but noticeable change in the planet's gravity field as a product of redistributed water in oceans and atmospheric vapor. So the trenches are a little hectic, and a little stressful.
There are days when I wonder why I couldn't research something simple, like the origin of the croissant. It comes from Vienna, actually, and Viennese bakers crafted it to celebrate victory over the Turks. Marie Antoinette brought it to Versailles when she was married off to Louis XVI. For her, it was comfort food.
But then I remember that I really, really like volcanoes and oceans and ice sheets, and I forget all about flaky Viennese breads.
*Have I told you that I love bread? I fucking love bread. It's boring, I know, but one of the best parts of living in Europe is all the amazing bread.
**Did you think I'd forget? Happy birthday, husband.
To: Erin Walsh
From: Nick Acevedo
Date: November 30
Subject: Check your mailbox
Let's take this piece by piece.
1. Are you okay? That sounded a little severe, even for you.
2. Have you checked your mailbox?
3. If not, please do that.
4. When can I see you this week?
5. Apparently, you already know everything there is about croissants. You wouldn't be able to research that for more than 45 minutes. I'll call Le Cordon Bleu, and get the ball rolling on an honorary doctorate.
*since you've been gone, Boston has fashioned itself as quite the foodie capital. There are all manner of authentic bakeries and such here. Come visit. You might find some worthwhile bread. And your husband.
**I never doubted you, wife.
Erin was sitting on her bed, pillows on either side of her and her glasses resting atop her head. She was wearing an unbuttoned flannel with a thermal shirt beneath it, and black pants that were close-fitting and looked soft. I couldn't tell whether they were yoga pants or leggings, or what the difference was between the two to begin with, but I loved them. None of this was seductive, not in any obvious way, but that didn't matter. Erin made thick wool sweaters and fleece-lined jeans that hid her curves look sexy. Sexier than anything I'd ever seen.
She was talking about an issue she was having with making her preliminary research findings comprehensible to philanthropists and politicians. I was listening, but also reminiscing about the texture of her clit against my tongue.
"And I'm not being a snotty scientist who thinks everyone else should just learn some planetary physics. I get it," she said, running her fingers through her hair. "It needs to be bite-sized and digestible, or it's not going to stick. No more complicated than Henry VIII dumping Catherine of Aragon to marry Anne Boleyn."
"Right," I murmured, smiling as her side-swept bangs fell across her forehead.
"Ignoring all the issues with his general inability to produce a male heir with basically anyone, anywhere," she continued, almost to herself.
She did that a lot, babbling about science or history or whatever information was in her head. She didn't say these things to show off her encyclopedic knowledge. It was a defense mechanism of sorts, a way to shield herself from revealing anything of her own until she was ready. There were days when it took longer to get through the random facts and reach Erin, but that didn't bother me. How could it? In the end, I got her, and that was all that mattered.
"And the fact he made wild changes to the English constitution mostly because he was a power-hungry manwhore with a God complex," she said. "That obviously complicates the analogy."
"You have me at a disadvantage with the random history facts, Skip, but keep talking. I'm gonna miss this. I'm gonna miss you."
She stopped, mid-thought. "Don't do that," she warned, pointing a finger at me. "We're not starting with that. We have a few more days." She threw her hands up and her gaze snapped somewhere in the distance. "The package, the one you sent. It arrived today. I grabbed it on my way in but then left everything at the door because I was covered in snow. I'll grab it now."
I was left staring at her yellow and blue pillows, wishing I could copy and paste myself into her bed. There'd never been a time in my life when I'd wanted anything or anyone this way while so much stood in my way. Even thinking back to those grueling years of internship and residency, when I was competing for procedures, surgeries, fellowships… None of it was this difficult.
It was as if we'd had this one miraculous weekend where everything was perfect—we were perfect—but then our paths diverged. Maybe the challenge wasn't in retracing our steps to get back to that weekend, but building new paths where none existed before.
Erin climbed back on the bed, tucking her feet beneath her as she pulled her computer onto her lap. "What do we have here?" she murmured, taking her Swiss Army knife to the box I'd sent.
I sat back, folding my arms over my chest as she sliced through the tape. Being aroused by a knife-wielding woman was new for me, but not unwelcome.
Erin shook out the t-shirt with a laugh. "Oh, this is special," she said, dropping the shirt and looking into the camera. "Where did you find it?"
"The guy who lives downstairs, the one in cardio-thoracic, not the gastro girl," I said. "A bunch of interns on his service started a dodgeball league, and they had those shirts made."
She held it up again, shaking her head. "'Hot enough to stop your heart,'" she read. "'Skilled enough to restart it.' I'm amazed you didn't add 'my husband is' anywhere."
"Thought about it," I said.
Erin unfolded the gray Harvard Med School hoodie next, and smiled at it before looking to me. "You know, I don't have any college stuff. I've just never thought to acquire any."
"Now you do," I said. "Keep going. There's more in there."
"All right, all right," she murmured, her arm disappearing inside the cardboard. She pulled out a small box, glancing from me to the box without opening it. "What's this?"
"Do you regret the lobster boat?" I asked. "Marrying me?"
She continued staring at the box. For a long fucking time.
"No, I don't regret that. I don't believe in regrets," she said eventually. I'd suffered five major heart attacks from her silence. "I can acknowledge that I should've handled things differently, or want to be better in the future, but wishing the past away, no matter how awful it was, is a disgrace to the moments you've lived. All that you've survived."
She wasn't talking about us or the lobster boat, though I wanted to yank her back to those topics and hear her say, No, I'd never regret marrying you.
"I'm coming for you," I said.
When Erin frowned, I recognized that my comment only made sense in my head, where I was aware that the feelings I'd had for this woman last summer were painfully superficial. That was lust mixed with some self-flagellating heartache, all compounded by her being beautiful, and more mysterious than any ancient artifact. But what we had now—the late night video chats and snarky emails, the challenge of finding time to share the same space again, the truths laid bare—there was nothing superficial about this. It was that awareness that sent me in search of a little piece of me by way of a Harvard hoodie, and when it was clear that wasn't nearly enough, I found something more substantial. More permanent.
"I mean, when you finish your research trip. I'm coming to Iceland. We can have a few days, a weekend, as long as you want. But know that I'm coming for you."
Erin's fingers traced the edges of the box. "Let's talk about that when I get back," she said. "It's not no, it's let's take it one day at a time. I don't even know for sure when we'll return, and I'd hate it if you were here, and I was somewhere in the Norwegian Sea. I'd have to stage a mutiny, and I'm not sure I want that on my record."
I could deal with that, and I nodded toward the box. "Open it."
Her forehead crinkled, not pleased with my barked order, but she tore into the container. There was a velvet pouch inside, a robin's egg blue one emblazoned with a Newbury Street jeweler's name, and that sent both eyebrows up.
"What's this?" she asked, loosening the ties.
I didn't answer, instead watching while she upended the pouch's contents into her palm. She pinched the ring between her thumb and forefinger, staring at the narrow strip of diamonds on platinum.
"There's probably something unwise about picking out diamonds for a geologist, but—"
"No," she interrupted, her eyes still focused on the band. "Not unwise. Not at all."
"You don't have to say that," I continued. "I just didn't want you going to the North Pole without a ring."
Her shoulders shook as she laughed. "Are you worried about the research station hook-up scene? Even if I wasn't married, and long past the hook-up phase of my life, I wouldn't be giving Arctic Sea researchers a second glance. I have to share some cramped quarters with them for two months, and I don't want them giving me the smarms."
"I wasn't worried about that," I said. "It hit me that my wife's been walking around without a ring, and that's a problem."
"So we're doing this," she mused, still studying the band. "We're being married now. It's real."
I took a sip from my water bottle before responding. "What've we been doing the past few months, darlin'?"
Erin rolled her eyes and held up the ring as if it could make her point for her. "Have you told your parents?"
I scratched my chin while I thought that through. "Do you want me to? I don't think I've even told them that I took the job at Mass Gen," I said. "If you want me to do that, I will, although I'd rather take you to Dallas and introduce you the right way."
Erin nodded slowly. "See what I mean? Your family doesn't know, my family doesn't know, it's just us and this little experiment."
"About that," I said, gesturing toward her. "Riley knows."
She blew out the longest, loudest sigh I'd ever heard, and then stared at me, stone-faced. "Of course he does," she said.
I started to explain, but then Erin slipped the ring onto her finger. A bolt of adrenaline spread through my body, warm and light like bubbles in my bloodstream, and I smiled. It was loose, and she moved it to her middle finger.
"I guess I'll have to grow into it," she said.
And that was our marriage, right there in a single breath. It didn't belong to tradition, and we were still trying to make it fit.
Was it strange that my wife lived on another continent, and neither of us could make moves to change that? Sure.
Was it odd that we'd been married for months, and neither of our families knew anything about it? Definitely, but it was worth noting that our families were also odd.
Was it possible that this would go up in flames and leave us burnt and broken? Absolutely.
Was it also possible that we'd uncover the path that made this work for both of us? Yeah, and that was what made this chaos worthwhile.