My arrival seems to have startled Abigail. I make note that I should announce my arrival before approaching behind her. The women seemed very engrossed in the article on the screen, and upon reading, I can understand why.
When Abigail turns to face me abruptly, I explain, “There’s long been discussion of the male climax as a biological response to stimulation, while the human female climax is thought to be equal parts physical and psychological. This article suggests a method of a biological female orgasm. Purely a result of proper stimulation technique. Fascinating.”
“Is this guy for real?” Abigail’s co-worker addresses her question toward the group at large. I frown, realizing I must have committed a social mistake, verbalizing my thoughts on the article.
Abigail stands and introduces me, saying, “This is Dr. Crawford from the biology department. He takes a professional interest in how tissues react to stimuli.”
I feel an odd sense of warmth and delight at hearing Abigail summarize my thoughts in a way that seems pleasing to the other women. They smile genuinely and return to their work areas. I follow Abigail to her desk, where she pulls out a folder about the investor she mentioned. “I wanted you to check out his other investment interests,” she says. “He’s coming to campus anyway, so we may as well try to set up a meeting for you.”
“This does seem promising,” I tell her, noting the list of start-up companies he’s nurtured, then sold to larger corporations for a hefty profit. Asa Wexler must be a billionaire. “He invested in the new Lyme vaccine,” I say, impressed.
Abigail smiles up at me, and again I feel the warm sensation of pleasure course through my body. She seems about to say something when I hear my mother shout for Abigail to come to her office. “We can talk about it after work,” Abigail says, rising and smoothing the sides of her skirt.
I watch her walk down the hall, noting the beautiful shape of her backside, and remembering how her bare legs looked in my house. I have to remind myself that I’m just having a natural, evolutionary response to her. Pair this with a discussion of orgasm, and it makes sense that I have another throbbing erection.
All afternoon, I try to focus on my lecture and my students, but I am distracted alternately by memories of the magazine article and of Abigail, translating my thoughts into phrases other people enjoyed. Does she understand me? She seems to.
Nothing seems to shake me from my distraction, not even poring over my microscope or diving into my statistical software. I go home early to get a good workout in before helping Abigail work slowly through her repetitions.
Her deadlift and squat technique has improved dramatically, and she has been able to add more weight to the bar than I would have thought.
Her skin shines with sweat as she finishes a set of ten lifts and then she walks over to add more weight. Watching to see that she attaches it safely to the bar, I see that her nipples have hardened visibly. That’s a normal side effect of exertion, I think, coughing and adjusting my shorts. This doesn’t mean my tenant is aroused.
“How long until my muscles are as defined as yours?” Abigail pokes at her legs. I know from the few times I’ve placed my hands on her body to correct her form that Abigail is primarily a soft person. Warm and smooth, her body often quivers beneath my touch, as if I could drown inside her curves.
“I have slow twitch muscle fibers, with a great deal of adenosine triphosphate production,” I tell her, unable to look away from her nipples.
“Adenosine? Can you dumb it down for me a little?”
“I estimate that your body is composed of fast twitch muscle fibers,” I tell her. “I think you have the ability to get very strong and produce a great deal of force, but might not be predisposed to long duration endurance activities.”
“Hm.” Abigail frowns and pauses in preparing her exercise. She’s quiet as she carries out her repetitions, which is uncommon for her.
“Did my assessment upset you? I frequently upset people inadvertently. I assure you, I placed no value judgement on either muscle type…”
She offers a slight smile, her face unreadable to me unless I study. Are her pupils contracting? Is her breath increasing? The pulse points in her throat? I can never answer anyone quickly, because it takes me a good deal of time to study their biological markers and calculate which emotion they are likely experiencing.
“I see that you are flustered,” Abigail says. She shakes her head. “You didn’t upset me talking about my body.” She grins. “I know I’m a thick gal.”
Grunting, Abigail lifts the bar and then pulls it up to chest height. She lowers the weights to the ground and says, “No. I was feeling a little homesick I think. My brothers all lift weights together. Not that they ever invited me…”
“Diana didn’t allow us to exclude her from our activities,” I observe. We both share a small laugh about that, and she finishes her workout. Abigail leaves her camping chair in my apartment, so it’s all set up for her to sink into it when we’re done. She continues to refuse to stretch after our workout. “I don’t understand why you would choose not to take care of your muscles properly after exercise,” I scold, handing her a glass of chocolate milk.
We’ve developed a routine where I talk about my work and she types notes into my computer, emailing them to herself to make sense of when she has time to ponder them. I hate having someone else touch my computer and it’s frustrating to have these limitations. My patience for teaching her to exercise seems endless, but I do not approve of her process at all for putting this proposal together.
As Abigail struggles to type her password into the dual-authentication system I set up for her cloud storage, I can’t take it anymore. I snap, “We cannot continue in this manner, Abigail. When will you get your own computer?”
Even I can read her frustration as she looks over at me. “I had a laptop and my asshole ex boyfriend broke it. I’ll get a new one when I can afford it, Hunter.” Her tone is harsh, but I’m distracted by her use of the word broke. Not disabled or erased or corrupted.
“Define broken,” I say, crossing my arms and leaning back in my office chair.
“He smashed it…like bent it backwards the wrong way…” her voice is soft. This man sounds decidedly unpleasant and I don’t like that Abigail was romantically involved with someone who would do such a thing.
I think of my conversations with Moorely. We often brainstorm as he tinkers with various hardware he has rescued. His students are always coming to office hours with odd bits and pieces of computers and they cobble together machinery capable of fantastic computational speeds. “Do you still have this laptop?”
Abigail invites me to follow her into her side of the duplex while she fetches the broken computer. As per usual, I forget social conventions and follow her upstairs as she retreats to her bedroom closet. She starts as she realizes I’m still behind her when she stoops to pull a box from the closet. She places a palm to her chest. “Hunter, you move so quietly. I didn’t know you’d followed me.”
“Bedrooms are a private space.” I recite some of the social rules my father used to tell me I needed to memorize whether or not I understood their purpose. “I apologize for violating a custom.”
“Next time I’ll make sure I clarify. Hey, do you want to visit your old headboard?” Abigail’s laugh seems to be the nervous type of laugh. I glance over to her bed, which she’s decorated with blue checked sheets and a white puffy duvet. The dark wood stands out in contrast to the walls she’s painted a soft blue. This seems like a pleasant space to sleep and wake up each morning.
Then I look into her arms, where she’s holding a cracked laptop case. “May I ask what inspired you to keep this if you were certain it was irreparably damaged? From Indigo’s description, you brought little else with you from Ohio.”
Abigail bites her lip and tucks a lock of hair behind her ear. The gesture is alluring to me. I like standing close enough to watch her chest rise and fall with her breath. “I don’t want to lose my novel,” she says. She sinks onto her bed, sitting at the edge with the broken laptop in her hands. She tells me how she began working on a creative writing early in her college career and had a working draft of a novel nearly complete when her ex-lover destroyed her computer during an argument.
Even though I haven’t been invited to sit, I do, holding out my hands for her to pass over the laptop. Upon brief inspection in the fading light, it would appear the portion of the laptop containing the hard drive is in tact. “Abigail,” I meet her gaze. “I might be able to extract the information from his hard drive.”
Her eyes well up with tears. I develop a stress response and wonder what I said to make her cry. I run through a checklist. I was kind. I hadn’t commented upon her appearance…what are all the reasons women cry?
“Oh, Hunter! I can’t believe you would do something so kind for me.” A single tear rolls down her cheek, captivating me. When I look closer, I see that Abigail’s pupils have dilated. She has leaned closer to my body.
“It stands to reason that your novel was of high quality,” I tell her. “My mother describes your writing as excellent and I have seen evidence that you have strong communication skills.” My words seem to reassure her and she lowers her head, flushing.
“Thank you,” she whispers. Her scent fills the room. I can smell the fresh, soapy, rosemary essence of her permeating the sheets. It’s an intoxicating aroma, even with the edge of sweat from her workout. I acknowledge that I am very aroused by Abigail. This is all very new. I hadn’t been thinking about women…had only focused on my failings as a scientist since returning from space.
It has been many years since I entered a relationship with a new person and Heather took the initiative when we began dating. Abigail and I have become friendly, exchanging jokes and talking comfortably in my house most days. It is not out of the question that she might share an attraction to me. I run through the biological signals someone might use to make their attraction evident. Flushed skin, rapid breathing, dilated pupils. Abigail leans closer to me and I nod, swallowing. Yes. I decide. She would like me to kiss her.
Shifting my weight to my right hand, I lean closer to her and raise my left, bringing it to her cheek. I want to repeat her gesture of tucking her loose hair back and out of the way, and I’d like to stroke her cheek. She breathes through her nose, meeting my gaze as the pads of my fingers make contact with the sensitive skin near her ear. In slow motion, gently, I begin to tuck her stray lock behind her ear, but Abigail stiffens and pulls back.