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I loved Nico, I really did. And not just because he was funny, charming, and extremely hot—definitely an eight or nine to my six. But he was also an incurable optimist, whereas I was a very firm rationalist. His habit of convincing himself that every rainbow ended in a pot of gold just for him—a habit that had seemed so endearing when we first met—had started to grate after two years together. Two years of me footing the bills and doing the admin and generally acting the grown-up, while Nico chased opportunities that somehow never quite materialized.
This sounded like another one of his pie-in-the-sky dreams, just like the West End musical of Twilight that turned out no one had cleared the rights to, and just like his plan to become a YouTube acting coach. There had been so many schemes that had come to nothing, so many shows canceled before their first episode and pilots that never got off the ground. But if I pointed any of that out, I would be the bad guy. I’d be the person who had denied Nico his chance.
“Can I at least tell Ari you’ll meet with the producers?” Nico said, his breath warm against the top of my head. I shut my eyes, knowing that if I looked at him, at his brown puppy-dog eyes and pleading expression, I’d be lost. What I wanted to say was that there seemed precious little chance of this getting past the first meeting, when the producers would presumably meet me and realize I wasn’t the big-boobed hottie they were looking for. Reality TV wasn’t exactly my usual entertainment fare, but I’d watched enough to know there was a certain physical type for female contestants, and that I didn’t fit it. Nico—with his gym-toned body and salon-tanned skin—he was different. He’d have fitted in fine on The Bachelorette or Perfect Match. But me? Were they really going to look at a thirtysomething scientist with fingers stained purple from protein gels, and a permanent frown line from squinting into a microscope, and think, We want to see her jogging down the beach in a skimpy bikini? Unlikely.
On the other hand… if it was never going to happen… would it really matter if I strung Nico along for a bit longer? Then, when I got rejected, or the whole thing finally stalled in development, this Baz guy could be the baddie, and I’d get to be the supportive girlfriend. Until the next hopelessly naive scheme materialized, anyway.
I opened my eyes, trying to think what to say, but instead I found my gaze straying to the glowing screen of my laptop. I couldn’t read the figures because Nico had shoved the computer to the far side of my desk. But that didn’t matter. They were there, and I knew it. Inconvenient. Incontrovertible. Unignorable.
“Please?” Nico said, breaking into my thoughts, and I realized that he was still waiting on my answer. I looked up at him. At his big brown eyes, fringed with impossibly long lashes—like a young George Michael. I felt something inside me giving way… melting. Oh God, I was going to say yes, and we both knew it.
“Okay,” I said at last, feeling my face crack into a reluctant smile. For a moment Nico just stared at me, then he gave a whooping holler and lifted me off my feet, crushing me in a giant bear hug.
“Thank you, thank you, oh my God, thank you. I love you, Lyla Santiago!”
“I love you too,” I said, laughing down at him. “But you have to get on the show first, okay? So don’t count your chickens! I don’t want you to be disappointed if you don’t get in.”
“I’ll get in,” Nico said, setting me down and kissing me firmly on the lips, one hand on either side of my face, his smile so wide it crinkled up his tanned cheeks. “Don’t you worry about that, Lil. I’ll get in. We both will. How could they resist?”
I looked up at him, at his broad grin, his white teeth, his sparkling dark eyes, and I thought, how, indeed, could they resist? No one could say no to Nico. I just had to hope Professor Bianchi would feel the same way.
02/15—02:13 a.m.
Hello? I’m not sure how this thing works, but this is Lyla, to the Over Easy, over.
02/15—02:14 a.m.
Hello, is anyone receiving this? This is Lyla to the Over Easy, please come in. Over.
CHAPTER 2
“OH DEAR.” PROFESSOR Bianchi’s face had gone from cheerful to depressed as I talked him through the latest batch of data. The findings left by Tony, my predecessor, had been—well, exciting was an understatement. If they’d proven reproduceable, they would have represented a major breakthrough in chikungunya, my specialist area. But they weren’t proving reproduceable, and that was a problem.
The annoying thing was that Tony was long gone. He’d published his thesis to rippling excitement and had promptly been headhunted by a private lab for a permanent position. I’d been hired by the university on a one-year contract to tie up the loose ends. My task was supposed to be simple: repeat Tony’s experiments with a wider range of samples and prove that the results held up. The problem was, they didn’t. I’d repeated and repeated and repeated until I was blue in the face, but after the third attempt, I’d had to admit it. The effect Tony had found wasn’t just weaker, it wasn’t there at all.
In theory, I’d done my job. Pat on the back. Great work, Lyla. And in theory, disproving a false lead was as valuable and important as finding something new. The problem was that in practice, we all knew that wasn’t how it worked. Grant funding didn’t go to the scientists who found out something didn’t work. It went to the groups with sexy new discoveries and results that got everyone talking. No one wanted to publish a paper meticulously outlining the anatomy of a damp squib, no matter how good the research.
In my darker moments, sleepless, at 3 a.m., I’d blamed Tony. Perhaps he’d written his method up wrong. Maybe he’d even faked his results? But in my heart of hearts, and with my scientist’s head on, looking at the data, I knew it wasn’t Tony’s fault. He’d thrown a dozen dice and they’d all returned sixes. Just one of those things, and when I tried again on a much bigger scale, the pattern hadn’t held. But I was the one having to break the bad news, and deal with the fallout.
Up until a few weeks ago, I hadn’t been worried about the fact that my contract at the university was about to expire—Professor Bianchi had more or less assured me that obtaining further funding was a formality. Now… well, now I could tell from his expression that I should be polishing up my CV. And I wasn’t looking forward to explaining at interviews the fact that I’d spent a full twelve months working on a highly exciting project and had absolutely fuck all to show for it.
“You’d better write it up,” Professor Bianchi said a little wearily. “And then we’ll have to see whether there’s anything that can be salvaged from it. Maybe something will come out of Gregor’s animal modeling.”
I bit my lip and nodded.
“I’m sorry,” I said again, and Professor Bianchi shrugged, the philosophical shrug of a man with tenure who’d wanted this to work out, but hadn’t hung his career on it.
“Not your fault, Lyla.”
“What do you think it means for the funding renewal?”
“Ah. Good point. Your contract’s up next month, isn’t it?”
“March, in fact,” I said quietly. “Ten weeks.”
Professor Bianchi nodded.
“I’ll speak to the grant committee. But…”
