Bearly Interested by Kim Fox Page A

blond hair in the reflection of the machine. “One day you’re going to wake up and be ninety and all you’re going to have is a shelf full of studies and awards to love.”
    Angie rolled her eyes as Sara left to catch up to the others. They just didn’t understand. If she nailed this project she might get asked to work at the Hadron Collider in Switzerland. The major leagues of Quantum Physics.
    Then she would be happy.
     
     
     

     
     
     
    Angie flipped off the light switch of the lab and locked the door. She rubbed her eyes and looked at her watch. It was almost one o’clock in the morning.
    Her stomach growled as she headed for the elevator. She had forgotten to eat since lunch. Again.
    The elevator binged as the doors opened and she walked inside. She leaned against the elevator wall and closed her eyes. Sidney’s large arms and massive chest thrust into her thoughts. She remembered the way he lifted her onto his strong shoulders and made her feel so girly. The way he made her pulse speed up in a way that it never had before. The way it felt when he pushed up inside her.
    The door binged open and the image vanished from her mind. She shook the distracting thoughts out of her head and walked out. Her mind always came back to him when she was tired and unable to focus on not thinking about him.
    “Another late night Angie?” Gary the overnight security guard, asked from his little booth.
    “Einstein never went to bed early,” she said as she passed him.
    The cool evening breeze hit her as she walked outside. She breathed in the thick, foggy air of downtown Manhattan and glanced up at the night sky. No stars. You couldn’t see any stars in the city with all of the light pollution. She remembered the blanket of stars in the sky in New Hampshire when she spent the night with Sidney. He pointed out the constellations to her but was wrong on every one. He actually tried to convince her that there was a constellation called Captain Crunch.
    She loved the stars. Her first choice was to become an Astrophysicist but her parents had convinced her to go into Quantum Electricity instead because it was an emerging field with lots of potential for recognition. Her parents were always hard on her, putting unrealistic expectations on her ever since kindergarten. The curse of the only child. She always had to be better and smarter than everybody else and it still never seemed to be enough for them.
    Angie walked past the pub. She stopped and glanced in the window to see if her team was still there. Not to join them but to see if they were going to be hung over tomorrow. She needed them on their A-games.
    Men flirted with dressed up women at the bar. Hands were on arms, fingers twirled in curls of hair, chests were puffed out (from both men and women) and smiles came fast and frequent. She felt a pang of envy and then shook the thought out of her head. She was destined for bigger things than family and a long string of unfulfilling relationships. She was going to be the best Quantum Electrochemist on the planet.
    She couldn’t see any members of her team so she hailed a cab and went home. It was a fifteen minute ride. She paid the cabbie and went up to her apartment.
    She flicked on the light to her small, one bedroom apartment and headed for the fridge. When was the last time I did groceries? She opened the door and sighed at the pitiful selection. Condiments lined the inside of the door and one package of yogurt sat alone on the top shelf. She pulled it out and glanced at the expiry date.
    “Yuck,” she said, as she tossed it in the garbage.
    She opened her cupboard and pulled out a box of Special K cereal. She filled a bowl and headed for her balcony, stopping at her large bookshelf, situated where most apartments would have a TV. Ooohhhh. I haven’t read this one in years. She pulled out a thick, heavy book: Advanced Multiscale Modeling of Electrochemical Systems and stepped onto her balcony.
    She was thirteen stories