Page 19 of The Best Friend Experiment
Brooke chuckled at the image of two students in personal protective equipment trying to get their rocks off. “I certainly hope so, for their own protection and for the protection of the lab environment. What’d Dr. McNamara do?”
“Told ‘em to put their trousers back on and get the hell out. Apparently they were mid-thrust. He was properly mortified.”
“Gross.” Brooke gave a little shudder. “Can you imagine?”
“Unfortunately, I can, and I wish I couldn’t. I need to scrub my brain with Betadine.”
“Undergrads are animals. Who was it, anyway?” If it was any ofherstudents behaving like that, she wanted to know so she could treat them with the appropriate amount of disdain and possibly assign an additional lesson on lab hygiene.
“He wouldn’t say.”
“He’s not reporting them?” Brooke couldn’t imagine them just being allowed to get away with that sort of behavior without any repercussions.
Tara shrugged as she studied her fingernails. “Dunno. If he is, he’s not saying either way. Wonder if they’ll show their faces at the picnic this weekend.” She looked up at Brooke. “Hey, do you think we’ll be able to guess who it was by watching how McNamara interacts with the undergrads?”
“Oh shit.” Brooke smacked her hand against her forehead. The departmental picnic wasthisweekend.
“What’s the matter?” Tara asked.
“The picnic. I forgot all about it.”
“Oops. Is your man still going to be in town Saturday?”
“Yeah, it’s his last full day in town.”
“Bring him.” Tara was grinning. “That way I can gaze upon his sexiness for myself.”
“Don’t be weird,” Brooke said, fighting a smile.
Tara laid a dramatic hand across her heart as if she was mortally wounded. “Moi? Never.”
Brooke leaned back in her chair with a sigh. “I’m already dragging him to a wedding with me that night. I don’t want to bore him to tears by forcing him to socialize with a bunch of biologists. Plus I’m already leaving him on his own most of the week while I try to finish up that paper.”
“How’s that going?” Tara asked, scraping a flake of green polish off her thumbnail. “You going to make the deadline? It’s Wednesday, yeah?”
“I should be fine.” Brooke only had a few sections left to edit, and then her conclusion to rework. “Thanks for reading it over. Your comments were really helpful.”
“Bah.” Tara waved her hand like it was nothing. “Of course you’ll be fine. You’re always perfect at everything, aren’t you?”
“Not as perfect as Monica Speight,” Brooke replied, only sort of joking.
“Whatevs.” Tara rolled her eyes. “You need to let the Monica thing go. It’s not healthy.”
“I’ll let the Monica thing go when you let your weird feud with Mathias go,” Brooke fired back.
Tara affected an expression of mock offense. “How dare you? Mathias is my sworn enemy and I will not rest until he has met his demise by my hand.” She hopped up from her chair. “Right. I’m off to run some samples. Good luck with your revisions.”
After Tara went next door to the lab, Brooke threw herself into work. She had a little over an hour until class, which was enough time to incorporate the last of the comments she’d gotten. Once that was done, it was just a matter of cleaning up a few troublesome sections, rewriting the conclusion, and doing some final polishing on the whole manuscript.
The rest of the day passed uneventfully. Brooke gave the exam to her intro class, went to lunch with Tara, and made good progress on her edits in the afternoon. She made so much progress, in fact, that she decided to take a break from her paper and get a head start on grading exams.
Although technically she could have just gone home, she found herself reluctant to face Dylan again after the penis incident this morning.
Yes, fine, she was a coward.
When Dylan texted her at six o’clock, Brooke was cross-eyed from grading and nearly a third of the way through the stack.
Dylan: I’m done!
