Luca’s smile falters, barely long enough for me to catch it, but I do. He rescues it with a laugh. “Yeah. For—”
My stomach sinks as my brain hooks on the date. “Oh, right, yes, yes,” I say, attempting to cover. “I was thinking I would come home before—”
“You forgot.” His blue eyes glimmer with teasing, but it’s tight. There’s a shadow there.
“I did not!” I try to keep my voice light. It’s not a complete lie. I did remember the date was coming up and had every intention of planning something spectacular, but then Tom discovered a batch of incorrectly time-stamped samples, there were a series of random mix-ups and lost vials in the lab, and our already dwindling timeline was robbed of a whole week. Just one of a dozen small-scale catastrophes recently, but any one of them could have tanked the whole project if not caught. Put them together and my best intentions just… slipped my mind. “I want to come home and change before dinner.”
“Sounds good.” Luca leans in, pressing one last kiss to my forehead. “Happy anniversary, Emery. Hope it goes perfectly today. You’ve got this. See you here at seven.”
“Seven,” I repeat, heart positively hammering behind my sternum. I step outside, laptop bag in hand, legs rubbery with nerves. I wave one last time before climbing into my car and driving off, to the meeting that will change not only my life but the entire world.
2EMERY
In the car, I wonder whether it’s possible to drown in my own self-loathing. I forgot my own fucking anniversary. Who does that?
Yes, today is an epic day for my career, and yes, deadlines and unforeseen disasters have left me more distracted than usual, but it’s right there in the calendar! The one on the wall that Luca updates meticulously with family members’ birthdays and doctors’ appointments and Sunny Sundays at the beach. Who still uses a paper calendar, you ask? My adorable husband does, insisting he likes the tactile experience and visual accessibility. All true, but he also hangs it next to the coffee maker, knowing it’s the one place I’m most likely to see it.
Unfortunately, I’m usually half asleep while I wait for my coffee to brew. And even if I wasn’t, that paper calendar on the wall isn’t the one I remember to check.Thatcalendar, the one that holds every critical deadline and meeting and to-do item in my work life, lives on the phone I’m contractually obligated to keep out of sight.
The calendar and the phone and the small safe that Luca doesn’t even know about.
That almostno oneknows about, not even the busybody neighbor who seems to know everything, and whom I can feel watching from her window as I pull out of the driveway and turn down the street.
Hell, she probably remembered my anniversary before I did.
There’s an adage that a lie told often enough becomes truth, and I’ve carefully built my life around it. My job isn’t one I can discuss with anyone, not even the person closest to me.
The key to deception is to lead with the lie you want the world to see. With that in mind, from the moment I leave my lab every day to head home, I mentally reconstruct the fictionalized version of myself: Dr. Emery Martín, a project lead whose team develops novel optical resonators for surgical laser devices… the details of which are still so wah-wah and overtly boring, no one stays focused long enough to ask many questions.
But some days it’s exhausting to be so compartmentalized. With Luca, I’m an affectionate—if work-obsessed—wife. On Sunny Sundays together, I love the beach and eating his cooking, or spending the entire day naked in bed. At work, I am a driven, inspired scientist with a gift for innovation.
But lying doesn’t just increase mental load and create stress, it rewires the brain. I once read a study where researchers found that the part of the brain that processes emotions—the amygdala—is very active the first time a subject tells a lie, but the more times it’s told, the more this activation diminishes.
Simply put, the more I lie, the more my brain becomes wired to say, “Eh. No big.” Every morning and every night, I shed each side of myself so easily, I sometimes wonder if I’m slowly and deliberately creating a split personality.
I went into my marriage knowing it had to be that way. I was hopeful and in love… and possibly a little self-important—but the lying is getting harder. I know I’ll have to tell Luca eventually; I just have to get through this presentation first.
So, as I pull into the parking lot and steer into the spot with my name—DR. EMERY MARTÍN—I compartmentalize like the pro that I am and shed the public-facing side of myself, transforming back intothe one that very few people ever see. I climb out of my car. My back straightens, my strides become longer and more confident. My gaze turns sharp. Two assistants rush toward me, Tom Halliday taking my bag, Claire Morgan handing me another coffee—Claire is my favorite—both updating me in overlapping words.
“Wei, Johns, Dunn, and Zimmerman logged on early,” Tom says.
“A/V is up and ready for you,” Claire adds. “Your slides are loaded, and I confirmed they’re the most recent ones that you sent this morning.” Her pause carries unspoken judgment. “At 3:36 a.m.”
I wince in apology. “I couldn’t stop tinkering.”
“Behold my shock,” she says with a single raised brow. Claire is my favorite for more than just feeding my caffeine addiction; she’s also an active member of the Friends of Tony Bennett fan club (I support fangirl enthusiasm at any age), and the most dependable yet no-nonsense assistant I’ve ever had. I used to attribute this to the twenty years she spent working around politicians, but I think raising six sons might have had something to do with it as well. She is not here for shenanigans. Mine included.
And while she’ll always point out my crack-of-dawn timestamps, she’ll also admit that none of us have what you’d call a “normal” work-life balance. It’s the price we pay for what we do, and we all knew that going in. Signed a large stack of papers agreeing to it, in fact. “Has anyone checked in on Honey?”
“Subject 10142 is stable as of 0545 this morning,” Tom reports robotically. If Claire is the most dependable assistant I’ve ever had, Tom is the most detail-obsessed. He’s twenty-eight but looks fourteen and can often be found double-checking compound batch codes on his lunch break because he finds it soothing. When he used the wordsonboarding, pharmacovigilance, andgravimetricallyduring his first interview, I knew he was my guy.
I take a folder from him, leafing through it. “CRP and platelets?”
“Both look great.”
“Awesome. That’s the cherry on top.” Feeling a rush of excitement, I pass the folder back as we walk through the marble lobby of the glossy steel-and-glass building with the giganticSURGOPTIXsign visible to anyone driving past on the nearby 805 freeway.
We wave to the security guard behind the desk, who waves back at the three employees his computer screen tells him work in the Laser Optimization department on the tenth floor.