Love Expectations (Season 1 of Nata and Phillip's Romance) ✔️

33. 'You're making a mistake'

Nata

The chair under me creaks as I twist in my seat because the pangs in my stomach feel worse. I shouldn't've drank the fourth coffee of the day and pretended it would replace a meal. Apart from breakfast, Phillip brought me to eat this morning, coffee is the only sustenance that made it into my mouth. The first sip of the green-brown smoothie that's supposed to solve my nurtitional disbalance tastes like dirt.

If work weren't my life I might've had a chance to think about the reason why Phillip changed his morning schedule to stand in his kitchen and watch me make coffee and attempt at making cappuccinos and flat whites for me at 5 a.m.

He doesn't need to impress me: the contract is signed and my financial situation hasn't changed over the last month for me to afford to move out of the duplex or abandon our deal and pay for an IVF treatment. If he were drinking the coffees, I could see him wanting to learn, but he doesn't even like the stuff.

I check my phone. It's past my usual dinner hour. By the time I make it out of the office, I'll either have to stop at a drive-thru or a 7/11. My meal tonight is a choice between a greasy variation on chicken and day-old sushi I'm better off putting onto a petri dish than into my stomach.

"Natalia, are you even listening?" Samson's question is ripe with reproach.

I wish I didn't have to. I made the decision, and Samson isn't supposed to drag me through an hour of explanations.

"My ears are wide open." I tuck my hair behind both to make them visible to Samson.

He narrows his eyes at me.

I twirl my coffee-shop smoothie I picked up before the meeting as a last attempt to focus and complete my pro and con columns for each applicant we interviewed. Instead of making me less hungry, it only succeeded at giving me indigestion. Or it could be Samson's glare. He might as well burn a whole in my stomach, he's been staring at it so much. If angry stares could act as contraception, people would've been using them for thousands of years.

What I thought was a courtesy meeting about the slam dunk of a decision I made is turning in the inquisition of my nightmares.

Samson brings his candidate back to the screen. “You don’t understand what you'll be losing. He knows everyone in this field. Think of the names you can add to your papers.”

He adds a scowl to his glare and waits for me to what…agree with him because he repeated the argument he's been badgering me with since we started discussing who is a good candidate for the new hire for my new lab? My. MY. The word seems to be escaping his understanding.

“I don’t need influential names on my papers." My insides are hurting. Too much coffee, a questionable smoothie,  and Samson's arrogance create waves of nausea I should not be experiencing. I drop my pen onto the table with a clank. "I need a brain that can both learn and offer new and innovative ideas.”

“You’re making a mistake." He goes back and forth in front of the screen. "You need to think bigger, think like a manger. If you don’t produce the papers that your peers view as valid, you won't receive any approvals.”

My teeth clench. I attended the same graduate and postgraduate programs as him, received even better grades than him, and have the same number of years of experience. Does he think I somehow lost part of my memories in a bout of selective amnesia?

“There will be no papers if we don’t have the ideas and do the work first,” I say in the voice of a patient who went through throat radiation therapy, my body is so tense and tired.

“You'll have the interns for that," he says.

Because of Samson’s way of explaining things I already know, I want to shout, to storm out of the too-hot meeting room, and slam the door in his face. Instead, I squeeze every body part and keep my emotions under control.