65. Chapter 65

Her old microbiology textbook is her standby.

When her emotions are too scattered for novels; when her body needs a bit of nostalgia; when her mind needs to focus but not on whatever problems are immediately at hand – Alex’s college microbio textbook is what she reaches for.

Because she remembers marking up the pages and she remembers the late-night studying and she remembers the lab and she gets a thrill out of correcting the book in places where it’s since fallen out of date, where she knows more details, now, than the book included then; when she’s made her own discovery that’s added to, that’s refuted, one of the tidbits in the text.

So when Maggie is restless and when Maggie is bone-dead tired but her eyes can’t close – when Maggie’s day was a living nightmare and if she closes her eyes, she’ll see things she doesn’t want to – Alex pulls her into her lap and Alex wraps her up in the blankets and Alex puts on her glasses and Alex pulls out her old microbiology textbook, and Alex starts reading.

But she doesn’t just read the words. She pauses a few times a paragraph, describing whatever diagram, whatever chart, whatever illustration, the text references. Describing her first encounter with tardigrades and the fight she had with her professor about whether desiccation experiments were a form of torture. Describing the updates that the book needs to make, the discoveries that have been made – that she’s made – since its publication. The way xenobiology and alien physiology both challenge and reinforce the beauty contained within the book’s worn pages.

And Maggie listens, and Maggie smiles, and Maggie nods, and Maggie whines when Alex briefly stops stroking her hair so she can turn the page, and Maggie hums contentedly when Alex replaces her hand, when Alex leans down to kiss her temple; when Alex’s voice coaxes her into a deep, peaceful sleep, dreaming of creatures that thrive near absolute zero and creatures that live in acid and a woman that loves her more than life itself.