Charlize Remi - Episode 8: Personal Log Entry [Dr. Andrea Williams]

When I entered my thirties, for the first time in my life I finally felt somewhat at ease. I felt confident, as though I was able to wash off the insecurities of my twenties and step into an entirely new skin defined by confidence. I felt respected in my field, as though my words and my insights now carried weight, like I no longer had to war against the tyranny of being female in a male dominated industry. I felt as though, suddenly, I had a seat at the metaphorical table.

It was as though everything imperative for my world had aligned. And all was well.

Today I realised just how very little I knew.

There is an irony in that. I'm approaching my forties and now unlearning everything I thought I knew about myself.

Today I held her. Just... held her. Against me.

How can something so simple become so profound?

I've held countless women in my arms.

Writing that suddenly made me feel uneasy, an admission I'm ashamed to make despite the reality being that I have held countless women in my arms, all faces and names I no longer recall. If I might take a detour for a moment, I had always owned a hidden sense of pride about that. I no longer feel pride, I feel a twinge of shame. Guilt.

What is it about Billie that makes her so different? Even something as simple as writing her name elicits a jolt of electricity that sparks from my fingers and into my chest.

As I held her today, I wanted the world to stop. And perhaps, for just a moment, it did.

I wasn't thinking about what I'd present at the upcoming conference. I wasn't obsessively musing over L-17's compound. I wasn't pushing aside the dull wail of a warning siren that has been ever-present since I discovered She is back in Boston. For a moment, the universe never felt quite so vast and, paradoxically, quite so small and perfectly occupied. There was only the warmth of Billie against me and the strange, beautiful silence of everything else.

I drew her scent into my lungs and held it there a moment longer than necessary, reluctant to surrender even that small piece of her. And in that moment, I almost told her. The words were there, I could feel them poised against my lips, aching to be spoken... I'm crazy about you too, Billie.

But I didn't. Something stopped me.

A last, stubborn remnant of the woman I have spent nearly forty years becoming, I suppose. A person who understands both boundaries and consequence. I know precisely how much there stands to lose and I know how unforgivably complicated this could become. I know that single admission - I'm crazy about you too - though I've already made it when I told her I wanted to kiss her, could place both of our careers in jeopardy and the thought of becoming a trigger that might compromise her promising future is almost unbearable.

However, with every day that passes, in between every moment, I find myself less persuaded by the reasons behind why I should resist her.

I kissed the top of her head. I hadn't intended to, I don't recall deciding to do that. One moment I was holding her and the next my lips were resting against her hair, as though it were the most natural thing in the world. I simply wanted to draw her closer, to shelter her from whatever it was that had unrattled her so. I wanted her to feel safe.

I have spent much of my adult life mistaking physicality for intimacy. I know how to make a woman feel desired, if I might permit myself a final moment of vanity. But this... this overwhelming need to shelter and protect, to hold someone without wanting anything from them and, I suppose, a small reassurance that she might feel less burdened somehow, as though I can take that burden from her, I don't believe I have ever felt that before.

What an extraordinary thing to discover about oneself at almost forty. Billie seems to reach into places within me that I hadn't known existed. I wonder if she has the faintest idea of what she is doing to me.

I am beginning to suspect that the woman I have spent so many years learning to be is not the woman I become when Billie is in my arms. And, god help me, I think I like that woman more.

The more I write the more I realise that I truly am crazy about Billie. I am so ridiculously crazy about her too. She consumes me. I want to give her every part of me, my body, my mind and my soul. I want her to have it, to take it, to hold it. I want to banish whatever demons war inside her. I want to wipe away every tear, to take her burdens and carry them for her. I want to piece those burdens apart with her, to understand what fears she has and to vanquish them all.

I want her. I want Billie.

Billie didn't want to go home. I have found myself returning to those words throughout the remainder of the day. There was something about the way she said them, almost emphatic, possibly desperate, that has sat uneasy with me. Perhaps I'm reading too much into it. Maybe she simply wanted to stay with me. There is an indulgent part of me that wants to believe she finds the same comfort in my presence that I have so unexpectedly discovered in hers, that the thought of leaving might have been as unappealing to her as the thought of watching her go was to me.

And yet, something about her insistence has left me apprehensive.

Was there... something waiting for her at home? Something she was reluctant to face? Something she couldn't bring herself to tell me? I wanted to ask but she had already allowed me to see so much of her today, potentially more than she intended, and I could not bear the thought of making her feel more exposed by asking for more.

I let her stay and I spent the day watching her. Obsessively, if I might confess.

I watched the way she moved around the laboratory, the small changes in her expression as she concentrated, the moments when her gaze seemed to drift to anywhere else beyond the work in front of her. I kept searching her face for the faintest suggestion of distress, listening for the merest hesitation before she spoke. I spent the remainder of the day hyperfixated on any tell that might betray the return of whatever troubled her earlier. And every time she smiled, I felt a ridiculous swell of relief.

Later, we were discussing additional tests I want to run with Specimen L-17 samples. I cannot recall precisely what I was saying, which is an anomalous admission, particularly given how thoroughly the specimen has occupied my thoughts for the better part of a decade. I do, however, recall reaching for her. It was a small gesture, my hand resting against her arm as I spoke. But I knew. I knew I had found an excuse to touch her. And for one incredible, reckless moment, I did not care who saw.

I feel disconcerted at how easily Billie makes me forget myself.

There are people constantly around us, colleagues who notice things. People who might begin wondering why I seem incapable of keeping my eyes from finding her across a room. A single touch on the arm may seem innocuous but a hundred such gestures? A hundred lingering glances? How long before someone begins to see what I have been trying so desperately to conceal?

What if they don't have to know? I'm almost embarrassed to admit that here in a log. I have spent years cultivating a reputation for discretion and sound judgement and here I am entertaining the possibility of a clandestine affair with my own assistant.

Affair? What an ugly word for something that feels so impossibly resplendent.

But what if we could have something that belongs only to us. Could I kiss her without first calculating the consequences? Could I hold her hand somewhere beyond the walls of our laboratory?

Oh, Billie.

What have you done to me?