Laura Steven - The Love Hypothesis

‘ Bärchen !’ he calls, dropping his tools and kneeling back on his haunches. Vati – Dr Felix Kerber – is Austrian. He’s always called me Bärchen , ever since I was teeny. Little bear. It still warms my heart.

‘Hey, Vati,’ I say, stopping just short of the front door. ‘How goes the gardening? Zu heiß, nein ?’ That’s about as far as my German goes. Gabriela is the language goddess of our friendship tripod, and is completely fluent. Vati always loves when she visits.

‘ Ja , this heat is ridiculous,’ Vati replies. ‘And I’m making a real mess of this. I never did know what to do with bushes.’

And then he guffaws . Actually guffaws. At his own disgusting joke.

I mime gagging, and shout back, ‘Is Dad inside? I would like some sensible conversation, for once in my life.’

Vati is too busy guffawing to respond.

Our dog Sirius – a one-eyed cockapoo – greets me at the door with a half-hearted tail wag. He is very old and very lazy, and his depth perception is very bad on account of the one-eye situation. Also, his face smells like a rotting corpse. Apart from that, I love him very much. Unfortunately, Sirius loves nothing but barbecue ribs.

I find Dad washing potatoes in the kitchen sink. Dumping my backpack on the counter, I immediately raid the fridge, as I do every night. And, as he does every night, Dad says in his dulcet Bostonian tones, ‘You will ruin your dinner.’

He’s the sensible one, Dad. While goofy Vati plays the clown, cracking inappropriate jokes and generally throwing caution to the wind, Dad is more subdued. As a world-leading expert in experimental hepatology, Dr Michael Murphy is not interested in your scatological humour. He is painfully smart, painfully literal, and affectionate in his own special way.

‘Dad, there’s every chance that the Higgs Boson being made over at the Large Hadron Collider are becoming unstable at this very second ,’ I say dramatically, while peeling a string cheese into my palm. ‘By the time I’ve finished this sentence, one could have triggered a catastrophic vacuum decay, causing space and time, as we know it , to collapse.’ Triumphantly, I cram several pieces of stringy deliciousness into my mouth. ‘In which case, dinner will be ruined regardless.’

‘Very good,’ Dad grumbles. ‘But since you have finished your sentence – and your snack – without a black hole in sight, you can close that fridge door, grab a vegetable peeler, and tell me about your day.’

3

Thanks to a potent dinner-table combination of intelligent conversation and creamy mashed potatoes, I manage to avoid checking my phone for a good couple of hours.

As I traipse upstairs, belly full of schnitzel, I’m almost dizzy with the anticipation of pulling my phone out and seeing Kevin’s name light up my screen. Or Haruki’s. Or anyone’s, for that matter.

It’s been two hours. I’ll probably have several messages in my group chat with Keiko and Gabriela, comprising pre-show selfies like we always get from Keiko, and witty comments from Gabriela about the spoilt rich kids she tutors. Possibly even a missed FaceTime call, if Gabriela’s particularly mad. Perhaps Leo, my brother, has tagged me in a nerdy meme only he and I would find funny. Maybe Haruki has reached out via Instagram to apologize for dropping me in the shit this afternoon. And surely Kevin will have replied by now, right? It’s been two hours. Two hours!

For no real reason, I make a slight ceremony of the phone-checking. I get into comfy sweats and an oversized T-shirt, throw my hair up into a messy pony, switch on a couple lamps and my fairy lights, and curl up cross-legged on my bed. Dad must’ve put fresh bedding on this afternoon, because the plain white duvet cover with tiny pink flowers smells of lavender and camomile. That’s when you can tell Dad is getting bored on sabbatical. He does all the laundry imaginable, instead of finishing the book proposal he’s supposed to be working on.

When I’m finally ready, I press the home button on my phone.

Nothing.

Just the time – 9:01pm – and my background photo. Keiko and Gabriela’s shiny faces smile back at me. We took that picture after Keiko’s first ever gig, when we were all sweaty and high on adrenaline and good music. I’m sandwiched between the two of them, and you can barely see my face through Keiko’s blue hair.

No texts. No calls. No notifications. Nada.

I shouldn’t care. I know I have people around me who love me. Keiko and Gabriela, and my dads, even my big brother, although he’s usually far too busy studying to pay me any attention. I know they care. It’s just . . .

Technology today makes it so easy to constantly communicate with your loved ones. So when they don’t communicate, when they all ignore you at once, it’s the worst feeling. They could get in touch with you. They just don’t.

I forever feel like everyone else gets more messages, more calls, more notifications than me. Everyone around me is forever looking down at their screen, laughing at something funny in their family group chat, swooning over a selfie from their crush, sighing as they faux-complain about how many notifications they have to read. And I just sit there, pretending to be doing the same, when really the only people who would ever message me are in the very same room.

It’s pathetic, and I hate myself for caring. But I do. I just want a guy to text me and let me know he’s thinking about me, to ask me how my day was, to send funny pictures to cheer me up when I’m down. It seems like everyone has that but me.

So, I do what I do almost every night when I’m down about my love life, or lack thereof. I whizz through my homework, take a long, hot shower, wait ’til my dads are both asleep – they usually hit the hay early – then sneak down to the refrigerator to retrieve half a glass of red wine. A full glass and they’d notice, but half usually slips under the radar, providing I remember to wash the glass and put it away again after I’ve finished.

Then I tiptoe back upstairs, lock my bedroom door, and engage in my dirty little secret: trashy rom-coms from the early noughties. Movies from before social media, before selfies, before the constant need for validation, before memes and Facebook politics. Just shamelessly cheesy romance and all the happy endings a girl could want.

My dads would murder me if they found me watching this crap. It’ll rot your brain cells , they’d say. Try this NASA documentary instead. Or if you have to watch a movie, at least start with Guillermo del Toro.

But hey. You can’t help what you love. And what I love is curling up in my empty bed with half a glass of red wine and watching cheesy rom-coms with the volume turned down low.

Ugly nerd on the outside, lonely middle-aged spinster on the inside. Form an orderly queue, fellas.

Tonight’s pick is Just Friends , because I have a massive soft spot for Ryan Reynolds, like almost everyone with retinas. It’s basically an in-depth study of the Matching Hypothesis. Ryan Reynolds’ character doesn’t get the classically hot girl until he changes everything about his physical appearance to match her level of attractiveness. Standard.

I’ve seen the film a couple times before, so I scroll aimlessly through my phone as I watch. Because I’m clearly a fan of torturing myself, I open up the conversation with Kevin – if you can even call a one-sided deluge of messages a conversation – and stare at my unanswered text.

Hey! You settling in okay? Hope you’ve managed to find a gaming buddy to replace Bryan.

And so begins the cringing.

Why did I have to go and make it so personal? I mean, he only told me about how much he was going to miss his gaming buddy because he was drunk. I’m pretty sure he did not want to be reminded of that. And here I go, dropping it into conversation like some kind of needy stalker. Does he think I’m a psycho for even remembering that? I bet he barely remembers what colour my eyes are, let alone the names of my best friends.