Grace had sounded so excited on the phone. Jamie was familiar with this though. Ever since they met at college and then got together, her boundless enthusiasm for the things she thought were cool and/or interesting had never ceased to amaze or endear her to him. They didn't always agree on what counted as cool or interesting however; he was into sports and fitness and she was a massive nerd after all, but her never say die attitude towards telling him it all anyway in a weird way made him feel more valued. He watched her shy away in other social situations based on the reactions of other people, but she clearly never felt the need to do that with him. It made it worth having to hear the odd nonsensical scientific theory or the entire plot of a comic book series every now and then (even if it was normally in excruciating detail) to know he was her safe person.
In truth, she was often that for him too. She never judged if he doubted himself and she always listened and encouraged him whenever he had those moments. Maybe it was that he hadn't played as well in a game as he normally did and he was feeling the pressure of his coach and the other players or maybe he was experiencing feelings of envy and self loathing when seeing other guys tear it up in the gym, in any situation she took the time to hear what he was saying and let him know it was ok. It was comforting.
As he walked through the door to their shared apartment, he was met with the sight of a large whiteboard on wheels dominating the space in their living room in front of the TV. It was covered with calculations and all sorts of other scientific jargon he had no clue about and wouldn't even begin to be able to understand in a thousand years. There were also a number of thick, well worn textbooks strewn about, each open on different pages and with post it notes sticking out of the sides.
He sighed but with a smile. Grace had been working as a researcher at a pharmaceutical company for the last year and had on countless occasions brought her work home with her like this. It often took a lot of clean-up as she wasn't so great with after the fact stuff like 'how long will this take me to tidy?' but again it was something Jamie had come to simply laugh off as another one of her quirks. He also thought he could hear a faint metallic whirring sound of some kind, but figured it may just be the washing machine.
"Grace, I'm home!" he called out.
She poked her head out from the doorway that led to their kitchen, wearing a pair of laboratory goggles and a big beaming smile on her face as she saw him.
"Hi Jamie!" she replied, giddily.
She emerged from the kitchen, wearing the white cropped t-shirt and black short shorts with the white trim that had become her go to lounge wear, and excitedly jumped onto him, wrapping her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist as he instinctively caught her and laid a big kiss on his lips before getting down. She was just under a foot shorter than he was and with a very slender frame, so holding her in place was never a problem for him.
"Looks like you've been busy?" he said, indicating the state of the front room.
"I have something really, really, really exciting to show you!" she grinned excitedly, practically bouncing up and down at this point with giddy energy.
"I know, you said so on the phone about 10 times," Jamie laughed.
"Did I?" she said, looking confused for a moment before the smile returned to her face. "Oh well, that just means you know I'm serious about this right?"
Jamie nodded and smiled. It was usually the best thing to do in this situation.
"It just needs a few more minutes..." she said, looking towards the kitchen, "but I've set it away now so it won't be long."
Jamie waited for more context for a second and when none arrived he spoke again.
"What won't be long?"
"You'll see," she grinned. "Take a seat and I'll explain everything."
Jamie didn't doubt that she would, down to the smallest detail, but looking at their sofa there was nowhere that wasn't covered by either a textbook or a stray sheet of paper.
"It's ok, just move those," she told him.
He did just that and then sat himself down. He suddenly felt very much like he was back in a college lecture hall as she stood in front of him with the whiteboard behind her about to present her lesson on what she'd been doing today.
"Ok, so the first thing I have to say is this is 100% classified..." she began.
"It usually is," Jamie playfully teased her.
"No but seriously though, this one cannot leave this room until I've spoken to my bosses about it... and then maybe not for another few years or so after that depending... but yeah, no talkie to anyone else about this ok?"
"Ok," he replied.
He'd never be able to accurately relay whatever she was about to say anyway, but still he knew she had to be careful and therefore so did he.
"Great! So, do you remember what it is we've been working on at the lab?"
That was a veritable Pandora's box of a question so Jamie asked her to remind him specifically which one she was talking about.
"The Instant Diet pills I've been working on, remember?"
Jamie did recall something about diet supplement pills that were meant to help people lose weight. Grace had explained some of the science around it before, but it had all gone over his head as usual.
"Yeah, I remember. You said you were way off having those done if I remember right though..."
"Yeah I thought that too," she smiled, glad that he'd remembered, "but then I suddenly had this huge brainwave at work."
She was clearly readying herself to explain her theory and progress in more detail than anyone could ever need and it was likely to be more of a stream of consciousness type of thing than a well structured and concise presentation, so Jamie braced himself.
"So it all started when I was talking to Benson, you remember him right? He's like the researcher above me on the pay grade, not the one in charge but the one I report to. I suppose that makes him a head researcher? But he's technically not though, what even is his job role anyway...?"
Grace went quiet for a moment as her mind wandered elsewhere.
"So what did you and Benson talk about?" Jamie interjected, pulling her back on course.
"Oh, yeah! So, we were talking about some of the latest test results. We were seeing progress but it seemed like very little was changing for people. We could see the pills were doing what they were designed to do because our subjects were losing weight but it was taking weeks and weeks and weeks! Some of them even said that they felt like it was making no difference at all, which is dumb because our results said they were, but you know what people are like, they need to see instant change or they're not happy, I suppose it was a mistake calling them instant diet pills but that's kind of what they're supposed to do, I mean what were they realistically expecting, you know?"
