The Art of Loving

[37] A Smart One and a Lucky One

Neither Elaine nor Daniel said anything for a moment, before Daniel managed to get himself together. "Astrophysics? 'at sounds really boring, El, 'at's a stepdown from me. It must get very boring with him around."

"Oh yeah it's the worst," Ellie said, rolling her eyes. "Believe me, it's absolutely awful having a boyfriend who cares about me, who doesn't cheat on me, who enjoys the same things as I do, who is actually smart enough to have a mature conversation with. It's pure torture."

"So in yer degree, what do ye do? Count stars?" Daniel said, scoffing a little as Elaine chuckled.

Brian glanced at Ellie who just shrugged and nodded, encouraging him to keep doing what he had been doing. So he shook his head. "No, actually I don't count stars. I'm not sure if I can dumb it down enough for you what I actually do," he started.

Ellie was still holding his hand, smirking to herself. He was handling this a lot better than she had expected and it made her happy. Very happy.

"Please, give it a try. Ye just don't know it yerself," Daniel tried to keep his image upright, but by the way Elaine was shifting in her seat that didn't seem very convincing.

Brian cleared his throat. "Alright, well I'm currently working on developing and building a Spectrometer and then collecting high quality data to find out more about a particular phenomenon in the sky called the Zodiacal Light. It's something that can be seen - at the best when you're close to the equator - in the early morning hours, but most people don't know it's there. At the moment I'm making various observations, collecting the data and then analysing it to see what that tells you about the dust cloud."

They couldn't hide that they were impressed, no matter how much they tried. It was impossible not to realise how smart he was when he started talking about his university work.

"I'd tell you more but I doubt you could follow that. I'm actually hoping to work together with Ellie on an astrophotography project, but I doubt you two would understand what that would be about so I'm not even going to try," he added, sitting up straight.

"Who on earth needs 'at?" Daniel asked, trying to sound condescending.

But Brian was prepared for questions. "Well actually, I'm not sure if you're aware but last year the Americans landed on the moon, and the moon is in space. And space is very different from our planet, there is no atmosphere. Now, you may not know this but the atmosphere is actually not just oxygen, it has various functions, and one of them is to protect us from things out there in space, such as meteorites. When astronauts are in space, there is nothing to protect them from tiny meteorites such as they could originate from the dust cloud that causes the Zodiacal Light, which is an accumulation of space debris, to put it simply. It's important to know more about that because it constitutes such an ever-present source of danger. So actually, no one on earth needs that, but humans going to space need my research."

Ellie was grinning at her ex and her cousin before she leaned over to kiss Brian's cheek. "And this, Daniel, is what I meant with having a smart boyfriend who I can have a mature conversation with."

Daniel scoffed after he had caught himself. "As if ye talk about space.."

"Actually, we do. Just the other day I borrowed one of his textbooks because I wanted to read more about how they measure the distance of stars using radial velocities and the Doppler effect," Ellie said, trying to remember what she had read in that book Brian had taken with him the first time they had gone to Cornwall. She wasn't entirely sure if what she was saying was correct, but Daniel wouldn't know if it was, and Brian wasn't going to correct her now. "It was actually pretty interesting," she continued. "Did you know that they can -"