“Because my boyfriend and I broke up and he keeps coming by my house, begging me to change my mind, which is such a ridiculous tactic.”
I took the seat across from her. I wished she’d change position—into one that didn’t display those curves the way they were currently displayed—but at least she was being veryEastonto remind me who she was.
“Why is it ridiculous?”
She pinched another conversation heart between her fingers and studied it. “You never get anywhere by letting someone know how you feel. Relationships are about status, about securing the most high-quality match with whom to pass on your genetic material. His desperation alone proves that he was not a high-quality match.”
I laughed. There it was. Easton and her facts, Easton and her science. I could ignore the curves and the thoughts about her mouth when she was being the version of her I remembered. Funny and strange and charming and awkward all in the samebreath. “Aren’t you a little young to be worried about passing on your genetic material?”
She rolled on her back and stared at the ceiling. The change of position didn’t help as much as I’d hoped. “From an evolutionary perspective, I’m precisely the right age and you’re nearly too old. And what I’m saying is that the search is hard-wired, so we act on it whether we’re planning to reproduce or not.”
My mouth opened to argue that there was no way that was true—that I was only twenty-two and had plenty of time. But that was what she wanted. She wanted me to get into a fight with her about biological clocks and evolution and forget that she still hadn’t truly explained why she was here.
“So, why’d you dump him in the first place? If you reference evolution or genetic material, I’m definitely on his side.”
She examined her nails. “I realized I was bored, kind of out of nowhere, and the next time I saw him, I was even more bored, and then I started to actually resent him for boring me. And that’s not really a fair way to feel about somebody who likes you and has done nothing wrong, so I broke up with him, but I didn’t expect him to turn into such a fucking whiny baby about being dumped. He’s actually interesting now, but in a bad way.”
I laughed. That poor fucking heartbroken kid—I could totally see it from his point of view. And it was cute now, but one day she’d be dangerous. One day, every man who fell for her would give her his heart and he wouldn’t get it back.
I was so relieved that I was older, and that it could never happen to me.
“What changed?”my mother asks. “Why is she willing to make the drive now?”
I scrub a hand over my face, unable to answer. This is a terrible idea, this trip with her.
I’d have known it the second I saw her sitting on the beach in her bikini with her ponytail blowing in the breeze, her spine curving over her bent knees, except I wasn’t planning to ask her to come at all.
I went out there simply to get any fighting out of the way so that it didn’t happen in New Orleans instead. If she’s going to start shit with me the way she nearly did yesterday before my mother arrived, I wanted it out of the way here, not within earshot of twenty family members.
And then...there was the stupid thing about her hair, and that bruise on her leg, and I started worrying about what the hell her dad and brothers might do over the course of the next week and a half and...it just came out. The request. We weren’t even supposed to leave until Friday but the thought of her here, dependent on their sobriety and goodwill...I couldn’t stand it.
“I’m relieved,” my mom continues. “I just don’t understand what changed.”
Nothing changed.
That’s the problem.
7
EASTON
The article about him inThe Cutwas entitled “We Came for the Science, We Stayed for the Eye Candy,” but I wouldn’t say that Thomas is necessarilyhot. He’s simply normal and vaguely telegenic—no different than a hundred guys you’d pass in the airport. It’s the way he comes alive when discussing what he does and the future of his field that make him attractive. He’d had a rule that he would never date a grad student, but he’d made an exception for me. As the only kid in my high school who had a favorite mathematician and a secret crush on a long-dead scientist, I couldn’t help but be flattered.
If it sort of sucks that he chose me for my looks after spending all these years honing my intellect, it’s the sort of suck I can live with.
He drew me into his life but didn’t really want to be drawn into mine. I couldn’t necessarily blame him. I’m eleven years younger, and broke twenty-something grad students live really different lives from middle-aged professors with their own TV shows. It wasn’t as if he was going to sit around with me and my roommates watching all threeKissing Boothmovies in asingle night; nor was he going to attend some BYOB party where everyone treated him like a demigod.
His friends James and Melissa are people I’ve spent a lot of time with. While most of Thomas’s colleagues are older and dull, and their spouses act like I’m just some young piece of ass riding Thomas’s coattails, Melissa wasn’t among them.
“Get me away from these old bags,” she’ll say at work events, pulling me off to the side, though she’s their age and they’re not old. We’ve spent enough time together at out-of-town conferences that I consider her one of my closer friends, and she’s invited me to the house she inherited in Palm Beach a million times, but...will she want to see me without Thomas too?
Even as I’m dialing her number, I’m not certain I should. Can Elijah and I manage to fool anyone while never touching each other once? I can barely even stand to meet his gaze—we’re fine for thirty seconds and then suddenly it’s awkward and painful and I know I’ve got what happened between us all over my face, but I’ve got to act like I don’t.
Not to mention how weirded out Elijah was by the whole concept—sort of irritating, given that it was his suggestion, initially. If he’s worried I might use this as a chance to make a move, he can rest easy. I wouldn’t touch him if he was drowning.
“Hi!” she says with good cheer that evaporates almost immediately. “I’ve been meaning to call you. I heard about you and Thomas. I’m so sorry.”
My stomach sinks, though I should have expected this. Thomas probably wanted to get the word out before photos of him frolicking with the women on Devon Hunt’s yacht emerged—his reputation means more to him than anything else, even me, and I can’t fault him for it.Myreputation means more to me than he does too.
