“No.” The word burst from her throat, and she rolled the magazine until her knuckles were white and she was able to speak calmly. “No. What’s the point? Let’s just try to ignore each other until you can leave.”
She offered him her best tough-girl face, and he simply nodded and looked down at those ridiculous socks. A particularly strong gust of wind rattled the windows in their panes, and Finn shivered. What a catastrophe. With or without Josie, she’d been counting on a chill weekend. But no way was she going to let her guard down for a second with Tom there, both familiar and strange and stirring up all kinds of long-buried emotions.
So she lied. “I actually have a big work project that I brought home with me. I’ll set up in my room.” It was the only activity she could think of that would give her an excuse to shut her door and pretend that Tom had remained a painful memory from her past. “What about you?”
He jiggled his knee, and she wondered if he was uneasy too or just burning off excess energy.
“I’ve always got a mountain of work I can do.” He pointed to his bag near the door. “Have laptop, will travel.”
“Kitchen table okay for you?”
“Sure.” He surged to his feet, and wow, she’d forgotten how tall he was and how tiny he made her feel.
She shrugged off the afghan and stood too, the forgotten magazine slithering to the floor. “Sure,” she repeated. “There’s soda and beer in the fridge. Help yourself to whatever.”
Tom crossed the room to grab his bag and dropped it on the table. “Thanks. Can I keep any spare change I find when I rummage through your drawers?”
“Ha,” she said flatly.
He offered her another lopsided grin. “Now that I think about it, it’s probably not worth the trouble. I’ve got a teaching assistant’s stipend that keeps me in the lifestyle to which I’ve lowered my standards. Spare change isn’t going to make a dent in the student loans.” He pulled a power cord out of his bag and swiveled his head around the room.
She pointed at the outlet along the kitchen wall, then asked in spite of herself. “Teaching assistant?”
He plugged in and returned to the table. “I’m a PhD candidate in economics at Northwestern.”
His hair was drying into those familiar curls,andhe was reminding her of just how smart he was? Unfair.
“Makes sense. You were the only one in econ class who actually enjoyed learning aboutThe Wealth of Nations.”
He grinned at her over the top of his MacBook. “Would you believe that’s what my dissertation’s on? I’m examining its compatibility with the rise in ethical investment portfolios.”
A memory surfaced of his enthusiasm for the topic, so at odds with the other bored-out-of-their-minds students in class. “I bet your grad school study groups aren’t nearly as much fun as we were.”
His smile faded. “They aren’t.”
Well, hell. Why had she brought that up? Their high school study group had been her, Tom, and Dylan—her boyfriend and Tom’s best friend—and they’d been a happy little trio. Until they weren’t. Judging by the look on his face, it wasn’t a particularly pleasant memory for him either. Time to shut this down.
“I’ll be in there.” She hitched a thumb over her shoulder toward her room. “Holler if you need anything.”
Before she’d gone three steps, his voice stopped her. “Hey, Huck?”
She turned slowly, apprehension and anticipation at war in her stomach.
“Wi-Fi password?”
Ah. Of course. He wanted to get online. She rattled it off and fled to her bedroom, where everything was neat and tidy and not covered in a sticky layer of emotions.
Four
Tom had prepared a speech once upon a time. A furious defense to show Finn Carey exactly how wrong she was about him. He’d imagined himself delivering it in a variety of settings: in the hallway between classes, at a cafeteria table, from the stage at graduation. It never happened, of course, but each time the crux of his message would’ve been the same:How could youeverthink I would do that?
He’d never imagined delivering it almost a decade later in the apartment of Finn Carey, adult. Yet the arguments he’d gone over and over in his head came rushing back, ready to unleash, as she’d sat on the couch, trying to hide behind a magazine. He’d even given her an opening.
She didn’t want to talk about it? Fine. He’d ignore their history and count the minutes until he could get the fuck back out of her life. Good thing he had two hundred pages of dissertation edits to plow through.
He pulled one of the binders from his bag and smoothed his fingers over the printed sheets of his rough draft, imagining he could feel the power of Adam Smith’s economic theories vibrating on the page. With his earbuds plugged in and the pages spread on the table in front of him, he soon forgot all about the uncomfortable kitchen chair, the chilliness in the apartment, the storm howling outside, even the woman in the next room.
Three hours later, he rested his elbows on the table and sank his fingers into his overlong hair as he stared at the note on page 108. Professorial handwriting was erratic on a good day, and with the addition of a stain of some kind, probably coffee, it was downright illegible. He gave a growl of frustration.
