Chapter Eleven
ELEVEN
You think you’re prepared for a person to open his front door, and then you see he hasn’t shaved since you last saw him two days ago, and all that dark scruff is so deliciously at odds with your admittedly narrow idea of how a computer nerd ought to look, so you get caught standing and gaping on his porch.
Again.
Based on the hint of color that streaks across Fisher’s cheekbones and the slight curve of his surprised but pleased smile, I don’t think he minds.
When my wits are sufficiently gathered to step across the threshold, he takes my coat and hangs it on the rack behind the door.
There’s a low fire in the hearth and I wander toward it with outstretched hands, not willing after the day I’ve had to investigate the potential dangers of how at home I feel here.
“So, what did you do today?” he asks, and more tension eases from my shoulders.
Because, thank God, he didn’t ask the question most dreaded by grad students everywhere: how’s your dissertation coming along?
“Oh, ran some errands,” I tell him.
Had a breakdown in the Children’s section of a popular bookstore.
And also in my car.
“Did you work up an appetite?”
“Definitely.”
He motions me to follow him deeper into the house.
As much as I don’t really want to leave the haven that is his living room, I’m curious too.
We pass through a large dining room, with a table and chairs for eight, and emerge into the kitchen, which has obviously been redone and fairly recently, but in a style perfectly in keeping with the character of the house.
No stark white quartz and cold stainless steel here.
I wonder whether his father purchased the place in this condition or had it fixed up as part of the property’s investment potential.
“Do you like fettucine alfredo?” Fisher asks.
“Sure.”
He washes his hands, then opens a refrigerator of a kind I’ve only seen on cooking shows—who knew people had them in their homes, too?
When he reappears with butter, cream, and a block of cheese, I realize we’re not talking about sharing some Olive Garden carry-out.
He intends to make the dish from scratch.
“You don’t have to go to all that trouble,” I say.
He’s rummaging in a cupboard for a box of pasta, so his reply is muffled. “It’s no trouble at all.”
I help with the basic stuff—boiling water, grating cheese—though he insists it’s all perfectly simple, something anyone can do. While we wait for the sauce to come together, he grabs two goblets from a glass-front cabinet. “Wine?”
“Mmm, what is this?” I demand after my first sip; it’s crisp and fruity without being too sweet.
“Proprietary blend,” he says, twisting the bottle so I can read the label: Gaby’s Good Grapes—Your Favorite White. “My sister runs a vineyard in northern California. She’s brilliant. Took it from failing to thriving in less than two years.”
“Oh.” I can’t quite hide my surprise. “I suppose that’s a branch of your family business?”
“No.”
I wait, but he doesn’t add anything more, and I’m left to sort out the tangle of emotions in that single word.
Pride for a sister who has already achieved such success, even though I would guess from that picture of them on the mantel that she’s not even twenty-five.
And envy, too, that she evidently gets to choose her career path, a choice he seems to have been denied.
“So, California,” I say, eventually. “But you’re from New England, right?”
“Connecticut.” He’s focused once more on his sauce.
“Oh, like Christmas Inn, Connecticut,” I exclaim—and immediately wish I could take the words back.
He pauses in his stirring to send me an amused but skeptical look. “If you say so.”
Because of course he doesn’t know that holiday rom-com. It no longer exists. And even if it did, he probably wouldn’t be a fan.
He arranges silverware and cloth napkins on the breakfast bar side of the large kitchen island—“I never eat in the dining room,” he tells me, with a self-deprecating shrug—then, in less time than seems possible, he presents me with a plate of pasta coated with creamy, cheesy deliciousness.
“Oh my God. How did you learn to cook like this?” I ask around a mouthful.
I’m not sure what I expect his answer will be. Something ordinary, like hanging out in the kitchen with my mom. Or maybe something Richie Rich, like my dad paid our private chef to teach me.
But what he says is “YouTube. And forcing myself to eat the mistakes so I didn’t make them again.”
It’s such a Fisher Davis answer—I think he really believes that all of life’s problems can be solved through technology and persistence.
God, I wish he were right.
While we eat, he coaxes me into telling him what it was like growing up in St. Paul, and manages to look interested the whole time.
He talks enough about his teenage years and his family to make it clear that of course he didn’t grow up in the part of Connecticut where a down-on-his-luck holiday-themed bed-and-breakfast proprietor could get snowed in with and fall for the soulless real-estate exec who’s trying to buy and redevelop the property.
He grew up in the part of Connecticut that’s basically a playground for wealthy Manhattanites.
“I’ve never been to New York,” I confess, to his astonishment. “But I’m going to a conference there in December with Professor Pedersen. And Geoff,” I add, because I’ve mostly made my peace with it, and I don’t want it to seem like I was keeping a secret if it comes up later.
His eyes narrow slightly. Personally, I think Fisher’s dislike of Geoff is overblown, but I have to admit I could learn to enjoy being the object of his concern. “Don’t worry,” I try to reassure him. “I’ll be careful. I haven’t forgotten what you told me.”
“I’m glad to hear it. Because I—” He nudges his glasses a little, as if bringing me into even sharper focus, and something about that little movement makes my heart beat faster.
“Well, let’s just say I wouldn’t want anything to interfere with your happiness—your enjoyment of the city, I mean.
” He stands up to gather our dishes and carry them to the sink.
“I wish I were going to be there to show you around, but I’m planning to stay here through the holidays and get some work done. ”
“Oh?”
I don’t know whether I mean to convey sorrow—he’s choosing not to spend Christmas with his family?—or hope, since my parents’ Florida trip means I’ll be sticking around Grantham too.
But that would be getting way ahead of myself.
“Make yourself comfortable in the living room, if you’d like,” he says as he bends to retrieve a bottle of blue liquid from a lower cupboard and dribbles some over the dirty dishes piled in the sink.
“I’m just going to wash up these dishes.
” With one hand, he reaches deep into the porcelain basin to jam the plug into the drain, while with the other hand, he flips up the faucet handle.
When he pushes his sleeves to his elbows, revealing those sculpted forearms, dusted with dark hair, I drop my gaze to the sheen of bubbles beginning to rise. “How is it this dream kitchen doesn’t have a dishwasher?”
“It does,” he says, laughing as he flicks a little soap in my direction. “Me.” Then he shrugs and flips a towel over his shoulder. “Old house, quirky plumbing. Anyway, I kind of like doing them by hand—I use the time to think. To problem-solve.”
I imagine him standing here, staring through the window over the sink. Would it be weird to hope that lately, he’s been thinking about me? And not just as, you know, a problem he needs to solve?
I snatch the towel, proud of myself for barely grazing his shoulder with my fingertips. “I’ll help.”
Between the two of us, we finish in short order. Then he refills our wineglasses, and we make our way to the living room. Like any good English major, I’m drawn to the bookshelves. I’ve been wondering about their contents since my first visit here.
My eyes immediately latch onto an old leatherbound volume.
“My sister gave me that as a graduation gift,” he says, pulling it off the shelf and holding it out so I can get a closer look. “It’s an early nineteenth-century copy of Euclid’s Elements. Euclid was the father of geometry,” he explains.
“Yeah, I recognize the name. My dad is a math teacher—well, was, before he retired.”
“Really?” The note of surprise in his voice makes me curl inward; it’s like he too is disappointed by my C-minus in algebra.
But maybe I’m not as good at reading people as I am at reading books, because the next thing he says is “I’m a little envious.
After that disaster of a philosophy class in undergrad, I changed my major to math.
I know it’s not most people’s favorite, but it just …
clicked for me. I always thought I’d like to teach it. ”
I can’t help blinking at him. After so long thinking of him as “the IT guy,” it’s difficult for me to imagine him in the classroom lecturing on quadratic equations; yet I think, based on his explanation of recursion the other night, he might be good at it. “Not middle school, I’m guessing.”
He laughs a little. “No, probably not. I thought of getting my doctorate, becoming a professor, but …” His shoulders roll; I think he might have been aiming for a shrug, but his muscles are suddenly too taut for such an easy movement.
“I made a promise to my dad to come home and work with him when I was done with school.”
I take a sip of wine that sounds more like a noisy gulp.
But it’s covering the sound of me trying to swallow back some awkward questions—this isn’t the first time he’s mentioned his plan to go back east after graduation; nor is it the first time I’ve wondered why he doesn’t get to dream dreams of his own.
“What do you think would happen if you told him you wanted to do something else instead?”
“Well, that’s an interesting question.” He returns the book to the shelf. “Not a lot of data to extrapolate from. Very few people have the nerve to tell my dad no.”