Chapter 7 Easton
EASTON
The article about him in The Cut was entitled “We Came for the Science, We Stayed for the Eye Candy,” but I wouldn’t say that Thomas is necessarily hot.
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 three Kissing Booth movies in a single 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.
My reputation means more to me than he does too.
“It was a little bit of a surprise,” I say breezily, because the situation is delicate, and if Thomas hears that I’m destroyed, he’ll think he has more time to fuck around. “But we’re all good. He’s off doing his thing and I’m doing mine.”
Melissa has never been subtle in her reactions.
I can’t see her face, but I can almost hear the solid, surprised blink of her eyes as she processes this.
“Well, I’m glad to hear because I can tell you, we were surprised.
We all thought he was about to propose. He’d discussed it with James.
And didn’t he sort of reference it on his show? ”
He did. There was a whole episode on marriage, where he talked to various experts about how a good marriage can extend your life and interviewed centenarians who were still married and kicking.
I remember the sly smile he gave one of the women he interviewed when he said, “I’ll be finding out firsthand pretty soon. ”
God. I’ve still got whiplash from this whole turn of events.
“I think he just wasn’t ready to make that jump,” I tell her. “He still feels too young.”
“Only a man would decide he was still too young to settle down at the age of forty,” she says with a groan.
I laugh. “Exactly. And I’m not looking to settle down with somebody who is that uncertain about me.
Besides, it probably makes sense for me to get a few more relationships under my belt, you know?
I was twenty-seven when we started dating but I’d been so focused on school until then that men weren’t a priority. ”
It’s not entirely true. I was just so focused on one man, for my entire life, that other men weren’t a priority.
And when he broke my heart, it took a while for me to find my feet.
It took the esteemed Thomas Prescott coming into my lab and deciding, pretty much on the spot, that he wanted me and wasn’t leaving until I agreed to date him.
A brokenhearted girl needs that kind of confidence in order to try again.
“I guess,” she says, “but I was your age when I got married. You don’t want to wait forever to have kids.”
I’ve been hearing some version of this the entire time I’ve been in grad school.
The risk of spending this much time in school is that we won’t even be beginning our careers until we are in our thirties, so children probably need to wait another five years or more.
Several women in my program have frozen their eggs.
I didn’t think I had to, given Thomas’s two-year thing, but I might have to reconsider it if this plan doesn’t work out.
“Well, anyway, I’m driving down to Key West with a friend and wondered if you guys might be free for dinner.”
“Of course!” she cries. “We’d love to see you. Why don’t you stay here with us?”
I’m sure her house is amazing, and it would be delicious to have her reporting back to everyone in Boston that I shared a bedroom in her home with another man, but I’m not about to take on that level of awkwardness with Elijah…
It’s going to be awkward enough as it is.
“Oh.” I allow a hint of wariness to enter my voice. “Well, actually, I’m traveling down there with a guy I know from home, and I wouldn’t want to put you in a weird position.”
“So is this someone you’re seeing?” she asks eagerly.
As much as I’d love to make it sound as if Elijah and I are hot and heavy, there are lines I can’t cross: calling someone my boyfriend days after I got dumped just sounds desperate. “He’s someone I used to date,” I tell her. “We’re playing it by ear.”
This sounds like the sort of noncommittal thing you’d say if you were having a hot fling with a guy who might turn into more. I approve.
“I’ll make a reservation for dinner. Where are you staying?”
My chest tightens. I’ll need to pay for a room since I’m the one who insisted upon this excursion. Thomas won’t feel too threatened by a guy who put us in some hotel that’s basically a cinder-block cell with a semen-covered blanket.
“I don’t know. Elijah did all the planning,” I reply.
“Oooh, his name’s Elijah? I have no idea why that sounds so sexy to me.”
I blow out a breath. Just wait until you meet him.
My father and I haven’t had a single meal together since I got back, nor did I expect to.
He’s too hungover for breakfast in the morning, and I guess he gets dinner at the bar.
If I catch him somewhere between two and three beers—enough to take away the edge off his hangover but not so many that he’s starting to get pissy for no reason—he’s sort of pleasant.
He’s even apologetic about the state of the house.
But my overall impression is that he wishes I hadn’t come and he can’t wait for me to leave, so I don’t make much of an effort to catch him.
On my final night in St. Samuels, I wait until he’s left for the bar and start to clean the family room.
The couch now has an odor, grime so engrained that no amount of cleaning will help.
There’s still a bloodstain from the night, years ago, when Sean came home with a bullet in his shoulder.
I suppose all the stains are the same to my dad, but that one particular bloodstain still has the power to knock the breath out of me. I wish he’d just replace the couch.
I’m nearly done when the front door opens and I freeze in place. It’s way too early for my dad to be home...which means it’s probably one of my brothers. I have the incredibly childish desire to hide, but I haven’t moved an inch when Kevin saunters into the room, followed by my father.
“Well, well, well,” he says, “look who’s decided to grace us with her presence. Dad never even mentioned you were home.” He turns toward my father, with narrowed eyes.
“Who am I, her fucking social secretary?” my father scowls, grabbing himself a beer from the kitchen and tossing an envelope on the counter.
Kevin glances between us. “Just seems a little suspect, is all I’m saying.”
My father flops onto the couch, directly on that bloodstain, and pops the beer open. “Get your money and get out,” my dad tells him.
Kevin ignores that. His eyes gleam as he observes me, his hands in his back pockets. “How long are you here?” he asks. “This could prove useful.”
My heart is drumming in my chest. I could tell him the truth, but what good would that do me? I’m best off letting him think he’s got time to figure it out.
“Not sure,” I reply with a casual shrug.
I’m the master of looking blank when I need to, as if my soul has left my body.
I’ll give you something to cry about was a threat I heard at least once a week growing up—I’d get hit before I’d even had a chance to stop.
I learned, over time, that it was best to show no reaction at all.
“I have to be in New Orleans a week from next Friday.”
His grin sends a chill down my spine. If I wasn’t already leaving, I’d be on the first plane out tomorrow. “Good to know, Dr. Walsh.”