Chapter 29 Easton
EASTON
My phone rings early the next morning.
Well, early-ish. Eight-thirty, which isn’t usually an early hour for me, but given how little sleep I got last night, it doesn’t feel great.
It’s Dr. Shearer, the professor whose lab I work in. I snatch the phone off the nightstand and jump from the bed.
“Hi, Aaron,” I say, doing my best to sound awake.
“Heeeey, Easton,” Aaron says. He’s normally a fast talker—he could have spit out a paragraph in the amount of time it took him to say heeeey. “Sorry to call on your vacation. South Carolina, right?”
Aaron does not give a flying fuck where I am or what I’m down here for. It’s not worth correcting him.
“Yeah,” I say softly. “What’s up?” My heart skitters. I twist my hair up just to get it off my neck—I’m starting to sweat—and begin to pace.
“Look,” he says, and I can hear the wince in his voice, “I’m going over the numbers, and I don’t know that we’ve got the resources to keep your study funded another semester.”
I nearly drop the phone. I perch on the edge of the mattress because my legs have begun to shake.
It makes no sense. My research is going really, really well. It’s already underway. “I don’t understand. You said the grant was approved.”
“It was,” he says. There’s a half-second of silence, as if he’s trying to carefully choose his next words.
“Some of the funding was coming from the university, though. That’s the part in question.
I’m trying to find a way to make it work, but I just wanted to prepare you.
While we’re figuring this out, I’ll see if someone else might be able to take you on, okay?
I didn’t want to worry you, but I also just wanted to be. ..upfront.”
My heart hammers in my chest, and it’s the only thing I can hear. This isn’t about me or my clinical trials. This is about Thomas. This is Thomas flexing his muscles after I told him not to come to the wedding, or someone currying favor with him by squeezing me out.
No one else is going to take me on in Aaron’s place. Not when it might mean incurring Thomas’s wrath.
The Walsh in me comes racing to the surface. You want to play this game, motherfucker? I’m gonna make you wish you were never born. Unlike my brothers and my dad, I would do it through the courts, not through violence, but the impulse remains the same.
I take one long breath in and slowly release it before I respond. “Okay, Aaron,” I say, “thanks for letting me know.”
Did Thomas actually set this up? Yes. Probably.
Don’t jump to conclusions, Easton.
But seriously, what the fuck? Thomas broke up with me in a fairly shitty way, with absolutely no warning, and now he’s taking it out on me?
I don’t have money for lawyers. All I can do is make threats I couldn’t possibly back up and even if I did have the money...my research would be dead in the water by the time it was adjudicated.
So I either give it up, or I get back together with Thomas. I already assumed I would be, so I’m not sure why I suddenly resent the idea so much. Maybe I just don’t like having my hand forced. Maybe it’s just that it’s so fundamentally unfair for him to jerk me around the way he has.
I pick my phone up again. Every bone in my body wants to accuse Thomas of doing this intentionally, of being disgusting and petty, but that’s not how I’ll win this battle.
Aaron just said he doesn’t know that there will be sufficient funding for me. Do you know anything about this?
Thomas
No, I’m not even there. But you know how these things work.
No, I really don’t. My research was really promising, and there hasn’t been an issue with my funding since it began.
Hon, you’ve been dating me most of that time. I warned you...there was bad and there was good.
Ah, right. The bad being that people would always claim my career progressed because I was with him. The good being that they were right to some extent: my career would actually progress more easily because I was dating him.
But the timing of it—for Aaron to tell me this right after that tense conversation with Thomas—is suspicious.
We broke up two weeks ago, and maybe word is just getting out, or maybe Thomas decided to show me a few of the cards in his deck.
Swear to me that you had nothing to do with this.
Thomas
Hon, I told you...I’m not even there. You know I wouldn’t do that. I’ll make some calls when I get back and see what I can do.
As if he’d have to be there. As if it wouldn’t just take one phone call, one email, one text, one DM.
I sit back and stare at my phone with a tight knot in the center of my stomach. I can’t believe I just accused him of intentionally sabotaging my funding to punish me for being here with Elijah.
It’s crazy, right? This situation is making me crazy.
But I’m only twenty-nine, and my career is being derailed for the second time.
I already have one degree I can’t use because a selfish man put himself first. Is this going to be another one?
When I get downstairs, Elijah’s just walking in—shirtless, a rivulet of sweat dripping down his chest. Sweat normally grosses me out, but I want to lick him clean. When my gaze meets his, last night rests between us for one very long moment.
I’m going to come so hard, straight down your throat.
God, I still can’t believe that happened.
It’s for the best that we’ll be separated tonight—family members are staying in the Boudreaux mansion, while extended family and the bridal party will stay in the guest cottages or the mansion across the street. Enforced responsibility. That’s what this situation requires.
I turn toward the coffee maker. “I’m going to go for a quick run, and then I’ll help you pack the car.”
“No need,” he says, slapping something on the counter. “We’re not leaving.”
It’s a note on yellow paper.
Elijah,
Paul is taking us on a road trip. We’ll be back in time to leave Wednesday.
Love,
Grandma
Well, fuck.
This means I now have two full days of skirting around what happened last night—and trying to keep it from happening again.
“I texted her,” he says, scraping his hands through his hair. “She won’t even tell me where they’re going.”
I want to laugh at my own stupidity. Here I was thinking he was just as caught up in remembering last night as I was, and he’s thinking about an eighty-eight-year-old instead.
I hit the button on the coffee maker and turn toward him. “Don’t worry about her. She actually seems pretty healthy.”
He shakes his head. “As long as she can manage not to drink a massive can of NitroCaffeine or whatever that shit was yesterday. There’s nothing I can do about it anyway. Kelsey might get annoyed if her bags are late, but she’ll live.”
There are circles under his eyes, and those hollows beneath his cheekbones are more pronounced than normal. “You look...stressed.”
His gaze meets mine. “I didn’t get much sleep.”
Last night was so good. Would it kill us to repeat it once?
“Ah,” I say, turning away again.
At least it’s not just me.
But it’s going to be two very long days.
I go for a run, but it’s not enough to drive this anxious tightening from my gut.
The thing with Dr. Shearer will sort itself out—I know I’m getting back together with Thomas and my funding will get reinstated, though the spoonful of force here has a very sour taste.
And what if Thomas changes his mind about me down the line?
Will I find myself exactly where I am now?
Thomas has been assuring me for so long that there will be a position at the university available when I’m ready for it.
It’s been a long time since I’ve had to worry about where I’ll go next.
And then, of course, there’s Elijah. Why did I have to make it weird last night?
But why’d he need to be affectionate afterward?
No, no...that was definitely on me. I’ve got no one-night-stand experience, other than him, but I assume even random hook-ups don’t, like, punch each other in the shoulder afterward.
They feign affection in some meaningless way, like lying on someone’s chest until it’s cool to slink away.
I shower and go downstairs, where Elijah’s reading the paper at the table.
“I got some sandwiches in Seaside,” he says, nodding in front of him. Everything that was easy between us has evaporated.
I thank him and take mine to the back deck, where I attempt to practice my wedding speech, though I’m mostly listening to the sounds of him in the room behind me.
This whole situation is...impossibly awkward.
Maybe I should just rent a car and drive myself—I could claim I was doing it just to get Kelsey’s bags there in time, and if Carol’s healthy enough for two days on her own doing God knows what, Betty and Elijah can handle any situation that presents just fine.
I go upstairs, throw on my bikini, and walk outside without a word.
I set up an umbrella on the beach and dive into the water, which is once again full of seaweed.
By the time I look back toward the shore, Elijah’s sitting on a towel beside mine, arms casually draped around his knees as he watches me.
There are circles under his eyes, a sag to his shoulders.
I’ve got my own shit to deal with, but as I walk out of the water, I’m more worried about him. I can’t think of a time since that day on the beach so long ago that I’ve seen him look this exhausted.
“Are you okay?” I ask, pressing my towel to my face.
He gives me the smallest nod imaginable. “Yeah.”
He doesn’t offer to remove the seaweed from my hair so I comb through it with my fingers, unknotting the tangles.
“The thing you said last night...I didn’t mean to break you,” he says hoarsely.
I turn toward him. “I know you didn’t. It’s fine. I shouldn’t have said it.”
He’s quiet for a long moment.
“My mom’s sick,” he finally says.
I freeze. “What?”