by S. E. Harmon
Monday was my turn to flake. Since I had to hand in my speech the next morning, I spent most of the night busily typing away on my laptop. I succumbed to a little of Blue’s wheedling and took a thirty-minute break—according to his undocumented research, a little sex cleared the mind, and the dirtier the sex was, the clearer your mind became. We tested his theory… a couple times. Afterward I was right back on my computer, typing in the near dark. Thank God for backlit keys.
I expected us to get together on Tuesday, but Blue had physical therapy in the morning and some interview stuff to do in the afternoon. Wednesday and Thursday were just as busy, and they flew by. It was almost as though someone had hit the gas on our week. So here we were on Friday after five, and I was nowhere near leaving. All of those things, added up, made it a little less enjoyable to watch Alex puzzle out his chicken/egg situation.
“Why don’t we try it another way?” I suggested.
The look he gave me was equal parts frustration and irritation. He looked as though he wanted to wing his pen at the wall… or at my head. He finally went with his stock answer of “Whatever,” which had the potential to drive me more than a little crazy.
“You know, sometimes it can help to make the question more personal.” I looked at him calculatingly. If I recalled correctly, he was a Fast & Furious nut. “What kind of car do you drive?”
He made a face. “If you think putting my beater in this question is gonna make me feel this shit….”
I rolled my eyes. “All right, what kind of car would Toretto drive?”
“American muscle, of course.” He looked up at the ceiling for a second, but not like he was drawing a blank—more like he was selecting from the many cars in his head. “Charger is the obvious answer, so I’m gonna go with a Challenger,” he finally said. “Black on black with a souped-up engine.”
“Got it.” I started to draw a car between two vectors. “A pink Beetle with flowers it is.”
He laughed. “That looks like a box with two circles anyway.”
I finished my drawing and read the problem aloud again. “Now you should be able to fill in the velocity and the uniform deceleration and determine the time it takes the car to come to rest. What equation are you going to use?”
“I don’t know—”
“Think, Alex. Do you want Toretto flying off a bridge or what?”
“He already did that,” he informed me. After a minute of thinking, he finally said, “V=x/t.”
“You killed him,” I said, shaking my head. “Now there won’t be a Fast & Furious Part 99 or whatever number they’re up to.”
He blew out a breath. “V=u+at.”
“Better.” He started to plug the values in the formula, and I stilled his pen. “Solve the equation for t first. It’ll make things a little easier.”
“Three seconds,” he finally said.
“Nice.”
“Nice? That took like six hours.”
More like seven minutes, but I wasn’t going to haggle. “Doesn’t matter how long it takes, as long as you get it. Do you?”
“Do I what?”
I clucked my tongue impatiently. “Do you get it?”
“Yeah. I think so, anyway. It always seems easier when you’re walking me through it, though.” He sighed and rocked back in his chair as though completely drained. After a moment, he raised an eyebrow. “Toretto in a pink Beetle, huh?”
I shrugged. “Makes more sense when you relate it to something you like. Not a big deal.”
“That’s dope, though”—his ears turned a little pink—“that you care enough to make up some shit like that for me.”
It was worth every minute of frustration right then. I half smiled and pretended not to notice that his cheeks matched his ears. “Glad I could help. Now one more and you can get out of here.”
WHEN ALEX finally left my office, I checked my phone for the time and groaned—five o’clock. I debated diving into traffic or just waiting until six, and common sense won out. I settled down grumpily and took advantage of the time to grade some quizzes I’d given earlier that week. Halfway through, my office phone rang. I picked up the receiver and tucked it between my shoulder and cheek without missing a beat.
“Dr. Cannon,” I said absently.
“So you are alive.”
I rolled my eyes. “Hello, Mother.”
“Don’t you ‘hello, Mother’ me. If I’ve called you once, I’ve called you six times.”
I tried to sound official. Being in a grown-up chair at my office helped. “Mother, I’m very busy right now.”
“I’ve practically memorized your voicemail at this point.”
“That’s very nice, but I need to get back to—”
“Hi, this is Dr. Cannon.” Her imitation of me was so perfect it gave me pause. “I’m unable to answer my phone right now, but if you leave me a detailed message, I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.”
I gave up trying to convince her that I was a grown-up with a real job. “Ma. Will you cut it out? I’m busy adulting right now. Or trying to, at least.”
“I mean really, sweetheart, it’s a phone. It’s portable. You keep it on your person, and when people call, you answer. Do you ever even use your phone?”
“If I never used a phone, we wouldn’t be having this lovely conversation.”
“To make me stoop so low as to call your office phone? It’s inexcusable.” She sighed, clearly satisfied with her tongue-lashing. “Anyway, dear, how’re you doing?”
“Before you called, or after?”
She ignored that quite handily. “That’s fantastic. And how’s Blue?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Because he’s your best friend and you guys are usually attached at the hip,” she said in her very best no duh voice. “Anything else you need to know before you answer a simple query?”
“God.” I huffed. “When I tell people where I get my smart mouth, they just don’t believe such a nice Southern woman could be the source. Blue is fine.”
“I’m going to need more than that, Kelly.”
“He finished training camp, and he has another preseason game this week. He’s like a big kid right now.” I smiled as I thought about his excitement. Even though the vets usually played very little of the preseason games, he was still pretty psyched.
“It’s been a while since I saw the two of you.”
“We’ve been pretty busy.”
“Too busy for family?” she demanded.
“Of course not.”
“I assume you’ll be here for Thanksgiving?”
My parents and I were separated by several hours of travel, and even though they were amazing people, I was constantly tempted to sacrifice the blood of small animals in thanks for every one of those miles.
“I can’t think of any reason why I wouldn’t.” Under my breath, I added, “And believe me, I tried.”
“I heard that.” She sniffed. “But I accept your RSVP, and I’ll see you for dinner.”
“I guess you will.”
“Blue isn’t playing this Thanksgiving, is he?”
I scrunched my brow. He’d posted his schedule on the fridge, and I had a vague memory of him saying something about the holidays, but I couldn’t remember if he’d been pleased or vexed. “I’ll have to check the schedule.”
“It’ll be so nice to have both of my boys under one roof. For once.”
I rolled my eyes. “I was coming up for Christmas anyway.”
“Christmas?” She clicked her tongue. “You mean when you roll into town with one sad pan of brownies and eat your weight in honey-baked ham and pie?”
“Sad pan?” My eyebrows shot up. “It certainly wasn’t sad when you all were diving into it face-first. Or when you asked me to send you the Pinterest link to the recipe.”
“Which you never did,” she said with a sniff.
I opened my mouth to retort, but there was a sharp rap at the door. A voice followed it as the person pushed it o
pen a crack. “Dr. Cannon?”
“Come on in,” I called.
The door pushed open farther, and I glanced up to find the dean of my department, Carole Wozniak, in my doorway. She gave me a brief but polite smile as she stepped in my office, looking all chic and pressed in tailored pants and a tweed blazer. At some point since I saw her on Monday, she’d cut her brown hair in a razor bob that was flattering for her face. When she tucked several strands behind her ear, she revealed tiny pearl studs in her ears.
I cut my mother off as she rhapsodized about her Pinterest pinning spree and all the dishes she’d found for the holidays. “I really have to—”
“They have some really gorgeous dishes that will look perfect next to—”
“I gotta—”
“—my centerpiece. And don’t get me started on the glasses. I found a perfect tablescape for winter on the Food Network. Have you seen Ina Garten’s show, by any chance? They call her the—”
“Barefoot Contessa,” I finally managed to break in. “I know. I really have to go now, Mother.” By the time I hung up, the dean was clearly fighting back a smile. “Sorry about that.”
“It’s no problem. I have a mother too.” She waved a hand. “I just came by to let you know the board was extremely impressed with your speech.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yes. We really connected with what you were saying and the framework of your ideas. I think certain areas could be tighter, of course.”
“Sure.” That speech was tighter than my skinny jeans after I binged on nachos, and she knew it. I cleared my throat. “Anything else?”
“There were also several points regarding nuclear fusion that I would like to see changed.”
“I’m always open to change.”
I was completely closed to change. Fuck change. I wanted change to die.
“Overall, everything was all very relatable and accessible. Dr. Arlow especially related with the direction you went in regarding applied technology. And your recent paper on the new phase point of oxygen certainly hasn’t gone unnoticed.”
“Well, that’s… that’s really good news.” The placid expression on her face didn’t change, and my enthusiasm dimmed a little. “Right?”
“I can’t give you a definitive answer at this moment. There are just so many factors to consider. This is a very prestigious conference and would be quite a feather in someone’s cap if they were awarded the honor.”
“I understand. Of course there’s a process to be followed.” I injected the appropriate amount of gravitas in my voice, but I didn’t give a rat’s ass about their process. I felt less like a university professor and more like a little kid on the playground, waiting to be picked for kickball. Me, me, me. Pick me.
“We still have three more candidates to interview, and then we’ll take a vote. That person would have to get three of the five votes, after which our final choice would then have to be approved by the chairman of the committee.”
I finally had to ask—either that or put on a fresh shirt and reapply my Speed Stick. “Carole, level with me here. Am I the keynote speaker, or what?”
“Oh, I’m sorry.” Her eyes twinkled. “Was I rambling?”
“Carole.”
“It’s still very unofficial, but you were chosen, yes.”
It was hard, but I maintained my composure. I drew on years of sitting in church on hard pews on Sundays with my grandma eyeballing me. That tiny woman had a hard purse filled with hard candies and wasn’t afraid to use it across my head. I took in a calm breath. Surely I could wait to do the macarena until after she left the room.
“That’s wonderful news.”
“Like I said, this is in no way official, but I just wanted to give you the heads-up. So… congratulations.” She smiled. “You’re going to be fantastic.”
I waited until she left and the door closed behind her to let loose a small whoop, and I shot out of my chair to do a quick shimmy and shake. Even as I worked my hips in ways my hips were too old to work, it started to hit me. I paused midtwerk.
I was going to have to go up in front of the physics elite—the best and the brightest from all over the country—and give a speech without stuttering or freezing up or any of those other things I’d absolutely done before with public speaking.
I decided to freak out after I got my celebration on, and I was starting to feel like maybe I’d confused the macarena with another dance entirely when I heard a cough that kind of sounded like a laugh. I spun around to find the dean standing half in and half out of my doorway.
We stared at one another for a moment, and then she finally spoke. “I forgot my keys.”
I spotted them on the edge of my desk, right near where she’d been standing, and plucked them off the edge quickly. I handed them over with a smile that was a hair too wide. “That you did.”
“Was that ‘Mambo Number Five’?”
Oh, the hell with it. I shrugged. “You’re messing with my routine, Carole. Close the door.”
She complied, but I could still hear her laughter through the thin wood.
I was going to take the moment like I seemed to be taking a lot of moments lately—enjoy now, worry later.
MY GOOD mood lasted even through the residual traffic from the five-o’clock rush. I stopped at the grocery store on the way home and picked up a few essentials we were out of—milk, bread, and a carton of brown eggs. I had no idea what made them better than white eggs, but Blue insisted on them, so that’s what I got. It was only when I got in the car that I realized I didn’t get any dinner items, but I wasn’t going back in that madhouse. As usual, thinking about food made me hungrier, and by the time I pulled into my garage, I was starved.
I came in the side door and tossed my keys and the mail on the hall table as I kicked off my shoes. I could tell Blue had been cleaning, which lifted my mood further. Even without the evidence of the polished wood floors, the smell of Pine Sol teased my nose.
I heard noise in the living room and headed that way. A clean house, and I didn’t have to lift a finger? He’d be lucky if I didn’t blow him where he stood. “Yo, Stepford,” I teased. “Tell me you cooked too, and you don’t have to….”
Put out tonight.
I faltered to a stop as I entered the living room and thanked my lucky stars I hadn’t finished that statement, because there were a bunch of guys in various states of repose, watching the game on TV and taking up way too much space on my furniture. Or at least they had been watching TV. Now they were looking up at me questioningly. I was only able to remember a few of their names for certain, like Warner and Ivanovich, but everyone looked vaguely familiar. “Sorry,” I said lamely. “Wasn’t talking to you. Any of you.”
“Blue invited us over to watch the game.” One of the giants was sitting in my lounger with a plate of hot wings on the footrest, and he sent me a salute. “We parked in the back this time.”
“Excellent,” I said dryly. The less I had to see of various luxury cars parked all across my driveway and lawn, the better. I squinted at him until I could remember his name. Cute face, dark brown skin, big muscles, and neatly trimmed fauxhawk. Dane, maybe? “Now if you could get your hot-wing dip off my lounger, that’d be fantastic.”
“We would’ve saved you some, but we didn’t know if you liked them.”
“Wings?” I raised my eyebrows. “Doesn’t everyone with a pulse love wings?”
“Not vegetarians.”
“I’m not….” I rolled my eyes. “Whatever. Where’s Blue?”
“He went upstairs, I think.” Warner tried to look around me as I passed the screen too slowly. “And were you just teasing him about being your Stepford wife?”
“Of course not. It’s an… umm… inside joke. You wouldn’t understand.” It was lame, but it was the best I could come up with on the fly.
He looked at me doubtfully. “What kind of joke is that?”
“The inside kind. And can you not put that there?” I grabbed the bee
r he was about to put near some papers I’d been grading the night before. Then I thought better of it and just scooped up the entire stack. I clutched the papers to my chest as I shoved the bottle back at him. “Aren’t you all a bunch of millionaires? Don’t you have your own houses and big-ass flat screens? Man caves and media rooms and the like?”
“We thought you might miss us too much,” Ivanovich said with a grin. “Were we wrong?”
“So, so very wrong. Possibly the miscalculation of the century.”
I headed for the kitchen to a chorus of boos, which I ignored. It wasn’t the first time. It wouldn’t be the last. I was so pleased about being chosen as the keynote speaker of the conference, I didn’t mind. Even if my living room looked like a pack of life-sized NFL trading cards had exploded.
I sat my papers on the kitchen island, headed for the fridge, and zeroed in on the crisper, where I kept my secret stash of junk food. I came up empty and pawed through the crisper more thoroughly, moving around the Ziploc baggies of fruit that Blue insisted we have for convenience. You know, in case of a seedless-grape emergency.
“What kind of maniac throws away cheesecake?” I grumbled.
The maniac in question came up behind me, briefly pressing against me as he leaned to look in the fridge too. I went stock-still, wondering what the heck he thought he was doing, rubbing up against me like that when we had a house full of people. He smelled good, as though he’d just gotten out of the shower, and I tried not to breathe too deeply, lest he find himself with an armful of horny Kelly. He reached past me, grabbed a bottle of water, and dropped a quick kiss on the back of my neck.
“I didn’t throw away your cheesecake,” he said as he stepped away. “I ate it.”
Able to finally breathe normally again, I took a deep lungful. I looked at him for a moment, took in his relaxed attire of cargo shorts and a faded tank, and wondered when “just rolled out of bed” had become my favorite look on the planet.
