by Susannah Nix
Esther’s nose wrinkled. “A truly, truly terrible film. I will not allow you to commit such a travesty.”
He grinned at her. “See, this is exactly why I need you.”
She felt her cheeks warm and looked back down at the pages in her lap. “All right, shut up and let me read the rest of this.”
It was actually good. At least, it had the potential to be good. He’d chucked most of the plot from the other script. A lot of the main characters were more or less the same, but the structure of the story was totally different. The whole film took place in space now, with no scenes on earth. And it was set in a near-future world, so the technology was slightly advanced.
“You know what it reminds me of?” Esther said when she’d finished reading it. “That Firefly episode—”
“‘Bushwhacked’?” he said around a mouthful of pizza.
“Yes! The one about the Reavers! So great.”
“That’s exactly what I was going for.” He swallowed, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “I mean, that was kind of what I was going for before, but now instead of switching genres midstream, I’m establishing it right up front. At least, that’s the idea. We’ll see how I do with the execution.” His blue eyes twinkled behind his glasses. He was so excited, he was smiling with his whole face, from the bottom of his beanie to his bearded chin.
Esther couldn’t help smiling back at him. “Jonathan Brinkerhoff, I think there may just be hope for you yet.”
Chapter Fourteen
“Talk to me about explosions in space,” Jonathan said as he strode into Esther’s apartment a few weeks later.
“What about them?” Esther asked, closing the door.
He’d been coming over two or three times a week to ask her science questions or show her the latest pages of his script. Or sometimes for no reason at all. Weirdly, she didn’t mind having him around so much. She’d even started to enjoy it.
After two years of having only a passing acquaintance with her neighbors, it was nice to be friends with one of them. To have someone to hang out with who was living right next door. Someone she could see without making plans in advance or having to fight LA traffic. It was like living in a sitcom—she was Monica with the nicer apartment, and he was Chandler, dropping by all the time just because.
Esther never knew when Jonathan was going to turn up. Sometimes he’d text in advance to ask if she was going to be around, but sometimes he’d drop by with no warning. Because he was bored, she supposed—or lonely, maybe. When he wasn’t in class, he spent most of his time alone, writing. It seemed to leave him craving human company some days.
Instead of being annoyed by his unexpected visits, Esther had begun to look forward to them. They broke up the monotony of her routine—and okay, maybe she was a little lonely too. She liked having someone she could talk about her day with when she got home from work. It was better than spending every night alone with her cat.
Jonathan went straight to her fridge and helped himself to a beer. She didn’t mind that either, because they were beers he’d brought over last week. He was always bringing her things: takeout, beer, coffee, even ice cream one time.
“Would you be able to hear an explosion in space?” he asked as he dug her bottle opener out of the drawer by the fridge.
“Depends.”
“On what?”
She sat down at her usual end of the couch. “If you were in a vacuum yourself. Sound is a pressure wave that requires matter to propagate.”
“Matter like the atmosphere in a pressurized spaceship?” He flopped down beside her with his beer.
“Exactly,” Esther said. “But it wouldn’t sound like a regular explosion. If you were close enough, you’d hear the expanding cloud of gases slamming against the vehicle, which could be pretty violent. Farther away, you might just hear projectiles and debris from the explosion colliding with the hull. Which again, could be highly dangerous, because with no gravity or air drag to slow them down, they’d travel outward virtually forever, with the same kinetic energy they had right next to the blast.”
“Yikes, okay.”
“That answer your question?”
“Yep.” He nodded and took a swig of beer. He’d brought his laptop, but he hadn’t gotten it out, and he didn’t bother writing down what she’d told him.
“You wanna watch a movie tonight?” Esther asked. “We could watch Europa Report.”
Jonathan swiveled his head in her direction, eyebrows arching. “It’s nine o’clock. I don’t want to keep you up past your bedtime.” Usually, she shooed him out of her apartment by ten on weeknights. He kept a student’s hours, which meant staying up later and sleeping in later than she had the luxury of doing with her office job.
She shrugged. “I made the mistake of stopping for Starbucks on the way home tonight and they put an extra shot in my iced coffee. I’m pretty sure I can see through the fabric of time, so there’s no way I’m getting to sleep at a decent hour tonight.”
He grinned at her. “Yeah, okay.”
She leaned forward to grab the TV remote out of the basket on the coffee table. “That reminds me, there was a woman at Starbucks who looked like Lady Gaga. But she was wearing pajama jeans, so I’m pretty sure it wasn’t her.”
“I passed a guy on campus yesterday who looked like Channing Tatum.”
“Was it Channing Tatum?” Esther asked as she navigated through the Netflix menus.
“No. But I followed him for like five minutes before I figured that out.”
She shot him a glance, quirking an eyebrow. “You followed some random strange dude around campus for five minutes?”
Jonathan shrugged and stretched his arm out along the back of the couch. “Look, I’m pretty squarely on the hetero end of the Kinsey scale, but Channing Tatum is my Get Out of Straight Free card. I had to know if it was him.”
Her mouth curved into a smirk. “Channing Tatum? Seriously?”
“What’s wrong with Channing Tatum?”
“Nothing. He just never struck me as a universal sexual donor.” She went back to typing the movie title into the search bar. “Now if it was Idris Elba…”
“I’ve got nothing against Idris Elba, but Channing’s more my speed.”
“What is it about him, exactly, that appeals to you?”
“I don’t know. He seems like he would be a gentle, caring lover. Like, he’d tell you what a great job you were doing, and then put in some quality spooning time afterward.”
Esther snorted. “See? I knew you could be funny.”
“I’m writing that down,” Jonathan said, pulling his Moleskine out of his pocket.
“The spooning thing or that I said you were funny?”
He smiled at the page as he scribbled on it. “Both.”
He’d let her look inside his notebook once. It was filled with doodles, random words and phrases that appealed to him, and snippets of half-formed ideas for his scripts. He never went anywhere without it and one of his favorite pens. He had strong opinions about pens, she’d learned, and never used anything but black Pilot G2 Ultra Fines. His fingers and his face were usually dotted and smudged with black ink stains. There was a smudge on his face right now, on his cheekbone, just below his glasses.
Esther waited for him to put his notebook down before starting the movie. It had been a few years since she’d seen this one, and she worried it wouldn’t hold up—or that he wouldn’t like it as much as she did.
A few minutes into the movie, Jonathan shifted on the couch, pulling his feet up and stretching his long legs out beside her. He’d walked the few feet between their apartments barefoot, and his toes were propped against her thigh. When she looked over at him, he grinned like he was daring her to object.
Esther shook her head and turned back to the TV screen. Jonathan’s toes stayed where they were for the next hour.
The movie held up pretty well, but Esther was yawning by the time it was over.
Jonathan sat up when the cr
edits started to roll, stretching his arms overhead. “That was good.”
“Yeah, I like that one,” she said, pleased he’d enjoyed it too. She covered her mouth as another yawn slipped out.
Taking a cue, he heaved himself off the couch and grabbed his laptop. “We should do that again.”
“Sure.”
“How about Saturday?” he proposed, backing toward the door. “I’ll even let you pick the movie again.”
“Um…” Watching a movie on a Saturday sounded like a vaguely date-ish activity. So far they’d confined almost all their hanging out to Sundays and weeknights. But she didn’t have any plans for Saturday, so why not? “Yeah, okay. How do you feel about zombie movies?”
He pulled the door open and gave her a lopsided grin. “I love zombie movies.”
“Is that the biggest sock I’ve ever seen or are you knitting a hat?” Olivia asked when Esther got out her knitting Monday night.
Vilma looked up from her needles. “Someone go outside and make sure the sky isn’t boiling. If Esther’s knitting something other than socks, it must surely be the End Times.”
“Hilarious,” Esther said as she spaced her stitches out along her circular needles.
“What’s the occasion?” Cynthia asked, lifting an eyebrow.
“No occasion,” Esther said. “Just stash busting. I had this skein hanging around, and it’s too thick for socks, so I figured I’d use it up on a hat.”
“Who’s it for?” Jinny asked. “You never wear hats.”
Esther didn’t like wearing hats with her heavy bangs. She either had to pin them back, or they got all smushed against her forehead and it looked weird.
“Is it for a boy?” Penny leaned forward for a better look. “It looks like a man’s hat.”
“It could just as easily be a woman’s hat,” Olivia said with a disapproving frown. “It doesn’t have to be gendered.”
“I’ll probably just give it to my brother,” Esther lied.
She was thinking of giving it to Jonathan. Might as well give the thing to someone who would get some use out of it, and the guy wore knit hats almost every day. Besides, this gunmetal gray yarn would look nice with his blue eyes—not that she’d been thinking about his eyes or anything.
She didn’t want to say who it was really for though. Jinny thought she still hated Jonathan. She didn’t know how much they’d been hanging out—or that they’d been hanging out at all.
He’d come over Saturday night to watch 28 Days Later, and wound up staying until one a.m. so they could watch the sequel too. When Jinny came over the next morning, Esther had cleaned up all evidence of his presence. Which felt a little underhanded. She didn’t like lying to Jinny, even by omission. It was just that she felt weird about being friends with someone Jinny had dated. The fact that Esther had started hanging out with him right around the same time he’d asked Jinny out didn’t help either. Not to mention the fact that he’d asked Jinny out at Esther’s urging. It was all a big mess, basically.
She wasn’t planning to keep it from Jinny forever. She’d tell her eventually. Just…after some time had passed. When it wouldn’t seem so weird anymore.
“I feel like my world’s been thrown out of kilter,” Cynthia said, shaking her head. “Esther knitting socks on Mondays was the one constant in my life.”
“I know, right?” Olivia said.
Jinny turned to Esther and waggled her eyebrows. “Next thing you know, she’ll turn up with a steady boyfriend.”
“Ha ha,” Esther said, keeping her eyes fixed on her knitting.
Chapter Fifteen
It was Saturday, and Jonathan was parked on Esther’s couch with his laptop again. He liked to work at her place, he said, because he could ask her questions on the fly. Also something about the change of scenery bringing out his muse. Whatever.
Esther was making chili for the two of them tonight. She didn’t do much in the way of cooking, but she made a mean pot of chili.
She could hear Jonathan tapping away on his laptop in the next room, his fingers flying over the keys like Mozart at his piano. The sound was oddly soothing, like having a tennis match on the TV in the background. Esther’s dad had watched a lot of tennis when she was little, and the sound of televised tennis always reminded her of lazy weekend afternoons when her dad was still living at home. When her family had still felt like a family.
The typing stopped, and she peered through the pass-through into the living room. Jonathan frowned at his screen, shoulders hunched, chewing on his bottom lip. He was working on his sci-fi script still, but he was close to being done. He’d showed her bits and pieces along the way. There were only a couple more scenes left, and then he’d let her read it all the way through.
As if he could feel her watching him, he looked up from his computer and broke into a smile as his eyes found hers.
“Whatever happened to your other screenplay?” Esther asked, turning back to the stove to dump a can of diced tomatoes into the pot. “The love story. You haven’t mentioned it in a while.”
“I’m still working on it.”
She poured a bottle of beer into the chili and stirred it together with the tomatoes, meat, and onions. “Are you going to let me read it?”
“When it’s done.”
She glanced back at him. “Not before?”
He looked down at his computer, shaking his head. “Nope.”
“Why not?”
He gave a one-shouldered shrug without looking at her. “It’s not ready to share yet. I don’t want you to see version 2.0 before it’s fully taken shape.”
“Whatever, Picasso.” She opened the spice cabinet and got out the paprika, cumin, and cayenne.
“I’m focusing on this one first, since it’s the one I need your help with the most.” When she snuck a look over her shoulder at him, he was drumming his fingers on the side of his leg. He levered himself off the couch, patting the pocket where he kept his cigarettes and lighter. “I’ll be right back.”
She made a face. “I hate that you smoke.”
He halted his pilgrimage to the balcony, tilting his head to peer at her through the pass-through. “You do?”
“It stinks.”
“I always go outside.”
“It blows in through the windows. And you smell like an ashtray.” She wrinkled her nose. “I can smell it on you right now.”
“You can?” He sniffed his shirt.
“Yes.”
He went back to the couch and sat down. “Then I won’t smoke anymore.”
“You’re going to quit smoking? Just like that?”
“Just like that.” He shrugged. “Who wants to smell like an ashtray?”
Esther’s phone rang. It was on the coffee table by Jonathan, and he leaned over to read the screen. “It’s your mom.”
“Ignore it,” she said, turning back to the chili.
“Letting your mom go to voicemail. Cold.”
“You don’t know my mom. I’ll deal with it later.”
Her mother only called when she had a problem she wanted Esther to fix for her. Which would be fine, except her mother had a lot of problems, mostly of her own making. Esther had forcibly distanced herself from her mother’s constant drama for the sake of her own mental health. It was why she’d left Seattle after college and taken a job out of state.
Whatever her mom was calling about, it was better to wait and talk to her after she’d cooled off a little.
Esther went back to measuring out spices for the chili, and Jonathan went back to working on his script.
A few minutes later, Esther’s phone rang again.
“It’s someone named Eric this time,” Jonathan said, lifting one eyebrow.
“Shit.” Esther put down the cumin and went into the living room. She grabbed the phone off the table. “Hey bro, what’s up?”
“Don’t give Mom any more money this month,” her brother said.
Esther sent her mother five hundred dollars out of her pay
check every month. That, combined with whatever her mother made temping part time and selling essential oils and wellness products through one of those multilevel marketing schemes, was all she had to live off. In other words, not much.
“Why?” Esther asked.
“Did she already ask you for it?”
“She tried to call a few minutes ago, but I haven’t listened to the voicemail yet.”
“She’s going to ask for more money. Don’t give it to her.”
“What happened?”
Jonathan looked up and gestured at the door, offering to leave. Esther waved for him to stay and wandered into the kitchen.
“The usual,” Eric said. “This time it was Fiestaware on eBay.”
Their mom was a shopping addict. Nothing as extreme as the people on My Strange Addiction, but she did have a tendency to impulse buy more than her monthly budget allowed. She’d grown up with money and married money, but two divorces later, she was living on a limited budget without the skills to cope. She kept trying to live like she was still married to a successful orthodontist, even though that hadn’t been her life for fifteen years.
“How bad is it?” Esther asked, stirring the cumin into the chili.
“Two hundred dollars and change.”
“Fuck.”
“She’s gonna tell you she needs the money for utilities or groceries or something. But it’s really for the Fiestaware.”
“Okay, but can she pay her utilities? We can’t just let her starve or whatever.”
“She’s not going to starve. What she’s gonna have to do is return the fucking plates. Don’t give in to her sob story, sis. It just enables her.”
Eric was Esther’s older brother. He and his wife, Heather, lived in Seattle with their two-year-old son, Gabriel. Eric sold medical equipment to hospitals and doctors’ offices, and Heather was a preschool teacher. They couldn’t afford to support Esther’s mother on top of all their own bills, but Eric made up for it by taking point on all her crises. It was part of the bargain Esther and Eric had made: he provided physical and emotional support to their mother locally, and Esther provided financial support long distance.
