Rocket Science

by Emily Mayer

  “Hi,” I breathed out, the sight of him in sunglasses and another one of those V-neck T-shirts that gave you a peek of the tattoos that crawled across his left shoulder and onto his chest momentarily making me forget my anxiety. Even my nerves appreciated the sight.

  He turned in his seat, reaching across the console to gently draw me closer with one of those big hands curled around the back of my head. His lips brushed across mine gently. I felt his smile against my lips. I opened my eyes slowly, wanting to stay in the calm of that kiss for a few seconds more.

  “Hi,” he said, the low timber of his voice causing me to involuntarily shiver. I would never, ever, ever get tired of listening to the way his accent made every word seem somehow more. He pressed one more kiss to my lips, this one a little hungrier. I huffed a small sound of protest when he drew back, eased the car away from the curb, and then reached for my hand.

  I focused my attention on the gentle glide of his thumb over my hand.

  “How did it go with Paige last night?” Sebastian asked, glancing at me.

  “Really good. I showed her how to order supplies and load new pictures on their social media, so there’s not a lot left I can show her. She does so well with the customers, too. I hope Harrison appreciates what an amazing sister I am.” I scrunched up my nose, remembering how much barking he had done last night. “But I’ll settle for him just being nice to Paige.”

  “I think I need to meet your brother.”

  I was vigorously shaking my head before he even finished that thought.

  “You’re not going to meet him for a long, long time. What did you end up doing last night?”

  “Grabbed dinner with Tom after practice, then fell asleep on the couch icing my knee like the old man I am. I used to think it was a sin to stay in on a Friday; now I’m falling asleep on the couch watching old football games.”

  I smiled at him. “You can always borrow Boomer if—”

  He cut me off. “Absolutely not. I’m not cuddling with a bloody cat. Especially that cat.”

  I could feel my anxiety trying to work its way into the conversation, waiting to pounce and drag me under. It was like a physical thing with enough weight to smother me. My heart rate accelerated in the silence that had settled over the car. It felt like my body was starting to crawl with nervous energy, my breath coming in soft pants. I started tapping a rhythm on my leg with my free hand, counting by sixes to focus my mind. I glanced over at him. He looked so relaxed and casual, so confident in his own skin. I sighed.

  “I have to tell you something.” My gaze drifted to my hand wrapped up in his. “Do you remember how I told you about my heart? About how I couldn’t run around with the other kids and was home-schooled?”

  He nodded, his face still soft, contradicting the muscle twitching in his jaw. I would wonder about that later.

  “I spent a lot of time alone or with my family. I didn’t have a ton of friends. Most of my friendships were over the internet. I wanted to go to public school so badly. After my surgery, I enrolled in the same school as Harrison. I was so excited for my first day. I had all these ideas of how it would go—all the friends I would make, having a locker. My first day was so overwhelming. Our school was pretty big so there were a lot of people and I was—well, still am—super shy. Anyway, the cafeteria at lunch was… not fun. I didn’t have anyone to sit with and the first table I asked wouldn’t let me sit with them.” I saw Sebastian flinch out of the corner of my eye, his hands gripping the steering wheel like he was trying to choke the life out of it. I squeezed his hand. “It was a long time ago and I made plenty of friends. I just felt like I needed to explain why I’m the way I am.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with you.” Sebastian’s voice was hard.

  I rushed to reassure him. “You’re right. I’m not doing a good job explaining. What I should have said is that I have really bad social anxiety. Sometimes being in large crowds of people gives me a panic attack. I’m feeling really anxious about the cookout, and I’m afraid that I might embarrass you.”

  He swung his head to look at me. I could almost feel the anger radiating off of him, but even worse was the trace of disappointment I heard in his voice.

  “You could never embarrass me. I fucking hate that you think that you could ever do anything to embarrass me.”

  “Thank you for saying that, but what if I start rambling about supernovas or the size of primates’ brains?” I wanted to believe him, I really did, but I had embarrassed myself enough times to know it was possible.

  He lifted our joined hands and pressed a kiss to the back of my hand.

  “Then people will learn about supernovas and the large brains of primates and be amazed that my girl is so smart.” The genuineness behind his words slowed the frantic pace of my heart. “Thank you for telling me. I’m going to need you to let me know when you’re feeling anxious and how I can help.”

  This man. How did I get so lucky? It seemed impossible that we had gone from that night at the club to holding hands in the car with Sebastian offering words of encouragement.

  “I will, I promise.”

  “The first time I played at Old Trafford I puked in the locker room. I was so nervous when I finally made it onto the pitch, I had to do laps just to keep from puking again,” he offered.

  I proceeded to ask him so many questions about his life in Manchester that I barely noticed we had arrived until Sebastian put the car in park. I looked out the window, taking in the gorgeous two-story house. Balancing out the Richie-Rich vibe of the house was a man chasing two screaming kids around the front yard. It was difficult to tell if it was a game or if he was actually trying to round them up.

  “Ready?” Sebastian asked, hand already on the handle.

  “Ready,” I confirmed with what I hoped was a smile. We both exited the car, and the man chasing the kids gave up and jogged over to us.

  “Kincaid, you made it.” His gaze shifted to me. “You must be Lennon?”

  I nodded, offering a wave and a hello.

  “Lennon, this is Roger.” Sebastian turned, pointing to the two kids who were now chasing each other. “One of those is his.”

  Roger laughed, placing his hands on his hips. “The girl-child is ours, unless you want her.”

  “Roger!” a small brunette called, swinging open the gate to the fence and closing it behind her. A smile swept the frown off her face when she saw us. “Oh my goodness, you must be Lennon! I’m so excited to finally meet you!”

  My eyes widened in surprise. I waved while also trying to think of something to say to this person, who knew a lot more about me than I knew about her. Roger saved me.

  “This is my wife, Brooke.” He wrapped an arm—which rivaled Sebastian’s in the muscle category—around her shoulders. “Her genes are responsible for the demon child.”

  She elbowed him in the ribs, making him wince.

  “Hush your mouth. Our baby girl is an angel,” she said—just as the girl finally caught the slightly larger boy, throwing him to the ground by the back of his shirt. Sebastian and I both choked down laughter, our eyes meeting briefly. “Let me introduce you to everyone.” Brooke lunged forward and wrapped her arm around mine, leading me away from Sebastian.

  He tensed, his eyes finding mine. I shrugged with my free shoulder and gave him what I knew was a sad excuse for a smile. I didn’t want him to feel like he needed to babysit me after my confession in the car.

  “Don’t eat her pie,” Roger whispered in my ear as I passed. When my eyebrows drew down in obvious confusion, he just mouthed “trust me.”

  “Roger said you were an aerospace engineer?” Brooke’s statement sounded more like a question. My brain was busy working on overdrive. Half of it was processing the knowledge that Sebastian must have been telling his teammates about me, and the other half was trying to understand the dire pie warning. The thought that Sebastian had told people about me sent a warm feeling rushing through me, which helped tamp down the flare of anxiety I
felt walking away from my lifeline.

  “I am, at Spatium.”

  “Girl, that’s amazing! You are officially the smartest person I know.” She looked over her shoulder and shouted, “Roslyn Wells, you get off James right now!”

  The slight twang I had noticed earlier became more pronounced when she was yelling. I made a mental note to ask her where she was from. I followed her through the gate and took in all the activity. Men and women were scattered around the well-manicured yard in small groups: Three men stood around a large grill with drinks in their hand, a group of women fussed over a picnic table filled with food, and a few kids splashed in the large pool in the sunny part of the yard. Brooke waved at one group of women and led me further into the yard. She inclined her head toward two women wearing very small leather skirts and midriff shirts that didn’t cover as much as my bathing suit.

  “Over there you have Julie and Charity. Stay far away from them. Charity has slept with half the single men on this team. The girl gets passed around more than a soccer ball and she’s meaner than a snake to boot. She’s currently sleeping with Pete Garrison. Just in case you ever need proof that men think with the wrong head.” I nodded, trying to keep up. “Julie is just a bitch. There’s not really a nicer way to say it. She’s dating Sully. He came over from Norway, bless his heart. He doesn’t know any better.”

  I followed her around the yard as she pointed people out to me, introducing me as we went. She seemed to accept me into the fold without question, which did a lot to decrease my anxiety. We made our way over to a group of four women huddled around a stroller.

  “And these will be your new best friends.” She waved her hand around the small circle of women, all holding glasses of wine except for a tall blonde who was taking large drinks from a beer. “Ladies, this is Lennon!”

  All four heads swiveled to look me over at once. Normally, that type of concentrated attention would have made me throw up in my mouth, but all these women wore such openly friendly expressions that it only made my stomach do a tiny trapeze act. The tall blonde was the first one to break the silence and then everyone started speaking at once. Brooke finally held up her hand.

  “Y’all are going to scare her off! One at a time.”

  “Hey, Lennon, we’re all just so excited to meet you,” said a brunette with intricately braided hair that hung down her back in a thick rope[EM14]. “Oh, I’m Lindsey Malone. I’m married to Trevor. I’d point him out but I lost track of him about twenty minutes ago.” She did not seem at all concerned about that fact.

  The tall blonde with the beer introduced herself next. “I’m Gretchen Stewart—why are we doing last names? It feels like I’m in school and now I have to say three fun facts about myself. Anyway, the redhead at the grill is mine. No one will give him the tongs because he’ll burn everything, but he’s still going to make a play for them every five minutes. I made it into a drinking game.”

  I laughed. The woman with hair so blonde it was almost white chimed in.

  “It’s true. It’s our favorite team cookout day drinking game. I’m Maggie. Are we doing last names or not? Collins.” She shrugged. “It felt weird not to say it. My husband Chris is the other one trying to keep the tongs away from Gretch’s husband. I teach third-grade math.”

  “Are we doing jobs too?” Gretchen asked. “I’m a physical therapist, for the Novas actually. I spend a lot of time with your boyfriend. Holy shit, that sounded terrible! I meant with his knee. Is that worse? It sounded worse, right?”

  “Ignore her. She pre-gamed before the cookout,” the fourth woman said. “I’m Tony Franklin. And this sweet boy is August. It’s his first Novas cookout too.”

  I looked down at the baby snuggled into the stroller with a blanket and big floppy hat keeping the sun from touching any part of his body. He was so chubby it looked like his cheeks had eaten his eyes.

  “He’s adorable. How old is he?” I asked, glad to have an easy follow-up question on hand.

  “He’ll be six months on Tuesday. Longest six months of my life.” Everyone chuckled, and she gazed at the sleeping baby affectionately. “But the best six months too.”

  “So, Lennon,” Lindsey said, “tell us everything!”

  I hesitated, not sure what she meant by ‘everything.’

  “I’m an aerospace engineer at Spatium,” I repeated, trying to come up with more interesting facts about myself. You never realize how incredibly uninteresting you are until someone asks you to talk about yourself. “I have a cat and a mild addiction to teen romantic comedies on Netflix.”

  “Same,” Brooke said. “Teen romcoms and terrible Hallmark movies are my jam.”

  “How did you two meet?” Lindsey asked. “We have to get all our information from the husbands and they never ask the right questions.”

  “Our friend Paige kind of set us up.”

  “Kind of?” Gretchen asked, one blonde eyebrow quirked up.

  “Neither one of us actually knew it was a setup. It didn’t go well and Sebastian showed up a couple days later to apologize.”

  A group of three women exited the house carrying martini glasses. They were all wearing form-fitting sundresses and wedge sandals that showcased their manicured toes. All three women had perfectly styled hair and flawless makeup. They seemed overdressed for a cookout, or at least the cookouts I had attended. Though to be fair, a large portion of those had taken place in the parking lot behind Bad Wolf.

  Tony leaned in and said in hushed tones, “We call them the Real Housewives of the Novas. They’re all really terrible human beings who spend their time doing Pilates and bathing in the blood of virgins. For reasons none of us understand, they think they’re better than the rest of us WAGs.”

  “Whatever you do, don’t look them directly in the eyes or you’ll turn to stone,” Maggie whispered.

  “Well, who do we have here?” The woman who appeared to be the leader of the group stopped in front of us, her gaze sweeping from my Converse-covered feet up to my wind-blown hair. Unlike the five women standing beside me, her gaze was critical and assessing, as if she was sizing me up.

  “Kimberly, this is Lennon, Sebastian’s girlfriend,” Brooke answered, with an edge to her voice.

  “Aren’t you just the cutest little thing? And such an interesting name.” Kimberly’s voice was sugary sweet, enough to give you a toothache. I felt all five women move in closer to me. Kimberly made a motion with the hand holding her drink, the sun catching the huge diamond ring on her hand and almost blinding me.

  “You’re not at all what I would expect for Sebastian, but I love this journey for him,” added the tall, willowy woman standing next to Kimberly, her martini glass dangling from fingernails that had been sharpened into points. She could have been Janie’s evil twin. “You’re totally adorable.”

  “I love the all-American girl look. Not everyone could pull that off.” The third woman’s thinly veiled insult had Gretchen inching forward.

  “I was just saying the same thing about your extensions, Beatrice.” She placed extra emphasis on her name.

  “I go by Trixie. I think I’ve mentioned that to you before, and it would be great if you could remember it this time. I’m sure you have baby-brain, so I understand. I can give you the name of our nanny service if you want.”

  Trixie was thinner than thin, but looked like she was three seconds away from throwing her martini in Gretchen’s face. I was basically a spectator at this point, head swiveling back and forth between contenders.

  Tony pulled the stroller closer. “The baby is mine, and we’re all set for childcare. Thanks, though.”

  Kimberly gave her a sympathetic look, placing one hand over an unnaturally perky breast. “I just think it is so brave of you to keep working. It must be so hard to find the time to work and be a good mom.”

  My head pivoted toward Tony. Even I knew those were fighting words. As if the ripples of tension could be felt throughout the backyard, husbands and boyfriends suddenly descended on ou
r group. I felt a hand slide around my waist and I looked up, smiling at Sebastian. The grooves in his forehead relaxed and he returned my smile, tucking me into his side.

  “Are you making friends?” he whispered in my ear, making me shiver despite the afternoon heat.

  “I think so,” I answered honestly.

  “Sebastian, we were just getting to know Lennon. We’re just so happy you finally brought her around for one of the team events. I was starting to think we were never going to get to meet her.” Kimberly batted her lashes at Sebastian using that same voice, oozing with fake sweetness.

  I felt Sebastian stiffen. I rubbed small circles on his back, trying to silently communicate to him that her words didn’t bother me. Gretchen’s husband looked like he was physically restraining her.

  “And now you’ve met her.” Sebastian’s voice was dripping with disdain. It sort of reminded me of the night we met. I liked it much more when he was using his snob tone for good. He smiled down at me. “Let’s get you something to eat and drink, love.”

  I didn’t think it was just my imagination that the last word was said a lot louder than the ones that came before it.

  “Sounds good.” I smiled wide, knowing my happiness was written all over my face and not caring one bit. I waved at the group and let Sebastian lead me to the grill. The smell of barbecue made my mouth water and temporarily banished thoughts of the blood bath I had almost witnessed.

  Sebastian greeted the only man left standing at the grill after the other two had abandoned him, presumably to prevent World War Wives.

  “I’m going to grab us plates and drinks. What do you want to drink? It looks like they have a bit of everything.”

  “I’ll have a beer. Something light and not too hoppy, please.”

  I wasn’t a huge beer drinker, but I didn’t think wine was going to complement barbecued meat on smashed buns. I watched as Sebastian walked to a table littered with plates and forks, then bent to dig around in a cooler. I angled my head to take in the way his dark blue linen shorts highlighted a very round butt.