The Nerd and the Neighbor, page 3
Just then, my mother bursts in the door. She brings with her a flurry of energy, always a whirlwind. “I’m home, my darlings,” she says, kissing everyone once, but pulling me into her tiny body and squeezing me like a tube of toothpaste. “Mmmm, Hunter, I’m so excited you’re coming in to work with me!”
“I don’t know yet, Ma.”
She waves her hand and tosses her suit jacket on the stool. “Nonsense. You’re coming in with me tomorrow. I’m meeting with potential investors.”
Diana and I stare at one another. I blink a few times and try to gather my thoughts about this announcement. “Since when does Oak Creek attract big-name corporate partners?”
Ma launches into an overview of her outreach this past year while I’ve been in space. She’s really been drawing a lot of philanthropy into the college, and attracting students who go on to earn prestigious fellowships. One of her recent grads won a Pulitzer Prize and another earned a Field Medal. I start allowing myself to think a stint teaching with my mother won’t be so pitiful after all. Ma has that affect on people—allows them to feel excited, even if they’re determined to wallow in discontent. Ma knows how to interact with people. It makes sense they’d want to give her money.
When Dad serves the roasted chicken and risotto, I focus on the tender meat, the rich gravy, and the texture of the delicious food. The whole experience of eating overwhelms me. My mother is telling my siblings how she hired a new writer to help her prepare to meet these big potential donors, but I tune her out as I focus on the herbs and pepper exploding in my mouth. I don’t feel concerned about the meeting my mother wants me to attend tomorrow.
I’m no stranger to corporate goals in funding research, and these sorts of meetings are nothing new for me after a decade of high level experiments. I savor the last grain of rice on my fork, closing my eyes to let the flavor linger on my tongue. “Garlic and sage,” I mutter, identifying these earthy flavors of home.
When I open my eyes, I see the wrinkled face of Ed Hastings staring at us through my parents’ kitchen window. I fly upward out of my seat, startling my sister. Ed snaps a picture with his giant camera as I stomp over toward the door.
“Hunter,” my father’s voice is stern. “Please don’t expose yourself to additional scrutiny.” He wipes his mouth with a napkin and cracks open the window. “Ed,” he says, his voice calm and stern, as if he’s refereeing a fight amongst his children rather than addressing an old busybody he already told to leave. “I’m going to need you to leave my property. I’ll see you tomorrow at Tai Chi.”
Ed scowls again and snaps another picture through the window as he disappears into the Oak Creek twilight. I can only imagine what nonsense he will print.
Chapter 6
Abigail
My “interview” with Rose Mitchell is the strangest thing. She hands me a contract to sign and offers me a salary much higher than my father was paying. “Wow,” I say, whipping out a pen to sign.
“Abigail!” She scolds and I freeze. “Never accept the first offer without negotiating. Ask me for more money.”
I hesitate. I have never met a person like this before. I’m not sure what to do, but I blurt out a number that feels obscene to me. She smiles. “I’ll meet you in the middle,” she says, writing in the new number and initialling beside it. Once I sign, Rose asks me to help her draw up bullet points and ideas for how to approach her meeting the next day.
I know nothing about drug research or plants or, really, science, but I’ve certainly helped my father convince large clients to hire his firm. “You want to gain their trust,” I tell her, making a list of a few ideas. Despite the whirlwind of upheaval and travel, ideas come to me quickly. I begin to feel like this job was sitting here waiting for me, and I just needed to build up the bravery to come get it.
A few hours later, Rose looks at the clock and says she has to go. “I can fill in the details to flesh out these talking points.” She smiles. “Yes, this is going to be fantastic.” She starts sliding papers into her bag and looks at me. I’m not really sure what to do. I have nowhere to go… Rose frowns. “Where are you staying, Abigail, dear?”
I shrug, worried for a minute she will drag me home with her. She mutters something about her long-lost son coming home for dinner and says, “Sit tight. I’ll send someone to help you.” And then she rolls out of the office in a burst of excitement. I stare after her, wondering how I’ll ever learn to keep up, but feeling exhilarated at the prospect of trying.
Unsure what to do next, I wander around the office. I’ve been assigned a cubicle outside Rose’s office, with a window behind my seat. It overlooks the lawn, and I’m staring happily out at the golden afternoon light when a sing-song voice echoes through the office. “Yoo hoo!”
Hesitantly, I turn around. “I said ‘yoo hoo!’”
The voice belongs to a tiny woman with dark curls and a smile that lights her entire face. “I’m Indigo! Rose said you need me.”
I don’t even have time to answer before Indigo tells me, in one giant breath, that she runs the Oak Creek Inn, where I’ll be staying until I find a more permanent rental. “Come on, Sweetheart,” she says, dragging me by the hand. “We’ll walk over together and get you situated.”
I typically hate pet names. I cringe when men or older women call me Honey or Sugar, but Indigo seems so genuine, like she really believes I have a sweet heart.
Apparently everyone here moves fast, skips over the guarded portion of a relationship and dives right in to sharing their true selves.
I love how Indigo describes the town as we cross under the train tracks to the Main Street that circles the library. “Isn’t it just wonderful that the library is the heart of our town?”
I nod, seeing a group of men in sweats doing Tai Chi in the amphitheater next to the library. Indigo tugs me past a tiny market and into a small park flanked by lamp posts that would feel right at home in Narnia.
“And there’s the Inn!” She coos. “Isn’t that just the perfect spot for an inn? Don’t worry.” She grabs my arm again. “We have parking out back. You don’t have to haul all your bags from the street. I don’t tell this to the overnight guests, though. Who needs more than one bag for an overnight?”
The remodeled Victorian house is painted a vibrant indigo and has solar panels clinging to each layer of the slate roof. The charming wrap around porch is lined with white rocking chairs and hanging baskets spilling with bright flowers.
“Indigo,” I hesitate, seeing how fancy this place is. “I can’t really afford—”
“Nope,” Indigo cuts me off. “Rose said your stay should be part of your relocation package to start work at the college. It’s covered, girl!”
Relocation package. It sounds too professional for me, like I skipped a few career steps or something.
We walk inside the Inn and Indigo hands me an old brass key. “Room number 8,” she tells me. “For luck, although it sounds like you’ve already got some of that!”
I follow her into the dining room and she slides a plate of muffins toward me, sitting down at the table covered with a crisp linen tablecloth. “So,” she says, biting into her muffin and talking with her mouth full. “Tell me everything about you. Rose says you’re a writer?”
A writer. As she says it, I allow myself to feel how badly I want it to be true. And maybe it is? If I just signed paperwork for a job with that in the title? I smile, sinking my teeth into the lemon poppyseed muffin. “Well,” I say, smoothing my hair so it covers my still-swollen ear. “I’m from Ohio. And I just moved here today.” We both laugh at this.
Indigo sits back in her chair and squints at me, sizing me up as if she can see right through me, and maybe she can, because she says, “Tell me about him. We can burn sage later and scrub him right out of your system. You’re safe here with me.”
I feel the muffin catch in my throat and I reach for the sweet tea Indigo pours as I cough. I’ve never really had girlfriends before. Growing up, I had my brothers and I’m sort of close with my mother, but she and I sure don’t talk about our relationships. There aren’t really any women working in Baker and Sons. I’m not used to getting to talk about this kind of stuff. I sigh. “He started out all right,” I tell her.
Indigo scoffs at this. “They all do, Sweetheart. They all do.” She twirls a wedding ring on her left hand. Seeing me notice it, she smiles and says, “took me awhile to realize I wasn’t waiting for Prince Charming so much as Queen Charming.” Indigo points to a photograph on the wall, where she beams in a white dress in the arms of a woman with short, spiky hair. “My wife, Sara.”
They seem so happy in the picture. My eyes well up with tears, thinking that Jack never looked at me that way, especially not toward the end. Especially not that last night. I start to cry and Indigo shifts around the table. “Oh,” she says, “It’s ok, Abigail. We’re going to take good care of you here. You’re safe,” she asserts again. For a moment, wrapped in her warm hug, I believe it’s true.
“I don’t even know how things got to be so bad,” I tell her, tucking back my hair to show her my ear. I haven’t looked at it since I pulled into the parking spot near Rose’s office, but it had nearly returned to normal. I was hoping the fear would fade into the background as my body returned to its normal shape, but I still feel myself looking toward each of the doorways, like I’m expecting him to stomp in the room. “The further I drove away from Greenwood, the more I realized how long I’ve been holding my breath.”
Indigo holds my hand and, for an hour, I tell her everything. How I felt like my life was being written by another author, how my family meant well but let their practicality get in the way of listening to my hopes and dreams. I haven’t turned my phone on since this morning, but I’m sure I will have missed a dozen calls from my parents, not concerned but calling instead to scold me for not showing up at the office.
When we reach a pause in conversation, Indigo stands and places her hands on her hips. “You know what you need?” I shake my head. “Underpants,” she says.
A laugh explodes from my chest, unexpectedly. She’s right, of course. I need socks and pants and work shirts. All of it.
“Come on,” she says, grabbing her purse and mine. “I’m going to buy you organic drawers from the co-op and then you tell me how much you can spend at the second hand store. We’ll get you enough clothes for your first week with Wild Rose.”
We walk back through the park and along Main Street. The Tai Chi has given way to marching band practice for the local high school students, whose drums compete with a lone bag piper standing on the hill facing into the sun.
The co-op Indigo mentioned is unlike anything I’ve seen before. We don’t have scarves made from hemp in Greenwood, Ohio, and we don’t have multiple types of kale or kombucha, either. I follow Indigo as she sizes me up, shoving a pack of Medium undies my way. “Will they feel…scratchy?” I don’t know if I’ve even touched hemp before.
“Oh! Girl, no. These will feel amazing. You’ll probably be ruined for life, even if they look like granny panties.” She sees me sniffing the shampoo and grabs a few bottles. She says she needs to restock the inn bathrooms, but I know she’s only buying them to be nice. I vow to repay her when I get myself situated.
At the checkout, Indigo introduces me to the cashier. “Mary Pat,” she says, “This is ABIGAIL.” She emphasizes my name like I’m some sort of celebrity. Apparently, as a newcomer in a small town, I am. “She’s going to be working with Rose at the college.”
Mary Pat’s eyebrows shoot up. “Good luck to you, then,” she says as she tucks our purchases into the cloth bags Indigo pulls from her purse. “And did you hear who else will be at the college this fall?”
Indigo leans forward on her elbows. “No!” She gushes. “Tell me everything.”
Mary Pat looks around the store, where shoppers are stuffing baskets and cloth bags with vegetables I’ve never heard of and pies made from foods I never knew could form dessert. She leans in and whispers, “Hunter Crawford. His wife left him while he was in the space station, and I heard he lost his mind and got fired.”
“No! Hunter?” Indigo snorts. “His wife was a stick in the mud anyway. He’ll get over it.” Indigo hands me an avocado “fudge” sample, but doesn’t elaborate any more on who this scorned astronaut is.
As we walk back to her place carrying my new undies, I already feel right at home.
“Don’t you worry about a thing, Abi-girl,” Indigo says, wrinkling her nose at the fake fudge. “We’re going to get you sorted out.”
Chapter 7
Hunter
“Not a bad day, brother.” Archer crushes a beer can in his hand and tosses it into the recycling bin across the room. His house is tidier than I expected. Growing up, his room was always a cluttered pit. It made me uncomfortable. Now, he has a housekeeper, and I can stand to be in his space without sweating. “You going to drink that?” He gestures toward my untouched IPA.
I sigh and take a sip. I don’t drink much, but I guess being back here I break a lot of my own rules. “First the dairy and now the alcohol,” I mutter, thinking about how the very first thing I want to do tomorrow is buy workout equipment for my new home.
“You sure you don’t want to camp out at your new place?” Archer laughs. He managed to arrange a short sale on a duplex while I helped Ma land funding from the computer engineering company today. Archer prattles on about how skillful he is at negotiating loans and deals, but my thoughts linger on the woman I saw in Ma’s office.
There aren’t many new people in Oak Creek. Even though I’ve been gone for years, I still feel quite certain I know almost everyone. This woman, though. I keep circling back to the idea that I must feel intrigued by her because she’s new. It’s unusual to see someone new, even moreso when I’ve been living in a tin can in outer space for half a year.
Still. This new woman is objectively, biologically perfect. When Archer snaps his hands in front of my face to ask if I’m listening, I tell him no and go back to cataloguing her features. Wide hips and a round backside…
“Dude, Hunter, you have to either tell me what you’re thinking about or else get the fuck out of my house.” Archer snatches my beer from me.
“I was thinking about breasts,” I tell him, not expecting him to laugh at that. “What?”
“Nothing, dude. I just didn’t think you thought about that stuff. I think about breasts all the damn time.” Archer scowls. “I’m really sorry about Heather, man.”
“Hmph.” I snatch the beer back again.
“She…not that I was looking in that way. But Heather had no breasts to speak of.”
I tip the beer in his direction. “That’s accurate.” I take a long sip.
“So you weren’t thinking about your wife, then?”
“I was not.” Hm. Diana is getting good at making beer. “She wasn’t something I thought much about, actually,” I admit. I find myself explaining to Archer that Heather made sense. She seemed so tolerant of me in ways I hadn’t experienced since moving out from my childhood home. But I have to agree with her assessment that I was a bad spouse. And so was she. If the paperwork from her lawyer means anything, Heather tolerated me just long enough to cash in on an investment.
“I don’t mind paying her something,” I tell him. “Just not that much.” Heather’s alimony request amounts to most of everything I’ve ever earned, and she even had the gall to ask for a percentage of future patents.
My family recommended a lawyer, Sara Garrett, who helped Indigo with her divorce…and then married her afterward. My expectations aren’t high for a small-town lawyer, but Sara seems to be intelligent. “Sara has a plan,” I tell Archer. “She also found me a tenant. Said something about serendipitous timing.”
I told Sara I’d pay her whatever she wanted to take care of everything for me. Contracts and leases and legal papers. I want someone to manage all these complicated details. I just don’t ever have the headspace for that stuff, especially if I’m deep in my research. I should have hired an assistant years ago, rather than marrying Heather. It wasn’t fair of me to take advantage of her planning and organizing like that. All I ever want to do is my work.
Thinking of my research reminds me how badly I’m itching to get my lab equipment set up on campus. This, in turn, brings my thoughts back to the new woman in town.
And her biological features. Apparently I still have urges after all. I had briefly felt concerned that my libido had vanished along with Heather.
So this is a positive turn, health wise. Archer and I finish our drinks and I call it an early evening. If I get my act together quickly, I can start my day early tomorrow, set up my stuff in my new house and then spend the afternoon setting up my lab. Soon I’ll have everything just how I want it.
Everything except my funding and my career.
Chapter 8
Abigail
Helping Rose prepare for that meeting was intoxicating. I’ve never gotten to do anything like that before. She included me in the conversation, too. I had no idea my voice was going to matter. At my dad’s company I’m never allowed to do anything different from how it’s always been done. File the invoices. Answer the phones. Lots of general office stuff I was happy enough to do, sure. But I just have always wanted to try more, try something different. And, it turns out, Rose asked lots of questions of me about my own college experience to help emphasize the importance of supporting small schools.
I never knew how badly I wanted to get to contribute to something until I got here and started doing it! Rose said the money we landed is called an endowment. I have so much to learn and I feel giddy to get learning it.
