Equilibrium

by Lorrie Thomson

  The microwave ding bristled her all over, a disproportionate startled response. She shook her head, trying to regain composure, although she was her only witness to the overreaction.

  She poked the butter to test its give, then added a bit of the dark brown sugar. Drizzling the dark molasses over the golden hills blasted the image of the cramped kitchen from her childhood and the tiny fatherless apartment she and her mother had shared.

  Her tiny fatherless life.

  She readied the dry ingredients and added more ginger than the original recipe called for.

  Sift, sift, sift, sift. She squeezed the metal handle, tried enjoying the snowfall of flour and spice, and the way the beige mounds rested at soft angles, sloping against the rim of the glass bowl.

  She hadn’t had a family, really. None except for her quiet mother, a woman who kept to herself. Kept herself from her daughter, too. So many times, Laura had asked her about her father, always with the same result. Mama smiled her rueful smile, leaving her to wonder whether the look of regret had as much to do with Laura as her conception. Now she’d never know for sure.

  She dumped the dry ingredients into the wet and blended with her favorite wooden spoon, folding dark grainy stripes into the dry sands. Her arm muscles tensed and picked up speed.

  Each and everything she’d made for her family had blossomed from that emptiness she’d felt as a child, the feeling as if she were the only one without any family to speak of. She’d always craved open fields and mountain views, even though she’d spent her childhood on city streets, conjuring small-town life from all the books she’d read. For a while there she’d even grown to believe in the power of her imagination to influence her life, although she’d never spoken of magic out loud.

  Now she believed only in what she could see. The readers who never knew Jack the person didn’t suffer the consequences of his real-life actions, those that diminished rather than elevated their children. Those that—

  The crunch-snap of wood brought her attention to her spoon broken into two tidy sections, not a splinter in sight, and a very well mixed dough. She rubbed at her spent muscles, tossed the doomed utensil, and spread a plastic-wrap bonnet over the bowl.

  Now what? Letting the dough sit for half an hour provided way too much time to think, when that was the last thing she wanted. She cleaned the dough dribbles off the counters, wiped the completely clean kitchen table, and then made her way to the broom closet. No matter how many times a day she swept the kitchen, she’d always discover more dirt.

  Swish, swish, swish.

  Sometimes, in the middle of the night, the notion that she was an adult woman responsible for two teenage children seemed preposterous. Deep inside of her lay the young girl who had willingly stayed up all night, reading under the covers with a flashlight borrowed from her mother’s emergency car kit. Later, she’d set her intentions to paper, deciding exactly what her life would look like ten years down the road, and the precise steps needed to birth the dreams of marriage, children, and a published novel by age thirty. She certainly hadn’t signed up for widowhood at age thirty-four or a fatherless life for Darcy and Troy.

  Laura stopped sweeping, visualizing another girl hiding beneath a white bedsheet with a silver flashlight in hand. She headed straight for her desk to jot down the sketchy character before the story seed dissolved.

  When the ideas thinned, she read what she’d written and chuckled her way down the page. Okay, either she was entirely too smart for herself or just a BS artist. Maybe both. Really, whom was she kidding? Even if she found a story train, what right did she have to follow it? Time was running out on her free lunch. Come fall, she’d need a job. A paying job. Best-case scenario for writing and selling a first novel would get her a check for a few thousand dollars in about four years.

  Jack was one of the few writers who’d actually earned a decent living out of his passion. Thank goodness for the long tail of royalties. The ideal of the struggling writer never included a thirtysomething widow with two teenagers in need of financial support they could depend upon.

  She rubbed at her eyes and stood to her anklebones crackling a protest at finding themselves up and about so late at night. Then another sound drew her attention outside her weary body. The music of a strumming guitar flowed seamlessly from Aidan’s closed apartment door, through her office nook, and penetrated her chest.

  One note, then several successive notes rippled the air. She couldn’t make out the tune, but she adored it right away. The flowing melody thrummed bittersweet, the strings plucking chords of deep regret and unspeakable sorrow, making her think he was playing her song, like in the old Roberta Flack tune “Killing Me Softly.” A joy just below the surface kept popping in, refusing to bow to the song’s initial mood.

  Laura padded to the apartment’s door, and the upbeat secondary melody gained momentum, running away with the song. She’d noticed Aidan’s guitar when he’d first moved in but had yet to hear him play. Could she have slept through other concerts? Mistaken his playing for Darcy’s or Troy’s music?

  She pressed her hand against the door, and the vibrations sang through her palm. The music stopped, but her hand still buzzed. She raised a fist to the door, then paused, getting a full-frontal memory flash of the classic movie, The Good-bye Girl. The single mom, Marsha Mason, upon hearing sub-leaser Richard Dreyfuss playing the guitar in the middle of the night, walked into his room and found him naked as a jaybird, obscuring his nudity with a well-placed guitar.

  Apparently, her late-night mind was dipping into music and movies from as far back as preschool and elementary, and broadcasting from her ’70s archives. Smiling, Laura tapped on the door with the knuckles of her middle finger.

  Nothing. Oh, great. The poor guy probably thought squirrels were scampering through the walls. She knocked harder. “It’s Laura.”

  Panic now, as she realized her foible. Aidan, her tenant, her new friend, deserved privacy, not a midnight visit.

  “Laura! Door’s unlocked. Come on in.” His response sounded as if he were expecting her.

  She pushed open the door, trying to look less like a grinning idiot.

  There he sat.

  The light from the mudroom followed her through the doorway and laid a carpet of illumination across the weathered pine boards, then climbed up a dark leather recliner and onto Aidan himself. In the minimal light, she made out his bare feet, the folds of his jeans, and the curve of the guitar he clutched in front of his shirtless chest. Not naked as a jaybird, thank God, but close enough to give her pause.

  You like him.

  The words played in her head and sounded a lot like Elle. Laura was no good at this, years out of practice, so she couldn’t say for sure whether his response to her visit indicated interest.

  For Laura, his nearness awakened every secret place. “Was I too loud? Did the music wake you?” Aidan said, and the gentle rhythm of his rich voice tweaked the pulse at the base of her throat. He got up and turned on the overhead light, making Laura wish for the anonymity of darkness. She straightened beneath the thin satin layers of a nightgown and robe, not exactly appropriate garb for their professional living arrangement.

  Her bed-sock feet relaxed against the smooth wood floor, responding to a palpable softness in the air. Yet, the distance between her and Aidan contained an energy that shifted her balance forward. A corresponding internal tug spun her thoughts. “Goodness, no. I was cooking. In the kitchen.”

  He raised his eyebrows into identical arcs.

  “I was getting some dough ready. For gingersnaps. I haven’t really baked anything.”

  He nodded, as if her nonsensical speech made all the sense in the world.

  “You have to let the dough kind of meld together. So I was writing.” She didn’t wait for his reaction; she just barreled forward. “Not really writing. Sketching out the framework for a character that came to mind while I was baking, but not really baking. You have to let character sketches meld, too.”


  “Sure.” He took a step in her direction.

  “Loved the music. I don’t think I’ve heard it before though. I was wondering if you could tell me what it’s called.”

  “Nope.”

  “Not even a clue?” She tried looking him in the eye, even though his bare chest was vying for her attention. Just a sprinkle of dark hair at the center. And that waist—she gazed over his shoulder.

  “I’ve never heard it before, either. Never played it before tonight.”

  “You write music?”

  “Occasionally. When I can’t sleep.”

  Her new friend, Doctor Aidan Walsh, wrote music and strummed the guitar like a virtuoso.

  Well, she couldn’t look past him when he was standing so close. “The music was beautiful.” He was beautiful. “You should write it down.” She should stop offering unbidden advice. “I could let you know when the cookies are done, if you like.” She turned to leave.

  “Um, Laura.” He waited for her to turn toward him. This time she held his gaze, and he grinned. “Do you … would you like some company?”

  “Sure.” She exhaled her response, and it came out all breathy, as if she were trying to sound sexy. Either sexy or asthmatic.

  “I’ll just be a minute.” He scrabbled up the loft ladder, and she stared at the ascent of his fantastic firm-looking bottom. He peered over the railing and nodded toward his bicycle on the indoor training stand, the source of the early morning whirring sounds. “Great shop Troy brought me to. Way better than driving into Manchester.”

  Who? Laura touched her face, reconnecting with the anchor of reality and translating the boy’s name: Troy, her son, the other bike enthusiast. “Glad it worked out,” she said. Now they’d have to work on Darcy.

  Aidan nodded and climbed down the loft ladder, shrugged into a white T-shirt. The apartment’s radiator clanged into gear, even though the temperature was kept a steady ten degrees warmer than the rest of the drafty house. Laura chanced a last peek at his chiseled abs, imagined touching his heated skin.

  Just make the cookies, Laura.

  In the kitchen, she threw on the overhead light, not wanting the room to reflect any of the inappropriate notions flowing not so much through her mind but through her body.

  A buzzing sound, and Aidan slipped his cell from his back pocket. On call at Memorial? He checked who was phoning, shook his head, and pocketed the cell.

  Aidan opened and closed his hands at his sides. “How can I help?”

  She uncovered the hill of melded dough she’d pulled from the fridge and tilted her chin toward the right-hand cabinet. “You can take out the parchment paper for me.”

  “Will do.” Without her asking, he tore off two strips of the brown paper and laid them on the waiting cookie sheets.

  His mother must’ve taught him well.

  “When I was a kid, my mother and four sisters used to bake every Sunday. Parchment was the extent of my job. That and eating. I excelled at the eating,” he said, as if reading her mind.

  Laura paused with her hands in the silverware drawer, rewinding to the last words she’d said out loud. Take out the parchment paper didn’t segue naturally to Aidan’s comment about his mother. “And your dad? Does your dad cook?” Jack had left anything remotely kitchen-related to her. He’d scurry through to pinch a taste of whatever she was cooking, and then throw his hands up and back out of the room.

  “Yes.” He gave the parchment an extra press into the baking sheet. “My dad cooked. He passed away … let’s see, I was fifteen. So, wow, thirteen years ago.” He smiled. “Doesn’t seem like that long ago.”

  “I’m sorry about your dad.” Even an old loss deserved condolence. Laura added this new information to the Aidan file. Becoming the man of the house at fifteen explained even more than his unexpected foray into emergency medicine at thirteen. No wonder her son was warming to Aidan.

  Laura left the teaspoons on the counter and reached past Aidan into the cabinet. Then, hands clasped around pastry bags, she tensed with the full-body-tingle feeling of being watched, of Aidan’s warm gaze sliding from her braid to her waist and lingering on her backside before gliding back up her spine. She turned back around and couldn’t mistake his half grin, the facial expression equivalent of a shrug.

  Or she could be losing her mind.

  Aidan held up a spoon and a pastry bag. “What do I do with these?”

  “Spoon dough into the opening?” she said.

  “Like this?” Aidan scooped dough and played at trying to force the dough through the smaller opening.

  She shook her head, laughed, and shoveled dough into her bag’s wide mouth opening. “No, like this.”

  Aidan winked and followed her lead. “After my dad died, my sisters and I didn’t sleep much. We’d stay up talking, get hungry, and they’d end up baking all night. Big brother,” Aidan said, pointing to himself, “got to oversee the operation. We never had all the right ingredients, so they’d improvise. The worst results were the most fun, at least for me. I’d make my sisters play ‘I dare you to eat it.’ ”

  “Oh, you’re bad.” She smiled at how thinking about teasing his sisters splashed a mischievous grin across his face. “Your family sounds great. I mean, really close.”

  “Yeah, too close sometimes.” He stood beside her, pastry bag at the ready, and watched her squeeze dough along the tray into satisfyingly well-ordered rosebuds.

  She kept her gaze on the cookies, her piping, but her awareness focused on his inches-away nearness and the way his movements paced hers. Her awareness deepened her breath. Her robe gaped open and, for a second, Laura let herself imagine the warmth of Aidan’s steady hands on her chest before covering herself. “I didn’t have any siblings, never knew my dad, and my mother died when I was eighteen.”

  Aidan stopped piping and angled toward her. “Laura …” he said, his voice soft with concern.

  She waved her pastry bag at him. “Not a big deal! I’m just giving you my bio to be fair. You know, since you had to fill out an application.”

  He nodded, but she couldn’t figure out his underlying reaction. So what if her childhood wasn’t ideal? Whose was? You worked with whatever family you were given. Sometimes family taught you a lesson in reverse: how not to behave. She sighed, thinking of how her friendless mother had died alone, felled by a massive heart attack two weeks short of her fortieth birthday.

  Aidan headed to the oven with his cookie sheet.

  “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “Heard ovens work swell for baking.”

  “Just a minute.” She filled a small peach bowl with warm water, tested the temperature with her finger, and then crooked a finger at Aidan.

  He jogged back across the room in response to her correction and set his tray back at the starting position, then stood at attention, awaiting further instruction.

  “Wet your finger in the water.”

  He stared helplessly at his dangling hands. “Which one?”

  “For goodness sake.” She snatched up his right hand, dunked it into the bowl of water, then brought his index finger to a mound of cookie dough and pressed the first circle flat. “Now continue.”

  She looked up from the tray and made contact with Aidan’s dark eyes. She couldn’t mistake the way he was looking at her, piercing the surface of her being and trying to go deeper. Waiting to gauge her response.

  How long since a man had made love to her? How long since she’d even been touched? Is that what had happened to her mother? Heart failed from lack of use?

  Heat didn’t contain itself in Laura’s cheeks. Sleep deprivation, nightmares, and overwhelming worry couldn’t account for the sheer magnitude of what she was feeling, despite its wrongness. After all, she was the elder, the responsible party. Her heart pounded an alarm in her ears, and she made herself look away.

  He dipped his fingers into the bowl of warm water. “So, yeah, what were you saying?” He didn’t wait for a response before fingerprinting the r
ows of gingersnap dough.

  Pressing her fingers along her identical rows of dough made her wish instead for the tactile experience of touching his skin. She sighed, threw open the oven door, and forgot to wait a beat before stepping into the fire breath. She slid their baking sheets onto the metal rack, shut the oven door, and set the timer.

  Aidan leaned against the counter, scraping the curved glass bowl with a spoon, and then popped a sizable glob into his mouth.

  Horror should’ve struck. He was eating raw eggs and risking salmonella poisoning. Instead, an irrational thought slammed her: she wanted some, too.

  “Any left for me?” Her logic center was shutting down, the way a teenage girl’s mind responded to a cute boy. Likely, the way Darcy reacted to Nick. Laura could only hope she’d sufficiently brainwashed her daughter about the dangers of premarital sex. At the moment, Laura couldn’t recall any of her own warnings. The image of Aidan pressing his mouth to hers, her fingers in his hair, his beautiful body—

  She nabbed a tablespoon from the drawer, scraped up a glob of her own, and leaned against the counter, mimicking Aidan’s stance. She gazed into the center of the kitchen and sucked batter from the spoon till nothing remained but the cold taste of metal.

  “Your mom,” Laura said. “Did she ever remarry?”

  “Nope.”

  “Thirteen years is a long time.”

  “She says no one can compare to Dad. They were childhood sweethearts, married at eighteen. Mom still wears her wedding band.” Aidan set his spoon and the bowl in the sink, then ran the hot water.

  Laura had always thought of Jack as the love of her life. And after nearly a year without him, the loneliness hadn’t subsided. If anything, it had gotten worse. On the day Jack had died, her body had turned as cold as Jack’s side of the bed. But tonight she was craving another man’s touch. What kind of person did that make her? “Your parents sound very romantic.”

  Aidan shut off the water and turned toward her. “My father was a great guy. But I tell my mother all the time he’d want her to find someone else.” His direct gaze slid a heartbeat of warmth between her legs, and her mouth fell open.