But whatever it was, it made him feel less alone.
She blinked first, turning her head to glance toward the girls’ house. “Thanks. I’m going to—”
“Yeah, it’s late.”
“Okay.” She lingered with one foot planted and the other edging away for half a beat. Then with resolve, she turned and stalked off. When she got to the door, she didn’t gaze back at him. But she did take one last, longing look up at the stars.
The door closed behind her, leaving him by himself again.
For the second time that night, he gazed at the galaxy above him. And murmured, “Good night,” to a woman who wasn’t listening.
Chapter Four
Jo shoved her pencil between her teeth, balancing her binder on her knees as she leaned forward and typed another set of coordinates into the terminal window on her computer screen. She glanced at the calendar on the desk beside it. One week to go until her first observing run on the telescope, and she had a lot to do between now and then.
In the week she’d been here so far, she’d dived right in, running through all the background material Heather had assembled for her and learning her way around the systems. She’d even sat in on one of Heather’s sessions with the telescope so she’d be prepared for when it was her turn.
She hadn’t pissed off Heather or killed her roommate or otherwise insulted or injured anyone else in the program. So really, it was all win.
That track record wasn’t going to be easy to hold on to, though. She frowned at the dates highlighted in blue on that calendar. Field trips¸ Dr. Galloway had called them. The whole gang was piling into cars and heading to the beach and the rain forest and even some random little island off the coast for an overnight escapade, and it was fine. Great. She’d always wanted to see the rain forest. But it was also concentrated time in cars and exotic locations with people. And it was time away from work.
Speaking of time away from work…
Jo looked up at the sound of a tentative knock on the door of the office she shared with her advisor. Carol stood there, an uncertain smile on her face. “Hey.”
“Hi, Carol,” Heather said from behind Jo, and Jo entertained a brief moment of hope that Carol was there to ask Heather a question, but no. Of course not.
“Hey,” Carol said again, addressing Jo for sure this time. “I’m heading over to the house. We’re all getting together to cook dinner in a bit. You in?”
Something uncomfortable flipped over inside Jo’s gut as she pulled the pencil from between her teeth. “I don’t know…” She knew. Keeping her distance was her best shot at holding on to her streak of goodish behavior. She looked around at all the stuff she’d managed to pile up on her desk already. It was the excuse she always fell back on, but it wasn’t like it was a lie or anything. “I have a lot of work to do,” she hedged.
“Oh, please.” Heather’s voice rang out from behind her.
Frowning, Jo looked over at her advisor. “Excuse me?”
Heather had turned to face her computer but was still waving a hand dismissively at them. “You’re a week ahead of my schedule for you. Go. Have some fun for goodness’ sake.”
And that was… really nice to hear actually. This internship was so short, and Jo’s expectations for it so ambitious. The whole time, thus far, she’d felt like she was behind.
“You heard the woman,” Carol said with a smirk. “Besides, Anna and Adam got someone to give them a ride to the grocery store, and they picked up some stuff specially for you.”
“For me?” Now Jo was really confused.
“Um, the whole vegetarian thing?” Right, because Anna had noticed that on the very first day, and a few others had given her sympathetic looks the couple of times she’d been cajoled into joining them for a meal. “We’re making stir-fry, and they picked up some tofu or whatever, so you can actually eat real food for once.”
Jo’s stomach growled at just the thought. She’d been doing okay, sneaking in peanut butter sandwiches between plates of limp vegetables and plain starches, but actual, honest-to-God food sounded amazing. Still, she sucked her lip ring into her mouth with a rough tug. “That sounds great. Just…”
“Just nothing. Come on. Walk back with me now and we can help cook.”
Cocking an eyebrow, Jo deadpanned, “Did someone get a fire extinguisher for the place?”
“Whatever. I can help cook. You can stay out of the way and glower at people. Come on.”
Well, when she put it that way.
Giving in, Jo held up her hands, then took a second to save her work and pack up her things. When she was done, she shoved a couple of articles into her bag and slung it over her shoulder.
On multiple levels, it was weird, walking back with Carol. First, Jo was used to walking to and from the lab alone, and second, she rarely made the trek before nightfall. Damn, it was hot during the day. And bright. She directed her gaze upward, missing the darkness and the shining spiral of Scorpius unwinding itself across the sky. And there were other nice views around that time, too.
Several nights now, she’d returned from work to find that guy, Adam, sitting out on the bench between their houses, appreciating the view in a way she wasn’t sure anybody else here really did. He usually saw her coming miles away, but every now and then, she managed to sneak up on him. To get a glimpse of him in a tight T-shirt, those big, muscled arms spread out to either side of him, throat exposed and gaze skyward. It made her curse herself again for getting off on the wrong foot with him.
Maybe if she hadn’t messed things up so bad, she could have been getting off with him instead.
Christ, but she really needed Carol to vacate their room at some point so she could unpack that vibrator from her top drawer. The idle fantasies she’d been indulging in of riding those lean hips into the ground—they weren’t smart thoughts, weren’t safe thoughts, especially considering this was the guy who’d triggered her into attacking him by sneaking up on her. By trying to help, like she couldn’t handle her own stupid bags. The guy who’d gotten here because of his connections and who’d tried to play the whole incestuous system off like it was a good thing.
Still, a guy who spent that much time by himself, with just the stars above for company… he might not have been the worst choice.
Cross that. He definitely wouldn’t be the worst choice, because the actual worst choice was sitting in the living room, drinking a beer and trying to make the television work.
“Hello, ladies,” Jared said with a smirk as he looked up. He did a double take when his gaze landed on Jo, a startled blink that turned into a leer about three seconds later, and she rolled her eyes with a huff.
Managing a bare nod and a wave at Anna and the other girl beside her on the couch, Jo headed to the kitchen to make a drink of her own, only to come face to chest with what might as well have been a freaking brick wall.
A deliciously warm, unfairly good-smelling brick wall.
And it was stupid—fuck, it was so stupid—but instead of stepping aside or slugging him in the face or any of a hundred other normal, rational reactions, she brought her hand up and settled it over the ripples of his abdomen. Heat was just pouring off of him, even through the damp fabric of his shirt, the flesh firm and perfect beneath the cotton.
He looked down at her, eyes shockingly blue. Maybe it wasn’t stupid to touch him after all, because he curled his hand around her hip, fingers brushing the skin beside her spine. It sent a shiver to the very center of her, and that wasn’t disgust on his face. It wasn’t confusion. Damn her if it wasn’t a hunger to match her own, and maybe this whole situation between them wasn’t as much of a lost cause as she had imagined.
Or maybe it was. In the blink of an eye, he seemed to realize what he was doing, his whole expression blanking. He yanked his hand away and stepped back so fast he half stumbled in his hurry to get the fuck away from her, and yeah. That was a little closer to what she’d been expecting. The impulse to lash out against rejection rose up in
her throat, but he let out an awkward, dry chuckle.
“Sorry,” he said. “I don’t know what I—”
“Yeah.” Her palm burned with the memory of his warmth, and the front of her body felt cold for more reasons than one. “Sure.”
She felt like such an idiot.
Before she could say something she’d regret, she whipped around. The only relief was that Jared and Carol and the rest of them had stayed put in the living room and hadn’t followed her. Hadn’t had to see that giant pile of awkwardness and weren’t looking at the inferno that was her face right now.
She didn’t acknowledge them as she stalked past them toward her room, where she closed the door and put her back to it, burying her face in her hands. Wishing she’d been smart enough to stay in her lab.
Adam pushed the last bits of his stir-fry around on his plate, scooping it up onto his fork the best he could and shoveling it into his mouth. It was one of the basic meals he’d managed to learn to cook after he’d moved out of the dorms and realized a steady diet of mac and cheese and Burger King wasn’t doing him any favors.
Not for the first time, he snuck a glance over at Jo, perched in the corner eating more greedily than he’d seen since they’d arrived. It was compliment enough, even if she hadn’t given him a verbal one. Which was fine. It hadn’t been much extra work to make up a separate little skillet for the tofu, which hadn’t been half bad, if he said so himself. If you, you know, liked tofu. Which he didn’t particularly, but whatever. Not up to him to judge. Anyway, it had gotten her over here, and that was a first.
Hell, she’d even said two words to him. Exactly two, and they’d both been effectively a dismissal. He’d been such a lug, putting his hands on her when she’d fallen into him. When she’d touched him and sent a heady jolt of arousal surging up his spine. It’d just felt so good to be touched, even if it was only a hand on his stomach as she steadied herself. Even if it wasn’t anything like he might have imagined—even if it hadn’t been heading where his brain had immediately gone.
A place his mind went entirely too often when he looked at her.
But she was all harsh lines and soft curves and he wondered what that piercing through her lip would feel like against his cock…
He shifted his plate to cover his lap and forced himself to look away. People around the room were finishing up, and there was ice cream in the freezer for dessert. Jared and Kim were flirting like they always were, though there was a level of bickering cropping up in their repartee that was new. He wasn’t sure what that said for what was brewing between them behind closed doors.
Carol, who’d already finished, too, rose and started moving around the room, taking plates from anybody who was done. Adam handed his over with a nod of thanks and leaned back in his seat as he reached for his beer. He frowned as he took a sip. Nothing stayed cold for long around here.
On the other couch, across from him, Anna looked at the time and sighed. “Should probably go call my boyfriend.”
Of course, that was a cue for half of the people in the room to look at Adam. Right. Because apparently he and Anna were the only ones here who had any significant attachments to people at home. As Anna picked her way over to the door, Jared raised an eyebrow at Adam. “How about you, lover boy? Time for you to go call the girlfriend, too?”
The clattering sound of a fork hitting a plate too hard pulled Adam’s gaze to the corner of the room. Jo dropped her head the instant he looked at her, stabbing a piece of tofu with way more aggression than was called for.
Not that Adam could blame her. His own store of hostility welled up as he went back to glaring at Jared. “She’s not my girlfriend,” he countered, a little more sulkily than he might have liked. But it had been a week now, and all he’d gotten were a couple of erratic texts. Never enough of them in a row for a real conversation, even. They were all apologetic, but actions spoke louder than silent words on silent screens, and it was like Shannon didn’t care. Like she didn’t miss him.
Sometimes, he wasn’t sure he missed her, either. Other times, he felt so damn lonely, he wanted nothing more than to hear that voice. The one that had been a constant in his ear for years, through the good and the bad and the everything in between. Until now.
“I’m sorry.” Jared’s voice was teasing. “Time to go call Ms. It’s Complicated?”
“No.” And he shouldn’t have added it, but he did. “She probably wouldn’t answer, anyway.”
He’d been good about not calling her recently, too. He’d given in once on that very first day and again a few days later. And once more over the weekend. But the itch had receded to the back of his mind, mostly. An adequate amount of disappointment could train anyone. Even him.
“Has she ever?” Carol asked, and at least she had the grace to sound sympathetic.
“Not so far.” He sucked down the rest of his beer in a few long pulls.
“Then what’s so complicated about it?”
He blinked as his gaze darted over to the side, uncertain which surprised him more—the fact that Jo was actually talking or the content of what she’d said. “Excuse me?”
She looked around, taking in the renewed attention being directed her way and visibly stiffening. Her shrug was all casual disaffectedness, but it wasn’t particularly convincing. “I don’t know, dude. Kinda sounds like she’s just not that into you.”
She grimaced, maybe at the gratuitous pop culture reference, or maybe at something else. He didn’t have a lot of space to concentrate on it, because his heart squeezed at the very idea. “It’s—” he started, but his automatic descriptor of “complicated” wasn’t going to help him here, now was it? Not when that was what had started the whole conversation. “We… she…” Swallowing, he looked at the empty bottle in his hands, and then at all the people staring at him expectantly. And back to Jo. “We’re… on a break. She said she needed some space.”
“Ouch,” Jared said.
Yeah, pretty much.
Jo’s mouth twisted down. “Not sure how that exactly contradicts my theory.”
How was he supposed to explain this? Everyone in the program had slowly been trading life stories and histories, but he’d shied away from this very subject time and time again, because it was complicated, as cliché as that might sound. “We’ve been together, sort of, since freshman year. I mean, it’s been on again, off again.”
There’d been the intense whirlwind his first week of classes, when they’d met in a seminar they’d both needed for their gen-eds, and she’d just sort of carved out this space for herself in his life. She’d been easy to talk to, and a beautiful blonde, and just different from anyone he’d ever met. Way different from anyone who’d ever given him the time of day before. Then again, that could’ve had something to do with the fact that he’d gotten contact lenses and started working out between high school graduation and the start of college.
She’d accepted his closet nerdiness with only a modicum of teasing and introduced him to the girls in the sorority she was pledging, and sure, they’d had different majors and hobbies and schedules. They’d conflicted on those here and there, and she’d thrown her hands up at him a couple of times when he’d insisted he had too much work to do to go along with whatever plans she’d made. But the breaks had been good for them both.
Three years of falling back into each others’ arms and beds and then slipping into the same patterns of her getting caught up in her things and him in his. He hadn’t even really been surprised this time when she’d said that maybe they should take advantage of the ocean between them for the summer.
He had been disappointed, though.
“But it’s really great when it’s great,” he said, half trying to convince them and half reminding himself. “She’s fun, and she makes me do things I never would.” He still didn’t really care for clubbing, but he’d met so many interesting people because of her, and thumping beats and close dancing usually led to some of their better nights once they made it to h
is place. “And she listens to me, even when it’s mostly boring science stuff. She’s faithful.” He looked away, out the window, into the distance. “And it’s been three years, you know? We both knew we were going to be busy this summer, and the distance is a killer, so she… so we…”
He stopped to listen to himself, and the squeezing in his chest got a whole lot tighter.
“Anyway, it’s fine. We’ve texted back and forth. And I’ll see her in a few weeks.”
“You will?” Jared asked.
“Yeah, there’s this conference in Baltimore I have to go to to present a poster. She’s driving down from Philly. We’ve got it all planned out.”
It was an overstatement, but it wasn’t too far from the truth. She’d said she’d make it work. He’d budgeted an extra couple of days between the conference and his flight, and everything that was wrong with them—these silences and this distance—they’d figure them out. When they were actually near each other, they always did. They’d manage it this time, too.
“It’ll be great,” he said. But it sounded weak.
“If you say so.” Jo gave another little expression of indifference, this one just as unconvincing as the last.
Only he didn’t understand the lines around her mouth this time. It couldn’t just be that she was talking in front of the group or garnering unwanted attention. Delicate, shy flower that she was.
“Just . . .” she started again, hesitating for a second. But then her gaze met his, and there was no less challenge there. “When someone doesn’t respond to you, it usually means something. Believe me.” She let out a harsh little laugh that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up and his stomach sink. “I have a lifetime of waiting for somebody to pay attention to me under my belt, and it doesn’t matter what you do. If they don’t want to, they’re not going to.” Glancing away, she said, “Better to cut your losses before they really break your heart.”
When The Stars Align Page 5