Nick wrestled with his telescope, far less proficient with it than Livie had been with hers. As soon as he got one leg out and tried to move the other, the first would swing back. “This is like wrestling with an eel. What the hell am I doing wrong?”
Livie came to help. She swung her hair over one shoulder as she bent down to straighten the legs. “There. You can set it down now. They’re pretty crummy, but Adams doesn’t have the money for anything better.”
“How many more should we set up?”
“That’s it. And chances are, nobody will show up to use those two.”
“Are you serious?”
“If you were an undergrad and you had your choice of lab times, would you choose to come all the way out to Mill Basin to stand around in the cold and dark on a Friday night?”
“Point taken. This is why the Friday night slot sucks.”
“Yep. It’s a waste of time.”
This was her punishment from that asshole Langley, being shunted to this crummy babysitting assignment. It made him want to punch something, preferably Langley’s face. If he wasn’t a responsible, reformed, law-abiding citizen, he’d be seriously tempted to electronically fuck up the dude’s life in some subtle and awe-inspiring ways. But sadly, he didn’t do that stuff anymore.
“Any update from Andy about Finch?”
She shook her head. “No improvement.”
Not good. Not good at all. “What are you going to do?”
“What can I do? I’m going to keep working on the program with you, and keep working on the application for time on Hubble. That way, everything’s in place for Janet when she gets back.” He didn’t point out the obvious—that it was becoming increasingly likely that Finch wouldn’t come back. He’d tried that once before and Livie hadn’t taken it well.
“You know this research as well as Finch. Can’t you keep moving forward without her?”
“It’s her work. I wouldn’t feel right doing it without her. And besides, it’s not that easy.”
Taking her hand, he ran his thumb over the back of her knuckles. “Explain it to me. I’ve been told I’m pretty smart. I bet I can keep up.”
“Janet didn’t get the purchasing requests submitted for approval before her heart attack.”
“Can you submit them?”
“No. And even if I could, it wouldn’t matter. Janet has to personally sign off on all expenses before Skylight will release the funds to the university’s account.”
“Isn’t that dickwad Langley head of the department now? Surely he’s got the authority to do it.”
Livie’s eyes flashed up to his then away again, and she caught her bottom lip with her teeth. Something was eating at her.
“What is it?”
“Nothing. I’m sure it’s nothing.”
“Obviously it’s not nothing. What are you thinking?”
“I don’t want to ask Langley for anything to do with Janet’s grant.”
“Why?”
Again, she paused. “Remember I told you about the fight she was having with Langley right before she collapsed? He wanted her to purchase some stuff for him with it.”
“Right. You don’t want him getting his filthy hands anywhere near her grant money.”
“Pretty much.” Then she shook her head. “Ugh. Forget I said anything. I’m just being paranoid.”
“Maybe you’re not. What’s happening to Skylight’s money while Finch is out?”
She shrugged. “Nothing, I guess? It’s sitting in their account.”
“You sure about that? Langley sounds like he thinks he’s entitled to it.”
“Well, he’s not. It’s Janet’s grant.”
“But she’s not here to defend it.”
Livie turned her wide brown eyes to his. “What’s he going to do? Steal it?”
“Maybe.” He knew plenty of people who wouldn’t think twice about doing just that.
Livie let out a shocked huff of laughter. “Come on, Nick. This isn’t the movies. There’s no espionage at work here. This is academia. There are rules. Langley’s a jerk, but he’s not a criminal. He can grumble all he wants, but I’m sure the money is safe.”
“I’m serious, Liv. I can totally see that guy trying something shady. You need to watch your back.”
“And you need to stop imagining everybody is as morally flexible as you.”
“I don’t need to imagine it, because most people are, or they’re worse.”
She was flustered now, breathing faster and twisting her hands together. He reached out for her, taking her face in his hands. “Hey, I’m only warning you because I’m worried about you. I don’t want to see you get hurt.”
He knew what she was scared of, even if she didn’t. If she admitted to herself that Finch wasn’t coming back, that Langley was an irredeemable asshole bent on sabotaging her—then she would need to do something about it, make some sort of life-altering change. And he’d already figured out she did not like her life altered. She wouldn’t be at Adams otherwise.
Now here she was, still stumbling along the path she’d set for herself even after the road had disappeared beneath her feet. If it were him, he’d have lit a match, burned it all down, and started fresh. But she wasn’t him. All he could do was keep nudging her in the right direction when she’d let him, press her with the uncomfortable questions until she shut him down. He hoped it worked, because otherwise she was in for a world of hurt, and he did not want to see that happen to her.
Which, he supposed, meant he’d begun to care. He cared about her, of course. They were friends. But this was different. He’d begun to feel stuff you didn’t feel about someone who was just a friend or even a friend with benefits. He wasn’t supposed to get serious about Livie—wanting to take care of her, to protect her, like he was her boyfriend or something. He was not in a good place to be anybody’s boyfriend. Not now and probably not for a long time. And considering his dark view of life, he was a terrible candidate to be Livie’s boyfriend even under the best of circumstances. She needed someone as decent and honest as she was. Someone who saw all the best in the world instead of wallowing around in its dark corners.
But when she was looking up at him with those dark eyes full of that warm light, and her lips looked soft, and her hair felt so silky under his fingers, it was hard to remember to keep his feet firmly on the ground. It was tempting to be selfish, and pull her closer, because that light in Livie’s eyes was pretty good at warming up his cold heart.
“Nick, I can handle this,” she said.
Since she’d shut him down, he wouldn’t try again, at least not tonight. “I know, I know. You can take care of yourself.”
Finally, she relented, smiling up at him. “But thank you for worrying.”
He kissed her gently, tempted, as he always was when his mouth was on hers, to go further. Their physical chemistry had taken him completely by surprise. He’d fully expected to enjoy sleeping with her. But he hadn’t been ready for this, the way his brain short-circuited every time he touched her, the way thoughts of her consumed his every waking minute. But they were outside and it was cold, so he firmly told his dick to stand down. This wasn’t the time or place.
Clearing his throat, he stepped away from her. “Tell me what you can see with one of these things.”
She moved to one of the telescopes. “With these? Here in Brooklyn? Not much. Venus and Mars, depending on the time of year. The Pleiades, if there’s no moon, like tonight. Come here.”
He joined her, watching as she leaned forward and pressed her eye to the eyepiece. Her hair fell around her face as she fiddled with the knobs and shifted the telescope’s aim.
“Here, look.”
He did. “What am I supposed to be seeing? Is it that fuzzy blue patch?”
“That’s the Pleiades, a star cluster. Can you see some br
ight spots inside the cloud? Those are individual stars in it. There’s Merope, Electra, Alcyone, Atlas.”
“Can you name everything up there?”
She laughed, that bright sound that always sent a little shiver down the back of his neck. “You know there are an infinite number of objects in space, right? Knowing them all is impossible.”
He straightened up and looked at her. Her head was tipped back, face turned to the night sky.
“What do you like about it?”
“Space?”
“Yeah. Is it that thing everybody says, about space making them feel small and insignificant?”
Livie shook her head, eyes still on the stars. “No. Space doesn’t make me feel small. It makes me feel bigger. More than I am.”
“How so?”
“Space doesn’t welcome human beings. It’s not our place. We’re too small, too fragile. But when I’m working, when I see something new come back from a telescope, something no one else has ever observed before, I feel like I’ve figured out a way around our human fragility. Maybe space doesn’t welcome most humans, but I’ve found a way to walk up there amongst the stars, to look back through time. I mean, primordial black holes! You’re looking at the birth of the universe. And I can do that. Me. And that makes me bigger, stronger, than anybody else. I’m alone out there with space and all its mysteries.”
He stared at her pale, perfect profile against the dark of the night around them. This girl was destined for greatness. What a waste that she was here, killing time in a grimy, empty lot, waiting around for a bunch of unappreciative undergrads, being hassled by a blowhard professor who wasn’t worth a tenth of her. One day, she’d break free of her orbit around Adams and their insignificant little Brooklyn neighborhood, and when she did, she’d light up like a comet, streaking away to parts unknown to change the world, to crack the code of time and space.
He rubbed the heel of his palm across his chest, trying to ease the ache that image caused him somewhere deep inside, somewhere in the vicinity of where his heart would be. If he still had one. It would be a good thing, Livie getting out there and blazing a trail of brilliance across the world. And he’d be out there on his own trajectory again, too. This little interlude—when she was biding her time in this academic backwater and he was biding his time until the next opportunity reached out to grab him—would be over. And he absolutely refused to feel sad about that.
“You’re beautiful, you know that?” His voice sounded rough with everything he was holding back.
She startled, looking at him with those big dark eyes. “I told you, you don’t have to say that kind of stuff to me.”
“I’m not saying it to flatter you. I’m saying it because it’s true.” He reached for her hand and she turned to face him fully. She was back, returned from her momentary trip to the stars, back on earth, and back with him. For now.
He ran his hands up her arms, over her shoulders, and up her neck, under the warm fall of her hair. “I’m saying it because I think it every time I look at you.”
She said nothing as he leaned in and kissed her, only released a long, slow breath.
“I’m saying it because when I’m not looking at you, I’m thinking about what you look like, your hair, your lips, your breasts.”
“You’re obsessed,” she murmured against his lips.
“I told you I was,” he said back.
He kissed her again, less sweet and soft this time, urging her lips apart, finding her tongue with his. One step brought their bodies flush. Arousal pulsed through his veins, even though there were layers of coats and sweaters and shirts between his body and hers.
“How much longer did you say you have to stay out here?” he whispered against her mouth.
“As long as there are students here working.”
“Livie. I don’t see any students.”
A small smile tugged at the corner of her mouth as she gazed up at him, her fingers toying with his hair. “Then I guess I don’t have to stay.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Vinelli’s Meats was a madhouse. It always was on the afternoon before a major holiday, as everyone crowded in to pick up their custom orders.
Thanksgiving was tomorrow, and Gemma had tasked Livie with picking up the turkey she’d ordered weeks before. Everybody knew Vinelli’s had the best birds in Brooklyn, so everyone else ordered from them, too. People came all the way from Bay Ridge and Marine Park to get a Vinelli turkey.
Vinelli’s was already decorated for Christmas, which she loved. They always started well before all the other businesses on the block. The faded light-up Santa in the front window and the dusty plastic holly swags overhead were older than she was. Boxed panettones imported from Italy lined the wall behind the meat cases. Vinelli’s had already put out the Christmas booze, too. In the corner, a silver tray held a little forest of open bottles—some scotch, vodka, whiskey, rum, and a bottle of Baileys—along with a stack of disposable plastic cups. For the next month, customers would help themselves to a drink while they waited on their orders and chatted with their neighbors. While Livie didn’t drink or chat easily with neighbors, she liked watching other people do it. It was one of the things that made this neighborhood great, and gave her that warm feeling of belonging someplace.
On the other side of those glass cases, featuring meat products in every permutation imaginable, three harried guys in white butchers’ coats ran back and forth, retrieving turkeys from the walk-in cooler in the back and calling out names out front. Livie patiently waited her turn, pickup ticket clutched in her hand. She stepped up to the counter and handed it over to one of the butchers when another butcher held a giant turkey aloft and called out the last name of its new owner.
“DeSantis! Twenty pounds!”
Spinning around, she skimmed the crowd, looking to see who replied. She’d have known the woman anywhere, because her face was Nick’s face. She was somewhere in her fifties, with Nick’s dark brown hair, peppered with gray and pulled back in a ponytail, and Nick’s dark eyes, framed at the corners with tiny lines. With a tight, harried smile, she edged through the crush of bodies to reach the counter and retrieve her turkey.
Nick’s mother.
People swept in in her wake, like the tide coming in on the beach, and Livie lost sight of her. Elbowing her way through the crowd, all her warm, fuzzy thoughts of holidays and communities vanished, Livie fought her way to where the woman had been a moment ago. When she got there, she was gone, but then she spotted her accepting the hefty bagged turkey from the cashier. She’d nearly reached the door when Livie finally caught up to her.
“Mrs. DeSantis?”
She turned, looking at Livie with polite curiosity. “Yes?”
Now that she was face-to-face with her, Livie had no idea why she’d pursued her. What had she meant to say? Mrs. DeSantis had the strained smile of a busy New Yorker wondering why a strange woman had run her down in the middle of the butcher shop.
“I know your son.”
Her smile brightened slightly. “Oh, you know Christopher?”
“No, Nick. I know Nick.”
The blood drained from Mrs. DeSantis’s face, and her smile vanished.
“You’ve seen Nicky?” Livie could barely hear her hoarse whisper over the chatter in the shop.
“Yes, he’s staying at our place right now.”
“Is he okay? Is he in trouble? Does he need help?” Mrs. DeSantis’s anxiety was palpable. Why on earth did Nick think she didn’t care about him. She was nearly frantic as she begged for news about her son.
“He’s fine. He needed a place to crash while he was between apartments. He’s moving to a new place soon.” It didn’t seem right to share Nick’s recent romantic history, not even with his mother, not even if she was desperate for any news of him.
“Can you tell me—”
At that m
oment, a butcher shouted out her last name across the shop. “Can you wait a second? I need to pay for our turkey.”
“Your name is Romano?”
“Romano’s Bar? That’s us.”
“Romano’s,” she echoed faintly. “Of course.”
Livie fought her way back to the counter to retrieve her turkey and pay for it. When she returned, Mrs. DeSantis was hurriedly scribbling something on the torn-off corner of her shopping list. “Here.” She thrust it in Livie’s direction. “It’s my cell number and my husband’s. Please, give it to Nicky and ask him to call. I just want to hear from him. I want to know he’s all right.”
Part of her wanted to reassure Mrs. DeSantis that Nick was doing fine. He was wildly successful and wealthy. But she held back, because the other part of her knew it wasn’t true. He was alone, bouncing from one temporary situation to another, steadfastly refusing to let himself put down roots. He was not okay. Whatever happened years ago between Nick and his family obviously affected him to this day.
Livie took the paper. “I will, Mrs. DeSantis,” she promised, even though she had no idea how she’d accomplish that. If she simply handed it over and told him to call his parents, he’d just throw it away and refuse outright. Somehow she’d have to explain this encounter, convince him that his mother genuinely missed him.
“Please, it’s Laura. And you...?”
“Olivia. Livie, I mean. You can call me Livie.”
“Livie.” She absolutely beamed at Livie, like she was Santa Claus and the Pope all rolled into one. Reaching out, she grasped Livie’s hand tightly. “Thank you, Livie.”
Livie’s heart ached for her. She clearly loved and missed him and wanted him back. Nick was the one staying away. But maybe she could figure out how to reconnect them. If she could somehow fix this thing with Nick’s family, then maybe, for once, he wouldn’t run. Maybe he’d stay.
“Happy Thanksgiving.”
“You, too, Livie. Tell him...” She paused, squeezed her eyes shut briefly, and took a deep breath. “Tell him I’m sorry.”
Love and the Laws of Motion Page 20