Professor Adorkable

by Edie Danford

  Professor Adorkable

  Edie Danford

  Copyright © 2018 by Edie Danford

  Cover art by Garrett Leigh of Black Jazz Design

  Edited by Christa Soule Desir

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  For Petr, whose brilliant sounds (words and otherwise) brought sunshine to a dark January in Chicago.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  More books!

  Chapter 1

  Marek

  I’m nervous. Fifteen pairs of eyes are staring at me. Fifteen pairs of ears are waiting to hear me say something brilliant.

  These expectations are maybe reasonable. As my friend Zoe likes to say, I have some brain cred.

  I’m the youngest professor in a renowned department at a prestigious university. At twenty-six I have two PhDs and a CV packed with many pages of publications. I can speak four languages. I’ve invented some technologies that are used by the largest software companies in the world.

  Still. I tend to feel like an idiot much of the time.

  And none of my credentials are keeping me from wanting to turn around, leave the laboratory classroom where I’m supposed to be introducing my brand of astrophysics to a class of undergraduate physics majors, haul ass down the hall and the stairs, exit the building, and run like hell for the three and a half blocks it will take to get home.

  Home. Where Pete, my friend and housekeeper, has promised kolache will be waiting, even though he’s been reluctant to try the recipe my grandmother had sent him.

  “I’m not a sweet old Czech woman with eons of cookie-making history behind me, Mar—I’m gonna fuck it up and you’ll judge me,” he’d said. Which is nonsense. I would never judge Pete.

  The thought of these things—Pete, more so than the kolache—makes my toes uncurl in my shoes, my fingers flex, my shoulders untighten.

  I have a place to regroup when this is over. Someone to talk to. Jam-filled dough to stuff my face with. I can do this.

  I click the keypad to bring up an image on the big screen behind me. I turn to check the projection. My lips, which were rubbery and frozen ten seconds ago, curve into a smile. I love this picture. It’s a weakly compressible homogeneous isoptropic turbulence.

  I’d shown it to Pete when I’d been working at home last week. He hadn’t been impressed, although he had mentioned liking the image’s colors—swirling shades of green, blue, red, purple, and orange.

  He’d said it reminded him of when his friend Toby had spun in circles too fast and too long at L.A. Pride three years ago. “He’d been wearing full body paint,” Pete had told me, smiling at the memory. “Really intricate boho rainbow shit done by a makeup artist at the studio where we worked. He looked fab for the first thirty or forty seconds he was spinning, but then he stopped. And the hurling happened. Jell-O shots. Glergh. Never again.”

  I give all my images basic names—because calling them things like “Weakly Compressible Homogeneous Isoptropic Turbulence Image Number Eleven” is boring—and so I told Pete I was naming this particular image Toby. He’d rolled his eyes, but his mouth—whose expressions I’ve made a study of—had turned up slightly on one side.

  Anyway. Toby is making me feel better about this talk. I’m able to start it with a smile and introduce myself without turning bright red.

  “When a star goes supernova,” I tell the students after a brief explanation of my work, “it releases an incredible amount of energy into the universe.” I change the image on the screen behind me to one of a supernova I’ve named Miles. Quite beautiful. “More energy than our sun would be able to release in ten billion years.”

  “Ten billion,” comments a woman in a red coat. “That’s hard to wrap your brain around. Maybe even a brain as big as yours, right?” She smiles at me—a bright smile I can see clearly even in the dimness of the room. I can also see her eyes. She’s not looking at the picture of Miles behind me. She’s looking at me. My face. My lab coat, from collar to hem. My brown leather sneakers (which I’ve been told as recently as this morning are very dorky). Then back to my face again, before her gaze finally settles on my mouth.

  I try to smile back, but I’m pretty sure it looks like a lip twitch. Nerves. Damn. And I’ve been doing so well up till now.

  “It is.” My voice squeaks, so I clear my throat. “I mean. My brain isn’t big. I don’t think. Not more than average. What I mean to say is that wrapping any brain—around an idea, of course—is difficult.” This brilliance earns me a few laughs. I suppress a sigh and try to speak in a way that doesn’t resemble the sound a fat frog might make while being swallowed by a skinny snake. “Each supernova is different. And it’s the differences that we try to study with our replications.”

  I gesture toward my lab. Beyond a glass wall is a large room filled with computer monitors and lasers and other gadgets that I find relaxing. In fact, I can see some interesting data swirling on the monitor I’d been using earlier in the day—

  No. Can’t look at it now. I need to talk with this class. Which, yes, is the opposite of relaxing. I do much better with grad students and my faculty colleagues. I’d been fourteen when I’d begun taking undergraduate classes in Prague. The experience was memorable for very cringe-y reasons. Reasons that I should not be thinking about right now. I needed to be thinking about—

  Miles. Yes. I’d been about to mention his unique qualities.

  “Magnetic fields,” I continue, still hyperaware of the young woman’s gaze on my mouth. “Gases in the atmosphere. Interstellar dust. Those are all things that can dramatically affect the outcome of an explosion.”

  A student toward the front of the room pulls out his phone. I can tell he’s not googling topics like magnetism or interstellar phenomenon. He’s pulled up a texting screen.

  It’s been five minutes and I’m already losing them.

  “And so,” I say. “Lia, one of the lab assistants, will now be giving you a tour of the lab.”

  Lia, who is standing just inside the door leading to the lab, gives me an evil glare.

  I was supposed to have spoken for twenty minutes. She’d coached me. All twelve people who worked in the lab had coached me. But I’m comfortable with the twelve people I work with. I’m very fond of them, in fact. And none of them look at my mouth when I speak. Not with any degree of fascination, anyway. The Let’s-Teach-Marek-To-Talk-To-Strangers experiment hasn’t included the proper variables.

  I give Lia a look I hope she interprets as an apology.

  “Thank you.” I vaguely nod toward the students and begin the process of unplugging my laptop from the monitor setup.

  “So.”

  I look up, startling at the sound of a soft voice so close to my ear. It’s the woman in the red coat. A bead of sweat trickles from my armpit to the top of my ribcage. I roll my shoulder, hoping my T-shirt will swipe it away before it begins to tickle.

  “Yes?” I ask. I expect her to say something after the “so,” but nothing else seems to be coming.

  Her eyes are friendly up close. A nice shade of brown. And her smile is also nice. H
owever—

  “So they say,” she says. Her tone is…playful? “Supernovae are the most energetic events in the universe.”

  “Uh, yes.” I nod. I’m beginning to understand. I’ve been flirted with a few times in my life. But I don’t think anyone has ever flirted with me about supernovae before. I’m curious to hear what she might say next. And terrified. “Yes. They are.”

  Her smile widens, even though I’m sure I haven’t given her the genius response—academic or flirtation-wise—she’s expecting.

  “So what’s the most energetic thing that happens in your personal universe, Professor?”

  I choke. Because wow.

  And then I blurt the first thing that blips into my brain. “Pete.”

  Her eyebrows smash together. “What?”

  “Sorry,” I say. “Um…” I turn. Smash into a chair and knock it over. As I bend to pick it up, my computer begins to slide from my hold. I straighten abruptly, overcompensate, grab another chair—

  “Oh my God,” the woman breathes, setting the first chair upright.

  I blink at her, feeling dizzy. She’s said something else—something that sounds like “hot nerd.” Or maybe “so absurd.”

  Before I can ask her to clarify, she gives me another huge smile. “I’d love to pursue an internship in your lab if there are openings.” She tilts her head, sending a wave of dark hair over the front of her bright red coat.

  A coat. It’s cold outside.

  I tick off in my head the things I’ll be expected to have when I walk through the door of my townhouse. Parka, scarf, hat, gloves, bag…lunchbox? No, I’d eaten at home today.

  Since Pete moved in with me back in July, I’ve tried to come home as much as possible for lunch. This would’ve been a shock to my old colleagues at Stanford, where I’d studied before coming to Chicago. At Stanford, I’d essentially lived in my lab and sometimes forgot—okay, often forgot—to eat.

  Today’s lunch had been one of Pete’s “soup experiments.” Tomato bisque with tiny squares of cut-up grilled-cheese sandwiches floating on top—

  “Professor Janos?”

  I turn to see the pretty woman is still standing there watching me.

  Shit. Is she expecting a response?

  “I have to go home,” I say. “Urgent business.” With Pete and some kolache.

  And then I leave the laboratory classroom, haul ass down the hall and the stairs, exit the building, and run the three and a half blocks to get home.

  Pete

  The last song on my kitchen-cleaning playlist is “Kiss,” and Prince has just made that incredible sound—the one that’s part squeal, part obey-the-funk war cry. Then comes guitar being grooved on so hard I feel it in my soles and my soul. Think I wanna dance…

  And so that’s what I’m doing when Marek gets home. Dancing.

  He stands on the threshold between the mudroom and the kitchen, eyes smiling, hands slow-clapping loud enough to be heard over the twanging guitar.

  I drop my sponge and looked at him through my eyelashes—a coy side-eye à la Prince that I’d perfected in middle school. Haven’t practiced it in a while, so I likely look like an idiot. Back when I’d excelled at Prince-ing, I’d worn false eyelashes and lots of eyeliner, and today I have only my boring pale blue eyes and light brown eyelashes to rely on.

  Marek doesn’t seem to care. He folds his arms and, as I came boogieing toward him, studies me with his typical intensity.

  The old me would’ve considered it my just reward to be the object of his, or anyone’s, attention. I hadn’t spent many hours of the day cultivating fabulousness to be ignored, after all.

  But the new me is different. Unfabulous. Mostly. And, hopefully, not so damn oblivious to other people. Like I’m very aware that Marek focuses, all laser-like and analytical, on many things in his life, not just the crazy-ass antics of his housekeeper.

  Still, seeing the sparks in his eyes is putting me in a good mood, so I vamp up my moves, going for exotically va-va-voom, twining my arms over my head, rotating my wrists as if they’re draped with spangles and gauzy scarves.

  When I get close enough to feel his body heat—why the hell has he come home without a coat again?—I perform a pelvic groove worthy of the professional belly dancers I’d once fanboyed over at a Lake Woods Arts Festival.

  Marek flutters his eyelashes, which are dark and thick and positively Prince-esque (bastard), and thumps the back of his head against the doorjamb, pretending to be all swoony.

  I wink and do a slinky-armed shimmy around the kitchen island and over to the sink.

  Song is over. So is the dance. My ears ring in the sudden quiet. I pick up the sponge and ask, “What sounds good for dinner?”

  “More dancing,” he says. He puts his computer—which is not in the bag I’d nabbed on sale for him (Marek is hard on computers)—on the counter. “And kolache.”

  His gaze drifts to the plate of cookies sitting on the table under the window.

  “Cookies can happen after dinner,” I say. “Where’s all your stuff? You didn’t notice it was twenty degrees on your way home?”

  “Um. I ran.” His smile is sheepish. With maybe an edge of mischievousness. Reminds me of the sweet-tart jam I’d used to fill his much-longed-for cookies. My own lips twitch in response.

  “If you remember your coat, hat, and gloves, you can have a leisurely walk home. Did you ever think of that, buster?”

  “Buster?” He scoffs loud enough that I hear him over the water running in the sink.

  I’d spattered grease on the shiny flame-colored tea kettle when I’d made him breakfast. I like to keep the kettle out on the cooktop because it jazzes up the excess of white marble and gray cabinets in the kitchen, but I’m not gonna have it sitting here looking all greasy. I’m scrubbing it when Marek comes up behind me.

  I hold my breath. Now I can really feel his body heat. And breathe in the scent of the shampoo and body wash I’d bought for him.

  I fumble the sponge, and we both reach for it as it lands in the soapy water, his long fingers fishing around for a few moments before clasping mine and squeezing, as if he’s mistaken them for the sponge. I give him a sidelong glance, my lips curving. He laughs and lets go. My nerve endings pop, like the rainbow-streaked bubbles in the sink.

  “Sorry,” he murmurs. “Water feels good on a day like today, right? Hot.”

  I hand him a dishtowel. He dries off my fingers before he dries his own. He’s gentle. Careful. Thorough. And I can’t look away from his eyes and how intense and warm they are as he rubs my skin briskly with the textured cotton towel.

  Marek’s touches aren’t the kind I’m used to. And…I like them, probably too much.

  Fact is, I like everything about Marek, probably too much.

  By some definitions—for example, my old ones that had to do with sex, love, relationships, and all things fuck-a-licious—you might even say I’m in love with everything about Professor Marek Janos.

  Head over heels, to quote the great Tears for Fears. Crazy for him, to quote the even greater Madonna. I’ve been hit, flash, bam, alakazam, as the greatest of all time, Nat King Cole, sang so perfectly.

  But all of that is neither here nor there, as Marek’s English professor friend would say.

  Because I’m not going to act on my feelings. My life is not a love song, unfortunately. Or, okay, depending on the song, that might be a fortunate thing. (I’m looking at you, Tammy Wynette.)

  In the past, I tended to have sex with people I hated and made the people I truly loved hate me. And I hadn’t realized how confused I was about all of it until I’d found myself jobless, miserable, and alone.

  And this is why I can’t throw myself into sex, love, relationships, and all things fuck-a-licious the way I used to. I have to be thoughtful. Careful. Cautious. I’ve made a set of rules for myself and I’m determined to follow them.

  This is why Marek is the perfect boss for me. He respects my rules, tries to genuinely understand them, a
nd, best of all, he follows them.

  I’ve explained to him that we can be friends, nothing else, and he’s agreed to this no-hanky-panky policy, without issue, without protest. Completely unlike any boss or coworker I’ve had in the past. When we first discussed it, Marek responded in his typical straightforward and wise way. He’d said, “It seems as though most people, regardless of age or background, could use clear-cut rules about social interactions, yes?”

  So, while I might be smitten, I know nothing will happen between us because we have an understanding that nothing is allowed to happen.

  Maybe that sounds naïve. But after six months of living and working with Marek 24/7, I’ve seen how he backs up words with actions. He’s never given me lip service or fed me lines. He doesn’t even know what a line is.

  Like what he’s saying to me right now, his deep voice all rumbly, a little breathy, a little awkward—“Dancing releases a different kind of energy than your typical movements. It’s fascinating. I wish I could map it. Study it.”

  Could be flirtation, I suppose. But likely not.

  Likely it’s just Marek being Marek. Expressing himself in a way that’s uniquely him. Uniquely adorkable.

  “Dinner,” I say, easing the dishtowel away from him. We’re both more than dry now. He drops his hands, stepping back, respecting my space.

  “What sounds good?” I ask as I shine up the kettle. “We have leftover shawarma from the Nile, but that might be best for lunch tomorrow. We have eggs and veggies—could make a frittata. We have—”

  “I want more dancing.” He waves his hand toward the now-silent speaker on the counter.

  “You can’t eat dancing.” I laugh and toss the dishtowel onto the island.

  He runs his hand over his shaggy hair and says, “I could eat your dancing. It’s delicious.”