Intermediate Thermodynamics: A Romantic Comedy (Chemistry Lessons Book 2)

by Susannah Nix

  His fingers drummed on the cushion next to his thigh, and Sally took the opportunity to smush her face against them. “I don’t know,” he said, idly scratching her head. “I guess…she’s funny.”

  “Okay, that’s a start,” Esther said. “Funny’s good. The script could use a little more humor. Make her funny.”

  He gave her a weary look. “I thought I had.”

  She pressed her lips together to suppress the urge to smile. It wasn’t funny, but in a way it kind of was. Darkly funny. “You’ve got to actually write her being funny, not just say she’s funny in the character description.” Esther tipped her head to one side, peering at him. “Can you write jokes?”

  He let out a long-suffering sigh. “Apparently not.”

  “We’ll put a pin in funny for now. What else do you like about her?”

  “She’s smart, I guess.”

  Esther shook her head. “Smart’s hard too. Give me something more concrete. Like, a specific moment when she did something small and seemingly insignificant that made you feel something about her.”

  She propped her elbow on the couch, watching him while he thought about it. He was chewing on his lower lip, with his face all scrunched up in a frown. He was more than cute; he was actively attractive. Why hadn’t she seen it before? Her hate goggles had blinded her to the fact that there was a hot guy underneath that beanie.

  After a moment he sat up, shifting to face her. “This is kind of lame, but…there was this one time, we were at the beach, and she spent like an hour building this really elaborate sandcastle with a bunch of kids we didn’t even know.”

  “That’s perfect.” Esther said. “That’s real. Put that in there.”

  His brow furrowed. “How am I going to get a sandcastle into the script if they don’t go to the beach?”

  “It doesn’t have to be a sandcastle. Make it sidewalk chalk or Legos or something. Whatever. It can be anything. But that tells me something about who she is. It makes me like her.”

  “Yeah,” he said, reaching for his laptop. “Okay.” He was almost sort of smiling, for the first time since he’d showed up at the door. His hair was sticking up, and it made Esther want to smooth it down for him.

  She cleared her throat. “Am I allowed to ask who Emily was?”

  His smile faded. “Just some girl I knew.”

  “She seems like more than that.”

  He stopped typing and stroked his hand down Sally’s back. “She was my first girlfriend. My only really serious girlfriend.”

  “What happened?”

  “She dumped me for someone else.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It happens, right?” He shrugged and looked up at Esther. “Have you ever been cheated on?”

  She shook her head. It would be nice to be able to say it was because she’d never dated anyone who would cheat on her, but the actual reason was that she’d never dated anyone long enough to get cheated on. She had a history of breaking things off before anyone got around to thinking about cheating.

  “Have you ever cheated on anyone?”

  “No,” Esther answered truthfully. Again, that itchy breakup trigger had prevented her from ever dealing with the temptation. If the thought so much as entered her head that she might want to sleep with someone else, she was out the door—usually she was out the door way before that, actually. She couldn’t understand why anyone would ever cheat, when breaking up was such an easy alternative.

  “Well, you’re a rarity,” Jonathan said, digging his fingers into Sally’s ruff as she lolled beside him purring. “Everyone else I know has either cheated or been cheated on at one time or another. Or both.”

  Esther sipped her coffee. “That explains the hostility, I guess.”

  The corners of his mouth drew down. “What hostility?”

  “In your script. I thought it was misogyny, but it’s more personal than that.”

  He stopped petting Sally and looked up. “You thought I was a misogynist?”

  Esther shrugged. “That whole daddy issues thing is pretty distasteful. Not to mention the part where you compare her to the White Witch, and the way you have her using her sexuality to get strangers to do things for her.”

  He looked away.

  “You haven’t forgiven her for breaking your heart. You’re still hung up on her.”

  “It was three years ago. I’m over her.” His voice sounded rough, like it had been scraped over sandpaper.

  “You wrote an entire screenplay about her,” Esther said, trying to sound gentle.

  He shook his head, but his eyes stayed fixed on a spot on the opposite wall. “I wrote a story about love, and she’s the only woman I’ve ever been in love with. She’s all I had to go on.”

  “Well, it feels like you don’t like her character very much, so when I read it, I didn’t like her very much.”

  His expression shifted into another scowl. “She broke my heart. I don’t like her.”

  Esther felt for him, but sympathy wasn’t going to fix his problems. “You’ve got to find a way to get over that if you want this story to work. Or else find a different muse. Because right now, the way you feel about her is hurting your script.”

  “I need some air.” He pushed off the couch and went out onto her balcony, sliding the door closed behind him as he reached into his pocket for his cigarettes.

  Esther stayed on the couch petting Sally for a couple minutes to give him a chance to cool off before she got up and followed him.

  “You shouldn’t smoke,” she said when she joined him outside. He was hunched over, leaning forward with his forearms resting on the railing.

  The balconies were small, only barely deep enough for a chair, and hers overlooked the alley and the apartment complex next door. It wasn’t exactly picturesque. Esther didn’t spend much time out here, and it was dusty and covered with seedpods from a nearby tree.

  “I only do it when I’m stressed,” he said without looking at her.

  If that was true, she felt even sorrier for him, because it seemed like he smoked a lot. She leaned against the railing beside him and bumped her arm against his. “I’m sorry I’m making you stressed.”

  He picked at the filter of his cigarette with his thumbnail. “It’s not you.” He didn’t look stressed anymore, he looked sad. She didn’t like seeing him sad—not that she liked seeing him stressed either. But it was better than this sad, dejected person who made her want to gather him up and give him a hug.

  “Is it talking about her?” Esther asked. “Real Emily. The girl who broke your heart.”

  He took a long drag on his cigarette and turned his head to blow the smoke away from her. “It’s not just that, it’s all of it. Her, my adviser, the fact that I’m failing at the one thing I ever wanted to do.” His eyes flicked her way. “Then there’s Jinny.”

  Esther winced. “Oh.”

  His mouth flattened out. “You didn’t ask how it went Friday, so I assume you already know she told me she didn’t want to see me anymore.”

  “I’m sorry,” Esther said, feeling like a shitnugget again. “I really thought you guys might be good together.”

  Shrugging, he took another drag on his cigarette. “It’s whatever. It’s one more in a long list of things I suck at.”

  He was too sad. She wanted to make him feel better, but she didn’t know how. So she did the only thing she could think of, which was to confess something embarrassing about herself: “The reason I’ve never been cheated on is that I’ve never been in a serious relationship.”

  He looked over at her, eyebrows raised. “Really?” He sounded as surprised as if she’d told him she’d never tasted ice cream.

  “I’ve had sex,” she said, so there wasn’t any misunderstanding. “Plenty of times. I’m not a—”

  He put his hands up in a warding gesture. “I wasn’t asking.”

  Esther looked down at the sidewalk. If the wind was just right, she could probably spit on her car from here. Or Jonat
han’s. “I don’t think I’m built for commitment,” she said. “Some people just aren’t, right?”

  “Why do you think that?”

  She shrugged. “I’ve never liked anyone long enough to keep them around.”

  “You’ve never been in love?” There he went again, sounding shocked.

  “Nope.”

  It wasn’t a big deal. Plenty of people had never been in love. The world was full of people still waiting to find their soul mate—not that Esther believed in soul mates. She was better off than most of the rest of them, because she didn’t need to be in love. She wasn’t waiting for a man to come along and complete her. She was perfectly happy on her own. Most of the time.

  He flicked ash over the railing. “That’s sad.”

  She swiveled her head to glare at him. “Thanks.”

  He didn’t look as sad anymore—probably because he was too busy thinking about how sad she was. She’d successfully distracted him with her own patheticness.

  He shrugged, smiling at her. “Well, it is.”

  “It’s not like I haven’t been attracted to people. I’ve had crushes. But after the initial excitement wears off I always end up feeling meh.”

  He looked thoughtful. “Maybe you’re gay.”

  “I’m not gay.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I want to sleep with guys and I don’t want to sleep with girls. That’s pretty much the textbook definition of not-gay.”

  Not that she hadn’t considered it. She’d even tried to date a girl once—in college, which was such a cliché—but that had been a big nope. Girls were definitely not for her. She liked men, and she liked sex with men. She liked it a lot. She just didn’t like the men hanging around afterward. Esther was the opposite of Jinny. Instead of keeping men around past their expiration date, she tossed them out as soon as the freshness had started to wear off.

  She looked down at her hands. “I just think all that sappy, hand-holding, love song stuff isn’t for me.”

  Jonathan shook his head, gazing across the alley at the building next door. “That stuff’s all performative. That’s not love. Love is madness. It’s a compulsion. It’s passion and torment and exhilaration and fear.”

  “You make it sound awful,” Esther said, shuddering. “Like skydiving or something.”

  “It is. But it’s also incredible.”

  “If you say so. Seems like more trouble than it’s worth.” Look at him—he’d only been in love once and he was still fucked up from it. If that was what was in store for her, she didn’t mind taking a pass.

  He took another drag on his cigarette. “You only say that because you’ve never experienced it. Most of art and literature was inspired by love.”

  Esther rolled her eyes. “A lot of it was inspired by religion, but I’m not inviting missionaries into my house to proselytize me.”

  He looked over at her. “So you’ve just given up on ever falling in love?”

  Maybe. It was easier than being disappointed over and over again. Or wondering whether there was something wrong with her. Plenty of men preferred casual sex over relationships, and no one ever blinked an eye at them. Esther was only doing what they did. That didn’t make her broken.

  She shrugged. “It’s not like love’s even real.”

  “Sure it is.”

  “No, gravity’s real. The laws of thermodynamics are real. You know how I know? Because I can measure them. I can make reliable predictions about how objects will behave under their influence. You can’t do that with love. It’s just a feeling. A temporary delusion caused by rising cortisol levels and depleted serotonin.”

  “You say that like feelings don’t matter.”

  “Maybe they shouldn’t matter as much as they do.”

  “Now you’re talking crazy.”

  “I just think maybe I was meant to be alone.” She stared down at the sidewalk. “I’d rather be by myself or with my friends than with any guy I’ve ever dated, so why bother dating?”

  Jonathan stubbed out his cigarette and flicked the butt over onto to his balcony. “Maybe the problem isn’t you, it’s the kind of men you date.”

  She looked at him sharply. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  He shrugged. “I just think you shouldn’t be dating anyone you don’t want to be friends with. If you’re looking for a real partner, there’s got to be more than just sexual attraction there. You should be looking for someone you actually enjoy spending time with. Ideally, you’re looking for a best friend. That’s the goal, isn’t it? To marry your best friend.”

  “Wow,” she said.

  He glanced her way. “What?”

  “That is shockingly sentimental, coming from the guy who wrote a love story where two people totally fail to fall in love.”

  His mouth twitched, but he looked more amused than irritated. “Thanks a lot.”

  “Come on.” She tugged at his sleeve. “Smoke break’s over. Let’s go channel some of that squishy romantic center you’ve been hiding into that script of yours.”

  He followed her back inside, and they worked for another few hours, going over the rest of Esther’s notes and talking them through. By the time he finally packed up and went home, Esther had convinced him to make some major overhauls. He took it pretty well, considering how much work it was going to take to implement the changes. Instead of being pissed or disheartened, he seemed downright cheerful.

  On his way out the door, he paused on the threshold, clutching his laptop and the copy of her notes she’d given him. “Thank you.” He met her eyes and smiled. Not the half-assed mouth twitch that usually passed for a smile either, but a real smile. Soft and genuine and a little shy. “It sounds hyperbolic, but I think you may have saved my life.”

  Esther felt her cheeks warm as she smiled back at him. “You’re welcome.”

  Maybe she wasn’t so bad at this critiquing stuff after all.

  Chapter Eleven

  “Do you think I have bad taste in men?” Esther asked Jinny at lunch on Monday. It was taco salad day, and the cafeteria was more crowded than usual. Everybody liked taco salad day, and unlike lasagna, they never seemed to run out.

  Jinny’s eyes narrowed over her tostada bowl. “Is this a trick question? It feels like a trick.”

  “It’s not a trick. It’s a regular question.”

  It was just the two of them today, because Yemi was on a conference call. Esther had promised to bring him back a taco salad.

  Jinny was still suspicious. “Why don’t you tell me what you want to hear, and then I’ll decide if I agree or not.”

  “I’m not looking for validation,” Esther told her. “I want to know what you really think.” She hadn’t been able to stop thinking about what Jonathan had said. About how her problem was the kind of men she dated.

  Jinny pursed her lips. They were a matte pinkish orange today. Esther couldn’t think of a single other person who’d look good in that particular color, but on Jinny it was perfect. “I think…” She paused, carefully considering her words. “I think you gravitate toward men you’re in no danger of getting serious about.”

  “That’s not true!”

  “I knew it was a trick.” Jinny shook her head as she stabbed a chunk of chicken fajita with her fork.

  “Sorry,” Esther said. “Tell me why you think that. I’m listening.” She made a zipping motion across her lips.

  “Fine,” Jinny said. “You haven’t been in a single serious relationship since I’ve known you. Your M.O. is to meet a guy, sleep with him once or twice, and then get bored.”

  She wasn’t wrong, but Esther still felt the need to defend herself. “Sometimes they’re the ones who get bored.”

  “Because you always pick guys who clearly aren’t looking for anything more than a casual hookup.”

  “Not always.” Just mostly.

  “Leo didn’t get bored,” Jinny said. “He would have happily boned you for the rest of his life if you’d let him.
”

  Leo was a vendor who worked with Jinny. Esther had gone home with him after Jinny’s New Year’s Eve party last year. And then she’d lost interest. Fast. She wrinkled her nose. “Leo was obsessed with anime figures.”

  “So what? You’ve got some Funkos on your desk.”

  “No, I mean he was obsessed. He had an entire room of his house devoted to them. Have you ever seen a entire room full of nothing but shelf upon shelf of anime figures? Super creepy. You wouldn’t have wanted to go back to that house either.” Esther shuddered. The memory of all those unnaturally wide, vacant eyes staring back at her still haunted her.

  “I’m just saying, you could have given him more of a chance. He might have eased up on the doll obsession a little once he had a real girl to care about.”

  Esther shook her head as she reached for her iced tea. “No, see, that’s your M.O. You’re always thinking you can change the guys you date, remember?”

  Jinny pointed her fork at Esther. “Nice try, but we’re not talking about my hang-ups right now, we’re talking about yours.”

  “I liked Diego.” Esther set her tea back down. “It’s not my fault he moved to Texas.”

  Jinny rolled her eyes. “Please. Diego was already halfway out the door when you slept with him. You worked with him for a year and didn’t show the slightest interest until he took that job at NASA.” She reached for a packet of hot sauce and tore it open with her teeth. “This is what you do,” she said, squeezing hot sauce onto her taco salad. “You either pick a guy you don’t actually like, or you pick someone who’s ‘safe’ because he’s physically or emotionally unavailable. And if one of the unavailable guys starts showing signs of wanting to hang around—god forbid—you immediately stop liking him and run for the hills.”

  “When have I done that?” Esther asked.

  Jinny fixed her with a pointed look. “Arun. You crushed on him hard for like three straight months, and as soon as he started showing actual interest in you, you immediately stopped liking him.”

  “That’s because I found out he was vegan! I can’t date a vegan. I like cheese way too much.”