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

by Susannah Nix

  “Your sister doesn’t have crops.”

  “I think we should do it. I’m going to make us an appointment.”

  One of the apartment doors slammed overhead and Esther tensed, but it was only stoner Brent.

  This was the first time they’d hung out by the pool since Jinny had dumped Jonathan. Every time Esther heard a door, she was afraid it might be him. Jinny still had no idea that Esther and Jonathan were friends—because Esther was a coward who hadn’t worked up the nerve to tell her—and she didn’t want her finding out because of a chance encounter in the courtyard.

  She should just come right out with it and tell her now. It didn’t have to be a big deal. Except…Jinny would ask a bunch of questions. She’d want to know how it had started, and what had possessed Esther to start spending time with a guy she supposedly couldn’t stand. Why she had agreed to help him with his script in the first place. And there wasn’t a good explanation for that, unless she also told Jinny about the bargain she’d made with him and how she’d coerced him into asking her out. That was the part that was really bad. Because if Jinny found out—

  “Hey, so lemme ask you something,” Jinny said, tossing aside her magazine. “What do you think about Yemi?”

  Esther leaned over to dig another beer out of the cooler she’d brought down. “I love Yemi. You know that.”

  “No, but…what do you think about him as, like, a man?”

  “Yemi?” Esther swiveled to look at Jinny. “Wait, do you like Yemi? Like, like like him?”

  Jinny’s lips pursed and twisted to the side. “Maybe?”

  “Since when?”

  “I don’t know. I never really thought about him like that until…” She trailed off, biting her lip.

  “Until what?”

  “Remember when I was trying on that new dress at work? And he said I looked beautiful?”

  “Yeah.” That was over two months ago. Had she been harboring a crush on Yemi all this time and was only just now getting around to saying something?

  Jinny ducked her head, picking at the lavender polish on her thumbnail. “It was the way he looked at me. Like I was something rare and special. Like he was looking at the Hope Diamond or a new Star Wars movie.”

  Esther thought about the way Jonathan had looked at her before he’d left her apartment last night. It would be easy to get used to being looked at like that.

  “And then the other day, he was wearing that pink shirt, remember?”

  Esther didn’t, but she nodded anyway, taking a swig of her beer. “Uh huh.”

  “And I thought to myself, ‘That shirt looks really good on him.’ And then I noticed he had muscles that you could see through the shirt, and I realized—Yemi’s cute.”

  “He is,” Esther agreed.

  Jinny shook her head. “No, he’s like hot cute. He’s got this nerdy Chadwick Boseman thing going on that I never noticed before but…” She broke into a slow smile. “I think I like it.”

  Esther smacked her on the arm, grinning. “You like Yemi!”

  “I don’t know.” A blush spread across Jinny’s cheeks. “Maybe. Do you think he likes me?”

  “I know he likes you, but I don’t know if he likes you like that. He can be a little hard to read.”

  “Right? He’s always so polite, it’s hard to know what he really thinks of you.”

  “But he’s also very forthright. He doesn’t do pretense. If you ask him straight out, he’ll give you an honest answer.”

  Jinny’s mouth pulled into a frown. “You think he would have told me if he liked me?”

  “Not necessarily. Not if he thought it might be impolite or inappropriate. Or unwelcome.”

  “Hmmm,” Jinny said.

  “Do you want me to ask him?”

  “No!” Jinny shook her head violently. “Don’t you dare.”

  “He’d probably appreciate the directness.”

  “My reproductive organs are not goods to be bartered via mediator. I’ll manage my own love life, thank you very much.”

  Esther stared at the surface of the pool, wincing internally. If Jinny ever found out she’d been behind Jonathan asking her out, she would be super pissed. “Why don’t you just ask Yemi out yourself?”

  “I think he might be a little old-fashioned. He might not like it.”

  “I don’t know. Sure, he goes to church with his parents every Sunday, but he’s never struck me as chauvinistic or narrow-minded. He might be relieved you’d made the first move.”

  “Maybe.” Jinny picked up her People magazine again.

  Now that Esther thought about it, they’d make a great couple. They were both Catholic, both close to their families, and both ridiculously smart. Plus, Yemi was a good guy who seemed like he’d be a terrific boyfriend. Considerate, attentive, loyal. Much better stock than most of the men Jinny had dated. And the two of them seemed to get along really well.

  Esther didn’t push it though. She’d said what she had to say, and now the ball was in Jinny’s court. Her matchmaking days were over. Even though she’d accomplished her goal of keeping Jinny and Stuart apart, it wasn’t worth the guilt and secrecy.

  Another door slammed overhead, and Esther saw Jonathan head for the stairwell.

  Shit.

  Maybe he’d walk around the outside of the building to his car without cutting through the courtyard. He must have seen that Jinny was out here with her. Hopefully he’d want to avoid an uncomfortable encounter.

  “Hey,” Jonathan said, striding toward them.

  Shit.

  Jinny looked up from her magazine and smiled warmly. “Hey!” Only someone who knew her as well as Esther did would be able to detect the edge under her cheerful exterior.

  Esther nodded a greeting and took a swig of beer to disguise her discomfort.

  Jonathan’s eyes lingered on her for a moment before moving back to Jinny. “How’ve you been?” His keys were in his hand, and they jingled as he flipped them around his index finger.

  “Good,” Jinny said without letting her smile slip. “I’m good. How about you?”

  Jonathan’s eyes flicked over to Esther again, then back to Jinny. “I’m good. Great, actually.” He flipped his keys again. Once. Twice. Three times. “Well, I’ve gotta…” He tilted his head toward his car, already backing away.

  “Sure,” Jinny said, still smiling at him.

  “I’ll see you,” he said, looking at Esther again.

  “Yep.” She raised her bottle and took another drink.

  “Bye!” Jinny called out. Her smile faded as soon as his back was turned. “Geez, that was mega awkward,” she said when he was out of earshot.

  “Yeah,” Esther agreed and guzzled the rest of her beer.

  The following week, Esther started paying more attention to Yemi at work.

  She watched him closely every time Jinny came up in conversation, and even more closely whenever the three of them were together. After four straight days of observation and data collection, her results were still inclusive.

  Yemi was too difficult to read. He was reserved, even-keeled, and unfailingly polite to everyone he talked to—even the people Esther knew for a fact he disliked. If he was secretly harboring an attraction to Jinny, she could detect no obvious signs of it.

  At least her scrutiny of Yemi’s behavior gave her something to think about other than Jonathan. She’d only seen him once since Saturday. On Wednesday night, he’d stopped by to show her a few more script pages. He hadn’t stayed long, and there’d been no repeat of that weird moment from Saturday night, which was good. Hopefully they’d moved past it and Esther could forget it had ever happened.

  Friends didn’t have weird moments like that. And she wanted to be Jonathan’s friend. She liked being his friend. She didn’t want to screw that up.

  On Friday morning, something else cropped up to distract Esther from lusting after Jonathan. “Hamburger Helper is at it again,” Yemi told her when she got into work.

  She groaned
as she sank into her chair. “What did he do now?”

  Hamburger Helper was their nickname for Dan, one of the design engineers on the payload team. Esther was on the power team, and Dan’s components were forever getting in the way of hers. They called him Hamburger Helper because he always pretended he was being helpful, when really he was trying to get everyone to do things his way. Also, his face sort of looked like a hamburger: round and flat and slightly bumpy.

  “Open your email. He stopped by already to make sure you saw it.”

  “Of course he did. I’ll bet he sent it after work last night, to make himself look busier.”

  She started up her computer and clicked over to her email inbox. As she’d suspected, Dan had sent the email at seven thirty last night, and copied both team leads to make sure everyone knew he was working late. She groaned again as she scanned the text of the email. “Is he serious with this shit?”

  “Isn’t he always?” Yemi said.

  It was a request for Esther to make modifications to one of her components in order to accommodate his. Which would be fine, except her power converter had been on the live model for a few weeks already, and this was the first he was bringing it up. Because he hadn’t bothered to tell everyone before now that his antenna pointing mechanism conflicted with the placement of her part.

  “No way,” Esther muttered. “No fucking way.”

  She got up and walked over to her team lead’s desk. “Hey, Bhavin, did you happen to see this email from Dan?” She tried to keep her voice mild and even-toned. Don’t be too aggressive, she reminded herself bitterly.

  Bhavin was a small-framed Indian man who wore a lot of hair product and owned a different pair of Air Jordans for every day of the week. Today’s were navy blue with bright yellow trim. He nodded distractedly without looking up from the spreadsheet on his computer screen. “Yeah. You can do it, right? I already told Dmitri you could.”

  “I can,” Esther said to the back of Bhavin’s coiffed head. “But I shouldn’t have to. He’s the one who failed to check the model before diving into a design.”

  Bhavin’s thumb tapped a high frequency drumbeat on the desk. He was always tapping his fingers or jiggling his leg, like he’d had too much caffeine. “Okay, but it’s less work for you to make the small change to one part that he’s asking for than for him to redesign the entire sub-assembly.”

  “It’s not less work for me.”

  He turned around to face her, frowning. “It’s less work for the project. His stuff’s on the critical path right now and yours isn’t. We’re all part of a team, remember?”

  She could feel her blood pressure rising as her hands clenched into fists at her sides. “I’m not the one who designed an entire sub-assembly without consulting the other members of the team.”

  “Is this going to be a problem? I told Dmitri you’d be happy to do it.” Dmitri was Dan’s team lead, and he and Bhavin were buddies. They were in the same fantasy football league and played Magic: the Gathering on the weekends.

  “It’s not a problem,” Esther said, forcing herself to smile. “I’m just pointing out this is an issue that could have easily been avoided. And it’s not like this is the first time he’s done something like this either.”

  Bhavin’s head bobbed in a rapid-fire succession of nods. “I’ll bring it up with Dmitri, all right? But in the meantime, I need you to go ahead and make the changes.”

  “Okay,” Esther said. “Thank you.”

  She went back to her desk, knowing nothing would come of Bhavin’s conversation with Dmitri. The payload team had more clout than the power team, because their system served the mission—even though you couldn’t do the mission without power. And Dan was chummy with his team lead, Dmitri, who in turn was chummy with Bhavin, which meant they’d invariably take Dan’s side. She knew this, because it was what had happened every single time she’d tried to object to something he’d done. Magically, the modifications that Dan wanted were always deemed the simplest solution to a problem that Dan himself had created. The guy was made of Teflon. She’d bet cash money he’d never been called “aggressive” in a performance review either.

  “Any luck?” Yemi asked when she got to her desk.

  “What do you think?”

  “At least you tried.”

  “I don’t know why I bother.” They never took her side, and now she was the one who looked like she wasn’t a team player.

  It wasn’t even nine a.m. and today already sucked.

  Esther was stuck in Friday evening traffic on Overland, still fuming about fucking Dan getting his way that morning, when her brother called. She hit the Bluetooth button on her steering wheel as the car ahead of her lurched to another stop.

  “We have a problem,” Eric said.

  Awesome. Exactly what she needed right now. She hadn’t talked to their mom since she’d had to refuse to give her money for the eBay Fiestaware. Esther couldn’t wait to hear what her mother wanted now. “What is it?”

  “Mom’s losing her apartment.”

  “What?” Esther’s fists tightened on the steering wheel.

  “I told you not to freak out.”

  She let her foot off the brake as the car in front of her started creeping forward. “How? What happened? What’d she do?”

  “It’s not her fault this time. Her landlord decided to cash out and sell the building. She’s got to be out by the end of next month when her lease is up.”

  “We’re never going to find another place she can afford in that neighborhood.” Her mother had been living in the same duplex apartment building in Lake City for six years. Rents in the whole area had skyrocketed as a lot of the older buildings were torn down in favor of new construction, or renovated so they could command the same outrageous prices as the rest of Seattle.

  “I know,” Eric said. He sounded exhausted.

  Esther could only imagine how the conversation had gone when their mother had told him the news. Once again, she was grateful she’d removed herself to another state—and even more grateful Eric was in Seattle to handle things there.

  Their mom was going to have to move farther north, probably. Maybe out to Lynwood or Everett, even. Which would make it more difficult for Eric to get to and from her place, making his life more difficult. Plus, she wasn’t going to want to do it. She’d put up a fight, drag her feet, complain that it was too far out, that everything in her price range was a dump. She’d do everything in her power to make this as difficult as possible, refusing to accept the reality of her situation, because that’s what she always did.

  Esther could feel an anxiety stomachache ramping up already. “What are we going to do?”

  “We’ll figure something out. We always do. I’ll help her start looking for a new place.”

  She hit the brakes as a BMW swerved into her lane. “She’s not going to want to—”

  “I know,” Eric said irritably.

  Esther bit down on her thumbnail. “I could send more money.”

  “No. Don’t you dare tell her that.”

  “Why not? I can make it work if I have to.” She could cut back on luxuries like cable TV and the satellite radio in her car if she needed to. Start packing her lunch more often instead of eating in the cafeteria every day.

  “She’s got to start taking responsibility for herself, not mooching more off you.”

  They had this same fight a lot. Esther was always tempted to give in to her mother’s demands, just to get her off her back. But Eric insisted that if they gave in, it would only encourage her to keep doing it. And since he was the one who had to deal with their mother in person, he usually got the final say.

  “Promise me you won’t offer her more money.”

  “Fine,” Esther agreed. Reluctantly.

  “It’ll work out,” Eric said. “I just wanted to give you a heads-up before Mom called you.”

  “Yeah. Thanks.” She ground her teeth as the car in front of her dawdled just long enough for the light to tur
n red before Esther got through the intersection.

  “Don’t stress about it.”

  “Sure.” Like that was possible.

  “I’m serious. Go do something fun tonight and forget about Mom. Go out with some friends or something.”

  It wasn’t a bad idea. She could definitely use some company tonight. She always could call Jinny, but it was Friday, and Jinny would almost certainly want to go out. Which would involve makeup and dressing up and more traffic—none of which Esther felt like dealing with.

  Alternatively…she could see if Jonathan was around tonight. They could stay in, order pizza, and watch movies again. The prospect was more appealing than going to a crowded bar with Jinny.

  She’d knock on his door when she got home, she decided as the light turned green and she finally made it through the intersection. See if he wanted to hang out tonight.

  She’d be the one to drop in on him for a change.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Esther didn’t get to knock on Jonathan’s door after all, because he was down in the courtyard when she finally made it home. He was camped in one of the lounge chairs with his legs splayed out in front of him and his laptop balanced on one thigh. It was the first time she’d ever seen him in shorts. His legs were long, covered in dark hair, and strikingly muscular.

  “Hey,” he said, looking up from his computer as she walked up.

  Esther sank down in the chair next to him with a loud, dramatic sigh.

  “Good day at work, I take it?”

  “Everyone sucks today.”

  He lifted an eyebrow.

  “Present company excepted.”

  He picked up the beer sitting on the ground next to him and passed it to her. She took a big swig, letting the alcohol relax some of the tension in her shoulders. It wasn’t enough to wash her bad mood away, but it was a start.

  “Keep it,” he said when she tried to hand it back. “You obviously need it more than me.”

  “Thanks.” She took another swallow, and her eyes drifted back to his legs. She’d never seen so much of his skin before. It had a golden, sun-kissed glow to it. Was he a runner? She’d never seen him leave his apartment in anything resembling exercise clothes. But now she was imagining what he’d look like shirtless and in jogging shorts, all sweaty and glistening with his hair drenched and dripping—