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

by Susannah Nix

  She wasn’t convinced, but it was nice to hear someone say it anyway.

  After she got off the phone, Esther lay in bed petting Sally and thinking about the things Eric had said. How she kept people at a distance. What had he said? She was allergic to emotions.

  He wasn’t wrong. Their family had never been particularly demonstrative or affectionate with one another—with the exception of their mother. But Esther had learned at an early age that her mother’s affections had an ulterior motive. She only deployed them when she wanted something. They were a means to an end. She flattered and charmed people to manipulate them. Unless she needed something from you, it never occurred to her to pay a compliment.

  Was it Esther’s fault, then, that she was distrustful of open displays of affection? Afraid of expressing her feelings? Closed off and frigid? Jesus, she really was broken inside. She probably needed therapy, but the thought of it made her want to die. Opening up to a stranger, talking about all her innermost feelings and deep-seated fears. She’d rather peel off her own skin.

  She remembered what Eric had said about making herself vulnerable. Showing you care by doing something for someone else that’s hard for you.

  Jinny was her best friend, and the idea of telling her how much she cared about her made Esther feel itchy all over, like she was breaking out in hives. How fucked up was that?

  The fact that it was so terrifying probably meant she should do it. That Eric was right. She needed to tell Jinny how important she was to her. Maybe Jinny still wouldn’t forgive her, but she owed her that much at least. She had to fight for her.

  But how? Walk up to her at work and blurt it all out? Take a big feelings dump in her lap, right there in the middle of the office? Seemed like a terrible idea.

  How were they supposed to talk when Jinny still wasn’t taking her calls? She could show up at her apartment unannounced, she supposed. But what if Jinny shut the door in her face?

  Esther thought about Jonathan’s screenplay. How he’d left it on her doorstep. And how it had made her feel to read all those words he’d written for her—about her. No one had ever done anything like that for her before.

  Esther couldn’t write a screenplay, but she could write Jinny a letter. An actual, physical letter on a piece of paper. An email, Jinny might delete without reading. But if Esther sent a real letter through the mail, Jinny would almost certainly read it—out of curiosity, if nothing else.

  That was what she was going to do. She was going to write a letter.

  Now she just needed to figure out what to say.

  Esther moved Sally off her chest and curled up on her side, turning over phrases and sentiments in her mind. She was still composing in her head when she finally drifted off to sleep an hour later.

  She woke up before her alarm in the morning, and sat down at the dining table with a stack of stationery. Her grandmother had given it to her in high school as a not-so-subtle hint to write more often. Esther had never used it; she’d sent her grandmother emails instead.

  The stationery had strawberries around the edges of the page. She stared at them, squeezing the pen in her fingers. Paralyzed.

  Just start. Just say something. Anything. The words didn’t have to be good, they just had to be true.

  She started to write.

  It had been years since Esther had handwritten a letter. Or even written more than a few words by hand. She had the handwriting of a third-grader.

  Every word she scratched onto the page felt like it weighed a thousand pounds. Like it was being hauled up from the bottom of deep, dark well. Like drawing blood from a stone. That’s how Jonathan had described writing once. She’d thought he was being overly dramatic, but now she understood. She was bleeding all over the paper, pouring her heart out to Jinny. Every drop was agony, but she pushed through, putting one word after the other.

  Her hand started to ache by the end of the first page, but she kept going until she’d said everything she had to say. Until she’d bled herself dry. She’d filled six full pages by the time she was done.

  It wasn’t poetry, but it was honest. More honest than she’d ever been, maybe.

  Her hands shook as she read over it. Was she really going to send this to Jinny? What if she read it and decided Esther was crazy? What if it drove her even farther away?

  Fuck it. Then at least she’d have tried, right? She’d have said what was in her heart, and if it wasn’t good enough, then it wasn’t. But she’d have done it.

  She felt drained, but also accomplished. Lighter. Maybe there was something to be said for expressing your emotions after all.

  It took five minutes of searching through every drawer in her apartment to find a stamp. She wrote Jinny’s address on the envelope, then deliberated for five minutes over whether to put a return address. What if Jinny saw it and threw it away unread? On the other hand, what if she assumed it was junk mail without a return address?

  In the end, she elected to write her name and address in the top left corner. The whole point of this exercise was to be open and honest. No more deceptions. No more manipulations. If Jinny saw it was from her and didn’t want to read it, there was nothing Esther could do about that.

  She stopped at the post office on her way to work and pulled her car alongside the drive-up mailbox. She almost got cold feet again as she held the letter over the gaping maw of the metal box. There were no take-backsies. Once she let go, it was gone. Out of her hands.

  So what? Let it be out of her hands.

  What did she have to lose? You can’t lose something you’ve already lost.

  But maybe you can get it back again.

  She dropped the letter in the slot and drove to work.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Esther figured it would take a few days for the letter to reach Jinny. In the meantime, she had a fence to mend at work.

  “Hi,” she said to Yemi when she got to her desk that morning.

  He looked up and nodded. “Hello.” Then he went back to work. That was what they did now. Offered the basic common courtesies and then went back to pretending they were strangers.

  Esther sat down at her desk. After she’d put her stuff away, she spun around and kicked the bottom of his chair. “Hey.”

  He swiveled to look at her, his expression one of polite yet guarded inquiry. “Yes?”

  “I’m really sorry,” she said.

  He blinked behind his thick-framed glasses. “For what?”

  “For avoiding you last week.”

  “Oh.” He nodded, shifting in his seat like he didn’t know what to do with that. “Okay. Thank you.”

  “Are you mad at me?”

  “I thought you were mad at me.”

  “I wasn’t.”

  “Then why have you been avoiding me?”

  Esther didn’t have a good answer for that. Because I’m a giant baby who got her fee-fees hurt didn’t make a convincing case for winning him back. “I didn’t want you to be caught in the middle,” she said. “I didn’t want to make you choose between me and Jinny.”

  “So you chose for me?”

  She hung her head a little. “Pretty much.”

  “You shouldn’t have done that.”

  “I know.”

  He pushed his glasses up, frowning. “I can be friends with Jinny and still be friends with you.”

  Esther stared at her hands. “I wasn’t sure you’d want to be.”

  He kicked her chair to make her look up again. “I do.” His eyes were so deep and kind, she felt like an even bigger ass for pushing him away. She shouldn’t have given up on him so easily. She should have known he’d still be there for her, because that was the kind of person he was.

  “I was dumb and I’m sorry,” she said. “Can we go back to being friends?”

  A smile spread across his face. “I’d like that.”

  She smiled back. “Me too.” She felt lighter already. Like some of the poison that had been building up inside her had drained awa
y.

  His smile faded. “We don’t have to hug, do we?”

  Esther laughed. “God, I hope not.”

  Things were better after that. She told Yemi what had happened at the roadblock meeting, and he agreed that it was stupid and unfair. Having someone take her side made the situation feel more bearable.

  Now that she had Yemi to talk to again, she didn’t think about Jonathan quite as much during the day. Only once every fifteen minutes or so, instead of every thirty seconds. It was progress.

  Evenings were a different matter, of course. Esther still thought about Jonathan obsessively when she was at home. It was hard not to, knowing he was so close. Hearing his coffee grinder through the wall and his wind chimes on the balcony. Walking past his window at least twice a day. Wondering if she was going to bump into him again.

  She tried not to think about Jinny or the letter at all. Tried not to wonder when it would arrive. If she’d read it. If it would do any good.

  It would happen when it happened. Or it wouldn’t.

  Two days later, an hour after Esther got home from work, Jinny called.

  She stared at the screen of her phone, relieved and terrified all at once. It took her until the third ring to work up the courage to answer it. “Hi.”

  “You wrote me a letter,” Jinny said.

  “Yeah.” Esther’s mouth felt dry. It was hard to get the word out.

  There was a pause. “Who even writes letters anymore?”

  “Nobody does.”

  “Your handwriting is terrible, by the way.” That was when Esther knew it was going to be okay. If Jinny was mocking her, she couldn’t be that mad. Jinny was relentlessly nice to people she couldn’t stand. Insulting people to their faces was something she reserved for her friends.

  “I know,” Esther said, letting out an unsteady breath. “It really is.”

  “It made me cry.”

  “My handwriting?”

  “No, dummy, the letter.”

  Esther blinked against the stinging in her eyes. “I’m so sorry, Jinny. I wish I could go back and undo all of it.”

  There was another pause, and then Jinny said, “It’s possible I may have overreacted a little. You didn’t deserve two weeks of the silent treatment.”

  Esther sagged with relief. “Can I come over so we can talk about it?”

  “Yeah. Of course.”

  She’d already changed into pajama pants for the night, so she had to change back into outside-the-house pants. She pulled on the first pair of jeans she could find, put her bra back on, and drove straight to Jinny’s.

  Jinny’s apartment was newer than hers, with a lobby and indoor hallways that smelled like disinfectant. Esther knocked on her door and waited while her stomach tried to twist itself into elaborate nautical knots.

  “That was fast,” Jinny said. She looked almost as nervous as Esther felt.

  “I may have run a stop sign or two.” Esther’s stomach hurt so bad she wanted to curl up in the fetal position. It was one thing to put her feelings into a letter, but now that she was looking into Jinny’s eyes, faced with the prospect of having to talk about those same feelings out loud, she was terrified. Like, the-first-five-minutes-of-the-original-Halloween terrified. She wondered if you could actually die from talking about your feelings. Because her stomach definitely felt like it was trying to commit suicide.

  Jinny didn’t say anything. She was standing in the doorway watching her, and Esther didn’t know if she was going to let her inside or if she should start talking out here in the hall.

  Just as Esther opened her mouth to apologize again, Jinny stepped forward and hugged her. Hard.

  Esther clung to her, burying her face in Jinny’s hair. She smelled like lavender laundry detergent and Tory Burch perfume. Like Jinny.

  “I thought you didn’t care we weren’t friends anymore,” Jinny said into Esther’s shoulder.

  Esther held her even tighter. She couldn’t believe Jinny could think such a thing. “I cared, believe me. I cared a lot.”

  “I cared too.”

  Esther sniffled. Right in Jinny’s hair, but Jinny didn’t seem to mind. “I thought you didn’t want me around anymore.”

  “I always want you around,” Jinny said. “Even when you piss me off.”

  “I shouldn’t have fixed you up with Jonathan and lied to you about it. That was shitty. You were right to be mad.”

  Jinny let go of her and reached up to wipe her eyes. “I should have taken your calls. That was pretty shitty too.”

  Esther looked down at the scuffed linoleum floor and shuffled her feet. “I’ve been doing some soul-searching lately, and I’ve come to the conclusion that I might be broken in some crucial ways. I should probably be in therapy.”

  “Probably,” Jinny agreed. “But you’re not broken.”

  Esther looked up tentatively. “You think?”

  Jinny shrugged. “You’re no more broken than I am.”

  “Are we okay?” Esther asked.

  “Yeah,” Jinny said, nodding. “We’re gonna be fine.”

  Esther blew out a ragged breath. Jinny was still her friend. Everything was going to be okay.

  “Come on.” Jinny grabbed her hand and dragged her into the apartment. “Get in here before any of my neighbors sees us crying in the hallway like weirdos.”

  They’d talked until late into the night, clearing the air between them. Jinny hadn’t held anything back, and neither had Esther. It was painful, but it also felt good. Like draining the poison from an infection. For the first time in weeks—for the first time since they’d known each other, actually—they’d really talked. Openly and honestly. About everything.

  Not just about their friendship, but about their relationships with men and with their mothers. About Esther’s abandonment issues and how they made her keep people at a distance, and about Jinny’s low self-esteem and how she needed to value herself more. How Jinny’s mother had screwed her up by making her resentful of being managed, and how Esther’s mother had screwed her up by making her feel like she needed to manage everyone else. And how that was all stuff they were going to have work through, and find a way to navigate.

  Esther hadn’t gotten home until almost two a.m., and she’d been so amped up it had taken her another hour to fall asleep.

  Her alarm hit her like a ball-peen hammer to the brainpan when it went off at six thirty in the morning.

  Groaning, she shoved Sally off her chest, silenced her shrieking alarm, and staggered out of bed. In the kitchen, she downed two ibuprofen with a full glass of water, and followed it up with a cup of coffee from her new drip coffeemaker.

  She was getting used to making herself coffee in it every day, even though the coffee always tasted a little bitter, because it reminded her of Jonathan and how much she missed him. But having Jinny back mitigated the sadness somewhat. Her coffee only had a level teaspoon of sadness and regret in it this morning, instead of a heaping tablespoon.

  Yemi looked up when Esther walked into the office. “You’re six minutes later than usual,” he said, grinning at her weirdly.

  “The traffic light at Overland was out again. And why are you smiling like that?” She sat down at her desk and docked her laptop.

  He swiveled his chair all the way around, grinning even wider. “Because you and Jinny made up.”

  “She told you already?”

  “She called me first thing this morning.”

  Of course she had. She was his girlfriend. That was what girlfriends and boyfriends did—talked to each other about the people in their lives.

  Esther tried not to feel weird about it, but this was all uncharted territory. She’d never been friends with one of Jinny’s boyfriends before. She couldn’t help wondering how much Jinny had told him, exactly. Had she given him an exhaustive recap—including every gory detail and teary confession—or just the condensed version? How much of Esther’s private angst was Yemi now privy to?

  “I’m glad you worked t
hings out,” he said. “I hated that you two weren’t talking.”

  “Me too.” Esther decided not to care if Jinny talked to Yemi about her. What mattered was that they were all friends again. They’d figure out the rest of it along the way.

  “You should really take the freeway though,” Yemi said, spinning his chair back to his computer again.

  Esther smiled at the back of his head. “I’ll take it under advisement.”

  His phone vibrated on his desk, and he picked it up. “Jinny wants to know what time we’re going to lunch.”

  “What’s the special today?”

  “Lasagna.”

  “Better go at eleven forty-five, then.”

  “Fine,” Yemi said as he typed a reply.

  Still smiling, Esther started up her computer and went to work.

  On Saturday, Jinny came over to hang out at Esther’s pool, just like old times. They were having mimosas to celebrate.

  “You cannot move to Seattle to take care of your mother,” Jinny said as she took the orange juice out of the fridge. “I forbid it.”

  Esther got down the champagne flutes. “Don’t worry, I’m not.” The glasses were dusty with disuse. She took them to the sink and rinsed them out.

  “I can’t believe you were even considering it. She’d drive you insane.” Jinny shook her head as she picked at the foil around the champagne cork.

  “Okay, but seriously, what am I supposed to do? Nothing? Just let her lose her apartment?”

  “Your brother’s right. She’s an able-bodied, grown-ass adult. She shouldn’t need her kids to take care of her. That part comes later, when she’s old and infirm. She’s cashing in her markers too early.”

  “She’s my mother. She doesn’t have markers.”

  “Everyone has markers.” Jinny winced as she popped the cork off the champagne. Whenever she opened champagne, she always made a face like that scene in Elf when Buddy was testing the jack-in-the-boxes.

  Esther went into the bathroom for sunscreen. She was wearing shorts and a tank top to try to get some color in her paper-white skin, but she’d wind up crispy-fried if she didn’t slather herself in sunscreen. “You say that like you don’t always do exactly what your mother asks you to do,” she called over her shoulder as she dug around under the sink.