The Hookup Equation: A Loveless Brothers Novel

by Noir, Roxie

  I’m entranced by her, by her rapture, by the way her face moves as she looks over the art like she’s asking for its secrets. If I were that flower, I’d tell her. How could I do anything else?

  I step closer to her, bend low, like we’re conspiring.

  “There’s a sealed pocket of air inside each flower,” I say. Her hair smells sharp and sweet, citrus and rose. “They rise when the heat lamp goes on, lower when it’s off. The lamp rotates, so they eventually all wind through the trellis. They’re kinda like mini hot air balloons.”

  I’m pretty sure it’s more complicated, but that’s the gist of it.

  “That’s it?” she breathes.

  “That’s the basic premise,” I say, forcing myself to straighten up.

  I want to touch her. I want to run my hands through her hair, want to put my hand on her back, want to bend down and kiss her full lips and all this want makes me feel like I’m going mad because I’ve known this girl for all of two hours.

  It’s lust. I know full well that it’s lust. What else could it be?

  “Do you know that because you cheated and read the plaque?” she asks, still watching the flowers, now sinking, heads turning downward, long woven stems resting against the trellis as they fall in slow motion.

  “Reading the plaque isn’t cheating,” I say. “That’s what it’s there for.”

  “Too much information can take the wonder out of a thing, though,” she says, her face still dreamy, her eyes still wide and captivated by the flowers, her hair falling over one cheekbone.

  I want to tuck it behind her ear but I resist, make myself look away because I don’t know what will happen if I touch her. I don’t know if I’ll be able to stop. Earlier, in the alleyway, I nearly kissed her knee while examining her wound, the urge so powerful it felt like an arrow to the chest, pinning me in place.

  I didn’t. I don’t do that. I’m not a man who kisses women without permission, definitely not on knees, absolutely not in alleyways. There’s a progression to these things: a conversation, a drink, a date, a second date, a kiss, maybe more.

  Life has patterns, systems, a proper order, and up until tonight, I’ve had no problem keeping that order but Thalia is a sudden bolt from the blue and I’m jumbled, disarranged.

  “You don’t think there’s beauty and wonder in knowing how things work?” I ask, concentrating all my willpower on not moving her hair from her face.

  “I think there’s something to be said for believing in magic,” she says.

  Above the trellis, the heat lamp goes on again and a dozen heads turn upward, faces toward the heat, like so many sunflowers.

  “Do you?” I ask as the flowers start to unfurl again, lifting themselves.

  “Of course not,” Thalia says, her lips quirking again, like they’re about to move into a smile. “Not in magic. In magical, yes. I believe in a space between seeing and understanding, where what’s in front of you seems impossible until suddenly, it isn’t.”

  “You like not knowing?” I ask, still looking down at her.

  “I like feeling as if there’s more to this world than I could comprehend,” she says, slowly, her eyes following a flower. “I like that moment before logic and reason kick in, where you see something astonishing and you think, maybe there really is magic in the world and maybe anything is possible.”

  I laugh, softly, and she looks over at me, a half-smile on her lips.

  “I don’t actually believe in magic,” she says, a little defensively, and I shake my head.

  “No,” I say. “What you call magic I call anxiety.”

  Thalia lifts one eyebrow. The heat lamps switch off, and her face goes from desert sunset to moonlight. A couple behind us wanders off, and although we’re right by the entrance to the gardens — we haven’t gotten far — suddenly I feel like we’re alone, somewhere private.

  I want to kiss her. I want her to tell me about magic and the spaces between things and I want to kiss her, taste her, sift her hair through my fingers.

  “I can’t stand not knowing,” I admit. “I never could. I live for that moment when things fall into place, when the mechanism’s revealed. When everything makes sense again.”

  “So you read the plaques,” she says, finally brushing the strand of hair from her cheek.

  “When I was a kid, my mom took my older brother and I to see a magic show,” I say. “It was the usual stuff, card tricks, rabbit out of a hat, you know. And it drove me completely insane.”

  She laughs. It feels like the sun just turned on.

  “I hated not knowing how it worked,” I go on. “I hated that there was this guy, on stage, lying to all of us about what he was doing, telling us it was magic when it was just sleight-of-hand that he wouldn’t explain, and I hated that I couldn’t figure it out. So I went home and learned a bunch of magic tricks so I could understand what was really happening.”

  “Did it work?” she asks.

  “The magic tricks?”

  “I mean, did knowing soothe you?” she asks. “Once you knew that it was just a flick of the wrist here, a misdirection there, did you feel better?”

  We’re facing each other now, her dark eyes searching mine, and I have the sensation that I’m a cipher being unscrambled, my numbers and letters and symbols rearranged into a message that makes sense to the right reader.

  I feel like this girl I don’t even know is undoing me.

  “I did,” I tell her, thinking back to me, nine years old, shuffling a deck of cards again and again. “I revel in the pieces falling together the way that you revel in not knowing.”

  She’s smiling. Still giving me that look, like she’s decoding me.

  “Is that the real reason?” she asks, head tilted.

  “I knew card tricks well before I ever touched a book about how to be a pickup artist, thanks,” I say, one eyebrow raised.

  “Okay, defensive,” she says, but she’s laughing again. “I meant was needing to know how it worked the real reason you learned all those tricks?”

  I stay quiet, gently unraveling.

  “Or did you hate that some guy in a sweaty tux was trying to pull the wool over your eyes?” Thalia goes on. “I hear you can’t stand that.”

  “If you’re fishing for an apology that I pretended to leave the bathroom and didn’t, I don’t have one to give,” I tell her. More people come up to the morning glory sculpture. Someone bumps my arm and apologizes, but I barely notice.

  “I wouldn’t take an apology if you tried to offer one,” she says, and her gaze is finally wrested from mine by a big family with three kids, the smallest of whom wedges her way between us. The father apologizes. “I’ve been wanting to go to this for weeks. Should we go look at the rest of the exhibit? You can read the plaques and I can marvel.”

  “I promise not to tell you what they say,” I tell her, and we turn away from the paper flowers and the heat lamp.

  “You can tell me,” she says as we enter the tunnel, light glinting from her eyes, her hair. “Just let me wonder for a few moments first.”

  There’s a family coming from the opposite end of the arched tunnel with a stroller and a little kid, and as Thalia moves right to make space, her knuckles bump into mine.

  “Sorry,“ she murmurs, then looks up at me as I slide my hand into hers.

  “Don’t be,” I say, simply, and we walk along hand in hand.

  Chapter Four

  Thalia

  Caleb takes my hand and the strangest thing happens: I’m not nervous. Not even a little.

  I’m excited, and I’m giddy. My heart is thumping and my pulse is raised and I can feel the adrenaline coursing through my veins, adrenaline and oxytocin and buckets and buckets of hormones, and that all lights up a lot of the same neural pathways as anxiety, but it’s not the same.

  Anxiety is a kind of fear. Excitement is a kind of happiness. Close but different, mirror reflections of one another.

  “What next?” he asks, giving my hand a slight s
queeze, maybe unconscious. “The Serpent’s Orchard or Moondial?”

  He looks down at me as he talks, his voice sending a shiver down my back.

  Which one is the most secluded? I want to ask.

  “The orchard,” I say, and we exit the long arched pathway, emerge into a colonnaded path, the only lights wrapped around the base of each column. It makes the garden feel like a spaceship.

  “Then I think we go right, if memory serves,” Caleb says. “I’ve only been here a few —”

  “LEVI!” a voice hollers, breaking through the quiet murmurs of art appreciation.

  “Oh, come on,” Caleb mutters, mostly to himself.

  I wonder, for a moment, if I’m in some sort of wacky comedy where my date has lied about who he is and his true identity is about to be revealed by accident.

  “Levi!” says the voice, closer now. “Oh, thank fuck you’re here. Levi, I am in a damn pickle because it’s Sunday night and none of the rednecks in this town —"

  Caleb closes his eyes and sighs deeply.

  “I’m sorry about this,” he tells me, quietly.

  “ — Just goes to voicemail and I ask you, how does anyone do business —"

  The shouter stomps up along side us. We all stop walking, lit from below by an unearthly purple.

  “Hello, Vivian,” Caleb says.

  “ — ah, shit,” she answers, frowning, looking him over. Her face is lined and she’s got an unruly black mane, streaked with gray. She’s standing there rigidly, feet firmly planted, like she’s ready to fight or lift something heavy. The work boots and coveralls she’s wearing, the latter splashed with paint, suggest that the latter is more likely.

  Then: “Maybe you’ll do. Can you swing a hammer?”

  His hand tightens on mine, just for a moment.

  “It’s nice to see you,” he says, with more than an edge of irritation to his voice. “This is my date, Thalia. We were just enjoying your show.”

  “Lovely. Charmed,” she says, pushing huge, thick glasses up her nose, barely glancing at me. “You helped him build that house, right?”

  “Caleb,” he says, still irritated, pointing to himself.

  I’m looking back and forth between the two of them, and I’ve got the strange feeling that I’m watching two completely different conversations. It’s been long enough since the Smurf’s Vacation that I’m pretty much sober by now, but this sure doesn’t make me feel like it.

  “Yes, I know which one you are,” she says, sounding annoyed as she pushes huge, thick glasses further up her nose. “And I also know that the sea monster just broke yet again because the original builders ignored my detailed design notes and now the jaw’s hanging off and it’s not much more than a slack-jawed snake.”

  “This is Vivian Atwell, the artist,” Caleb says to me, still having a different conversation from the woman in front of us.

  I have no idea which one to respond to.

  “Nice to meet you,” I tell her as she glances over her shoulder. “The morning glories were lovely.”

  “Yes, they’re nice,” she says, distracted. “But they’re not broken, are they?”

  “Nope,” I say flippantly, well aware that the question is rhetorical.

  “Well, the sea monster is and you’re the only person I’ve found so far with a chance in hell of righting it,” she says, now talking to Caleb again. “Come on.”

  With that, she turns and starts walking.

  “I’m on a date, Vivian,” he calls after her.

  She turns back, ten feet away, and looks at Caleb like she’s just told him that an avalanche is coming and he doesn’t believe her.

  “The art. Is. Broken,” she says, astonished.

  I’ve now moved past feeling awkward about this interaction and into being sort of entertained by it. Clearly, Caleb has dealt with this woman before, and just as clearly, nothing is expected of me.

  Caleb just sighs, then waits. Vivian shifts her stance slightly, though she’s still firmly rooted like she’s about to lift something.

  There’s a long, long pause. She clears her throat and looks like she’s concentrating.

  “I would be ever so grateful if you would pause your nightly cavortation and assist me with repairs,” she calls, sounding like Harper when she’s drunk. “Perhaps your date would appreciate a glimpse behind the scenes. I’m told it’s very interesting.”

  Not for the first time, I have the sensation that I’ve followed a rabbit down a hole and found myself in Wonderland. Is Vivian the red queen? Is she going to insist that my head come off? Where’s the caterpillar?

  Another couple strolls past us on the walkway, and all three of us watch them as they pass Vivian, very obviously ignoring whatever’s going on here.

  “Please?” Vivian finally calls.

  Caleb looks down at me.

  “She’s a good friend of my mom’s,” he explains, voice low. “Probably because my mom is the only one with enough patience to stand her when she gets like this.”

  “Let’s do it,” I tell him, giving his hand a quick squeeze, my pulse ticking up at the same time.

  Caleb raises one eyebrow.

  “I don’t like to give into terrorists’ demands,” he says, voice still low, the tiniest bit rough, like ruffled velvet.

  “But the art is broken,” I say, fighting back a smile. “It’ll be a good story. Someday she’ll be famous and you’ll have a good story about how this well-known artist chased you down in a garden and called you the wrong name.”

  “I’ll be incredible at cocktail parties,” he deadpans.

  “Exactly.”

  Still hand-in-hand, we walk forward.

  “All right,” he says to Vivian, in a normal voice, when we’re close enough that we don’t have to shout. “Take us to the sea monster.”

  “It’s in the sea,” she says, pointing down the spaceship path, as if it’s obvious.

  * * *

  The sea monster isn’t in the sea. We’re a four-and-a-half hour drive from the nearest sea, at Virginia Beach, a distance and journey I know pretty well because my family’s lived in Norfolk, right next door, for the past seven years.

  It’s more of a pond monster, stationed on a platform between lily pads. The pond partially surrounds a small Thai-style building, the points and turrets of its roof outlined in golden light.

  Vivian may have zero social skills, but she’s good at what she does.

  “There,” she says, pointing, though we didn’t need the help. “Slack-jawed, like some sort of inbred yokel. The jaw is supposed to move with the breeze but the idiots who actually built the thing decided on their own that it didn’t need that amount of bracing, so obviously the strain snapped the joint and now my beauty looks like it’s about to spit chaw into the sea.”

  Pond, I think but don’t say out loud.

  “Are there materials?” Caleb asks.

  “Behind the temple,” she says. “Small supply shed. Five-twenty-seventeen. Rowboat’s right there. Fix her up good, I’m supposed to be at a damn Q&A talking to art students who want to talk about intersectional multimedia semantic bullshit.”

  With that, she turns and stomps away, her heavy boots vibrating the wooden bridge that we’re standing on.

  “Sorry about her,” Caleb says, probably before she’s even out of earshot. “She and my mom have been friends for a while, and she’s really not this bad most of the time. I think she’s stressed.”

  “She has friends?” I ask, looking after her, and Caleb laughs.

  “At least one,” he confirms. “My mom’s got a habit of taking on odd ducks, though.”

  We walk over the bridge, through the lit temple where the northern lights are being projected on the ceiling above us, and behind it we find a small, locked storage shed that opens to the combination she gave us.

  “This is gonna be pretty slapdash,” Caleb says, looking at what’s inside.

  “Well, you’re no Levi,” I tell him, and he just snorts. “Whoever t
hat is.”

  “Levi is my eldest brother, and we look nothing alike,” he says. “Nothing.”

  “You sure about that?”

  “Of course,” he says, grabbing some wood, a box of nails, and a hammer, a smile playing around his lips.

  “Not even a tiny family resemblance,” I go on, leaning against the temple and grinning.

  He leans into the shed, disappearing for a moment.

  “Maybe a little,” he admits.

  “You know that the more you claim you don’t look like someone, the better chance that you could practically be twins,” I tell him. “My brothers swear up and down that they don’t look a thing alike, but seeing them together is like seeing double.”

  Or at least it used to be, I think, then push that thought aside.

  He backs out of the shed, arms full, and nudges the door shut with one foot.

  “I can carry some of that,” I say.

  “I’ve got it.”

  “Let me help.”

  “The artist didn’t ask you, she asked me,” he says, teasing. “And I can’t have you getting splinters on our first date, this is already going off the rails.”

  First, I think.

  “Technically, I think she asked your brother who canceled,” I say, walking beside him to the rowboat at the edge of the water, wedged between lily pads.

  Caleb just laughs and puts the materials into the bottom of the metal boat, which rocks slightly.

  “That would’ve been a real mistake,” he says, straightening. He stands at the edge of the water, holds out his hand. I take it. “Seth couldn’t fix this to save his life.”

  I step carefully into the boat, my hand held tightly in his as I sit on one of the bench seats, careful to keep my knees together. I didn’t exactly pick my outfit with a pond construction outing in mind, but I’m not mad about it.

  “So the brother who was supposed to come couldn’t fix it and the one who could fix it wasn’t supposed to come,” I say as he grabs the single oar from the bottom of the rowboat and looks around, like he’s trying to get his bearings.