The Hookup Equation: A Loveless Brothers Novel

by Noir, Roxie

  “Ollie,” he starts. “If —"

  “He’s my math professor,” I hiss, leaning across the table. “There. You happy? Is that better?”

  “Holy shit,” he says, and now he looks surprised, but no longer horrified. “I didn’t really think he was married but that’s the problem? He’s a professor?”

  “Assistant professor,” I say. “It’s his first year, he just got his Ph.D. in May.”

  In the four hours we just spent together in the car, we did manage to talk about more than my stupid, tragic family. For example, Caleb now knows the entire plot of the anime Neon Genesis Evangelion and I know all the ways in which the Lord of the Rings movies differ from the books.

  “I would be amazing at math if he were my professor,” Bastien says, his face dead serious. “I’d declare a major.”

  “No, you wouldn’t,” I sigh.

  “I might if he were driving me across the state and kissing me goodbye,” he says, stealing a chunk of my donut and popping it into his mouth.

  Then he looks up at me, and my thoughts must be written all over my face because he immediately looks horrified.

  “I won’t say anything,” Bastien says quickly, a few donut crumbs flying from his mouth. “Sorry. I would never, Ollie, I can hardly go and tell everyone your secret.”

  He chews, swallows.

  “Besides, you’ve got leverage on me,” he points out.

  “That’s not leverage,” I protest. “I’m not a monster.”

  “Sorry, bad joke,” he says, and rubs his eyes with the heels of his hands.

  Speaking without thinking first is probably genetic. I know better than to take it personally.

  “You’re at least getting an A in his class, right?” he asks, leaning back in the booth and crossing his arms.

  “I think so, but not —”

  “Wait, no,” he says, pointing one finger at me and grinning. “You’re not getting an A.”

  I shut my eyes and wait for the stupid joke.

  “I bet you’re getting a D,” he says, still grinning like it’s the funniest thing anyone has ever said.

  “I’m not getting a D,” I say calmly.

  “You’re getting the D,” he says.

  “He’s my professor, Bossy, nothing like that is happening.”

  “You know, D for dick?” he says. “So if he’s giving you the —"

  “I get the joke, Bastien,” I say, and toss back the rest of my coffee.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Caleb

  I only get about thirty miles from Norfolk before I realize that I’ll never make it all the way back to Marysburg without either taking something illegal or falling asleep at the wheel, so I pull off the interstate somewhere on the Northern Neck and find a Motel 6.

  It’s fine. It’s clean. It’s a Motel 6. I toss my dirty clothes into a heap at the foot of the bed, splash some water on my face, and fall asleep within seconds.

  I swear it’s five minutes later when I wake up to the relentless buzzing of my phone, rattling away on the wood veneer side table.

  “Fuck,” I mutter to myself, reaching for it.

  It’s my brother Seth, and it’s seven-thirty, not five minutes later. My mouth tastes like a swamp, but I answer it anyway.

  “What?” I ask, still face-down on the scratchy pillow.

  “He’s here,” Seth says.

  “What?” I ask again, feeling like I’ve walked into the middle of a conversation. “Who’s where?”

  “Charlie had the baby,” he says.

  That gets me to sit up in the bed, even as I feel like my brain is water, slowly going down a whirlpool.

  “I thought she wasn’t due for another week,” I say, blinking at blackout curtains, trying to gather my wits. “Is everything okay?”

  “Everyone is fine, he’s just huge,” Seth says. “Nine pounds, thirteen ounces. Total chunker, he’s got the chubby wrists and everything. He’s actually really cute, Caleb, even though newborns are usually kind of funny looking.”

  Seth is smitten.

  “What’s his name?” I ask, standing.

  Where are my clothes?

  There are my clothes.

  “Thomas William,” Seth says, and I stop, one leg halfway into my pants.

  Of course. The moment he says it, I can’t believe that it hadn’t occurred to me that that would be his name, that the first boy born to one of us would be named after our father.

  “Did you know?” I ask, sitting back on the bed.

  “Not officially,” Seth says, slowly. “I had a feeling, though. Daniel wouldn’t confirm or deny.”

  I wonder, fleetingly, whether I should tell them the truth, a thing I’ve wondered so many times that the thought is a worn pathway in my mind, smooth like a worry stone.

  Then I put it away, back into the same drawer where it’s been for years. Not every ugly truth needs to be brought out and aired, and that’s something I decided a long time ago.

  “Thomas,” I say, trying out the name in my life. “I like it.”

  “Me too,” says Seth. “You coming?”

  “Of course,” I tell him, pushing my foot the rest of the way through my pant leg as I hold my phone between my chin and shoulder. “Are they still in the hospital?”

  “Yup. Second floor, maternity ward. Text Mom or me first, though, in case they’re napping. Charlie might go full mama bear if you wake him up,” he says.

  “Will do,” I agree, grabbing my shirt from the floor. “I’ll be there in… five hours.”

  There’s a brief silence on the other end of the line.

  “Five hours?” Seth asks.

  * * *

  It’s close to three in the afternoon when I finally walk into Sprucevale Memorial Hospital, almost six and a half hours after I talked to Seth. Sprucevale is further from the interstate than Marysburg, then there was an accident so I got off the interstate anyway, and by 1 p.m. I thought I might starve so I stopped and grabbed a sandwich.

  I text my mom and Seth from the waiting room, then stand there for a moment. I’m the only person in there. Apparently late September isn’t a popular time to be born in Sprucevale.

  “You got here just in time, they’re about to —"

  Levi comes in, then stops short.

  “What happened?” he asks, giving me a good, long, head-to-toe look.

  Oh, shit. I put one hand over my chest, like it can hide the black eyeliner stains that Thalia left there last night.

  “It’s a long story,” I tell my oldest brother.

  “Is the long story also why it took you six hours to get here?” he asks, both eyebrows raised so high they’re practically in his hairline.

  “I’ll tell you later.”

  “Is everything all right?” he asks, coming across the room, lowering his voice.

  “Fine,” I say, pushing my sleeves up, like that’ll help. “I’ll tell you later, promise.”

  Levi just nods.

  Then he starts unbuttoning his plaid shirt, revealing a white undershirt beneath it.

  “Uh… ?” I say.

  “Take your shirt off and give it to me,” he says, pulling his shirt over his shoulders. “Then put this on. You stand a zero percent chance of being allowed to hold Thomas if you come in wearing that, though we’re going to have to risk the pants as I’m afraid those are personal.”

  He holds his shirt out to me, and I don’t argue. I just take my shirt off, hand it to Levi, then put his shirt on. It’s a tiny bit too wide in the shoulders and a tiny bit too short in the sleeves, but for all intents and purposes, we’re the same size.

  “I trust that this will be part of the explanation later,” he says, holding up the shirt in one hand. I just nod.

  “Room two-forty-one,” he says.

  Surreally, it’s the second time today I’ve been in a hospital, and I follow Levi as he walks, nodding at nurses who inevitably smile back at him.

  “Where’s everyone?” I ask.

 
“Mom’s here,” he says. “Seth went home for a bit and Eli’s making dinner for everyone. Elizabeth and her husband just left. June and Violet are with Rusty. It’s me again.”

  The last part is directed into a room, a curtain separating us from the interior.

  “Come in,” Daniel’s voice calls, and Levi pulls the curtain back.

  “Got him,” Levi says, and gestures me forward.

  Daniel’s sitting in a chair, shirtless and holding a tiny pink baby, both of them draped with a blanket, and Charlie’s propped up in a hospital bed a few feet away, my mom folding an afghan onto an armchair across the room.

  Charlie and Daniel don’t look up, but my mom glances from Levi to me, looking slightly puzzled.

  “Hi,” I say, keeping my voice low. “How are you guys doing?”

  “You know, normal weekend,” Charlie says from the bed, her eyes never leaving Daniel and Thomas. “Pretty chill.”

  “You look good,” I tell her. “How do you feel?”

  That gets a tired, woozy half-smile from Charlie.

  “Bless your heart, Caleb,” she says. “All things considered, I think I feel pretty good. Better than I did this time yesterday.”

  Daniel stands from his chair, both his hands spread over Thomas’s small back. He looks like he’s carrying a sack of loose eggs or something, he’s so careful.

  “You want to hold him?” he asks.

  I do. I really, really do, but I’m also never sure I’ve seen anything so terrifyingly small and fragile before. I’m the youngest, after all, and though Daniel does already have Rusty, he didn’t know about her until she was almost a year old.

  Rusty’s biological mother isn’t a nice person. It’s a whole story.

  “Can I?” I ask, pretty certain that Daniel’s kidding and there’s no way he’s going to let me touch this tiny, hours-old human.

  “Sure,” he says. “Thomas, this is your Uncle Caleb. I promise he’s the last one.”

  Thomas’s head is turned toward me, his eyes barely open a crack, his head covered in a pink-and-blue knit cap, his face puffy.

  “Hi, Thomas,” I say, bending forward and talking softly. “Pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

  Thomas doesn’t move, but I swear he looks me dead in the eye and then holds my gaze like he’s studying me, one tiny fist next to his face. I don’t know how far newborns can see. I don’t know if he can see my face or whether I’m a big peach blob, but I swear there’s a connection.

  Then Daniel is carefully wrapping him in his blanket and my mom is coming over, fluttering a little, supervising.

  I wonder, briefly, how she feels about his name, but then Daniel is standing in front of me, Thomas in his arms, nothing but his tiny face visible, eyes now closed.

  “You ready?” he asks.

  “Do I have to take off my shirt?” I ask, since he’s not wearing one, but he shakes his head.

  “We’re supposed to do skin-to-skin bonding with him,” he says. “Apparently it helps to regulate his body temperature, and it releases hormones, and… I don’t know, I’m just following instructions. Here.”

  Carefully — so, so carefully — he holds the bundle out, and I take it from him, cautious to put one hand under Thomas’s head, my other arm under his body.

  Thomas opens his eyes for a moment, then closes them again, and I just stare down at him. And stare. And stare.

  And then, suddenly, I’m nine years old and in the forest, kneeling on the leaves. In front of me are sticks tented together on a patch of cleared ground, thicker on the outside, the interior of the cone filled with pine needles and a wad of newspaper.

  Behind that is my father, on one knee, and he’s got a box of matches in one hand.

  This might take a few tries, he says.

  Making a fire takes patience, he says, and I’m hanging onto every word he says because this is one of the rare times I don’t have to share him with anyone. It’s just him, and me, and his calm voice that Seth got and his dark hair that Eli got and his unflappable nature that Daniel got, his deep love of nature that Levi got.

  The first match doesn’t take, and he tosses the burnt stub into the pile of tinder, sits back, and looks at it for a moment. He’s analyzing, thinking, considering the best way to go about improving this, and right there, in this twenty-one-year-old memory of his final summer, I see the parts of my father that I got.

  I blink away tears. I swallow hard, take a deep breath, refocus on this tiny, tiny human in my arms.

  “He’s perfect,” I say. Levi squeezes my shoulder. Daniel pulls a gray t-shirt over his head. Across the room, I can see Charlie smile.

  “I know,” Daniel says.

  Chapter Twenty

  Thalia

  The days while my mom’s in the hospital blend together. Sunday is like Monday is like Tuesday with no real differentiation between them other than the date on my phone.

  I visit my mom in the hospital. After a little while, I somehow get used to the tube in her chest and then learn to ignore it. The doctors say it’ll be there for several more days, until her collapsed lung is getting enough oxygen.

  Besides that, she’s loopy on pain meds for her broken arm and ribs, and every time I so much as make her smile, the nurses admonish me lest I make her laugh. She spends most of her time fading in and out of sleep, and sometimes Bastien and I take turns napping with her, in the uncomfortable arm chair next to the bed.

  My father’s there, too, though he never naps next to her, but he attends to her dutifully. He charges her phone, brings her his iPad, makes sure she has good snacks and plenty of water. He brushes her hair and helps the nurses give her a sponge bath.

  I know that they’re on the rocks. They have been ever since he cut Javier off and Javier disappeared, breaking my mom’s heart. But he’s still there, every day, because if there’s one thing my father understands, it’s duty.

  * * *

  I do, eventually, remember to email my professors and explain my absence, even though it’s Tuesday before I suddenly realize that it needs to be done. I beg forgiveness and offer doctors’ notes, copying and pasting the same email to all of them.

  Though I hesitate over Caleb’s. I wonder if I should tell him more, expand on the fact that my mom is okay but will still be in the hospital for a little while, if I should thank him for giving me a ride all the way across the state.

  Then I remember the kiss. The frantic, anxious, frayed-nerves kiss that I practically forced on him at the end of the night. The kiss that I gave him in a moment of weakness and helplessness even though I knew that I shouldn’t, because it’s not me who will get in real trouble.

  If a student and a professor get caught kissing, the student probably gets a stern lecture, maybe a warning.

  The professor probably gets fired.

  I decide not to say anything, at least not in this email from my university address to his. It was a mistake, an accident, something that I’ve solemnly sworn up and down to myself that I won’t do again, and I’d rather just bury it.

  * * *

  My roommates, on the other hand, get blow-by-blow text updates. We have a group chat and I tell them every time that my mom seems a little extra woozy, every time there’s some decision to be made, every time a doctor has new information.

  They send my mom flowers and a balloon. They send me chocolate. One night, as I’m complaining to them about how there’s no food in the house because my father is clueless and my brother is back at school and no one ever seems to think about the fact that we have to eat except me, the doorbell rings.

  There’s a delivery man standing there with a pizza.

  From them.

  Margaret, Harper, and Victoria are my lifesaving angels, and I owe them big time.

  Finally, after a week, it’s decided that I’m going back to school. My mom is still going to be in the hospital for another few days, just to monitor her, but there’s no reason for me to stick around. She’s doing well, her broken bones ar
e beginning to mend, and the tube is finally out of her chest.

  The night before I leave, I finally, finally decide it’s time to relax. I pour myself a glass of wine from a bottle in my parents’ pantry and load up a dumb movie on my laptop.

  Just as I’m about to hit play, my phone rings.

  It’s Harper, and I frown. She’s calling me? Harper never calls. I mean, no one ever calls, at least without texting me first and warning me, but Harper in particular never calls.

  I cross my fingers before I answer.

  “Hi,” I say.

  “Hi! Sorry for calling,” she says.

  “It’s important,” Victoria says, on speakerphone.

  “Did something happen?” I say, twirling my wine glass between my fingers.

  “Hell yes it did,” Victoria says.

  “Do you have your laptop nearby and is it on the internet?” Harper asks. “And are you at least medium-alone?”

  “I’m fully alone,” I say. “Why? What’s going on?”

  “Okay, okay, hold on,” Harper says. “You tell her.”

  “You worked with Nathaniel Johnston, right?” Victoria asks.

  “Yeah, he was Dr. Castellano’s other research assistant,” I say. “But he got kicked out last week —”

  “See, I told you she’d know,” Harper says to Victoria. “Well, do you want to know why?”

  “Obviously.”

  “Check your email.”

  I take a gulp of wine, then lean forward, toward the laptop. I pull up my email, click the link that Harper just sent.

  “If this gives me a virus I’ll — uh, what?”

  A video pops up of a woman, naked on all fours, on a bed. She looks over at the camera like she’s checking on it, then tosses her hair back.

  “Come on,” she says in a weird, breathy voice. “I’m so horny for you.”

  “Did you send me porn?!” I ask, pushing the laptop away from me. “Why did you send me porn?”

  “Just wait,” Harper says grimly.