The Hookup Equation: A Loveless Brothers Novel

by Noir, Roxie

  In her sleep, she snuggles back against me. I stay awake a little longer just to savor it.

  * * *

  Seth: Caleb, who are you staying with?

  Levi: I thought it was me.

  Daniel: If you like being awake at three in the morning, you can stay here.

  Daniel: Charlie approved of your laundry folding skills last time you were over.

  Eli: You say that like she’s the one in the relationship with opinions on how laundry gets folded.

  Daniel: Fine. Caleb, you folded the laundry nicely.

  Seth: I folded laundry, he put together the swing.

  Seth: But thank you.

  Levi: Caleb, the spare bedroom is yours if you want it.

  Seth: I’ve also got a spare bedroom. And also, wifi.

  Levi: We have wifi. We’ve had wifi for two years.

  Seth: You mean June has wifi?

  Levi: We live together. It’s our house and therefore it’s also our wifi.

  Eli: We know whose wifi it is, Levi. Do you even know the password?

  Levi: Yes.

  Eli: Caleb, you’re welcome to our couch, but sounds like you’ve got better offers.

  Eli: Maybe he’s staying at Mom’s house?

  Seth: Earth to Caleb.

  Daniel: Caleb, please bring one of those huge chocolate chip cookies from that place near the park when you come. They’re very good and I would like to eat one. This is Daniel.

  Eli: Daniel left his phone unguarded again, didn’t he?

  Levi: Looks like it.

  Daniel: I did not leave my phone unguarded and I would like the big cookie please insert this patch itch extra extra wish bag etc

  Eli: Definitely seems like Daniel over there.

  Seth: For sure. Better get ten cookies.

  Daniel: Sorry. I went to grab Thomas and Rusty got my phone.

  Eli: Wow, that wasn’t you? She even said “this is Daniel.”

  Daniel: Don’t laugh. I live in terror of the day she learns to lie well.

  * * *

  I’m a quarter mile from the trailhead when my phone starts beeping, ringing, and buzzing like it’s possessed, though it turns out to just be the group text I’ve got with my brothers, not a demon.

  The group text is probably better. Probably. A demon might be less nosy, though.

  Caleb: Anywhere is fine. I actually hadn’t thought about it yet.

  Seth: Your mind elsewhere?

  I decide to ignore him, turn my phone to silent, and keep hiking. I should probably be figuring out what I’m bringing to Thanksgiving tomorrow — Eli sent an email about what he’s assigned each of us — but more than anything, I needed to escape, clear my mind, and get some exercise.

  Admittedly, I’m mostly thinking about Thalia. I’m thinking that we should go hiking out here instead of only ever having dates in my house. We’ll go somewhere far from campus, and no one else is ever out here. We won’t get recognized.

  I’m wondering when I can bring her to Sprucevale to meet my family. I’m wondering if I can get Seth to keep his mouth shut about the fact that she’s my student.

  And about last night.

  I think about last night a lot, actually. Hard not to. The way she said fuck, it’s so good. The sounds she made. The way she fit me like a glove, the way I could feel every tiny move she made, the way she looked as she slid down my cock —

  I sigh out loud and glare at a squirrel, forcing myself not to think about it any more. The squirrel glares back.

  “What’s your problem?” I mutter, and it runs away.

  * * *

  Me: I hate Monopoly.

  Thalia: Did you lose to Rusty again?

  Me: When you play Monopoly, doesn’t everyone lose?

  Thalia: That’s not very sporting of you.

  Me: Monopoly’s not sporting, it’s stupid.

  Me: How was the drive to Norfolk?

  Thalia: Uneventful. How’s Sprucevale?

  Me: Well, I’ve lost twice at Monopoly and Seth gives me a knowing look every thirty seconds or so.

  Me: But otherwise, it’s good. I hadn’t seen Thomas for a couple of weeks and I swear he’s twice the size he used to be.

  Thalia: You can’t just say that and not send a picture.

  I oblige and send her one that Daniel took of me and my nephew. He’s yawning in my arms, and I’m making that same face back at him.

  Thalia: Ugh, what a cutie.

  Me: Thanks. I really think this shirt brings out my eyes.

  I can practically hear her sigh and try not to laugh.

  Thalia: The baby is also cute.

  Me: How’s Norfolk?

  Thalia: It’s been better.

  Thalia: Oh, Bastien wants to know if any of your brothers are single and gay.

  Me: Seth’s technically single but not gay, unless he’s REALLY closeted.

  Thalia: What about that guy who’s not your brother?

  I’m standing in the upstairs hall of my mom’s house, briefly escaping the madness of Thanksgiving Day, and at that question I look up at the wall in puzzlement.

  There are a great many guys in the world, and the vast majority aren’t my brother.

  Thalia: The one whose sister is marrying Levi.

  Thalia: I mean, they look alike.

  Thalia: June? Is that her name?

  Me: Oh, you mean Silas?

  Me: Also, what, did you make flash cards of everyone?

  Thalia: If I’d made flash cards I’d have known his name.

  Thalia: And yeah, Silas. Hetero?

  Me: Hetero and too old for Bastien.

  Thalia: Bastien says he’ll be the judge of that.

  Me: Nope, I’m doing the judging.

  Thalia: Suddenly critical of age differences?

  Me: Fifteen is a lot more than six.

  Thalia: You’re so good with numbers, have you ever thought of doing something with that?

  Me: Nah, I don’t think I’ve got much of a future in math.

  * * *

  “How’s Thalia?” Seth asks, holding a huge tray of leftover turkey and staring into the refrigerator.

  “Who?” I ask, standing beside him. “We should probably turn the fridge off for a minute. This looks like a whole project.”

  “I meant to come over here and clean it out before today,” he admits. “And don’t play dumb, idiot.”

  I reach up and turn down the temperature dial on the fridge, because finding spots for all the leftovers is going to take a while, and there’s no sense in wasting all that electricity.

  There were over twenty people at Thanksgiving, and even though we sent everyone home with food, there’s still an astonishing amount of leftovers, and it’s fallen to Seth and I to figure out how to fit it all into my mom’s fridge.

  “Can we move these shelves? That one’s a weird height,” I say, pointing.

  “Ignoring my question won’t make it go away,” he points out, taking more stuff out of the fridge, putting it on the chair currently propping the fridge door open.

  “Yes, it will,” I say.

  “No, it’ll make me ask it louder,” he says. “Eventually, I’ll have no choice but to ask how Thalia’s doing so loudly that everyone in the house will hear me, and I bet they’ll also want to know how Thalia’s doing. They might also have follow-up questions.”

  “Come on,” I say, as we both reach into the fridge and begin rearranging.

  Seth pulls out a small plastic container of something and regards it suspiciously, then tosses it into the sink.

  “Not bluffing,” he says.

  I say nothing.

  “How’s Thalia doing?” he asks, ten percent louder than before.

  “Don’t.”

  “How’s Thalia doing?”

  Twenty percent. I close my eyes and tell myself that he’ll knock it off before someone else actually gets interested.

  “HOW’S —”

  I punch him in the arm, and he breaks off, grinning.


  “Ow,” he says.

  “She’s fine,” I mutter. “Doing well.”

  “How are her grades?”

  “Seth.”

  “She still getting a D?”

  I don’t answer, even though I already know that it won’t work. For all my cleverness and book smarts, I’ve never figured out how to make any of my brothers knock it off when they’re being obnoxious.

  “That stands for dick, specifically yours,” he explains.

  I keep rearranging the fridge and do not, repeat, do not make eye contact.

  “And asking if someone is getting the D is a colloquialism for —”

  “We’re not talking about this,” I say.

  “Q.E.D., we are, actually.”

  I take a deep breath, stand up straight, push one hand through my hair and gather my thoughts. Generally, I’m a fairly calm, unflappable person.

  Siblings, though.

  “Things are really good, and they’re not supposed to be,” I say, keeping my voice low. “Because she’s my student, and there aren’t supposed to be things at all, which means that no matter how good they are, I don’t want to talk about them because every person who knows is one more who might let something slip, and that could be disastrous.”

  Seth’s quiet a moment, his eyes searching my face, his dark hair slightly mussed like always. I think, for a flash, of how much he looks like our dad, even though his hair was always neat and never out of place. A far as I recall, at least.

  “But things are really good?” he says, softly. “Despite the fucked-up nature of your relationship?”

  I don’t take that last part personally, because I know exactly what he means.

  “They are,” I tell him. “I’ve never met anyone like Thalia before. I really like her, and I really want it to work, I just wish…”

  “Right,” Seth says, nodding as he pushes a container into the fridge, then frowns. “Is this gonna keep the door from closing?”

  “Dunno, try it,” I say, and move the chair holding the fridge door open.

  It swings shut, and then Seth and I both jump.

  Levi’s standing right there.

  “Who’s Thalia?” he asks.

  “How long have you been behind that door?” I hiss.

  “Ten seconds. Maybe fifteen, I came to see if you needed help. You all right?”

  I don’t know why I’ve ever tried to keep a secret in my entire life.

  “I’m fine,” I say.

  “A relationship with a fucked-up nature sounds less than fine,” my eldest brother points out, folding his arms over his chest.

  “Caleb’s dating someone he shouldn’t be,” Seth explains.

  Levi shrugs, looking skeptical.

  “No, really shouldn’t be,” Seth says, keeping his voice low. “This isn’t my friend is gonna be mad —”

  “He punched me,” Levi points out.

  “ — This is Caleb’s life is gonna be ruined if people find out,” he finishes.

  Levi just turns and looks at me, silently. And looks. And waits.

  I lean my head against the cool metal door of the fridge, close my eyes.

  “She’s my student,” I finally admit.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Thalia

  Bastien looks down at his mocha, then up at me.

  “It would be frowned upon to put vodka in this, right?” he asks.

  “Did you bring vodka with you?”

  “It’s more of a theoretical question,” he says. “In theory, let’s say you’re at your parents’ house for Thanksgiving break, and they’ve barely spoken two words to each other since your dad kicked your ex-junkie brother out of the house while your mom was at work, and also your mom has a cast on her good arm but would literally rather drop a full knife rack on her foot than ask your father for help with something in the kitchen. Vodka in your coffee: yes or no? Also, you’re gay and they don’t know.”

  “Thanks, now I want vodka,” I say.

  “There’s a liquor store down the street,” Bastien volunteers. “I’ll wait here.”

  “This was all a ploy to get me to buy you vodka, wasn’t it?” I ask, taking a sip of my non-alcoholic coffee.

  “I don’t need a ploy,” he laughs. “I’d just ask you to buy me liquor. Actually, speaking of which, will you buy me liquor?”

  “It’s illegal,” I tease, and Bastien rolls his eyes.

  “You’re fucking your math professor, you can —”

  I nearly spit out my coffee and kick him under the table.

  “Ow,” he says while I cough.

  “Don’t,” I hiss, still coughing.

  “I’m just saying, on the spectrum of no bigs to big deal, buying your pretty-close-to-legal little brother some booze ranks way below some of your other activities.”

  Bastien is utterly and completely delighted that I’m having an affair with my professor. He might be even more delighted than I am, and I’m pretty delighted. He claims it’s because he likes seeing me happy, but I’m not buying it.

  Well, I’m sort of buying it. I think he likes seeing me happy, but I think he’s even more relieved that at last, I’m doing something wrong and he gets to know about it.

  He’s also enjoyed the (perfectly innocent) pictures that Caleb’s been texting me, and I can’t blame him. Caleb’s hot and he has hot brothers.

  “Fine, I’ll buy you booze,” I say.

  “You’re my favorite sister,” he says, grinning.

  We both take a long sip of our respective coffees, then look out the plate glass window we’re sitting by. This coffee shop is across the street from a big shopping center, which makes for pretty good people watching.

  Particularly today. There’s definitely a certain level of schadenfreude involved in watching people shop on Black Friday while peacefully sipping a drink across the street.

  “You weren’t actually going to try and buy something, were you?” I ask him, my chin in my hand as I watch two people shout at each other in their cars, both in the wrong lane.

  Bastien’s just staring out the window, his coffee in one hand, resting on the table, and he doesn’t say anything.

  “I figured you just said that to Mom and Dad as a reason to leave the house because if you said ‘we just really want to not be here right now,’ they’d get all weird about it,” I go on.

  He still doesn’t answer. I follow his gaze, but I can’t tell what he’s looking at, other than a general shopping madness.

  “Bossy,” I say, and he finally turns to me.

  The look on his face stops me cold.

  “I think I found Javi,” he says, voice low, eyes locked on mine.

  Then he swallows.

  “That’s the real reason I wanted to get out of the house — I mean, Mom and Dad are also unbearable, but —”

  “Is he dead?”

  The question comes out flat and emotionless, my lips and fingers already going cold, my heart a knot getting pulled tighter with every second.

  Bastien just shakes his head. He looks away. He looks at me again, and suddenly he doesn’t look like my college student brother who plays soccer and volleyball and rock climbs and is constantly apologizing to girls for being gay.

  He looks like my kid brother, young and scared and lost.

  “No,” he says. “I mean, I don’t know. That was misleading. I didn’t find him, I found where he was a month ago.”

  “A month?” I echo, the knot still tightening.

  I don’t want Javier dead. I want to say that first, that I want my big brother back. I want back the guy who taught me to write in cursive long before I learned in school, the guy who drilled me endlessly at kicking soccer goals, the guy who beat up the boy who pulled my hair in fourth grade.

  But I saw Javier after he came back, and before he went to rehab, and he may as well have been a ghost. He barely talked, couldn’t joke, couldn’t laugh. The only time he ever seemed alive was when he’d wake up screaming.

  In o
ther words, I think Javier might already be gone.

  And the truth is that I don’t know which is worse. He’s on the streets and he’s addicted to opiates and winter is coming, and I’m one hundred percent positive that when he sleeps, he still wakes up screaming.

  “I’ve been calling around to shelters and churches and groups that work with the homeless,” he says, softly. “A volunteer with the Richmond needle exchange program said she helped someone matching his description at the end of October, right after Halloween. She gave him a bunch of syringes, some medical supplies, and a couple doses of Narcan. Said he turned down an HIV test.”

  I nod. I swallow hard, and I keep nodding and I stare out the window at the zillions of cars fighting to get their cheap TVs and underpriced pants, and I have a thousand thoughts all at once.

  I think, he’s still using and at least he’s using a needle exchange and at least he has Narcan in case he overdoses and I hate the first, hate that he needs the last two.

  I think he was exchanging needles while I was having fun with Caleb.

  I think I can’t believe I’ve been so happy while Javi’s been out there, still using, still on the streets…

  “When did you find out?” I finally ask, still staring blankly out the window.

  “A week ago,” he says.

  “I should have been calling too.”

  “Ollie.”

  “I’ve done nothing.”

  “Ollie, knock it off,” Bastien says gently. “Don’t start guilt-tripping yourself.”

  “But I should have been —”

  “I mean it. I finally talked to someone who’d seen him and what does it help? Jack shit.”

  “We know he’s still alive and still in Richmond,” I point out.

  “We know he was three weeks ago.”

  I look at my hand on the table, my nails shiny and dark blue because I painted them yesterday, listening to my parents ignore each other. It’s good, if minor, stress relief.

  “Do Mom and Dad know?”