The Hookup Equation: A Loveless Brothers Novel

by Noir, Roxie

  I’m staring down at some women in evening gowns and thinking about Thalia when the door opens and her father walks into the room. He stops immediately inside the door, then scans the room like he’s taking note of everything that’s wrong with it.

  Finally, he seems to notice me sitting there, and he walks over. He sits in a chair opposite me, his hands on his thighs, back ramrod straight. I put the magazine back down on the coffee table, sit up a little straighter myself.

  “Captain Lopez,” I say, and nod.

  “Caleb,” he says, and nods curtly back. The minor inequality of our names grates on me — we’re both adults, I’m not his subordinate — but I have every reason under the sun to let it go, so I do.

  “How is Javier?” I ask, the natural next question.

  “Alive,” he says again, then seems to catch himself. “My wife is in with him right now, trying to talk him into letting us put him through rehab again.”

  His jaw flexes, like he doesn’t approve of this plan but has no alternative.

  “I see,” I say.

  “How long have you been dating my daughter?” he asks, changing direction on a dime. “As I recall, you also drove her to see her mother in September. Quite a drive.”

  “A few months,” I say, ignoring the second part of his statement.

  “She hasn’t said anything to us about having a boyfriend,” he says, his tone perfectly neutral but somehow aggressive at the same time, like he’d like to start an argument with me in this hospital waiting room.

  I am perversely tempted to say well, sir, that’s because she’s one of the many women who I’m casually fucking right now, even though it’s completely untrue. There’s just a part of me that wants to see this man’s reaction to that statement.

  “No?” I ask, perfectly neutral.

  “No,” he says. “Not a word.”

  “I guess that’s her choice, isn’t it?”

  That doesn’t get a response. Instead, he crosses one ankle over the opposite knee and puts an elbow on the armrest.

  “And what is it you do?”

  Shit. It did occur to me that this would come up, but then Thalia’s phone rang again and it was Bastien with another update, and I forgot to tell her we should figure out a lie.

  “I’m a graduate student,” I say, since the lie that’s closest to true is usually the best. “Mathematics.”

  “What do you plan on doing with that?” he asks.

  “I’ll be going on the academic job market soon,” I say.

  “Not too many opportunities there,” he says. “You’d make a much better living going into cyber security or working with the dee-oh-dee. That’s the Department of Defense.”

  “I’ll see what I can find and consider my options,” I tell him, just as the door to the waiting room opens again, and Thalia’s mother steps through.

  I’ve never actually met her before, but this woman looks so much like Thalia that it can’t be anyone else. Raul turns and looks at her, and as she walks over we both stand.

  “This is Caleb, Thalia’s new boyfriend,” her father says, and I hold out my hand.

  “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you, Mrs. Lopez,” I say. “I’m sorry it had to be like this.”

  “It’s Paloma, and thank you,” she says, her grip surprisingly strong. “Thank you for bringing her. She and Bastien are in there right now, trying to talk some sense into him.”

  Her eyes are bloodshot, puffy, her cheeks splotchy, but she half-smiles at me.

  “He’s a graduate student who’ll be going on the academic job market soon,” Captain Lopez says to his wife.

  Her face changes the instant she turns to look at him, her mouth going into a thin line.

  “We’re paying for rehab,” she tells her husband. “We’ll pay for it this time, and we’ll pay for it the next time, and with God as my witness we’ll pay for it until he’s clean if it takes our entire life savings and both our retirement accounts.”

  “You’re going to bankrupt us coddling him into getting clean?” Thalia’s father says.

  “It’s better than turning him out onto the streets to —”

  “Excuse me,” I say, step around them, and leave the room.

  * * *

  The day is complete pandemonium before it’s ten in the morning. I’m sitting on a bench, outside the hospital’s back door, watching a man in a hospital gown chain smoke when Thalia texts me that she’s done talking to Javier, where’d I go?

  The hospital wants him discharged. They wanted him discharged hours ago, because his life is no longer in danger and they need the bed back, but Paloma had begged them and they relented.

  I get Thalia’s laptop out of my car, then head back upstairs with her and Bastien. Paloma is with Javier, somewhere. Captain Lopez has gone to the cafeteria to drink endless cups of coffee and presumably stare at a wall.

  Our mission is simple: find a place that can take Javier today, now, before he has a chance to change his mind, and before he has a chance to start detoxing in earnest. Thalia finds locations and phone numbers; Bastien and I do the calling.

  Thus begins my crash course in drug rehabilitation centers. Some are simple, affordable, relatively bare-bones. Some sound like resort spas. One offers something called crystal alignment therapy. One offers horseback riding therapy; neither has any openings for weeks.

  Together, we work through the listen. Bastien finds a place with an opening, up in Northern Virginia, close to D.C., then I find a place in Maryland, near Ocean City. The list of options grows slowly. There are city rehabs and country rehabs, even a fishing rehab. One’s on a working dairy farm. One is also a daschund rescue. Several are very religious.

  But in the end, we choose the place that specializes in addicts who also have PTSD. Thalia is adamant, and neither of us argue. It’s in the middle of nowhere, a few miles outside Lynchburg, and the only reason it has an opening at all is because someone didn’t show up yesterday.

  Bastien calls to make the arrangements, and as he paces back and forth, trying to answer questions that I don’t think he knows the answers to, Thalia leans over and puts her head on my shoulder.

  “Thank you,” she whispers, and I put my arm around her, then kiss the top of her head.

  * * *

  We say goodbye standing next to her parents’ minivan after we put her stuff into it. She’s going with them to take Javier to rehab, then back to Norfolk for winter break.

  After we put her suitcase into the back, she looks at it, then rubs her eyes with her hands, and turns to sit on the tailgate and I follow suit.

  “Did I apologize yet?” she asks, leaning her head on my shoulder.

  “You did, and I told you to cut it out,” I remind her.

  “Did I say thank you?” she asks.

  “Yes,” I confirm, resting my cheek against the top of her head, my arm around her, looking out at the other cars in the parking lot, the gray sky, the spindly, leafless trees.

  “I wish we were on a date right now,” she says, kicking her feet out in front of her. “Whatever you had planned, I have a feeling it wasn’t a questionable hospital in a bad part of Richmond.”

  “Should it not have been?” I ask, and she laughs. “Oops.”

  “My parents didn’t get weird, did they?” she asks. “I didn’t realize until it was too late that I’d accidentally left you alone with them, which probably wasn’t a great move.”

  “I am a capable adult who can hold his own among other adults,” I remind her. “I know how to act.”

  “Calling my dad sir was a very nice touch,” she admits.

  “But I also panicked a little and told them I’m a grad student,” I say.

  “I’ll take it,” Thalia says, and puts her hand on my thigh. I’ve got my right arm around her shoulders, so I put my left hand over hers.

  Then she rotates her temple against my shoulder and looks up at me.

  “I also didn’t get to give you my Christmas present,” she says,
and then wiggles her eyebrows.

  God help me, it works. I barely slept last night and then spent the morning driving and calling rehab centers, but that eyebrow wiggle still works on me.

  “Is it the return of Sexy Freud?” I tease. “Tell me you didn’t get rid of it.”

  “I mostly didn’t,” she says. “Though the bra was never mine to begin with, and I should probably go ahead and confess that it was mostly socks anyway.”

  I stare at a young, leafless tree, quietly replaying select elements of that night in my head. I don’t remember a single sock.

  “Your bra was socks?” I finally ask, forcing myself to think of something else.

  “Yeah, I stuffed it,” she says, sounding surprised. “The socks were clean, but that was definitely not all boob.”

  “Oh,” I say, and Thalia starts laughing.

  “You never noticed that my boobs are, like, half the size that they looked in that bra?” she asks. “I couldn’t even get the vest buttoned over the socks.”

  “I noticed that,” I say. “But I can’t say I do a lot of critical thinking when I look at your breasts.”

  She just laughs.

  “Mainly, I’m thinking about how great it is to see them again,” I admit. “How much I like looking at them. How fun it is to touch them. There’s very little analysis.”

  “I should have kept my secret,” she says.

  “I would literally never have known.”

  “That wasn’t your Christmas present, though,” she says. “Can I give it to you when I get back?”

  “What is it?”

  “You’ll find out when I give it to you, won’t you?”

  “Difficult,” I tease.

  “Nosy,” she teases back, and I give her a long-but-chaste kiss.

  When it ends, she takes a deep breath, then hops off the tailgate of the minivan and faces me.

  “I should go,” she says, softly. “See you in three weeks.”

  I’ve never lamented a long winter break before.

  “Three weeks,” I agree. “It’s not that long.”

  “I think it might feel that way,” she says, steps forward, and kisses me. She kisses me sweetly, gently. It’s a long, lingering kiss, and when it’s over, I can still feel it in my bones.

  When it ends I give her one brief, final kiss on the forehead, and then it’s over.

  “I’ll miss you,” she says, giving my land one last squeeze.

  I nearly say I love you, but instead I say, “I’ll miss you too,” and she turns and walks back toward the hospital and I drive back to Marysburg, alone.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Caleb

  I pick up another cookie from the plate and pop it into my mouth as I walk through the kitchen.

  “The usual,” Thalia’s saying. “Which over here is a big Christmas Eve dinner and then midnight mass. Per tradition, I nearly fell asleep in the pew and Bastien had to keep elbowing me to keep me awake.”

  “Midnight’s not that late,” I say, crumbly bits of cookie shooting out of my mouth. I try to catch some in my hand, but I don’t. Oops.

  “It was dark and warm and mass is very soothing sometimes,” she says. “What are you eating?”

  I swallow quickly.

  “A cookie,” I say. “My mom baked. You’ll still be interested if I weigh an extra fifty pounds when I get back to campus, right?”

  “We’ll see,” she says, laughing. “Did Daniel actually faint?”

  “No, but he might still kill me,” I say, finding a quiet corner of the kitchen and leaning against the wall. “It remains a distinct possibility.”

  Seth and I teamed up and got Rusty a skateboard for Christmas. It’s electric blue and bright purple, and has a picture of a badass unicorn on the bottom. She loves it. Daniel, her father, hates it, even though we also got her knee pads, elbow pads, and a helmet.

  We’re very responsible uncles. Really.

  “She’ll be fine,” Thalia says, as if she knows anything about skateboarding. “By the way, my family says hi.”

  “Hi,” I say, and she snorts.

  “They also want to know when you’re graduating, what your prospects are, what your dissertation is on, what religion you are, whether you’d convert to Catholicism, when the last time you went to church was, whether you’re also waiting for marriage, where your family is from originally, how long they’ve been in Sprucevale, whether anyone in your direct male line has served in the military, and if it’s not too much trouble, they’d appreciate blood, saliva, and hair samples.”

  I glance over at the cookies and contemplate taking one more. On one hand, I’ve already eaten too many, but on the other hand, my mom’s lemon-iced spice cookies are amazing.

  “Can you repeat the first one?” I ask.

  “The good news is that this means my mom likes you,” Thalia says. “The bad news is that she has a couple of misconceptions about our relationship.”

  “Oh?”

  “You know, one or two,” Thalia says. “Probably starting with the idea that most of our time together consists of going on dates to the movies and leaving an empty seat between us for the Holy Spirit —"

  “Ooh!” a voice says at the kitchen door. “Is that Thalia?”

  Charlie’s standing there, Thomas in a carrier on her chest, utterly asleep and oblivious to the world in a way that only small babies can be.

  “I’ve been discovered,” I say sotto voce to Thalia.

  “Hi!” calls Charlie, cheerfully coming over and grabbing a cookie on the way.

  “Which one is that?” Thalia asks.

  “Put it on speaker,” Charlie says, grinning practically from ear to ear. “Come on. He won’t quit talking about you!” she calls, standing on her tiptoes next to me and leaning in.

  “Do you mind if I put it on speaker?” I ask Thalia, giving Charlie a dirty look.

  She and Daniel, her now-husband, have been best friends since I was about eight years old, so she’s the closest thing I’ve got to an older sister. Right now, that means she’s been hassling me about my new girlfriend nonstop, along with the rest of my family.

  Everyone knows that she exists and her name is Thalia.

  Only a select few — Levi and Seth, and probably June since she’s engaged to Levi — know she was my student, or even that she’s an undergrad.

  “Go for it,” Thalia says, and I pull my phone away from my face.

  “Behave yourself,” I mutter to Charlie, before I hit the button.

  “Hiiiiiii!” she says, grinning like a maniac. “He seriously won’t shut up about you. Oh, now he’s giving me a look like I wasn’t supposed to say that so he could play it cool?”

  On the other end, Thalia is just laughing.

  “Anyway, how was your Christmas? If you celebrate. If not, how was your Friday?”

  “It was nice,” Thalia starts. “It was just my family —”

  “Is that the new girlfriend?” Eli asks, suddenly darkening the kitchen door. “How come Charlie gets to talk to her first?”

  “Because I found her first,” Charlie says with a mouthful of cookie, spraying a few crumbs on Thomas’s head, then brushing them off. He doesn’t move.

  “Hi! Who’s that?” asks Thalia, who sounds like she’s struggling to keep up.

  “Pick a name, it doesn’t matter,” I say. “Now that there’s two people here it’s gonna be like —”

  “I heard we were taking to the girlfriend?” Seth asks from the doorway.

  “I’m sorry,” I tell Thalia, one second before Eli grabs the phone from my hand, then spins and makes off with it.

  “Hey!” I shout, but he’s gone.

  I’ve tried to get things back from my brothers before. It’s never worked.

  “Okay, I’m just gonna introduce you around to everyone,” he says. “I’m Eli, Caleb’s probably said a lot of really good stuff about me...”

  I sigh, and Charlie pats my arm.

  “Have another cookie,” she says
, grabbing one for herself. “And look at the bright side: if she’s still answering your calls tomorrow, it must be true love.”

  * * *

  Winter break is three weeks long.

  I last one and a half.

  The first I’m in Sprucevale, with my family, before Christmas and after Christmas. I talk to Thalia every day and we text constantly, plus hanging out with my brothers and Rusty and Thomas more than keeps me occupied.

  The next week, I’m back in Marysburg. I keep myself busy: working on papers for submission, making lesson plans, going out with friends, but it’s not quite the same. There’s nothing like the madness of Christmas and there’s particularly nothing like the madness of my family at Christmas, and that’s when it settles in that I miss Thalia.

  It also settles in that there’s no earthly reason for me not to see her. I’ve got a car. My job becomes very freeform during winter break.

  And Virginia Beach, which is right next to Norfolk, has lots of very nice hotels with great off-season rates, so I book two nights at one of them and Thalia tells her parents she’s visiting a friend.

  It’s glorious. It’s glorious to be with her again, naked and gasping on the white hotel sheets while I’ve got my face buried between her legs, but it’s glorious that no one here knows who we are.

  We go out for every meal, just because we like being together in public. She takes me to the Back Bay Wildlife Refuge for the day, even though it’s cold and windy because it’s the beach in January, and we hike around holding hands because we’re not going to get caught.

  Then we go back to the hotel, and we have more sex. Afterwards, still tangled in the sheets, I show her the latest emails I’ve gotten from secretknower@gmail.com that call me a predatory husk of a man and a shameless power-loving degenerate and an unscrupulous dirtbag, and Thalia tells me that the sender is a shallow-brained moron who doesn’t know their genitals from a bowl of cereal. Then she calls me an unscrupulous dirtbag, laughing.

  Everything feels better when she’s around. We talk about who the sender is but don’t get anywhere — I’m nearly certain it’s not Seth or Levi, she’s pretty positive it’s not Bastien. She mentions that her roommates have also figured it out, but she’s adamant that they’d take their problems up with her, not send me weird emails.