The Hookup Equation: A Loveless Brothers Novel

by Noir, Roxie

  “You didn’t even ask me,” are the words I finally choose. “Did it ever occur to you to talk to me about it? To ask me what was really going on? Whether I needed your help?”

  I can hear the tears behind my voice, feel them heavy in my throat and in my skull behind my eyes, but they don’t come out. I’m shaking with the force of keeping them in, but for once, I do.

  My father answers with a silence so flat that for a moment I think the line has gone dead.

  “You’re my daughter,” he finally says. “And I’m not going to let your professor sully you like —”

  “Stop,” I say, and to my surprise, he does. “Did you even consider talking to me about it?”

  He doesn’t answer me, but he doesn’t need to because we both already know that the answer is no.

  “Or did you just decide that someone needed to be taught a lesson and you were the perfect person to make it happen?” I ask, and now my voice is shaking. “How many times are you going to confuse cruelty for love before you don’t have anyone left?”

  There’s a minuscule part of me that knows exactly why he thinks the only real form of love is tough love, that at least understands the theory behind what he was trying to do, how he was trying to protect me, but I’m not really interested in understanding right now.

  After all, it’s not like he was either.

  “I’m withdrawing from our relationship,” I tell him, slowly, each word coming to me as I say it. My voice quavers, dips, comes dangerously close to tears, but I don’t give in.

  He’s not going to hear me cry. I’m not going to give him that.

  “I don’t want to speak to you for a while,” I say, whispering, unsteady. “When I call home, I don’t want to speak to you. I don’t want you at my graduation. If you’d like to know how I’m doing, please ask Mom.”

  “You’re choosing some perverted older man over your own family?” he snaps, finally angry. “Hasn’t anyone ever told you that blood is thicker —”

  “You turned your own son out onto the streets when he needed your help!” I shout suddenly, violently, the sound of my own voice bouncing from the walls of the conference room a shock.

  I take a hard, deep breath but I’m not in time and the tears finally break through. I bite my lips together as I feel my self crumple inward, determined not to let him know.

  Keep it together, just for one more minute, please keep it together keep it together…

  “Don’t you dare tell me anything about blood,” I go on quiet, strangled. “I’m not choosing him over you, I’m choosing to no longer speak to someone who nearly got me expelled from college and doesn’t seem to consider me a full person with thoughts worth seeking out.”

  “What do you mean expelled —”

  “Bye, Dad,” I say, softly, and then hang up.

  Two seconds later, he calls. I send it to voicemail, then do it again and again, until finally, he stops calling.

  Then I sit in a fancy office chair, put my head on the table, and cry.

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Caleb

  “Put this on, you’re making me cold,” Seth says as I glance at my phone again. Nothing.

  I open my texts. She hasn’t read any of the five I’ve sent her in the last couple of hours, hasn’t answered any of my calls.

  Is she still in the hearing? I wonder, even though she can’t possibly be because it’s been hours, the sun now almost down.

  “Earth to Caleb?” he says, and this time I turn. He’s holding out a thick fleece blanket very patiently, his hair still wet from the shower, his feet bare beneath his pants.

  “Thanks,” I say, and take it, suddenly realizing that I’m standing on my back porch wearing nothing but a long-sleeved shirt, pants, and slippers, and it can’t be more than forty degrees out here.

  It must be over by now. It has to be. The letter must have worked or not, because although I know what’s happened to me — I packed up my office while a security guard watched; my VSU email has already stopped working — no one would say a single word about what’s going to happen to her.

  “You’re supposed to put it on,” Seth says, his patience clearly running thin. “That’s the thing about blankets, they reflect back warmth from whatever part you put them on. So if they’re just wadded up in your hands, all they’ll do is warm your hands, while your face falls off from frostbite.”

  “Sorry,” I say, and unfurl the blanket, then slowly put it over my shoulders, wrapping it around myself.

  He sighs, goes inside, comes back a moment later with a similar blanket wrapped around himself and his shoes on.

  “Does your back yard know what the fuck you’re going to do?” he asks, leaning against the wooden railing next to me.

  It’s midwinter, and the back yard looks shitty. The grass is dead. There’s a small garden, left by the previous tenant, and that’s dead. The two small trees and the oak on my property line are all leafless, spindly branches reaching into the darkening sky.

  “No,” I say.

  “Has your back yard spent even a second thinking about it?” he asks.

  “No,” I admit, and Seth sighs.

  I’ll never teach again. Not at the university level, not community college, not high school. I confessed, in writing, that I used my position to coerce a student into a sexual relationship, and every job I apply to for the rest of my life will find that out with a single phone call.

  I lean forward, crack the knuckles on one hand, my fingers freezing.

  “I just want it to work,” I say, softly.

  “Moron,” Seth says, matching my tone, looking out at my ugly back yard.

  “I was getting fired no matter what,” I remind him.

  “And if you hadn’t been?” he asks, gravelly, not making eye contact. “If they’d said one of you has to go, you’d have done the same thing, which is ridiculous and you’re ridiculous.”

  He’s right, and we both know it.

  “You’d have done the same if —”

  “Don’t,” he warns me.

  I sneak a sideways glance at him.

  “Still?”

  “Just don’t,” he says, sounding weary, so I don’t.

  I already dragged the poor man on a five-mile hike through forty-degree weather today, after I turned in the letter, because I didn’t think I could deal with people any more. At least not regular people, which Seth isn’t.

  After my dad died, it was twelve-year-old Seth who took care of us. Seth made sure that we all took showers, ate meals, did laundry. Seth made tea and built fires in the fireplace. He woke up in the middle of the night when I had nightmares about a car crash, talked me down.

  We all reacted differently. Levi got quiet, Eli got spiky, Daniel got angry. I think I was just sad, but Seth somehow became nurturing. Out of everyone, he’s the one who reached down deep and found something good within himself in those dark days, and I’m still grateful.

  “Sorry,” I say. “I should know —”

  There’s a knock on my front door, and I fall silent for a moment.

  Then I drop the blanket to the floor, pull open the back door so hard it slams against the wall, and practically run through my house.

  She’s standing outside the front door, bag slung over her shoulder, wearing heels and a skirt, hands curled into fists and jammed into her coat pockets.

  Thalia looks at me for a moment without saying anything, and my heart drops through the floor. She looks like hell: eyes glassy and red, ringed with black; face splotched bright pink.

  Without a word, she walks past me, into my house. I close the door behind her and she steps out of her shoes, then stands next to them.

  “What happened?” I ask, almost afraid to know the answer.

  “Nothing,” she says, quietly. “I get to keep my scholarship and stay in school. But you knew that.”

  I start grinning, the relief flooding over my head like a cold rain, releasing tension I didn’t know I was holding.

&n
bsp; “Thank God,” I say, and I step forward to take her in my arms.

  Thalia steps back, and I just kick her shoes.

  “Don’t,” she says, and now she’s got her hands on her face, in her hair, on her hips, and she looks away and she sounds edgy and I stop in my tracks.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t answer your calls,” I say, fighting to keep a smile off my face. “I thought it was best —"

  “Did you?” she suddenly says, cutting me off, her voice wobbly and tired. “You thought it was best, just like you thought it was best to tell the story of how you blackmailed me into having sex with you?”

  I feel like the moon must feel when it begins waning: the slow, unexpected march of darkness.

  “You were going to get expelled,” I point out, my mouth suddenly dry.

  “You don’t know that.”

  “There was a good chance,” I go on. “And if you hadn’t been expelled, you’d have at least lost your scholarship —”

  “So you felt it was a good idea to make sure that you’re remembered forever at the university as a professor who sexually assaults his students?” she says, her voice rising, eyes wide, face flushing. “You decided to just tell everyone that I was just your victim? Nothing but some innocent girl who wanted an A so badly that she was willing to fuck for it?”

  The anger spreads through me with a chill, like frost in my veins.

  “I just gave up everything for you,” I say, my voice an ugly snarl. “Tomorrow morning you’ll still be in class, still on scholarship, and I have no idea what I’m going to do.”

  “You didn’t even ask me,” she says, hard and flat.

  “I spent seven years in grad school and now I can never teach again,” I say, stepping forward again. This time Thalia doesn’t budge, just looks up at me, jaw clenched, lips pressed together.

  “You wouldn’t even answer my calls,” she says, her eyes shining, brighter red than before. “You wouldn’t talk to me. You took everything into your own hands — you took us into your own hands — and you didn’t ask me and you didn’t tell me and at no point did you ask about my thoughts or my wishes and Jesus, Caleb, I’m so fucking sick of men thinking that they know what’s best for me.”

  “What would you have said?” I say, and now I’m shouting too, taking a step back, pacing away in frustration and then back to her. “Would you have said oh, no, I’d prefer to be expelled from school?”

  “I don’t know what I would have said!” she shouts. “I’ll never know because you didn’t bother consulting me!”

  “Well, you’re welcome!” I shout, and now I’m pacing back and forth the width of the hallway, unable to keep still. I want to punch the wall and I want to open the door and rip it off its hinges, but I don’t do either because I’m a damn adult.

  “Did you think I was kidding?” she asks.

  “What are you talking about?”

  Thalia points furiously at the front door.

  “There,” she says. “When I stood right there after you told me about the emails and you promised to be my partner and not my protector, were you kidding? Were you just waiting for the next moment that you could be some kind of knight in shining armor and come and sweep this little lady off her feet?”

  Now she’s crying, tears running down her face, voice strangled and high-pitched and I keep pacing because if I don’t keep moving I don’t know what will happen.

  “I’m sorry that you hate not being expelled,” I snap. “I’m sorry that taking all the blame for the affair you’re just as responsible for as I am wasn’t enough, you also wanted pre-approval.”

  She stands perfectly still for a long moment, nothing moving but her eyes, glassy and bloodshot, as she watches me pace back and forth.

  “What I want,” she finally says, her voice quiet, shaky. “Is to be treated like I’m a person who gets to have input on her own damn life and not some sort of fancy pet.”

  “I promise I wouldn’t blow up my entire life for a chinchilla,” I snap. “Though maybe —”

  “Jesus,” Thalia hisses. She steps forward and jams one foot into her shoe and then the other, swaying as she does. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I came here.”

  She jerks the door open, the cold hitting us both in the face.

  “Sorry about your life,” she says, then steps through and slams the door behind her, the click of her steps fading quickly.

  I stare at the inside of the door, clenching and unclenching my fists. I think of a thousand angry comebacks and they crowd into my brain, elbowing each other out of the way.

  “Fuck you,” I finally say, the least clever of all, as I turn away from the door. “And fuck me for helping you and fuck — WHAT?”

  “Sorry,” Seth says, and instantly disappears back into the kitchen.

  I stand there. I seethe. I resist the urge to destroy all my own things.

  Then, finally, I grab my coat and my shoes and my keys and I jerk the door open myself, then go for a long, angry walk in the opposite direction of Thalia’s house.

  Chapter Fifty

  Thalia

  Fuck it, I mope.

  I spend that night in my bed, wearing pajamas, my suit crumpled in the corner, watching a pirated version of The Borgias. I’ve never pirated something before, but it turns out it’s actually pretty easy.

  Will the police come knocking on my door to arrest me? Maybe. After all, I’m a bad, bad girl who watches TV shows that she hasn’t paid for, sleeps with her professor, gets away with it, and then gets mad at him for helping her.

  Around midnight, Victoria knocks. She’s got a mug of tea and a giant cookie from the Market Street Cafe, and she asks if I’m okay. I lie and say yes, but I let her come in and watch an episode with me in my bed while we eat the cookie, which is the size of my face and delicious.

  She doesn’t press me for answers. I think she knows better. I don’t volunteer any, because I feel like a pile of garbage that someone should light on fire.

  I skip all my classes the next day. Why? After that asshole quit his job and torched his career so I could keep my scholarship? Because fuck class, that’s why. Once my roommates are gone, I come out of my room, still in my pajamas, and eat some of Margaret’s ramen because she deserves to have her ramen eaten.

  Around three, Harper knocks, then enters. She’s got a burrito with her, and she makes up a long story about how she accidentally got an extra burrito from Jose’s when they screwed up her order, but I don’t really believe her.

  She gives me the burrito — it’s my favorite, a breakfast burrito, which probably makes me a bad Mexican but who cares — and when she does, I cry, and she comes over and hugs me, and then I eat the burrito in my bed and we watch another episode.

  Harper maintains that no one in the fifteen hundreds was that clean or that sexy, and I maintain that I don’t care, I just want to watch sexy historical figures have stupid escapades because I’m afraid that if I think too much about my situation, I’ll come to some conclusions I don’t like, and I’m still mad.

  Saturday, I finish The Borgias mid-morning. I was already halfway through the first season when I started this binge, and it turns out there are less episodes that I thought there were.

  After about ten minutes staring at my empty laptop screen, I decide I’m going to be a person, so I grab some clean pajamas and come out of my room, don’t look at Margaret as I walk through the living room, and I take a shower.

  As I shower, I wonder what I’m going to tell my mom. Does she already know? Is she going to be angry? Hurt? Will she understand?

  Do I deserve understanding? Do I deserve anything?

  I cry in the shower.

  When I come out in my clean pajamas, at least feeling slightly less gross, Victoria and Harper are in the living room, plugging a laptop into the television.

  There are fuzzy blankets on the couch. There’s a bowl of ramen on the coffee table, next to another giant Market Street Cafe cookie and an open bag of potato chips.


  “Oh, hi,” says Harper, as though she wasn’t expecting to see me in my own apartment. “We were just about to eat this junk food and watch a historical drama called Reign about Mary, Queen of Scots that’s supposed to be ridiculously over-the-top. There’s also this extra bowl of Margaret’s ramen, do you want it? And to join us?”

  Bending over the laptop, Victoria’s trying not to laugh at Harper.

  “Yes,” I say, and sink into the couch, then put my head on Harper’s shoulder. “Thank you.”

  * * *

  We do that for nearly four hours. I’m sure they have ten thousand things to do besides watch dumb sexy teenagers in period costumes make bedroom eyes at each other, but they don’t act like it. Instead, we sit there and eat junk food and watch, entranced.

  Around episode three, I start talking. I watch overly attractive people whirl around a ballroom in big ball gowns and half-face masks, and little by little, I spill the whole story.

  The bar bathroom. The date. The classroom. The Madison Scholars banquet and the hospital; the office hours where we talked half about calculus and half about life; the walks home from the library.

  I admit to the organ concert, and if they’re even one percent surprised, they don’t show it. I admit to the affair, to finally losing my virginity, to sleeping with my professor again and again and again and not even being slightly sorry about it.

  And then, finally, I get to this week while Mary is sitting on the throne and the show cuts between shots of her face, looking toward a window, and her handsome lover riding a horse away from the castle.

  When I tell them about the letter, they both gasp in unison. By the time I’ve finished with the phone call to my father and the fight, I’m crying again but it’s a normal crying, not the ugly, breathless, snot-filled sobs of the last forty-eight hours.

  “I think I might just be an asshole,” I conclude, shoving a crumpled dining hall napkin against my eyes, trying to get them to stop leaking. “He’s right, right? He did a nice thing and I should be grateful but I just feel so bad about it.”