The Hookup Equation: A Loveless Brothers Novel

by Noir, Roxie

  “Second oldest,” Caleb corrects.

  “Damn. Married to Eli, the second oldest, lives in the house on the lake, manages operations at the Folk Art museum.”

  “You’re on fire,” Caleb says, grinning, looking at his phone and swiping some more. “Okay, who’s this?”

  He holds out a picture of a man who’s handsome and smiling, but who doesn’t look related to him. For a moment, I’m stumped.

  Then I snap my fingers.

  “June’s brother,” I say. “Levi’s friend. Lawyer, former Marine…”

  “And his name is…?”

  I squeeze my eyes shut in concentration.

  “Rhymes with… guileless, sort of?”

  “Guileless?” I repeat, baffled.

  Then, it hits me.

  “Silas?” I say.

  “Correct!” Caleb says.

  We’re sitting on Seth’s couch in his living room, both drinking coffee while Caleb quizzes me on the people I’ll probably meet this afternoon.

  “That doesn’t rhyme at all,” Seth’s voice says from the staircase, and half a second later, he appears.

  “Seth,” I say to Caleb, pointing. “Fourth oldest, owns the brewery with Daniel.”

  “Don’t forget coolest, handsomest, and smartest,” Seth says, walking in front of us and to the kitchen.

  “He’s not that cool,” Caleb says, flipping through pictures again as he sips his coffee. “Or that smart,” he mutters, mostly to himself.

  “Did you make flashcards?” Seth calls.

  “Not technically,” Caleb calls back.

  “Dork,” Seth says.

  “Dweeb,” says Caleb.

  Seth comes out of the kitchen with his own steaming mug, looks from me to Caleb and back, then takes a seat in the leather armchair opposite us as Caleb holds his phone out toward me again.

  “Daniel,” I say. “Married to Charlie, owns the brewery with Seth, has a nine-year-old named Rusty and a baby named Thomas. Will give you a hard time if you curse in front of his kids.”

  “He’s relaxed about that a little,” Seth offers. “I think Rusty’s finally learned about context and doesn’t call the lunch line at school a total clusterfuck any more.”

  “Charlie’s also a calming influence,” Caleb says, flipping through pictures again. “I think that’s pretty much everyone.”

  “And if you get a name wrong, don’t panic,” Seth offers. “Mom still doesn’t get my name right on the first try half the time, and she gave birth to me.”

  “I’m Levi or Daniel a lot,” Caleb says. “Even though I’m way better looking.”

  “I get Javier sometimes, and we’re not even the same gender,” I offer.

  “Last week Mom called me Thomas, and he’s been dead for almost twenty years,” Seth says. “Unless she meant the baby, I guess.”

  Caleb and I exchange a quick, half-second glance, and then it’s over. I wonder if he’ll ever tell his brothers. I wonder if he should.

  “You and Eli do look a lot like Dad,” Caleb says.

  “So I hear,” Seth says, then finishes his mug, stands, stretches. “Anyone else need more coffee? I’m gonna make another pot.”

  * * *

  “You’re not nervous, are you?” he asks, taking my hand as we walk up the gravel driveway to the big, old farmhouse.

  We’re back in the woods, probably a quarter mile from the road, the naked trees waving overhead in the breeze. It’s cold but clear, the air so crisp I swear it smells like leaves and granite.

  “Of course I’m nervous,” I say. “I’m about to meet your entire family for the first time and I just cost you your job.”

  “No, I cost me my —"

  “You know what I mean,” I say, my other hand tugging at the scarf around my neck. It’s the same one he lent me a few months ago, and even though I keep offering to give it back, he never takes it.

  “I do,” he says, slowly. “But I prefer to think of you as the girl so amazing that I didn’t mind giving up my job, and that’s definitely how I’ve been pitching this.”

  “Thanks,” I say, and I try to sound light, but I’m nervous. Of course I’m nervous. I’m sure it would be easy to see me as some wicked seductress who led to their youngest brother’s downfall, not to mention I’m younger than Caleb and way younger than his brothers.

  That said, I did do the math, and I’m technically closer in age to Levi than to Rusty, so hopefully they still let me sit at the grownups’ table.

  We head up the stairs to the front porch, but before Caleb opens the screen door, he turns to me, takes my shoulder in the hand that isn’t holding several baguettes.

  “I love you, and so will they,” he says, quietly, then gives me a quick, soft kiss.

  “Thanks,” I say again, trying to quell the beating of my heart.

  Then Caleb glances at the door, and for the first time, he looks a little apprehensive.

  “That said, their love can be kind of a lot, so steel yourself,” he says, and pulls the door open.

  “ — tell pine from oak just by looking at it,” someone is already shouting. “It all looks wooden.”

  “The heavier one is oak,” a voice calls from the next room.

  “Hey, Caleb,” says a woman’s voice as we step inside, and I look around. “Oh! Shit! Hey, Thalia!”

  “Hey, Charlie,” Caleb says, already laughing. “This is —”

  She’s already practically scooped me up in a hug, her wild curly hair all over the place.

  “We’re so glad you could make it!” she says, cutting Caleb off. “Seriously, it’s been nothing but ‘Thalia this’ and ’Thalia that,’ so thank God you’re finally here!”

  “It’s nice to meet you too,” I say when she releases me, slightly stunned.

  “Hey, Thalia,” calls a man who’s kneeling in front of the fireplace. “Can you tell pine from oak?”

  “One’s got needles,” I point out, and Charlie laughs.

  “I mean in log form,” says Eli, standing and brushing his hands off. “Hi, it’s nice to meet you in person.”

  He also gives me a hug. Apparently we’re all huggers here.

  “Here, I’ve got your name tag,” a woman says as he lets me go, and I turn to see Violet holding up a large sticker that says:

  HELLO

  My name is

  THALIA

  • Caleb’s girlfriend

  • Psych major

  • Navy brat

  “Wow,” I say, because for a moment, words truly fail me, but Violet just laughs.

  “I tried to include at least one conversation starter,” she says. “Oh, here’s Caleb’s.”

  “I’m literally the one person here who everyone knows,” he points out, accepting the sticker anyway.

  “Let me have my fun,” Violet says, and he dutifully puts the sticker on his chest.

  “This was fun?” he teases her.

  “You have no idea,” she says.

  * * *

  Caleb was right, and everyone is wonderful. For a little while I feel guilty about how nice they are, just welcoming me into their lives like they’ve been waiting this whole time, especially when my own family has been somewhat less than kind to Caleb.

  Okay, a lot less than kind.

  But still, I remember what Caleb told me when I was crying on the floor of his bedroom, when I called his family perfect and he laughed and told me everyone’s flaws, the ways they’d fucked up.

  Finally, meeting most of his family for the first time, I realize his point: flaws are just flaws, not the entirety of a person. They matter, but what really matters is learning to look past them.

  I meet Eli (whose name tag says older brother / married to Violet / chef), who tries to get me on his side in some argument he’s having with Levi about wood, and Violet (married to Eli / knows a lot about quilts), who laughs and pokes holes in his logic.

  There’s Levi (oldest brother / engaged to June / likes trees), and June (engaged to Levi / ask m
e anything about old-timey outlaws), who I met yesterday at dinner, and I talk to them for a while about the checkered history of firearms in national parks. It turns out that June has a deep and broad knowledge of everyone who’s been murdered in a national park, and we talk for a while.

  I meet Rusty (Daniel and Charlie’s daughter / knows skateboarding tricks), who very quickly tells me that technically, Charlie is her stepmom but since Charlie is her legal guardian, she and Violet decided to simplify the name tag. She also asks me if I know anything about an Olympic sport called skeleton.

  I do not. She tells me. It’s like the luge, but you go head first.

  I hold Thomas (Daniel and Charlie’s son / hates socks). I meet Clara (mom / astronomer / baker of pies), and we talk for a long time about grad school, about academia, and then finally about why we can send people to the moon but not make high heels that don’t suck.

  We have dinner, then pie, and by the time that I’m practically quizzing Daniel (middle brother / married to Charlie / Rusty and Thomas’s dad / co-owns the brewery) about yeast behavior at various temperatures during the fermentation process, I’ve completely forgotten that I was ever nervous to meet them in the first place.

  * * *

  After dessert I use the bathroom upstairs, and when I come out, Caleb is on the landing, alone.

  “I’m allowed to be in there,” I tell him, and he just laughs.

  “I didn’t come to bust you for using the wrong bathroom, I came to see how you were doing,” he says, keeping his voice low, glancing at the stairs. “Like I said, I know they can be a lot.”

  At the bottom of the stairs, someone — Silas? — is asking loudly about some kind of event permit, Thomas is starting to fuss, and I can hear Daniel very patiently explaining that something or other is dangerous. I don’t know what’s dangerous, but I’m pretty sure I know who he’s talking to.

  Caleb casts a suspicious glance at the downstairs, then nods his head and pulls me into one of the bedrooms.

  “Was this one yours?” I ask, looking around. Right now it’s just a guest room: bed, dresser, curtains, all perfectly nice but nothing that suggests who slept here.

  “They were all mine at some point,” he says. “I think we changed who slept where every six months or so. There were a lot of shifting alliances.”

  “Sounds tricky,” I say, still glancing around.

  “It wasn’t really,” Caleb says, laughing. “If nothing else, we’re all pretty straightforward so it was pretty much a matter of me telling Daniel that I was annoyed with him and I’d like to sleep in Levi’s room now, please, or Levi getting tired of sleeping with a middle-schooler and swapping me for Eli, or… you get the idea.”

  “I don’t. I’m the only girl, I always had my own room,” I say.

  “Aren’t you fancy?”

  “Yes.”

  “You doing okay?” he asks, pushing a strand of hair from my face.

  “With your family?”

  He nods.

  “I am,” I say, a little surprised at how easily the words come. “They’re really nice. And actually interesting.”

  “That’s one way to put it,” he says, and I laugh.

  “I like them,” I say. “I like you, and I like them. Deal with it.”

  “If you insist,” he says, bends down, and kisses me.

  I very, very briefly consider the guest bed that we’re standing next to, but it’s clearly the worst idea in the history of bad ideas.

  “Thanks for calling Seth from my bed and tracking me down,” he says when the kiss is over. “I was a little out of sorts.”

  The corner of his name tag sticks to me slightly, and I pull it from my shirt, anchor it back to him.

  “You like it?” he asks, looking down.

  HELLO

  my name is

  CALEB

  • Youngest brother

  • Thalia’s boyfriend

  • Good at math

  “I guess it’s only fair,” I point out. “Though I’m not really sure who it’s for.”

  “It’s for Violet and June, who made these and thought it was funny,” he says, smiling.

  “They were right.”

  “I kind of like having a label that says I’m your boyfriend,” he says, running his finger across the handwritten name tag one more time.

  “It does look good on you,” I tease. “Should we head back out there? I should head back to Marysburg soon, I’ve got class in the morning.”

  “Probably,” he says, but as I turn he catches my hand.

  “Hey, Thalia.”

  I just raise one eyebrow.

  “Love you,” he says.

  I twist his hand around in mine, bring his knuckles to my lips.

  “Love you too,” I say. “And for the record, I love them. Flaws and all.”

  “I wouldn’t say that until you know their flaws,” he murmurs.

  “I know yours and I love you anyway,” I point out, and he leans in again, rests his forehead against mine.

  “I have no idea what I’m going to do,” he admits, his voice low, quiet. “To be totally honest, I only know one thing.”

  The base of my neck tingles, and I close my eyes, lean into him.

  “What’s that?”

  “I’ll be doing it next to you,” he says. “And I’m pretty sure I can handle anything if you’re with me.”

  “Anything?”

  “Anything.”

  I put a hand around his neck, draw him in, kiss him. He tastes a little like cinnamon, smells a little bit of pine and just-fallen leaves and I wonder again, for the thousandth time, at my luck in finding him.

  Then the kiss ends. Caleb squeezes my hand, reaches for the door, pulls it open and the cacophony floods in.

  And it sounds just like home.

  Epilogue

  Thalia

  Six Months Later

  I ignore the sweat pouring down my back and crouch in front of the box, bending my legs and keeping my back straight. The corners firmly in my hands, I take a deep breath, plant my heels, and lift.

  “Ollie, for fuck’s sake,” a voice behind me says.

  “I got it,” I gasp out, fingers already slipping.

  “You don’t,” Javier says, hurrying around the other side of the box I’m attempting to lift. “What happened to I’ll get the smaller boxes?”

  He wraps his arms around it and takes it from me, lifting it like it weighs nothing.

  “I can get that one!” I protest, but Javier ignores me and walks down the ramp of the moving truck, then into the open front door of our apartment.

  “Do you think you’re Rosie the Riveter again?” Bastien asks, hopping up into the moving truck.

  “I’ve been taking a weightlifting class at the gym,” I protest, eyeing the rest of the boxes, because I think Javier just took the last one I had even half a chance of lifting.

  The rest all seem to be labeled BOOKS.

  Turns out that between Caleb and I, we have a whole lot of books. That’s actually one of the reasons we picked this apartment in Ochreville, the town that contains the Virginia Institute of Technology: the living room is lined with bookshelves.

  “Has that made you taller than five-foot-two or infused your body with testosterone?” Bastien asks, casually lifting a box and hoisting it onto his shoulder.

  “I’m five four,” I tell him, and finally grab a floor lamp that’s sitting next to a box. It’s very light, and I carry it into our new living room, then plant it on the floor and look around.

  Boxes. Boxes everywhere, interspersed with furniture that mostly came from Caleb’s old apartment, because it’s not like I fought to keep the coffee table that Harper, Victoria, Margaret and I found on a curb our sophomore year.

  “Which room is green?” asks a voice, followed moments later by Silas, bringing another box in.

  “Green is the study, purple is the bedroom, blue is the living room,” Levi says with the patience of someone who’s explained som
ething a thousand times. “It’s on the chart on the wall.”

  “You know, Thalia,” Silas calls, walking down the hall. “Some people just label their boxes with words.”

  “Every system has flaws,” I call after him and Levi.

  I didn’t even know Silas was coming until he showed up this morning at Levi’s house, where Caleb and I had spent the night. He claimed that he just wanted the free donuts and pizza, but as we were driving, Caleb told me his suspicions.

  It’s early August, and the two months since I’ve graduated have been a whirlwind. My lease with my roommates ended in June, so I moved in with Caleb for a little while. Dr. Castellano offered me a summer job continuing my research for her before I started graduate school this fall, and Caleb got a freelance gig writing problems for a mathematics textbook.

  Slowly but surely, things are working themselves out. I kept my scholarship and graduated Magna Cum Laude; Caleb has been tutoring and working on textbooks and generally figuring out what to do with his life, now that he can do anything.

  I was worried he’d hate it. I was worried that he’d resent me for losing his job, that he’d feel like he’d wasted years of his life in graduate school only spend one semester as a professor, but he’s been fine.

  Happy, even. Almost giddy. Once a week he comes home with some new harebrained scheme, and even though he never acts on any of them — an audio tour of the Appalachian Trail? An app that will instantly tell you if a number is prime or not? — he’s got a verve and energy just talking about them, about all the possibilities that he’s got now.

  “You’re not just standing around, are you?” he says, and speak of the devil, Caleb comes into the living room through the sliding glass door that leads to the back yard we share with the other two apartments in this building.

  “I’m strategizing,” I say, my hands on my hips.

  “Sure,” he says, grinning. “Looks exhausting.”

  “Well, every time I try to move a box someone else comes along and does it for me,” I point out.

  “Poor thing,” he teases.