“Oh, is this the part where you skate right over the fact that you didn’t actually read my paper, and instead tell me I’ve got ‘spunk,’ that I’m exactly what Beaumont needs?”
“No. That’s me telling you. Independent of Beaumont.” He says this firmly, with more conviction than he’s said anything else so far.
“Well. I know your type, and flattery isn’t going to work, either.”
“My type?”
I feel it, right here, that I’m losing a little control over the conversation, but I’m stuck with it, so I barrel on. “Oh, sure. You come in here, with your”—I pause here, to gesture vaguely in the direction of his body—“your suit. And your face, and…” I swallow the rest of it. I want him out of here. I’m afraid someone will come in, Dr. Singh, or any one of the faculty or graduate students who would probably wet their pants at meeting a Beaumont executive who seems to be handing out jobs. “Listen, it’s very kind of you to come all this way. But I did read those emails, so I know something about what you’re offering. I’m just really, really not interested. And I do, actually, have an appointment.”
He takes a deep breath and nods. His skin is golden-brown, a light tan, but I think I see flags of color on his cheeks. This is his fault, coming in here sleek but unprepared, but suddenly I feel a little guilty for being so dismissive. Before I can say anything, though, he speaks again. “I understand. I’m…” he trails off, long enough to run a hand through his hair, before continuing, “…sorry to have wasted your time.”
He steps forward a little, holding out his hand. I catch a little scent of something—pine, maybe. Whatever it is, it’s not what I’m expecting. With the suit he’s wearing, I’d expected some upmarket version of that heinous body spray I sometimes get a whiff of when one of the undergrads is trying to compensate for not-very-clean-laundry. Ben, though, he smells—clean. Natural.
Male.
I take his hand and shake it, forgetting the glove I still have on. He looks down and chuckles a little at the contact, and I try not to be ashamed of the little shiver that chases down my spine at the sound of that.
“It was very nice to meet you, Ms. Averin,” he says, and then he turns and leaves the room, as quietly as he’d come in.
For a minute, I stare after him, a little confused, thrown off. I’ve been recruited before, especially back when I was finishing up my thesis, but never quite that way, never by someone that looked like him. One thing about it was the same, though—that quick-shot feeling of fear that would go through me at the very idea of having to pick up and leave here, start all over again. I can’t do that anymore. I’ve had my fill of it.
I strip off my gloves and shrug out of my lab coat, cast my eyes up at the clock. There’s no time for me to be distracted by Ben Tucker or by my disproportionate reaction to his offer. If there’s any day when I don’t need to feel threatened by an upheaval, it’s today.
Today, I’ve got millionaire dreams to make come true.
* * * *
“It’s like a four,” Zoe says, peering out the back window to the small, overgrown yard, “on a scale of shithole to ten.”
It’s Saturday morning, and I’ve been a homeowner now for less than a full twenty-four hours. I’d spent most of yesterday afternoon at the closing, signing a stack of documents that Satan obviously prepared, and then had made my way over, alone, to take it all in and drop off a few boxes—but also, I guess, to get prepared for this, the morning I was showing my two best friends my new place for the first time.
When I’d first started looking for a place, Zoe and Greer had gone with me to dozens of open houses, had helped me scour real estate websites for prospects. They each had their own opinions about where I belonged—condo, Zoe had said, lobbying especially hard for her own posh downtown building, while Greer said she pictured me somewhere with a big yard, a place to spread out a little.
Of course I valued their opinions. For the last few years, since the night we’d all literally, hilariously, run into each other outside of the entrance to my apartment—Greer walking home from the pet store with a plastic bag filled with water and a single goldfish, Zoe yelling into her phone outside of the yoga studio next door to Betty’s, and me, trying to wave a bat outside of the doorway with an old hairbrush—Greer and Zoe had been my confidantes, my cheerleaders, my companions. They were family. But buying this house was so important, so personal to me that I was afraid I’d lose my own voice somewhere in the shuffle, and more than that, I’d known almost since I first moved to Barden and drove through its most historic district that I wanted to live in this neighborhood, on this medium-sized city’s southern edge, someday. I think I was stalling, really, until I saw one of the Queen Anne style row houses come available, and when one did, I’d gone on my own to the first showing, fully intending to call them, to have them see it another time, once I’d checked it out.
But the house was in rough shape—lots to be done, lots of people to be hired, lots of planning and patience required. I was afraid they’d talk me out of it, and so I’d made an offer that first day, had held off, despite their pleading protests, on showing it to them before today—moving day, when the truck was outside, unloading the boxes that had been picked up from my old apartment this morning.
So if my friends are a little skeptical, it may be because I’ve made them that way. And also because this house—it probably is a four.
Greer tsks, nudging Zoe in the back. “Kit, it’s beautiful, really. And don’t listen to Zoe. Her mother called this morning and you know what that means.”
Zoe waves a hand dismissively. “I’m fine. It’s just that my garlic necklace doesn’t work through the phone. Anyways, Kit-Kat, I’m totally kidding. This is a great house.”
I smile at their gentle approval, but I need, today, to press for more. There’s two dudes carrying my mattress upstairs, after all. I am in this thing. “You really think so?”
It’s a little tough, standing in this kitchen, trying to recapture the calm, joyful feeling I’d had when I’d first seen the house. Then, I’d taken in the flaws, understood the need for many renovations—but I’d somehow known. I’d felt a certainty unlike anything else, except for maybe the first time I’d solved a thermodynamics equation. Now, though, I only see the mismatched cabinets, some painted so many times the doors won’t shut, the peeling laminate countertop, the floor covered in stick-on tiles. It’s like the lab, but worse.
Zoe wraps her arms around me, gives me a smacking kiss on my head before pulling away and heading into the dining room, where Greer and I follow. “I really think so. It’s perfect for you. You can make it exactly what you want.”
“I can see it now,” Greer says, turning in a slow circle around the room. “The light coming in through all these windows, the fireplace in the front room, all this woodwork cleaned up and repainted. You could put this place in a magazine once it’s all done.”
That idea—it does not appeal, not in any way. This is going to be my safe place, for me and the people I love. Watching Zoe and Greer move through these rooms, pausing over the big, gorgeous bay window at the front of the house, I feel suddenly choked up. I’ve really done it, I think. I’ve got a home.
I lived in sixteen different apartments from the time I was born to when I left home at eighteen. They were all, every one, varying degrees of awful. The first one I remember had no heat, and some nights my older brother, Alex, would light a small campfire grill he’d found in a dumpster and we’d huddle around it, falling asleep leaning against each other. Six of them had communal showers; when I’d go down the hall, clutching a bar of soap and a towel to my chest, Alex would walk behind me, standing outside the door until I’d finished, not letting anyone in. For my entire