Not in Love

ELI

After the scene Hark had witnessed earlier today, it was no surprise that the first thing he asked when Eli let himself inside Hark’s Old Enfield home was: “What the fuck is up with the girl?”

“Woman,” Minami corrected him distractedly. She was on Hark’s couch, feet in Sul’s lap, frantically pressing buttons on the PlayStation controller. Eli checked the screen, wondering whom she was shooting dead.

Bafflingly, the game appeared to be about cake decorating.Original content from NôvelDrama.Org.

“Right. Sure.” Hark rolled his eyes. “What the fuck is up with the woman?”

Eli ducked into the kitchen, which was spotless in a way only never-been-used steel surfaces could manage. He helped himself to a bottle of Hark’s imported beer and returned to the living room. “Just checking: If my answer were to be ‘What woman?’ then…”

“I would lose all my respect for you.”

“I think I can handle that.” He sat next to Hark with a grin. This was their routine when they all happened to be in Austin—increasingly less common as Harkness expanded. Minami and Sul on one half of the sectional, being disgustingly in love, and Eli and Hark on the other, being…Disgustingly in love in your own manly, grunting way, Minami had once said. She was probably right.

“Her name is Dr. Rue Siebert,” Sul volunteered.

Eli lifted an eyebrow. “Dude, you have a budget of fifty words per day, and you use six of them to give me shit?”

Sul smiled, pleased with a job well done, and went back to massaging Minami’s feet like the whipped traitor he was.

“What’s up with Rue Siebert, Eli?” Hark asked, with the tone of someone who wanted an answer ten minutes ago. Eli saw no particular reason not to give him one.

“We matched online. An app. And met up last night.”

Minami paused her game so forcefully, her thumb might need X-rays. “To…?”

“Fuck.”

“Actually, I knew that. I just wanted to hear you say it.”

“Jesus, Eli. You rode her?” Hark asked, and Minami laughed.

“Good to see that after fifteen years in the US, Hark is still a living, breathing Irishism.”

“Shut your bake, Minami.”

Eli bit back a smile. “No one rode anyone, because she was having a rough night. But.”

I wanted to.

I’ve been thinking about her nonstop for the past twenty-four hours.

I’ve been distracted, irritable, and horny, and I wanted to text her first thing in the morning. I decided it was best to wait since her phone looked busted and she might need to get another, and fuck, I shouldn’t have hesitated.

Eli couldn’t remember ever overthinking an interaction with a woman this much. And he’d been engaged.

“But?”

“No buts, actually. She’s pissed because she thinks we’re trying to take over Kline.”

Minami gasped and clutched her throat. “Us? No way.”

This time Eli couldn’t hide his smile. Until Hark asked pointedly, “Is she going to be a distraction?”

“I don’t know.” Eli leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and stared at Hark with a hint of a challenge. “Do I ever get distracted, Hark?”

Hark’s gaze narrowed. Thick, fat tension rose between the two of them—and then everyone burst into laughter. Even Sul’s shoulders shook silently.

“I just remembered!” Minami clapped her hands. “That one time Eli fell asleep while riding his bike?”

“And the Semper deal?” Hark spoke as if Eli wasn’t there. “He got so sucked up in it that he forgot to pick up Maya from overnight camp—way to traumatize her, asshole.”

“The bike thing was at three a.m., after a forty-eight-hour experiment, and we all know that ninety percent of Maya’s trauma was already there.” He took another swig of his beer. Then, zeroing in on Minami, he drawled, “Also, if we want to talk about unfortunate driving mishaps, let’s discuss that Missouri fair where you got a DUI on the bumper car rink.”

“It was thrown out in court!”

“Or”—he pointed his finger at Hark—“that time someone sent the entire Harkness mailing list a message about pubic liability insurance.”

“Embarrassing,” Hark acknowledged, “but not driving related.”

“Or”—Eli circled to Sul—“the guy who forgot his vows in the middle of his wedding ceremony.”

“I would like to be excluded from this narrative,” Sul requested.

“Rein in your wife, then. If the marriage is even legal.”

“Oh, it is.” Minami beamed, tapping Sul’s cheek with her socked toe. Some might have felt self-conscious about this level of PDA in their ex’s house, but Minami had been reassured, over and over, that Hark didn’t mind. Only Eli knew how much of a lie that was.

Silence dropped, comfortable, familiar, the product of years of being together in the same room, tireless and stubborn, always after the same goal. “Today went well,” Hark said eventually. “Not like I’d imagined.”

“How so?” Eli asked.

He shrugged a single shoulder, which meant that he did know, but wasn’t ready to put it into words.

He would soon enough. He was the angriest out of all of them, and the one most likely to let his rage coalesce into something sharp and focused. Nine years ago, Eli had been drowning in student debt while epically failing at taking care of a tween, and Minami had been drowning in something else, something that made her struggle to get out of bed to brush her teeth in the morning. Hark had been the one to drag them out of their wallow, to go to the father he despised and ask—beg—for the firm’s starting capital. “This is how we get even,” he’d insisted, and he’d been right.

“We should name the firm Harkness,” Eli had suggested a week before signing the paperwork, sitting at a table lined with his sister’s homework sheets, wondering why she could solve college-level math but not spell spaghetti for her fucking life, wondering what the hell he should be doing about it.

“It’s a shit name,” Hark had grunted.

“It’s not. It’s just your father’s name,” Minami had said, not without compassion. “I think it has the sophisticated supervillain flair we’re going for. Plus, what’s the alternative? Killgore? Too on the nose.”

Eli had given her the finger. Nearly a decade later, and look at them: still giving each other the finger on a daily basis.

“Dr. Florence Kline,” Hark said now, like the words tasted bad in his mouth. “Have any of you talked to her yet? In private?”

“Sul did, for some minor logistical stuff. And the lawyers, of course,” Minami added.

“Not you or Eli?”

She shook her head. And then, after a beat, “She reached out to me via email.”

“And?”

“Just asked if we could talk. Alone. Outside of Kline.” She rolled her lips. “I bet she thinks I’m the weak link.”

“She clearly hasn’t seen you open a jar of pickles,” Eli muttered, and she smiled.

“Right? Kind of amusing, given that I’m the one most likely to push someone under a lawn mower.”

“Did you reply?” Hark asked.

“Nope. I’d rather drink battery acid, thank you very much. Why? Do you think I should?”

Hark glanced at Eli. “Any benefits you can think of in Minami having a one-on-one with her?”

Eli mulled it over. “Maybe in the future. For now, let Florence sweat it a bit.”

Minami nodded. “She’s properly freaked out, I can tell. Despite her bullshit speech today, she must be hiding something.”

“I, for one, really appreciate the collaborative environment she’s trying to foster,” Eli said dryly, which had Minami sniggering and Sul snorting.

“You know what it means, right?” Hark asked. “If she’s hiding shit, it’s not just from us, but also from the board. And she’s dead certain that we won’t find out.”

“That’s fine.” Eli drained what was left of his beer. “I don’t mind proving her wrong.” The biofuel tech was as good as theirs. That was all that mattered.

“Tomorrow I’ll meet with the core research and development team,” Hark said. “Reassure them that they’re not going to get caught in the cross fire.”

“Yeah. They’re not the ones who should be worried.” Eli stood to leave. “I gotta get to Tiny. I’ll see you—”

“Wait,” Minami interrupted, eyes on her phone. “About Rue Siebert.”

Eli halted.

It was a problem, knowing her name. It made conjuring her image that much easier—a shortcut his brain did not need. “We’re still talking about her, aren’t we?”

“Well, I googled her. Just to know what your type looks like these days.”

Eli sighed.

“Apparently she was a student athlete just like you, which is interesting. But even more interesting is this fluff article that came up, from the Austin Chronicle.” She held out her phone, and he read the title aloud.

“ ‘Industry Mentor Offers Exciting New Opportunities for Women in STEM Who—’ Is this about Florence?”

“Yup. She has become a champion of the underclass, clearly.” Minami snorted. “Rue Siebert and Tisha Fuli were hired by her a year ago. Your girlfriend has no social media that I could find, so I looked up Tisha—who, by the way, is a rock star. Summa cum laude at Harvard, scholarships, awards. She’s hot shit, and judging by her unlocked Instagram account, she and Rue might be besties. Look at this #tbt pic of them. They can’t have been older than ten.”

Eli did look. Rue was angular and gangly, eyes and mouth too big for her face, holding hands with her friend as they skated side by side in the middle of an ice rink. The contrast with the adult she had grown to be, tall and strong and lush, made Eli lean in for closer inspection, but Minami had already turned the phone away.

“Love Tisha’s bio, by the way. ‘No im not looking for a sugar daddy and ur not Keanu reeves stop DMing me.’ Might steal it. Anyway, this is the biggie.” This time she handed him her phone. It was a picture of three women hugging in front of a rainbow-colored brick wall. The redhead in the center was much shorter, a little older, and very familiar.

Since my little sister @nyotafuli STILL won’t follow me back, I’m officially swapping her for Florence Kline. Best friend, best boss, and now best sister ever. Ilu, happy birthday!

He glanced back at the picture. Florence’s and Tisha’s grins were ray-of-sunshine wide. Rue’s was more subdued, closemouthed, like she felt the need to hold back. Eli had to pry his eyes from her face.

“I see.” He did. There was clearly a personal relationship here. Rue’s words today, her hostility, suddenly made much more sense.

What did she know? What had Florence Kline told her about Harkness? About Eli?

“There’s more. Guess where your future wife got her PhD?” Minami asked.

“Don’t say UT engineering, please.”

“Okay. I won’t.”

“Well, shit.” Eli turned to Hark. They exchanged an uneasy look.

“Tisha and Rue, they might have better access to Florence than most other people at Kline,” Minami continued. “We might want to keep an eye on them. See if they know anything.”

Eli pinched the bridge of his nose. “Let me guess. ‘We’ means ‘me’?”

“You know her already. Just saying.”

“Going by what I walked into earlier today, I’m not sure it’s an advantage,” Hark pointed out.

Minami only smiled in a curious, secretive way. “Why don’t you go to her lab tomorrow, Eli? See what she’s working on. Snoop.”

Eli’s “fuck” was soft. “Is this some abortive attempt at matchmaking?”

“Who? Me?” She slapped her chest. “Never.”

“Minami. Her work is not even related to biofuels. She’s beyond irrelevant.”

“What do we have to lose?”

Eli opened his mouth to protest—then closed it when he realized how unhinged his response would sound. He couldn’t say it out loud, that he felt like he’d already lost something, or at least the possibility of it. That he needed distance from Rue. It was bullshit, since they were distant, miles apart on parallel streets, and inserting himself in her life was not going to bring them any closer. “You’re so generous with my time.”

“Give it two days, and she’ll have you sleep with her for info,” Hark muttered. Eli’s hand, which had been patting his pockets in search of car keys, briefly stuttered.

“Poor Eli.” Minami smiled, sly. “He’s so put off by the idea. What hardship.”

Eli flipped them all off half-heartedly and headed home, resigned. Minami always thought she knew best. Unfortunately, she tended to be right.

When he stepped into his kitchen, Maya was sitting at the counter, frowning into her tablet at something that could have been a physics article or Wattpad fan fiction. She was that eclectic.

“I made dinner,” she said distractedly. “You hungry?”

He dropped his keys on the counter and tilted his head skeptically. “You made dinner.”

She looked up. “I ordered Chinese on Grubhub—with your money—and I put it on one of the paper plates I bought—also with your money—because I’m sick of loading and unloading the dishwasher. Would you like some?”

He nodded, smiling faintly while she spooned rice and chicken out of the containers for him. His gaze wandered to the table, where she’d made a move in their ongoing chess game. He made a mental note to study it later and accepted his plate.

The home where they’d been raised had been foreclosed a decade earlier, but Eli had bought this one about six years ago, after Harkness had taken off, after he’d paid off his sizable debt, after he’d become financially stable enough to cover Maya’s undergrad tuition wherever she chose to go. At the time, he’d figured Allandale would be a nice neighborhood to settle down in, with its well-kept parks and quiet atmosphere and good food. He and McKenzie had been talking about marriage, maybe not enthusiastically, but often enough that he’d taken for granted they’d eventually get around to it. They’d live here, and…hire a photographer for bucolic family photos, argue over the thermostat, grill every night. Whatever the fuck it was that happy, well-adjusted people did. They’d soak in the peace of the place, since their relationship was all about calm and harmony and restraint.

But here he was, living with his sister. His sister, who used to accuse him of crimes against humanity and couldn’t get away from him soon enough at eighteen, had decided to “come back home” for her master’s, her magnetic poetry stuck on his fridge and the syrupy scent of her candles cozy in the too-hot evening. As for McKenzie…Before today, Eli couldn’t remember the last time he’d thought about her.

That was telling enough.

“Where’s Tiny?” he asked.

“Not sure. Tiny?” Summoned, Tiny barged in through the garden doggy door and threw all of his one hundred and eighty pounds of mutt delight at Eli, who was just as happy to see him. Maya rolled her eyes. “He was busy pining for his one true love to return from the war. I just walked him, by the way. The ingrate. How was work?”

Eli just grunted, vigorously scratching the backs of Tiny’s ears to his exact specifications. The reward was as close to a smile as a canine could physically achieve. “How was school?”

She grunted just the same, and they exchanged an amused look.

Look at us. Related, after all.

“Did you see Hark today?” Maya’s tone was the personification of casual disinterest. Eli swallowed a snort and sat on the stool next to hers. “How is he?”

“Still not age appropriate for you.”

“I think he’s into me.”

“I think it’s a felony.”

“Hasn’t been for a while, since I am almost twenty-two years old.” Tiny whimpered softly at Eli’s feet, as though in agreement. Traitor.

“Yes. Fair point. Until you remember that when Hark was twenty-two years old, you had yet to achieve full control of your bowels.”

She shot him a baffled look. “Do you think nine-year-olds use diapers?”

Yes. No? What the fuck did he know? He’d barely paid attention to her before she’d been shoved into his life. “This feels like a trick question, and I don’t plan to engage with it.”

“Seems kind of puritanical of you, someone whose entire download history is hiking trail maps, solitaire, and sex-forward dating apps.”

His eyebrow rose. “Hark doesn’t do relationships, either.”

“That’s fine. I don’t want to marry him. I just want to—”

“Do not say it.”

“—use his beautiful, former rower’s body.”

“She fucking said it,” he mumbled. “Can you please not put in my head images that a therapist will have me reenact with dolls five years down the line?”

“But it’s so fun.”

“Listen, you are legally free to engage in orgies with people four times your age, but—”

“ ‘But don’t expect me to facilitate any of that,’ I know, I know.” She sighed. “How was the date last night?”

“It was…” God, it was so messed up that the only thing he could think of saying was, “Good.”

Because it was true. Being with Rue, even just to talk, had been good. Wasn’t that incredibly fucking pitiful?

“Will you see her again?”

He thought about the following day. “Maybe.” He bent his head to focus on his food, then on Maya’s recounting of her computational physics class, then on Tiny’s soft snores rising up from his feet. And told himself that if he couldn’t avoid Rue Siebert, he should at least try to think about her a little less.