“Not a bad day, brother.” Archer crushes a beer can in his hand and tosses it into the recycling bin across the room. His house is tidier than I expected. Growing up, his room was always a cluttered pit. It made me uncomfortable. Now, he has a housekeeper, and I can stand to be in his space without sweating. “You going to drink that?” He gestures toward my untouched IPA.
I sigh and take a sip. I don’t drink much, but I guess being back here I break a lot of my own rules. “First the dairy and now the alcohol,” I mutter, thinking about how the very first thing I want to do tomorrow is buy workout equipment for my new home.
“You sure you don’t want to camp out at your new place?” Archer laughs. He managed to arrange a short sale on a duplex while I helped Ma land funding from the computer engineering company today. Archer prattles on about how skillful he is at negotiating loans and deals, but my thoughts linger on the woman I saw in Ma’s office.
There aren’t many new people in Oak Creek. Even though I’ve been gone for years, I still feel quite certain I know almost everyone. This woman, though. I keep circling back to the idea that I must feel intrigued by her because she’s new. It’s unusual to see someone new, even moreso when I’ve been living in a tin can in outer space for half a year.
Still. This new woman is objectively, biologically perfect. When Archer snaps his hands in front of my face to ask if I’m listening, I tell him no and go back to cataloguing her features. Wide hips and a round backside…
“Dude, Hunter, you have to either tell me what you’re thinking about or else get the fuck out of my house.” Archer snatches my beer from me.
“I was thinking about breasts,” I tell him, not expecting him to laugh at that. “What?”
“Nothing, dude. I just didn’t think you thought about that stuff. I think about breasts all the damn time.” Archer scowls. “I’m really sorry about Heather, man.”
“Hmph.” I snatch the beer back again.
“She…not that I was looking in that way. But Heather had no breasts to speak of.”
I tip the beer in his direction. “That’s accurate.” I take a long sip.
“So you weren’t thinking about your wife, then?”
“I was not.” Hm. Diana is getting good at making beer. “She wasn’t something I thought much about, actually,” I admit. I find myself explaining to Archer that Heather made sense. She seemed so tolerant of me in ways I hadn’t experienced since moving out from my childhood home. But I have to agree with her assessment that I was a bad spouse. And so was she. If the paperwork from her lawyer means anything, Heather tolerated me just long enough to cash in on an investment.
“I don’t mind paying her something,” I tell him. “Just not that much.” Heather’s alimony request amounts to most of everything I’ve ever earned, and she even had the gall to ask for a percentage of future patents.
My family recommended a lawyer, Sara Garrett, who helped Indigo with her divorce…and then married her afterward. My expectations aren’t high for a small-town lawyer, but Sara seems to be intelligent. “Sara has a plan,” I tell Archer. “She also found me a tenant. Said something about serendipitous timing.”
I told Sara I’d pay her whatever she wanted to take care of everything for me. Contracts and leases and legal papers. I want someone to manage all these complicated details. I just don’t ever have the headspace for that stuff, especially if I’m deep in my research. I should have hired an assistant years ago, rather than marrying Heather. It wasn’t fair of me to take advantage of her planning and organizing like that. All I ever want to do is my work.
Thinking of my research reminds me how badly I’m itching to get my lab equipment set up on campus. This, in turn, brings my thoughts back to the new woman in town.
And her biological features. Apparently I still have urges after all. I had briefly felt concerned that my libido had vanished along with Heather.
So this is a positive turn, health wise. Archer and I finish our drinks and I call it an early evening. If I get my act together quickly, I can start my day early tomorrow, set up my stuff in my new house and then spend the afternoon setting up my lab. Soon I’ll have everything just how I want it.
Everything except my funding and my career.