Loathe to Love You (The STEMinist Novellas #1-3)(16)

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    He shovels snow like it’s his one and only vocation.

Maybe it’s the isolation-induced insanity speaking, but there’s something hypnotic about it. The rhythmic rise and fall of his shoulders under the black fleece. The seemingly effortless way he’s been going at it for hours, occasionally stopping to wipe the sweat off his brow with the back of his sleeve. I press my forehead to the window and just . . . stare. I can almost hear Helena’s voice in my head (Would you like to borrow my birding binoculars?). I blithely ignore it.

Maybe that’s what he majored in at Dartmouth: Snow Shoveling. Nicely complemented by a minor in Muscles. His honors thesis was titled The Importance of Armceps in Ergonomic Excavating. Then he moved to graduate school to study How-to-Make-a-Mundane-Winter-Task-Look-Attractive Law. And here I am, unable to take my eyes off a decade of overpaid-for higher education.

This is getting weird. It’s giving me flashbacks to the first time I saw him, when his dark eyes and those (frankly ridiculous) shoulders hit me like a brick in the head. It’s not a memory I want to revisit, so I look away and head downstairs to make lunch, blaming my temporary lunacy on skipping breakfast. This is what I get for falling asleep late last night, halfway through the finale, in the middle of explaining to Liam between yawns that Bachelor and Bachelorette contestants get mandatory STD screenings. What I get for waking up this morning on the couch, a soft, heavenly smelling blanket laid over me. I wonder where it came from, anyway. Not from the living room. I’m positive that there wasn’t one around.

It’s not that Liam and I are friends now. I don’t know him any better than I did yesterday—except, I guess, that he has some surprisingly valid opinions when it comes to reality TV. But for some unparsable reason, when I start working on my soup I find myself making enough for two.

See, this is why humans are not meant to be sequestered at home. Boredom and loneliness turn their minds to mushy oatmeal, and they start imposing their poorly cooked food on unsuspecting Snow Lawyers. And I’m apparently embracing my weird, because when Liam comes in, dark hair damp and curling from the melting snowflakes, cheeks glowing from the exercise, I tell him, “I made lunch.”

He stares, arms dangling at his sides, as though unsure how to answer. So I add, “For both of us. As a thank-you. For doing that. The shoveling, I mean.” He stares some more. “If you want. It’s not mandatory.”

“No. No, I . . .” He doesn’t finish. But when he notices me reaching toward a high shelf to the bowls, he comes up behind me and sets two on the counter.

“Thank you.”

“No problem.” I might be imagining this, but I think I hear him inhale slowly before he moves away. Does my hair smell bad? I washed it yesterday. Has Garnier Fructis finally failed me after years of faithful service? I’m wondering whether it’s time to switch to Pantene by the time we’re politely eating at the kitchen table, in front of each other, like we’re a young family in a Campbell’s commercial.

Problem: without the TV on, it’s pretty conspicuous that we have nothing to talk about. Liam glances at me every few seconds, as though me stuffing my face is either something he likes to look at, or something totally hideous—who’s to say? As the silence stretches, I am once again regretting every choice I’ve ever made. And when his phone rings, I’m so relieved I could fist-pump.

Except that he doesn’t pick up. He checks caller ID (FGP Corp—Mitch), rolls his eyes, and then turns the phone around in a dismissive movement that has me chuckling.

Liam gives me a puzzled look.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to . . . Just . . .” I shrug. “It’s nice to know that you hate your colleagues, too.”

He lifts one eyebrow. “You hate your colleagues?”

“Well, no. I don’t hate them. I mean, I sometimes hate them, but . . .” Why is this about me? “Anyway, do you think the snow is over for good?”

“Why do you sometimes hate your colleagues?”

“I don’t. I misspoke. It’s just . . .” Liam has stopped eating and is looking at me like he’s actually interested. Ugh. “They’re all men. All engineers. And men engineers can be . . . yeah. And I’m the newest arrival, and they’re all kind of chummy already. And I’m pretty sure that Sean, my boss, thinks that I’m some sort of pity diversity hire. Which I’m not. I’m actually a really good engineer. I have to be, or Helena would have butchered me in my sleep.”

He nods as though he understands. “She’d have butchered you awake.”

“Right? She wasn’t exactly forgiving. And I’m not complaining—I owe her so much. She truly helped me become a better scientist, but everyone in my team treats me as though I’m some infant engineer who doesn’t know what an ohm is, and—” Why am I still talking? “Well, everyone except for Ted, but I’m not sure whether he actually respects me or is just trying to get laid, since he’s already asked me out, like, three times, which makes things kind of awkward . . .”

Liam’s face instantly hardens. His spoon sets in the bowl with a loud clink. “This is sexual harassment.”

“Oh, no.”

“At the very least, it’s highly inappropriate.”