Joy and I are at Surfrider Beach. She decided I need icy cold waves, a tan, and sand between my toes. So here we are. The back of her hand covers her eyes as she squirms on her towel.
“You’re so funny,” I say. “You never enjoy it down here. Whenever I want to come, you find excuses, and now all of a sudden, you drag me out of the house.”
“Exactly. If it takes the beach to get you out of your room, so be it.”
“I’m not just in my room. I’m at school, and I have lunch with you...”
“Yes, and that’s it. Library and your department, period. No actual out-time. No time away from the guys. I see what’s happening, you know.”
I feel a worry-wrinkle forming. “What do you mean?”
“Come on, Geneva. It’s clear as day. The guys are fawning over you. Whenever I’m over there, everyone’s hovering, bringing you stuff, and being so damn nice I wouldn’t blame you if you felt smothered.”
“They’ll calm down.”
“Are you sleeping with them?”
Shocked, so-shocked silence.
“With who?”
She lets out a giggle. “I’d say Luka, going with the obvious, but you’ve been a bit up front about your so-called hate for him. So, hmm, how about—all of them? They all look at you in quite the special way.”
Okay. Whoa.
“No! I don’t sleep with all of them.”
“But most of them, then?”
“Shut up, no, I—”
“Math, Geneva. You’re not the best in math. How many Fratters are there?”
“Seven.”
“And you’re not sleeping with Luka.”
“Right.”
“So six?”
“Does it matter?” I sit upright and pierce her through my sunglasses. She doesn’t move. I barely see her eyes beneath the shade of her hand.
“You tell me. The way you’re reacting makes me think you do have a harem of Fratters and you’re beating yourself up over it. Would you feel better if you slept with just one of them? And would you be able to choose?”
No. And no!
Air goes out of my lungs so fast I groan.
“I shouldn’t be doing this, Joy. I’m having weekly flings with every single Fratter except Luka. I can’t sleep alone. It’s like— Ah. Because they’re not strangers to me and they’re all amazing in different ways, I need them... close. Really close. I crave them. It’s crazy.”
She’s quiet for a moment. “How did it start?”
“Luka started it.”
She hoists up on her arms and looks at me. “I thought you said Luka wasn’t one of them.”
“No, he isn’t. I’d never...” Scrunching my eyes shut, I pick sand off my forehead. “But he masterminded it. I’m pretty sure he decided to chip in too, but I’m not letting him. Every Sunday, he comes into my room and sits next to me until I fall asleep.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah. And he tortures me by talking about Julian.”
“Which might not be bad. Talking is good for you.”
“Overrated when you want peace,” I say, and my friend is too wise to object.
“Today is Sunday.”
It’s a reminder I don’t want.
She shields her eyes against the sun again. “So he’ll visit you tonight?”
“Yeah.”
“You can lock the door. You know that, right?”
“Duh. I just...”
I must look pitiful, because Joy reaches for me and rubs from my shoulder down my arm. “This is temporary, Geneva. You’ll feel better.”
And later, as she drops me off at the Queen, I realize she never once reproached me.
Luka meets me at the door. His arms are folded like Connor’s were in bed last night. There’s that light drizzle of blond on them that I don’t want to gawk at. I don’t want to gawk at anything Luka, so I don’t meet his eyes either. He’s too much Julian, too little Julian. He’s also way too much Luka.
“Did you have a good time at the beach?” he asks, voice gravelly. We both know “a good time” is a relative term. My resentment wants to shoot out in the form of snide remarks, but it’s become increasingly painful to be a bitch.
“It was okay. The water was cold,” I say, and I hear several Fratters breathe out before they go on with their business, some setting the table, others turning on the TV or chatting in the kitchen. I don’t smell food, though.
“We’re having chicken salad today. You want to shower before we eat? I’ll pop the baguettes in the oven last minute so they’re hot. We didn’t think you’d be home this early.”
I have seven house husbands. Jesus.
“Sure, that sounds amazing. Tomorrow, maybe I’ll make dinner,” I suggest, but James says, “Nuh-uh. I’m making baby-back ribs the real way tomorrow. You can take Lenny’s day.”
“What? No, I have plans. I already know what I’m making. You’re going to be blown away,” Lenny tells me, brows waggling. “Pick someone else’s day.”
I bite my lip, smiling. “You guys are so nice.”
“You’ve made dinners for us before,” Marlon says.
“Actually, that was Julian. I was just his stirrer.” My smile grows at the thought, a memory that doesn’t make me sad.
“She was good at it,” Luka jokes to Marlon, who grins.
“Yep, tasted perfectly stirred every time. Not an unstirred ounce of food in the Queen whenever Julian and Geneva cooked dinner.”
“True story.”
I shower. I enjoy the chicken salad with a more relaxed group of Fratters than in a long time. It makes me feel good. I’m contributing to lightness at the Queen for once. My guard lowers, and I even share the couch with Luka.
Marlon chooses the movie: we’re watching horror that’s so farfetched I can’t possibly get upset over it. Something about aliens who feed on everyone’s brain cells by sucking them out through their mouths. It’s crazy disgusting. Once, Luka bends over, acting like he’s about to puke into my lap, and my reaction is instinctive.
“No! Yuck, you jerk!” And then I giggle and squirm to get his head out of my lap, pulling at his hair—and it’s so long and soft between my fingers I don’t let go as quickly as I should.
His smile crooks upward on the side as he sits up again, gaze less steely than it has been lately. I feel my own features smoothen in response.
Luka is quiet when we walk upstairs together. His hand rests at the small of my back in a way I haven’t allowed from him before. He sees me into my room. Trots to his own. When he returns, he’s showered, hair in wet waves down to his collarbone. A clean white V-neck stretches over his chest and meets his black pajamas pants.
“You don’t have to do this, Luka. I’ll be fine. I’ll read until I fall asleep.”
“Naw, I don’t mind being here.”
I feel my smile return. “Bring something in here, then. A blanket or whatever.”
“You okay with that?”
“Sure. You always look so uncomfortable,” I say, surprising myself. His face lightens, but he doesn’t answer. Instead, he stands in one motion, returns to his room, and comes back with his comforter and a pillow.
He half-asses some sort of lair between the plants in the glass nook. I get up and push him out of the way so I have room to work. “Grab a blanket too, why don’t you? That way you can use the comforter as a mattress and get some rest with the blanket over you.”
He stands again, and there’s something endearing about him obeying me. Julian and I had lots of pillows. I bring a few out of our closet, now, and rest them against the wall at the head of Luka’s makeshift bed.
I hear him shuffle back in, but then he stops in the doorway. I twist to look at him, and I give him my smile again.
“Wow,” he says. “It’s... That’s nice of you. Thank you.”
“Don’t get any ideas.” I still detest him.
He watches me from his post while I get comfortable in bed. Then he takes the steps back to his lair. I turn to switch the light off, but before I can, he clears his throat. “Can we talk?”
“About what?” Talking with Luka is never good.
“About your trip. Connor told me.”
“Jesus, why does everything have to go via you here? I’m fully aware, you know, that you were the one setting up the revolving-door schedule for my bedroom.”
Features still, he waits for me to get back to his question.
I shrug. “Okay, so Connor told you. Cool. Done deal.”
“Do you think Julian would have been okay with you going on your own?”
“He’s not here to have an opinion!” Luka’s Adam’s apple bobs in a thick swallow, and I scrunch my eyes shut. “I’m not going on my own. I’ll find someone. Plus, there’s an interpreter.”
“So I’ve heard, and I’m with Connor on this one. No one has met this interpreter, and we have no idea if he’ll protect you. He could, consciously or unconsciously, put you in harm’s way. I don’t want you to go on your own.”
I don’t have it in me right now to work myself up over him butting in again.
“I’ll get a team. I’m working on it.”
“Do you have your funding together?”
“A part of it came through yesterday.” My stomach flops at the thought.
“What about the Mikhailov Oracle funds?” he asks, merciless. “Have you spoken with the commission yet? It’s a Russian heritage fund. Do they know about Julian?”
I’ve been postponing that phone call. For one, I don’t want to talk about it, and second, a hunch tells me they won’t take pity on me and transfer the funds when I don’t have an ounce of Russian in me.
I burst out my “no.” Then, “Julian told you?”
“Yeah. He was pretty full of himself over scoring it.” Luka’s humor is fleeting. “Wasn’t there some formal hand-over meet-and-greet for it?”
I swallow. “Yeah. It’s coming up, in a law office over by the Russian Embassy.”
“Are you going?”
“I guess.”
He shakes his head slowly. “Have you thought this through?”
That’s when it floods me, the impossibility of completing this mission. There’s no way in hell I’m getting on a plane to Brazil with enough money to sustain a ten-week field trip. Julian left me in the dust!
I let out a strangled grunt and turn my face into the pillow. Liquid, the panic seeps out, warm against the cotton. “What am I gonna do? I don’t know what I’m doing anymore.”
I feel his hand on my shoulder. It rocks me slowly.
“Everything’s turned to shit. I can’t take my PhD out of the Amazon. I’ve worked for this kind of project through my entire master’s degree—my dissertation has to be based on that groundwork.”
“Shh, we’ll find a way.”
My back shudders against his hand. “I’m just not— It’s too short a notice. And without a PhD, I’m just another unemployable anthropologist.”
“You’ll get your degree. It’ll happen.”
I try for a laugh. “I’m not like you, with a profession that’s ready to suck me up first thing after my studies. I’m supposed to remain in academia. I’m supposed to become a professor and teach others stuff they can only use in the field, see? Julian and I... I know we were ridiculous.”
His hand on my back becomes firmer, kneading up and down until it finds my neck. Goosebumps spread when he burrows beneath my hair, gentle fingers clutching and loosening knots.
“You’re exaggerating. You can work in the private sector as well. Many big corporations employ anthropologists as part of teams focusing on consumer preferences. Or you can work within the government, in international development and cultural resource management, for instance. You can work in non-profit organizations, nationally and internationally.”
I hold my breath. “Where’s this coming from?”
“Julian and I had our chats about the future. He was really only doing his PhD to support you, but you know that.”
It’s true. We didn’t talk much about the job market after school. Me, I didn’t mention my interest in a professor position because I was aware of Julian’s limited interest in moving up to the next level. “Yeah.”
“He’d do anything for you.”
A shuddered sigh steals out of me.
“What Julian wanted was for you to finish your studies and become what you want to become. A professor.”
“What? I never told him that.”
“Of course he knew.” Luka’s hand clasps my neck. I turn my head so I can peer up at him. I’ve seen gifs of Luka, short gifs on social media that can’t be unseen. But these aren’t the searing porn-star eyes I detest.
“I’m coming with you to that meeting. We’ll do this.”
“What?”
“Julian was so proud of it.” Luka’s Adam’s apple trembles as he fights his tears. “I don’t want him to have worked for it in vain. I’ll be my brother in the meeting with the Mikhailov Oracle people.”