Fix

around. I’ve never seen an uncomfortable Thomas Aquinas. He looks… softer without a smirk.
“Thanks for bringing my work.”
“Part of the job,” he says, and then adds, “partner.”
I squirm under the tiny blanket. I knew he’d caught that. Seeing through people is Thomas Aquinas’s goddamn superpower.
“You can just toss it there,” I suggest in a breezy way, jerkily using my chin to point out the dining room table, and totally knowing he probably caught this as well.
“Which is just where I found it a couple of days ago, minus any completed work,” he says. “But the joy is in the journey, right, Eve?”
I decide to cough a few times in order to let that comment pass. I figure Thomas Aquinas doesn’t know you don’t cough after spinal surgery. Anyway, I could have a cold. Or pneumonia. Lots of people get pneumonia after surgery. I hope I don’t have pneumonia.
He places the books on the table and walks back into the living room.
“So, Eve.” He clears his throat. “You like poetry?”
His hair is out of its ponytail and is falling across his shoulders, and dark stubble has grown out all over his face. He has large features—wide eyes, a big nose, a big forehead, and his hands are big, too. He just looks… bigger standing inside my house.
“Not really.”
Again, I sound like an assole, though I’m totally not trying to.
He nods and laughs a little.
“And I guess you don’t like astronomy either?” he asks, glancing at my telescope.
My breath catches at the mention of my telescope. “I just started using it,” I say, which is pretty much true.
He folds his arms across his chest and looks into my eyes. Waiting. Maybe for me to offer some sort of star information?
My mind spins like it’s in orbit, but besides this, I have nothing.
“So, what about those Rockets?” Thomas says.
I stare at him, lost. Can you see rockets through a telescope?
“The college’s hockey team,” he explains. “And I’m just teasing you, Eve. I thought talking sports might help the conversation since this is Boston. I was obviously wrong.”
The mention of hockey reminds me of Minnesota’s wiki page, which I’ve been staring at for the past few days, and before I can stop myself, I ask, “Do you like hockey?”
Thomas looks at me, trying to figure out if I’m being serious. Then he straight out asks: “Are you joking?”
“No,” I whisper.
“Really,” he mumbles, unfolding his arms and opening his jean jacket wide and pointing at his shirt. It’s the same yellow shirt he wears every day of his life, but I read it for the first time.
Gophers Hockey.
My eyes widen at what it says underneath that.
Minnesota.
“Do you follow hockey?” he asks.
“I follow Minnesota,” I say.
“The Wild?”
I guess the blank look I give him is a little frustrating.
“The Wild is Minnesota’s professional hockey team,” he says, sucking in a big breath through his obnoxiously large nose. But I can’t take my eyes off that word on his chest.
“So… pleasure, as always, Eve.” And he dips his head at me like we’re in some 1950s movie or something. “I hope you feel better. Text me if you have questions on any of the work. I did all the SWAS shit. Figured I owed you a few of these after, you know, the last two and a half years of letting you do it all. I’ll be back with more work next week, unless you need something before then.”
“I won’t,” I say, a little too fast. “Need anything,” I add, at a much more normal speed. “But thanks.”
He looks back at me, and we stare at each other until my stomach rises into my chest. My mother walks into the living room carrying files under one arm and my Roxy in the other, saving me.
“Going so soon?” she asks, handing me a Roxy, which I gulp down with a swig from one of the many glasses of water that litter the coffee table, though I’m pretty sure I’ve recently self-medicated. She hasn’t taken off her coat and is obviously running back to work.
“Sizable load of homework tonight,” he says, throwing me a snarky smile. Ah. There’s the Thomas Aquinas I know.
Placing my bottle down on the coffee table, she walks to the front door and Thomas Aquinas opens it for her.
“I’ll be home right after my evening class,” my mother says.
Thomas Aquinas salutes me and then shuts the door behind them.
The sound of the closing door fades, and my ears ring with the emptiness. After a few minutes, I think that maybe Thomas Aquinas and his shirt were just a dream… until Lidia mimics his voice. “‘Pleasure, as always, Eve,’” she says. “That kid is just plain strange. He thinks everyone is a fool but him.”
“Yeah,” I say. “But… I did kind of look like a fool.”
Lidia laughs. “Who cares. It’s Thomas Aquinas.”
“Right,” I say, staring out the front window and picturing him walking down Wrentham in his jean jacket.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Lidia pick up my Roxy and walk across the living room to the gold armchair. Flopping into it, she examines the orange bottle.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“I’m not doing anything,” she says, turning the bottle around and around in her hand.
She keeps studying it, her dark eyes growing darker against the natural paleness of her face.
“What’s wrong? Is there something wrong?” I ask.
“Nothing’s wrong, Eve. I was just looking at it. Are you feeling okay?”
She’s still looking at the bottle. Not at me.
“I just need my medicine.”
I say it harder than I mean to. And I’m out of breath, which I try to hide, I don’t know why.
Lidia sighs, and that tiny little pushing out of air filled with disapproval gathers in my chest. “It seems like you need it a lot, Eve.”
That’s all it takes.
“Yeah, well, I’ve just been through an eleven-hour surgery and had metal rods and a plate welded into me, and half my left rib cage sawed off.”
I watch her face. It has a look