The Theory of Attraction Read online

  “Well, it’s true.”

  “But it’s not very nice. And you admit that it’s selfish.”

  “Lies of omission are still lies. I’ll never understand why people do that.” He checked his watch. It was probably time for him to go inside, have a high-protein snack and spend two hours and fifteen minutes in front of the computer playing first-person shooter games.

  We were getting off the topic a bit too rapidly.

  “So you want lessons in how to act at a fundraiser, basically?”

  Ivan cocked his head and then nodded. “That’s essentially it.”

  It was a chance to spend an awful lot of time with him. In a masochistic way, that sounded intriguing to me. I was hot for him, for whatever reason, and this would certainly put me in a position to gain his attention.

  On the other hand, it would be time spent giving him instruction and constructive criticism in an area I myself probably didn’t excel in, and one that was also his bête noir. I wasn’t sure I was quite that masochistic.

  Ivan lifted the hem of his shirt to his face, mopping the sweat from his decidedly elegant brow and revealing his six-pack abs in the process. His khaki cargo shorts were low-slung enough to frame his hips nicely. About an inch below his belly button, a dark trail of hair began a journey down to—

  “So will you do it?” He was mumbling through the fabric, still wiping his face.

  “Huh?”

  He dropped the shirt back into place, cutting off the distraction. “Will you do it? Teach me how to…whatever?”

  “Oh. Um, when is this shindig?”

  “In three weeks. Right before the students get back.”

  Three weeks. I could work with that. Maybe.

  “I’d have carte blanche? And you won’t get mad at me for telling you to do stuff you think is stupid?”

  Stupid was me, believing he could follow through on a promise like that. But for all his rough points, he was still a hero. A tomato-growing, fire-fighting, shirtless-jogging hero. And all that could blind a girl.

  He promised not to get mad, and I promised to meet with him for daily sessions in fundraiser etiquette starting that night.

  “Oh, and can I also have a few tomatoes? As an advance?” I figured it didn’t hurt to ask. They looked so delicious, even the ones that were not quite ripe. And I loved fried green tomatoes.

  “You can have all you want. Just tell me how many you take and from which plant. I won’t eat them, I don’t like tomatoes.”

  I blinked at him, and then eyed the four lush plants with their juicy, curvaceous, ready and nearly ready fruit weighing down the slender green branches. Enough for pots and pots of sauce, for salads and fried green tomatoes and bruschetta and pico de gallo made with the garlic and cilantro I’d managed to keep alive long enough to harvest.

  “Then why—”

  “It’s just an experiment.”

  Interruptions would have to be on the list of social niceties to address. “All right then. You don’t get mad and I get all the tomatoes I can eat. And we start at dinner tonight?”

  He thrust his slightly grubby hand forward. “Deal.”

  I slipped my even grimier hand into his and we shook, then stood there for a moment with hands still clasped. Ivan was taller than I was by almost a head, and he was backlit by the morning sun so I couldn’t see his expression. But I could feel the warmth of his earthy grip, the strength in his long fingers, and a shiver raced down my spine with even that small contact.

  “Deal.”

  Chapter Two

  My friend Athena had a theory about Ivan. It was the latest in a series of theories she’d had about him.

  The first one had been simply “Gay.”

  She usually assumed this about any man who didn’t seem interested in her boobs. Giving credit where it was due, she has a fabulous rack, but I didn’t think that was the issue in this particular instance.

  “Maybe he’s just not a breast man.”

  “He doesn’t check out my ass, either,” she countered.

  “Could you love yourself a little more, please? Maybe he’s into eyes. Or a sense of humor or something. Foot fetish. I don’t know. He doesn’t seem to look at any of the guys that way either. And some of them are really pretty hot when they’re not talking.”

  “Mmm,” she agreed. “Dinesh.”

  “Indeed.”

  “Those eyes. Those lips!”

  I nodded. “If Ivan were gay he’d be all over that. I mean, wouldn’t you be?”

  Dinesh lived in the duplex at the far end of the row. He and his wife Julia were both quite beautiful, and both did some sort of work analyzing rodent genomes. I found them spectacular but almost unnerving, like they were actually a slightly more evolved species that was simply prettier and smarter than humans. Julia was the only other woman in the complex. Athena lived a few blocks away.

  “Maybe,” Athena posited, swirling her wine around in its glass as we sat in front of my computer that afternoon, “he simply prefers porn. I mean, think about it, Cami. He spends all his time on the computer, and we all know what guys do on there most of the time. Maybe he’s addicted to that and the real thing doesn’t measure up.”

  I couldn’t even picture Ivan surfing for porn. If anything, I suspected his browser history at home looked exactly like his browser history at work. With the likely exceptions of sites featuring in-depth mathematical discussions of Halo strategies and the technical details of people’s creations in Minecraft.

  “If he does look at porn, he does it on a schedule. And I don’t know of any unaccounted-for chunks of time that he spends at home. Unless it’s weekly or monthly, and it’s at a time when I’m not at home but he is.” I was only half paying attention to Athena, because most of my attention was focused on the monitor. I was researching etiquette, about which I knew precious little myself. And trying to come up with some sort of plan for that night’s “lesson,” not to mention the next three weeks’ worth. But I noticed her protracted silence after a bit and looked away from the screen to find her giving me a look. “What?”

  “Stalker.”

  “Neighbor.”

  We’d had that talk before.

  “I still do not see the attraction. I mean yes, he’s hot, but only in the abstract because he’s not actually a human being. And you only like him because you think he’s Mr. Darcy.”

  I took offense. Not only was Athena disparaging one of my favorite books, she was knocking my comparison of Ivan to a young, slender Colin Firth. Another talk we’d had before.

  “How can somebody be hot in the abstract? And I don’t think he’s Mr. Darcy, because Mr. Darcy was not a scientist. Completely different personality. But it doesn’t matter. I just want to do the guy. Does there have to be a reason?”

  The truth was, I did liken Ivan to Mr. Darcy. But only to Darcy before his transformation to a kinder, more considerate self. It was the cool, disdainful yet commanding Darcy that floated my boat. And Darcy was indeed a scientist in his way, studying human nature while being at times every bit as baffled by it as Ivan was. Because so much about human nature didn’t lend itself to methodical study.

  “I loaned you the ho-ho-ho dress last Christmas. If that didn’t turn his head I’m out of ideas. That thing is pretty much the nuclear option.”

  “I don’t look as much like a ho in it as all that.” We wore the same size, but I was a bit taller than Athena, and flat in all the places she was curvy. The dress had looked okay and had turned more than one head. Sadly, none of those heads were attached to the body of the aloof and indifferent Dr. Reynolds.

  “So is this like a date, tonight?”

  “I don’t think anything could possibly be further from a date than whatever we’re doing tonight.”

  * * *

  At least I was right about one thing. It was nothing like a date.

  If it had been a date, it would have had to rank with the all-time lame dates in history. Beginning with the way Ivan looked when I a
nswered the door to his ring, promptly at seven.

  He was wearing the shorts he’d been gardening in and a pair of boat shoes so decrepit I didn’t know how they stayed on his feet. He’d changed into a polo shirt of a particularly hideous neon aqua, and it was threadbare not only at the collar but around the little logo on the chest.

  His hair wasn’t combed.

  On the plus side, the shirt made his eyes look fantastic, somehow playing up warmer, softer highlights in the dark chocolate brown of his irises.

  Then he frowned, which shouldn’t have surprised me at that point. He was holding out a bottle of wine, and I hadn’t even noticed because I was too busy mooning over his eyes.

  “Thanks! Come on in.”

  “Don’t thank me,” Ivan said, breezing past me. “It’s Ed’s wine, I was just carrying it for him.”

  Sure enough, our neighbor Ed was right behind Ivan, his hands full of computer equipment.

  “Ivan said you guys were watching Young Frankenstein tonight. I love that flick.”

  Ed was already in the apartment, settling in on my couch next to Ivan with his laptop on the coffee table in front of him. I closed the door and joined them, trying to hide my pique. My big chance to get Ivan alone and talking to me about human interaction over a cozy dinner, and that was the moment Ed happened by? Ivan rolled his eyes when I threw him a questioning glance.

  “And the computer is also here because…?”

  “I’m at work,” Ed explained. He was already arranging cables, pulling the power cord from the pile and looking for the closest outlet. “I’m monitoring something.”

  “Oh. Do you need to use my wireless, or can you get yours this far away from your place?”

  “I can get mine. But Ivan already gave me the key to yours.”

  Another eye roll and a shrug from Mr. Inscrutable on the far end of the couch.

  Lesson One: when invited to a person’s home, don’t bring along an unexpected plus one.

  If Ivan even knew what a plus one was. Probably not. I couldn’t picture him at a wedding. Or a formal dinner. Honestly, had he been raised by wolves? Erudite, scientifically inclined wolves? I pictured a cave littered with test tubes and beakers, computers and model rockets. And little baby Ivan, toddling around in a diaper while the wolves conducted their experiments. This, despite the fact that I’d actually met the man’s parents on more than one occasion.

  Focus, Cami.

  I didn’t really see any way out of it. Ed was only doing what most of the guys in the complex did from time to time. They worked together, they played together, they hung out with one another as though their homes were interchangeable. And up until tonight, my place had always been another one of those hangouts. Besides, I suspected Ivan would rather not broadcast his real reason for coming over. Which was probably why he hadn’t sent Ed packing in the first place.

  “I made lasagna. Who’s in?”

  Both guys raised their hands. Ivan got up to start the movie. I’d pulled out the DVD already, because I’d planned for us to watch it as part of the lesson.

  “Hey,” Ed called as I walked into the kitchen, “could I maybe get a glass for my wine? I’m drinking one glass every night. It’s an experiment.”

  He didn’t want to share the bottle, though. Because then, Ed explained, he would have to go back to the liquor store a day sooner than he’d planned. It was not on his way home from work, and of course it was a brand not carried by the local grocery store.

  Yes, the evening was off to a rip-roaring start.

  By the time the monster came to life on screen, we’d picked up an additional viewer. Lin, another astrophysicist post-doc, had happened by looking for Ivan and stayed to watch the rest of the movie. And to help finish the lasagna, of course.

  I’d taught zero lessons in socialization. Ivan hadn’t said a word the whole evening, aside from thanking me for dinner. When the movie ended, I got the impression he was willing Ed and Lin to leave just as hard as I was. But our combined psychic abilities were no match for the cluelessness of these two particular geeks, who remained on my couch arguing about Mel Brooks and Ed’s wine experiment until well after ten.

  I tried dropping polite hints, but nothing worked. After several tense moments, I realized I felt tense partly because I had that you’re-being-watched feeling.

  Ivan was watching me. I wasn’t even sure he realized he was doing it. His eyes followed me around the room as I tidied up and tried to convey that general “let’s wrap this party up” feeling. Maybe because it was after ten (time to brush teeth), so he was out of his routine, or maybe because he really didn’t know what to do, since participating in the conversation would obviously not serve the purpose of getting the other two to leave. But he seemed a little lost, isolated. And he was watching me as intently as though his line of sight were a lifeline. I’d wanted that for months, but getting it made me so self-conscious I wasn’t sure what to do with my hands.

  Then it passed. Lin finally said something so egregious it pulled Ivan into the argument, and the talk quickly passed over my level of understanding as I’m a computer programmer, a script monkey, not a rocket scientist. I only knew that once they’d reached this stage, any pretense at civility was pointless and if I didn’t kick them out they’d be there all night. Two arguing geeks were stoppable. Three arguing geeks created an infinite argument vortex of doom that sucked time down like a black hole.

  “Okay, that’s it for tonight. Thanks for coming over, but I’m fixing to head for bed.”

  Three heads snapped my way. Lin had the grace to look a little chagrined. He made a nice apology and headed out, with Ed close on his tail. Before he was all the way out the door, Ed asked Ivan to carry his wine bottle for him.

  But perhaps the evening wasn’t a complete loss. Ivan turned at the door and, to my astonishment, smiled. A sheepish, crooked smile, but I still counted it. He did it so rarely, it was like seeing a rose that only blooms once a year in the spring.

  “Sorry.”

  I didn’t think I’d ever heard him apologize for something before.

  “No problem. There was plenty of lasagna. Oh, and the salad was great with all those fresh tomatoes. You can take my word for that.”

  He hadn’t eaten the tomatoes, of course.

  “So the lesson for tonight is…I should have lied more?”

  “What, to Ed?” I considered this a moment. “Not lied. I wouldn’t call it that. There are times when the other person doesn’t need all the information you may have to give. I don’t think that’s really even a lie of omission. It simply isn’t their business. You can keep some things to yourself.”

  “Like only caring about my project being funded?”

  “Exactly.”

  He smiled again. I realized he had a slight dimple on the right side. Charming. He leaned against the jamb of the open door, as though he was a little reluctant to go. The muggy night air was creeping in, probably bringing mosquitos with it. I didn’t care.

  “If I’d told him the truth and said why I was coming over here, and that I didn’t want anybody else here with us, that would have been more effective.”

  “But he would have known something you didn’t want him to know. And knowing Ed, he would have teased you pretty mercilessly about it. He might have also assumed you were lying to get him out of the way.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  I wanted to beat my head against the door. Ivan was either as genuinely clueless as he appeared, or he was simply in no rush to spend time alone with the horny nerd-girl next door. “To get more lasagna for yourself, of course.”

  “I see. So, same time tomorrow night?”

  “A little earlier,” I suggested. “If we go out to eat somewhere the guys don’t typically go, we’ll stand a much better chance of actually accomplishing something.”

  Ivan answered slowly, and I had to resist reading more meaning into it than he probably meant there to be. “I wouldn’t say we accomplished nothing th
is evening. I wouldn’t say that at all.” He gave me that intense, concentrated look again, exactly like when he was watching me clean up earlier. A creeping tendril of desire swirled through my belly.

  And then he strolled off into the thick, hot night.

  * * *

  At work the next day, it was almost as hot inside as out. Though the temperature had cooled to a mild ninety-four, the ancient and put-upon air conditioning unit in the refurbished hundred-year-old house where I worked had finally conked out for good that weekend, so we’d arrived for the morning to find the house already hot, stuffy and smelling slightly of mildew. There was a slight breeze through the windows we’d all had to pry open, but not enough to help much. Only enough to ruffle the papers I had stacked so neatly on my desk moments before.

  No small feat, either, stacking paper neatly when it was that humid. The pages wanted to stick and rub instead of sliding tidily against one another to get in line. Everything felt damp, even the stapler and the surface of my desk. I was covered in sweat. I had shut my computer down around ten, when the heat in the building rose above eighty-five. When my boss, Agatha, finally told us all to give it up and go home for the day, I was too drained to even cheer. We all offered up a feeble mumble of thanks and cleared the building within two minutes flat.

  It was only eleven-thirty, and I hadn’t eaten. On a whim, I picked up some burgers and headed for the astrophysics lab. Not entirely a whim, actually. The building was notorious for being overcooled, and right now that arctic blast seemed like the perfect antidote to the heat.

  Ivan’s mother sometimes called me when her worries about her son got the best of her. This had started about six months after I moved into the complex, after Ivan’s parents came for a holiday visit and we got to know each other a little. As his nearest neighbor, good friend, and the only relatively normal-seeming person in his small social circle, I guess I seemed the likeliest candidate for surrogate mother. That and the whole female thing.

  Her concern was not entirely misplaced, because Ivan often forgot to eat when he was involved in a big project, and he’d been known to let himself get to an almost delusional state of hunger before he realized the problem and remedied it. I liked feeding people, and Mrs. Reynolds made it up to me when she came to visit every few months by providing me gourmet treats I couldn’t afford to buy all the time on my worker-bee salary. Imported olives, smoked oysters, organic chocolate with a high percentage on the label. And she told me things about Ivan’s childhood that I was sure he would rather not have people know. He was a very smart, very poorly adjusted little boy, and she still saw him that way. It wasn’t wholly inaccurate, I guess.