Not in Love(67)

He gave her a puzzled look.

“You’ve been staring at Rue’s hair like you wanted to know.”

Rue couldn’t possibly have heard, but when he was back at the stove, she eyed him strangely. “What?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Nothing.”

Rue liked the risotto, which had Eli trying to play it cool even as he was ready to take a victory lap around the block and invest in some fireworks. Dinner went without incident, and the conversation didn’t touch sensitive topics; it flowed mostly among Harkness people, but Minami, and even Hark, made an effort to include Rue. She was shy, he realized, but he wasn’t sure whether the others were able to recognize this in her. Perhaps Tiny did, because he put his chin on her knee and gazed up at her with an adoring expression that seemed like a parody of Eli’s.

He was absolutely charmed by her inability to interact with his dog. He pictured her waking up in the morning, making her way outside to walk Tiny, politely but assertively asking him not to eat other dogs’ shit. When she lifted a hand, as though considering a tentative pat on Tiny’s head, Eli almost held his breath. She gave up after a few moments of nervous hovering, and Tiny looked absolutely crestfallen.

Me, too, buddy, Eli thought. Me, too.

Maya returned while Hark was in the middle of a scathing recount of the art house movie he’d watched the night before. She first gasped, then smiled, then roasted them. “Oh my god—is this a party?”

“It’s a dinner,” Minami said while hugging Maya. “Which is what passes for a party among people in their thirties.”

“Must be hard, being so millennial.” The last word was clearly an insult. She hugged Sul, made heart eyes at Rue, but stopped short of Hark. “Hey, Conor,” she teased. Her cheekbones were flushed pink. From the night chill, Eli hoped.

Except it was June. In Texas.

“Hi, Maya.” Hark nodded, pointedly looking elsewhere. He was always nice enough to pretend not to notice Eli’s sister’s crush, but did a miserable job of it.

“There’s leftover risotto in the kitchen,” Eli said. When his sister left, Hark’s eyes followed her. Then he poured himself another glass of wine and downed it in a single gulp.

“You know there is this thing called sipping? It’s not tequila,” Minami pointed out. She and Sul hadn’t been drinking much.

“Isn’t it? Who’s to say?”

“Its molecular structure, for one.”

“Electron pairs are overrated,” Eli interjected.

“They are not. And that’s why I finished my PhD in chemical engineering and you two did not.”

Eli and Hark exchanged a look, mumbled “savage” and “low blow,” and then stopped in the middle of shaking their heads. Because Rue glanced between them, then focused on Eli and asked, “You were in a chemical engineering PhD?”

Fuck.

The table fell silent. Eli considered damage control possibilities, but Hark beat him to it. “We sure were.”

Rue turned to him. “Where?”

“Same as you.” He leaned back in his chair. “UT.”

“You both were in grad school. In the engineering department at UT Austin,” Rue repeated, confused.

“Correct.”

“When?”

“A few years before you, I’d guess. Your boyfriend came in the year after mine. Same mentor, though.”

“Hark,” Eli warned, but Rue talked over him.

“And why didn’t you finish?”

“What an interesting question.” The twist of Hark’s mouth was bitter. “We were asked to leave.”

“Hark.” This time, the warning came from Minami, who was usually better than Eli at getting him to behave. Problem was, she could not order Rue to stop asking questions.

“Why? What happened?”

“Oh, it was so long ago, I can barely remember. But maybe your friend—”

“Hark.” Eli rose to his feet, palms on the table. Rue looked puzzled and out of sorts, and he didn’t like it. She wasn’t going to be ambushed with a piece of knowledge that would hurt her—not on Eli’s fucking watch. “Enough.”

“My friend?” Rue asked, at a loss.

This time, Hark tipped his glass at her, drained what was left of his wine, and then lifted his hands in surrender. His smile was once again charming. Directed at Eli. “I know, I know—I’m an asshole. But what the fuck is left in life if I can’t be an asshole when I’m drunk?”

Eli rolled his eyes. “How about decency?”

“Eh. Overrated.”

Eli and Minami exchanged a long, conversation-containing look, punctuated by Minami clapping once and getting to her feet. “Since Rue might be too polite to ask Hark to go drown himself in a claw-foot bathtub, how about we just call it a night?”

“Sounds good even to me,” Hark muttered.

“Fantastic. You’re clearly not sober, so we’ll just drop you off on our way home. You can pick up your car tomorrow, when you slink back here to beg for Eli’s forgiveness for the way you acted in the presence of his friend.”

“I should leave, too,” Rue said. Eli hated how small her voice sounded, or the idea of her going anywhere. But her posture was tense, and it was obvious that she didn’t want him to protest.