Love Lessons

Karen looked a bit reluctant, but Julia was more than happy to veer the conversation into a new direction. Very aware of Mike sitting on the other side of the room, but trying to pretend she had forgotten all about him, Catherine focused intently on her friends as they finished their meals.

Catherine spotted Mike across the apartment compound as she climbed out of her car late the next afternoon. A toolbox in his hands, he was chatting with an older man she knew to be a longtime resident. Other tenants were moving around the parking lot, either walking to or away from their vehicles. She noted that several of them called out greetings to Mike, to which he responded with cordial waves.

He had certainly made himself known during his brief time on this job. She had lived here almost two years and knew the names of maybe three of her neighbors.

Finishing his conversation, he turned her way, saw her and lifted his hand in a wave. She paused in the shade of the oak tree next to her apartment building when he indicated that he wanted to speak with her.

“How’s it going?” he asked as he approached her.

“Very well, thank you. And you?”

“Not bad. I just wanted to tell you I got a B on my biology exam. A high B, just two points away from an A. The professor graded off on one of my essay questions,” he added with a charmingly sheepish smile. “Said I was ‘too vague.’”

She returned the smile, feeling safe to tease him a bit since he seemed to have accepted the comments good-naturedly. “Imagine that.”

He chuckled. “You did try to warn me.”

“Still, a high B is an excellent grade. Congratulations.”

“Thanks.” He looked genuinely proud of himself.

“When’s your next exam?”

“Friday.”

“Do you feel good about it?”

He hesitated just a moment before smiling a bit too brightly. “Oh, yeah. Piece of cake.”

Tilting her head, she studied him with a frown. “What will it cover?”

“Classification of organisms. You know, prokaryotes and eukaryotes. Real basic stuff that everyone should know by college.”

And yet he didn’t sound at all confident that he did know the material that well. “I’d be happy to quiz you, if you like,” she offered diffidently. “Not that I’m implying you’re not ready, of course, but—”

“You’re sure? Because I wouldn’t want to be a nuisance to you. I really don’t expect you to help me study for every test.”

“I don’t mind,” she assured him. “This is a fairly slow week for me—which is a rarity, actually. I can spare a couple of hours to talk about plantae and such.”

“Eukaryotes, right?”

She smiled again. “Right. When’s a good time for you?”

“I have a class this evening. But I’m free tomorrow evening, if that’s good for you.”

“Yes, fine. I should be home by six.”

“Do you like pizza?”

The non sequitur made her blink, but she nodded. “Yes.”

“Then I’ll bring dinner.” He dug into his shirt pocket, pulled out a card and a pen, and scribbled on the back. “Here’s my cell number, in case something comes up. Don’t feel obligated for this if there’s something else you need to do.”

Even as she gave him her numbers in exchange, she couldn’t imagine anything cropping up that would be more tempting than having pizza and studying with Mike Clancy.

Chapter Four

“Hey, Catherine. You’ll be here this evening, won’t you? Would you mind pulling a couple of plates for me?”

Catherine looked up from her microscope in response to the question the next afternoon. It was from one of the young women she had overheard talking about her last week, commenting about how Catherine never did anything but work, as if she had no life outside the lab.

It gave her great satisfaction to be able to say, “I’m sorry, Brandy, I won’t be here this evening. I have a date.”

“A date?”

Catherine wasn’t flattered by the surprise in the younger woman’s expression. She nodded coolly, feeling little compunction now about misrepresenting her plans for the evening. “You’ll have to ask someone else.”

“Okay…well…have fun.”

“Thank you. I intend to.”

It wasn’t like her to take such pleasure from deliberately misleading someone. But her lips curved into a rather grim smile of satisfaction as she bent back down to her work. It felt good to make it clear that she didn’t actually live here in the lab, with no outside interests of her own.

She really was going to have to start getting out more to make that assertion entirely true.

Catherine usually dressed quite casually—pretty much a necessity for most lab work. Her wardrobe consisted primarily of khakis and camp shirts in muted solids, often worn open over beige or white sleeveless tops. When the weather turned cooler, she swapped the camp shirts for thin sweaters with sleeves that could be pushed up and out of her way.

Occasionally she paired her khakis with more-professional blouses and blazers. When she had to dress up, she wore black slacks with the blazers. She rarely wore jeans or shorts and owned only a few skirts, since bare legs were not usually a good idea in a science lab.

Because her wardrobe was so simple and her choices rather limited, she didn’t spend much time deciding what to wear. She simply reached for a pair of slacks and any of the dozen or so shirts that matched them. She kept her hair in an easy-to-style bob, wore only light touches of makeup and eschewed all jewelry except her functional watch and a couple of pairs of simply styled earrings. She could be ready to leave her apartment in under half an hour.

All of which made it completely out of character for her to dither about her clothing for almost twenty minutes before Mike arrived Thursday evening. She had gotten home from work an hour earlier than she’d expected, giving her plenty of time to freshen up and change before Mike arrived, but for some reason she couldn’t decide what to wear. How silly, considering they wouldn’t be doing anything but studying, and that he wouldn’t notice her clothes, anyway.

She reached for fresh khakis and camp shirt, then paused again. On an impulse, she turned to a shelf on which she kept the two pairs of jeans that she owned. She donned a pair with a snug-fitting yellow T-shirt, then slid her bare feet into a pair of brown leather clogs.

Eyeing her reflection in the full-length mirror attached to the back of her closet door, she wondered if she had made the right choice. She looked more casual than usual. Too casual? Did it appear as though she were trying too hard to look younger?

“What do you think, Normie?”

The cat, who had been playing with a jingling toy ball near her feet, looked up and meowed rather impatiently, as if to tell her to stop being silly. Deciding that he was right, she turned off the closet light and left the bedroom.

Mike was late again, but only by fifteen minutes. The large pizza box in his hand looked as though it was still steaming, which probably explained his tardiness, she decided. Maybe he’d had to wait in line to pick it up. They should have just called for delivery.

A backpack was slung over one shoulder of the Hawaiian print shirt he wore over a T-shirt and faded jeans, reminding her of the “surfer dude” nickname she had given him the first time she’d seen him. He greeted her with a broad, beaming smile that elicited quivers of reaction deep inside her. “Hi.”

“Hi.” She moved to one side. “Come in.”

She closed the door behind him as he bent to scratch Norman’s ears. She wondered if anyone had seen him entering her apartment with the pizza, and if any tongues would wag as a result. She wasn’t accustomed to imagining herself at the center of apartment complex chatter, since her life wasn’t exactly fodder for juicy gossip.