Page 22 of The Sunday Brothers Novellas

CHAPTER FOUR

THEO

I hadn’t known Porter Sunday could be skittish.

I’d seen him being a sexy, overconfident, know-it-all student too many times to count last semester.

I’d seen him being a gregarious, good-natured goof with his friends around campus.

As of last night, I’d even seen him being an amusingly obnoxious sonnet-screamer.

More than once in the months I’d known him, I’d wished that the man would sit still and just fucking listen to me.

But now that Porter was sitting silent and subdued at my tiny wooden kitchen table, nearly curled in on himself, I wasn’t sure this was what I’d wanted after all.

In fact, I knew it wasn’t.

I set a plate of scrambled eggs and toast in front of him before taking my own seat on the opposite side of the table. “Eat,” I instructed.

He picked up his fork and began shoveling hot eggs into his mouth pell-mell, like he was on the clock. I frowned at him, trying to figure out what had changed with him in the last five minutes… and whether I should try to address it or not.

Porter had had a hard night. Maybe he was hungover.

Maybe, considering the apology he’d just made, he was feeling embarrassed about his behavior.

Maybe he was tired, or coming down with a cold, or sad that I didn’t have oat milk creamer for his coffee, or…

Christ, the possibilities were endless, really.

If Porter had been a white paper on intersectional diversity training or a few stanzas of fragmentalist poetry, I’d have been able to read, analyze, and comprehend him without a problem. Flesh and blood humans, though, were so much trickier.

There was a reason why my friends—classmates, former colleagues, or even people I’d grown close to at Hannabury, like my colleague John Curran and his husband—only called me when they needed willing bodies for their Fun Runs, or the name of a good accountant, or someone to take their extra ticket for Les Mis at the last minute because I probably didn’t have any plans.

I wasn’t a heart-to-heart sort of person.

And Porter wasn’t my friend. Wasn’t my houseguest. Wasn’t even my student anymore. He officially should not have been my problem… but it turned out, I missed the spark of mischief in those green eyes of his. I missed his humor. And his fire.

“Is something wrong?” I finally asked.

He shook his head and didn’t glance up. “Nope. Good eggs. Thanks for that.”

I blew out a breath and tried again. “You seem troubled. If you wanted to talk, I would listen.”

He did glance up at this, at least long enough to ask incredulously, “ Now you want to talk? I apologized. I asked you to drive me home and we could forget this ever happened. And you said?—”

“No.”

“Exactly!” He threw up his hands. “No, you don’t forgive me? No, we can’t forget it? What does that even mean , Professor? ”

I blinked. He was upset because he thought I might be upset with him ? That wasn’t what I would have expected of Porter Sunday. But I was beginning to realize that I’d been wrong about a lot of things with him.

“Obviously, I accept your apology, Porter. I’d hardly be making you coffee and eggs if I were angry, would I?

Context clues , yes? The no was in reference to me driving you home.

If you recall, there’s an enormous tree across the driveway, the road to town won’t be plowed for ages, and there’s more snow predicted later.

” I sipped my coffee. “Campus is closed until Monday, and even that feels optimistic.”

I didn’t say it out loud, but while I might forgive Porter, I wasn’t sure I could forget last night had ever happened. Too many parts of the last eight hours had been written on my brain in indelible ink, and I’d be replaying them in my mind for a long while.

“Monday?” Porter repeated. “As in… as in, three days from now ?” His eyes went comically wide, the flecks of honey in his green eyes catching the light coming in through the nearby window.

“That’s impossible! I have to be at the Hub tomorrow.

I promised the kids we’d do a theater thing. I’ll… I’ll hike home.”

I glanced down at his feet, which were currently snug in a pair of my wool socks but which we both knew would only be minimally protected by the thin Vans he’d left by the door.

“Sure you will,” I said, turning my attention to my breakfast. “You know, the Hub will be closed because campus is closed, so you won’t have to worry about that.”

“But…” His eyes flicked to the bed in the middle of the room. “You and I… we… I can’t stay!” The mild edge of panic was back in his voice again, lifting the pitch of his words high enough to make me bite back a smirk.

Stop finding him attractive, dammit.

“If you found my company that abhorrent, you probably should have considered that before you and your friends got Steve to drive you out here to deliver a poetry rant,” I said mildly. I took a bite of toast. “Speaking of which, have you called to let them know you’re okay?”

“Yeah. I texted our group chat while you were…” Porter waved a hand at the stove. “Cooking stuff. And look, it’s not that I mind your company. Jeez.” He ran a hand through his dark hair. “It’s just… I’m embarrassed, okay? And there’s still only one bed here. And… and… you don’t even like company!”

He wasn’t wrong. I valued my privacy. But he wasn’t correct either. “You seem to feel like you know me pretty well for a person who never had a conversation with me outside of class until last night.”

“Am I wrong?” He waved a hand around the space. “If you wanted company, you’d have more than one bed and one reading chair…”

“I have two chairs at this table,” I retorted. “ Four plates in the cabinet, four glasses on the shelf.”

The green eyes I was trying so hard not to notice blinked at me. “Because they came with the set!”

Once again, not entirely wrong but not entirely right either. I couldn’t hold back my smile anymore. “My grandfather made these chairs by hand. One for me and one for him.”

Porter looked back down at the chair he sat in. “Your grandfather did?”

I nodded before taking another sip of coffee. “Yep. This cabin was his retirement project. He made everything in here, including the cabin itself. He left me his entire estate when he passed away, but this was by far the best part.”

“Oh, wow. I… I’m sorry for your loss. Sounds like you were… close?”

I nodded again.

“Rough,” Porter said. “I lost my dad right before I turned seventeen. If losing your grandfather was anything like that… well. It must have sucked.” He pushed his plate aw ay and pulled his mug closer, grasping it with both hands. “Was he really handy? Or in construction or something?”

It was clear Porter was trying to make an effort, to make a connection , and I appreciated that. Which was why I found myself sharing more information with him than I usually shared with anyone.

“Nope. Gramps was a physics professor at Hannabury, actually, and an amateur inventor. For decades, he and my grandma lived in faculty housing, back when the college offered that as a benefit. They raised my mom there. And since they didn’t have a mortgage, they bought a large parcel of land as an investment.

” I swept a hand out, indicating the seventy-acre plot around us.

“For years, they parked an RV out here. They’d spend their summers fishing and exploring, and there’s a tool shed out back where Gramps used to tinker with things.

They had lots of big dreams of building a house out here as soon as he retired, but…

” I took another sip of coffee. “Then Grandma died. And Gramps wasn’t excited to retire anymore.

Too much alone time and nothing to do, you know? ”

“Yeah.” Porter’s bright green eyes shone with sympathy. “How did he finally decide to build the cabin?”

I smiled down at my coffee, remembering my mom’s frantic phone call. They’re forcing him out, Theo. Get up there and distract him.

“Well… I told him I needed a break from working on my dissertation—which wasn’t a lie.

I said I wanted to come stay with him for the summer and distract myself with physical labor.

Chopping wood or building something. He was so excited to have company up here he immediately got to work planning our summer project.

And he didn’t seem to mind too much when the school suggested making him a professor emeritus and taking him off the roster for the following autumn. ”

“You worked on it together?” He looked around the small space as if appreciating it through a new lens. “So cool.”

“Knowing how the place was put together has come in handy from time to time,” I agreed.

“And I’ve never laughed as much as I did that summer.

Never worked as hard or slept as little either.

When Gramps fell asleep each night, I stayed up working on my dissertation for a few more hours.

I hadn’t told him I had a job lead in Virginia that would require me to finish my degree as soon as possible. ”

“Did you make it? Did you get that job?”

I shook my head. “No, but it turned out to be a good thing. If I’d gone to Virginia, I wouldn’t have gotten the job at Brown, which is how I ended up getting hired here.”

Porter looked surprised. “You had a job at Brown, and you left it to come to Hannabury? Why?”

I rolled my eyes. It was a question I’d been asked many, many times.

“You sound like my father,” I said with a laugh.

“I grew up in New York, where his side of the family is from. My mother was thrilled to get out of Hannabury and never wanted to come back, but I lived for the summers I’d spend with my grandparents up here.

I enjoyed Providence, and I loved the students at Brown, but when Gramps left me this place, I just… ”

“Felt the need to come back here permanently?” Porter guessed. “Like it was a thing you were supposed to do?”