Andrew lives on Corey Street, in a decent brick house, with a front porch, a space for a vehicle, and a little fence leading to a small yard behind.

  If I had to imagine the epitome of an American city house, it would be this. Just enough for one or two people, rather high than large, and aligned with a dozen other houses with the same shape, except for the exterior color.

  Corey Street. It is close to the University but not close to the bar at all. “You lied.” I babble, gripping the column to stabilize while he grabs his house keys in his pocket. He hums interrogatively before watching above his shoulders, finding my eyes, and immediately knowing what I’m talking about.

  “About where I live? I never said it.”

  “You said you weren’t far from the bar.”

  “Oh, that. Yes. That was a lie,” he opens the door and takes a step to the side, gesturing for me to come in first. I’m sure his interior is very neat. Everything in its place, lots of colors. After climbing the stairs, I take a few seconds to dry my shoes on the mat. “You were so embarrassed that I didn’t want you to feel bad.”

  “Why would I feel bad?”

  “Well, you could have driven me home. Like a kind person. Although you were ravaged. Just like tonight.”

  My answer is stuck in my throat while I step inside.

  I wasn’t too far from the truth. It is neat and well-furnished. Not too many flashy colors, though, just the right amount. Decorated with paintings, plants, and flowers. Cushions and plaids, usually seen in the example displays of the perfect living room in IKEA. Although all of it is a bit unorganized.

  But the scent.

  All that I imagined and worse. It’s in every corner of the place. I can smell the fruits in the kitchen’s basket, the different species of flowers I couldn’t even name, and him. The warmth, the intimacy, the sunlight. I can’t even explain. I must be terribly drunk. Much more than I thought.

  “Can you go in? I want to close the door.” His voice interrupts my digression. He points at the couch after I obeyed. “Sit there, I’ll make you some tea.”

  “I don’t drink tea.”

  He huffs, and I glimpse at the corners of his mouth lifting. “Of course. Black coffee, right?”

  I nod. I am really that obvious. “Just some water.”

  “Fine. I’ll make tea for myself.”

  He disappears into his kitchen, and I go sit on the couch. It’s soft, cozy, and wide enough to lounge in. The regular sound of the clock on my right settles my heartbeat in more coherent pumps. The smell has lessened as I grew accustomed to it, but it is still dangerously evident how much I like it. There’s an obvious tint I can’t find. Maybe a flower, or an herb.

  I get up again to watch the numerous photos he has on his TV console. I recognize him, of course, and I guess the rest is family. Maybe his mother and father, because he looks very young in the one that I’m scrutinizing.

  His hair is blond, and his smile almost outshines the sun above them. His mother’s arms are in the air, and her husband has his around her waist. Andrew is on their right. Happiness is the best word to describe the picture. “It was a week before the accident.”

  His steps betrayed his position a few seconds ago, yet I’m still surprised by his arrival. As I turn around, I see my glass of cold, fresh water and his steaming mug with the tea sachet inside, resting on coasters on the small table. I would have smiled if the topic wasn’t so heavy. Because, of course, he would protect his furniture like that.

  Honestly, besides sharing my deepest condolences, which I already have, I don’t know what to say.

  Instead, he continues, “I was supposed to start driving lessons with him. He was coming home late from work again that night. The other guy didn’t stop at the sign.”

  I carefully nod. “What did he do? For work?” I ask, trying to deviate the discussion onto a lighter subject.

  “He was a teacher. Middle school.” He says. And I smile. “What?”

  “Is it where you got your passion for teaching?”

  He watches the ceiling for a second, asking himself that question for the first time. But the corners of his lips are downward. The extremities of his eyelids are wet. We shouldn’t talk about this. “Probably,” he eventually admits.

  I wait a moment before stepping into another topic. “Do you have siblings?”

  “No. It’s only my mom and my grandfather, now.” His tone is way different than the usual one he uses while speaking to me.

  “What’s their name?”

  He takes a second before answering. “Francesca and Christian.”

  “And your father?”

  “William. But everybody called him Will.”

  Andrew sits on the sofa and lets a soft chuckle escape his nose. “What is it?” I ask, as I join him. The cold water against my fingers sends electric shivers up my elbow, and the freshness following my trachea, falling into my stomach, already patches me up from the headache.

  “You’re not pestering me this time. It’s… weird.”

  I frown. “You expected me to make fun of you while admitting you lost your father?”

  He looks at me with curious eyes. Was he really assuming this? Guilt crunches my lungs. He depicted such a horrible picture of me in his head, and that’s all my fault. I’ve been nothing but terribly ungrateful when he has only been nice and cordial to me this entire time.

  “I’m sorry,” I articulate with difficulty this time.

  “For my father? You already apologized.”

  “For how I treated you.”

  He’s dumbfounded. And I can’t blame him. I barely recognize myself talking. It just feels right at the moment. I need it off my chest. The truth that has been simmering. “You surely are drunk.” He whispers, but I hear it.

  “I might be grumpy and cold, but that’s just on the surface. You surely know, since you can figure me out so easily.”

  “I can’t,” he almost screams and slides his hand into his hair, as he often does when he’s frustrated, I notice. “I can’t read people’s minds.”

  “But you are always in my mind,” I admit in a whisper as I close my eyes, his scent even stronger than when I stepped inside his house. How?

  Andrew’s voice rises from the back of my head, far away. “That’s because you can’t stop thinking about me.” His giggles bounce back and forth with an echoing effect.

  As the smell grows deeper, warmth fills my nose, and I lean forward, toward what is at the tip of my tongue. It’s coming from the tea, isn’t it? The aromas of this tea are exactly what I’ve been searching for this entire time. I need to know. Why does it remind me so much of home? Back in Slovakia? “What is in your tea?”

  “Alexej,” he murmurs, and I don’t understand why he doesn’t just answer me. The smell is so evident now, it’s like my nose is right above the mug, but it’s not, because when I open my lips, I can feel skin stroking against them.

  I’ve leaned into the crook of his neck. That’s perfect. That’s where he smells the most. It’s brilliant. Soothing. It tightens my stomach in the best way possible, and I take the deepest inhale I can, right below his jaw. “Tvoja v?ňa…” he shivers and tries to pull away, but he can’t. I need to smell him. I need to know. Why won’t he tell me? “Vonia? ve?mi dobre.”

  “What—”

  I suddenly jerk upward. “Linden.”

  “You…”

  “Linden blossom.”

  “I—”

  “The flowers from the linden trees. Is that it?” I ask and finally acknowledge how red he is. His cheeks and his neck and his ears. Everything is red. His torso dangerously rises up and down, and I’ve made a mess again. What should I do? What the hell happened? Why did I do this? Why did I put my mouth so close to him? What’s wrong with me?

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  Instead, I grab the mug and take a long inhale. The warm vapor burns my nose, but I don’t care. I think I’m blushing too. “It’s linden tea, right?”

  “Yes. Yes, it is.” He blinks furiously and pretends to pull on his shirt to wipe away where my lips have been. “With chamomile.”

  “I had a linden tree back in my hometown. In Slovakia. There was a swing attached to it. It was in my backyard. And when I wanted to be alone, I would go there to listen to the birds and the wind. The flowers would bloom, and the scent would follow me all year long. I’ve been smelling it on you since the first day we met, and before tonight, I couldn’t put my finger on it. Linden.”

  Surely, I look like a maniac right now, but I owe it to him at least to explain my weird reaction. He nods and seems to be ingesting the news. His throat works. I’ve put him in a difficult position. He must be so confused. Once I’m treating him like my personal archnemesis, and the next I’m sniffing out his neck? I’m a freak.

  “I’m sorry,” I repeat yet again and give him the mug. He grabs it with much softness, our fingers brushing.

  “Don’t worry,” he says with an embarrassed smile on his face.

  “You should be wearing your watch on the other side, if you’re right-handed.” I blurt out because I need to stop thinking about how soft his skin was against my mouth.

  “It was my father’s,” he takes a small sip of his beverage, and for some reason, I want to drink tea now. “And he was left-handed. It’s just—”

  “I get it.” I interrupt him. He looks overwhelmed. I made him uncomfortable. And my head is spinning from the alcohol and the linden and his neck.

  He snorts, and the silence is broken. I freeze. I’m afraid, I realize. I don’t know what to do. “I’m going to sound redundant, but it is so truly interesting to watch you.” He admits with half a smile.

  “Watching me has become your new hobby.”

  “You have no idea.”

  The moment we spent inside the closet right before I humiliated myself in front of every professor at Tufts resurfaces, and my mood becomes dread. “You’re going to have to come clean, Andrew.”

  His expression is priceless. Exquisite. The little devil on my shoulder whispers dirty truths to my ear. “About what?”

  “What you started explaining in the closet. What do you know about Isabella? About Mr. Haynes? About me?”

  He chews on his bottom lip, and it takes all of my willpower to keep my focus anywhere else. I set my sights on the very subtle freckles under his eyes. On his nose, too.

  He looks like he’s been asked to choose between the two most precious things in his life. His hands fondle the end of his pants, and our legs almost touch.

  “I’m sorry I brought it up. I shouldn’t have.”

  “Too late for that.”

  His lids squint a little more, and I’m sure he’s trying to teleport right now. Anywhere else than this place. “Bella is going to kill me if I say anything.”

  “Bella, uh?”

  I remember the phone call I had with her. It wasn’t Andrew’s voice, and now that Jesse let his secrets out, I’m more than convinced he wasn’t having an affair with her. Yet. Something stirs in my belly.

  “Are you jealous?” he queries, and he’s in my head again.

  I’m not sure I like it when he’s immaculately on point. I’m not surprised or even impressed, and especially not when he still asks the question despite already knowing the damn answer. “I’m not jealous.”

  “You do sound like it.”

  “What kind of relationship do you have with her?”

  I’m conflicted between grabbing his jaw and forcing him into admitting everything or shutting him up with… something. “I’ve known her for as long as I’ve been working in Tufts lab.”

  “And that would be?”

  “Six years ago.” That’s impossible. “I got accepted to the lab before I finished my Ph.D.” He continues, reading my thoughts.

  Well, that’s embarrassing.

  I’ve actually never searched for his name, but if he’s been implemented to the team before he even got to graduate, he must be a fucking genius. “What is it that you do again?”

  “Synergology.”

  “No, no,” I shake my head, the little strands of hair on my sides tickling the top of my ears. “In the lab. Isabella told me already, but I forgot. And don’t think we are done with Isabella.”

  He closes his eyes with amusement. And while he talks, he straightens up his spine. He wants me to take him seriously.

  “I primarily work through experiments regarding the educational impact of the environment on children in our current era. We create simulations for the kids to develop in, and analyze their reactions. Especially the ones with disorders or diseases. How the pollution, the internet, and other human beings affect them as well as how to appropriately decide which treatment is best or which mannerism should be inculcated or not.”

  The fireworks explode in his eyes. I see it all. The devotion. The passion. The need to make this world a better place. A place where… some might have thrived a lot more. And a lot better.

  I can only nod. And gaze away. Because the intensity is too much to bear. He has been working for a long time for a cause that is truly necessary. While I’ve been messing with him for teaching synergology. He did say how he hesitated about doing the classes at the very first meeting. I do remember his speech. I’ve just decided to obliterate it from my brain out of spite. And pure stupidity.

  “Tell me what you know,” I deviate. I can’t be too honest tonight. Or maybe I’ll just blame it on the booze. He sighs loudly, probably pondering the repercussions of his untied tongue. Eventually, he brings his eyes back to mine and starts talking.

  “Last time she and I saw each other, she was rather… agitated. She didn’t want to explain but admitted it was related to you.”

  I couldn’t be more concentrated. I think I’ve leaned into him, even, as if his words would penetrate my brain faster, better. He doesn’t seem phased, but his gaze darts down a few times. Mine don’t leave his pupils. “Hmm.”

  “I’m… She didn’t say much more. Just that she was tired and on edge, and that your situation really should end quickly because it was driving her insane. But if I had known it was because you two were seeing each other—”

  “What?” My mouth opens before I had entirely acknowledged the meaning of his sentence.

  “You seem to be unhappy about my affinity with Bella, but I can assure you, I’m not interested. She’s all yours—”

  “I’m not pursuing Isabella.”

  His eyebrows go up, and his mouth agape for a few seconds. “Then it was not because you two had a fight?”

  “Well. Depends on when you last saw her. We did have some kind of fight. But we are definitely not together.” He nods, chewing on the inside of his cheek mindlessly. Back in the closet, is this really what he had in mind? Or is he withholding information on purpose?

  He stays quiet, watching expectantly. “She’s been taking care of pleading my case to the dean for the past four years. I’m sure you can see where it’s going.”

  “So, Bella’s working on your position at one of Tufts labs but…”

  “But apparently, something, or rather someone, is preventing it from happening.”

  He bends his head to the side. “The dean?”

  I nod. Who else? I can’t start believing Isabella is actually working against me. I don’t want to become that person. The next possibility is sitting right in front of me. And that possibility, yet again, reads my thoughts. “You suspected me?”

  “Not really.”

  “You’re putting a lot of expectations on me. I have zero influence on the dean,” he smiles through the bewilderment.

  I shrug my shoulders. “You’ve been begged to teach.” That’s what Haynes said at the meeting, the first day. They’ve been close. We have the same last name. I might be extrapolating.

  His laugh resonates inside my own rib cage. Deliciously. “Alright. There’s only a little chance you trust me, but I can assure you, I have nothing to do with this. I’ve seen Bella numerous times these days, Clark as well, and I haven’t noticed anything weird. I will be cautious now.” He lifts his hand to my mouth. “And before you start, I am not expecting anything in return. I will do it, whether you want it or not.”

  His gaze is categorical. With great scrupulousness, he takes the last sips of his tea and watches me through it. I’m completely mute.

  I feel weirdly supported. Not entirely alone.

  “Do you want to take a shower? You look like you need one.” He gathers both of our empty beverages from the table to his sink, the clatter of the glasses the only sound perturbing my whirling thoughts. I do need a shower. That is exactly what I need right now.

  He walks away, barefoot, the sound of his feet resonating loudly against the flooring, and I understand a bit too late that I’m supposed to follow him.

  Along his resting space is a long corridor with mirrored rooms on each side. And at the end of it stands the bathroom. I figured he would live in a much bigger place than this. He surely has the income to envisage more. But the whole resembles him too much for this house to be just transitional.

  He loves it. It’s heavily decorated with postcards, photos, candles, and personal trinkets. I stop in front of one of them. It’s a bowl, clearly handmade, in a clear water green color. Inside: tickets for a movie, dry candies, a thimble, and an assortment of dry leaves, tangled with a thin string. It’s been burned on one tip.

  He halts in his tracks and comes back to stand close to me. “It was one of those little handsy projects we did at school for Father’s Day.”

  His fingers drive the rebellious hair at the back of his head, and I decide it’s best not to query more. He seems exhausted, too.

  The bathroom is delicately and intelligently painted in light yellow on the ceiling and the first half of the walls. I’ve rarely seen myself around this color. When Andrew steps inside as well, he fits so perfectly. This place is his home. “Here’s your towel,” he stretches one after grabbing it under the sink, and that’s just common to any household, isn’t it? “You have everything you need on the shelf to your right, and… feel free to take as much time as you need. Do you need clothes?”

  “I sleep naked.” The words slip out of my mouth with an ease I wouldn’t have expected. “But, I’ll take a… t-shirt. Please.”

  He can’t suppress the smile on his face. Sleep is more than required at the moment. If not from resentment, I’ll avoid him from deep embarrassment tomorrow. “Of course, Alexej,” he chimes, and I watch him close the door behind him before entering the Italian-style shower.

  When I leave it, the towel around my waist and my clothes under one arm, Andrew sets up the living room for me to sleep on the couch, now open and as large as a classical bed. Andrew’s attention remains on the sheets he’s stretching while gesturing to the clothes behind him for me to change into. “I figured you never would have taken my bedroom. Is this enough?”

  “Yes. Thank you.”

  My voice is hoarse, bruised like I’ve been screaming non-stop at a five-hour concert the day before. Is that what it is? To talk as much as a normal human being?

  “What do you eat in the mornings?” He casually asks.

  And I freeze.

  Tomorrow, I’ll return to my usual self. This night is out of time, like in another astral plane of the universe, and I need to come back to earth. The whiskey will finally abandon my body as I sleep through the night, and I’ll gather my senses.

  He shakes his head. “Understood. Just leave whenever you feel like it.”

  When he’s done with the bed, Andrew comes to where I’ve stood for the last three minutes and wishes me goodnight before reaching for his bedroom door.

  My heart is hammering in my chest. My breathing is ragged. My body is on fire despite the freezing shower I just took, and the reason why is no longer in the room with me.