Page 8 of The Scent of Happiness

As Brooke rushed out the door into a cold blast of autumn air, she tried to imagine Theo Chambers as a lawyer.

She couldn’t.

Chapter Four

Theo had learned to like going to the gym. He’d hated it at first, when everyone seemed bigger and more confident than he was, but he’d quickly seen the benefits. After the day he’d had—day and a half, actually—he needed to stop thinking for an hour. So even though he was exhausted, he still made time for a workout before going home.

In the office, he was judged for his brains. Was he smart enough? Quick enough? Could he find this fact, research that precedent, connect it all together in an iron-clad document? At the gym, he could let those expectations go and be fully in his body, no thought required. Pick up this weight. Put it down again. Pick up another. Put it down. Add more weight to the machine. Add a little more. Get stronger.

When he was done, his clothes were sticking to him, and he was starting to stink with that special gym odor. He drove home with the windows down.

He lived with a roommate in an apartment that had been built for students in the early days of Cannondale University’s founding and barely renovated since. He crept through the door, shed his workout clothes, and took a quick shower, careful not to bang around while closing doors or walking from room to room. His roommate worked the opening shift at Hotshot Coffee, so he went to bed early and woke up at five in the morning. Theo was quiet in the evening and Derek returned the favor when he woke up before dawn.

He’d been friends with Derek forever, so splitting the costs of an apartment made sense. It worked out well, mostly because they hardly ever saw each other and neither of them was a jerk about doing chores. When they’d first moved in together, they’d had many discussions about when and where Derek could smoke, but he’d agreed to keep it in his room and open a window. As long as their apartment didn’t smell like weed, Theo could deal with it.

He put on comfortable jeans and a sweatshirt, then ordered an olive and mushroom pizza. He thought vaguely about cooking real food, but it was hard to cook without making noise. Besides, one of the great pleasures of being a grown-up with a grown-up job was that he didn’t have to cook real food. Nice people would make meals for him and deliver them, so why not take advantage of that?

The only problem was the apartment’s door buzzer. He’d told the delivery guys a million times not to ring it, but they’d do it anyway. He didn’t want to wake Derek, so he waited at the bottom of the stairs, ready to intercept the pizza before the delivery got to his building.

As he huddled in the doorway, scrolling through his phone, his thoughts turned to Brooke Nesbitt and the odd phone call from her father, who’d made an appointment for her. He and Brooke were both adults now, and surely wouldn’t get sucked back into the high school pecking order, but he had to admit that a part of him enjoyed the thought of the prom queen needing his help.

He hadn’t seen Brooke in ages. Would he still recognize her? And why was she making soap? She’d always been artsy, but he pictured her more as a singer or actor than someone making crafts.

He searched around until he came up with Brooke’s Instagram. He clicked on it, hoping to see her face, but she didn’t have many photos there, and the ones she had were mostly cute pictures of her soap. The rest were photos of flowers she’d taken at the botanical gardens. It was the kind of Instagram a shy person would have, but the Brooke he used to know was anything but shy.

Maybe she didn’t like Insta. He poked around other social networks, but before he found anything, his pizza arrived. He snuck back into his apartment like a thief, closed the door softly behind him and got a beer from the kitchen.

He was tucking into his second slice when Derek emerged from his room with bleary eyes and bed-messed hair, wearing sweatpants and a t-shirt that stretched over his belly. He lifted his chin. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Theo said. “I was trying to be quiet.”

“Didn’t hear a peep.” Derek sat in the other kitchen chair and sniffed the air. “It was the smell of late-night pizza. Even when I’m dead to the world, a good garlic crust will invade my dreams.”

Theo pushed the pizza box toward him. “Help yourself.”

“Thanks.” Derek took a slice and then nodded toward Theo’s phone. “Oh man, you don’t want to do that. Looking at the news before bed will give you nightmares. It will be like a horror movie up in your head.”

“It’s not news,” Theo said. “I’m trying to find someone. Do you remember Brooke Nesbitt from high school?”

“Hey yo, I’m not going to forget a girl like that.”

“Do you keep in touch? Snapchat or Twitter or anything?”

“Nah, she’s out of my league.” Derek took another bite. “She’s out of both our leagues. But hell yes, I remember her.”

“I’m not trying to date her. I asked if you remembered her, that’s all.”

“I bet she’s still hot,” Derek said. “Man, those ABC girls were gorgeous. Ashley, Brooke, and who was the other one? Chloe? Yeah, all three of them were in my spank bank. My dick sang its ABCs so many times that I—”

“Derek, I’m trying to eat.”

“Yeah, all right.” Derek shoved half the crust into his mouth. “Why were you thinking about girls we went to school with?”

“Not all of them. Just Brooke.”

“She was my lab partner in freshman science class.”

“I never knew that,” Theo said. “That must have been tough.”