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I crouch, escaping his touch, and untie my hiking boots before toeing them off and nudging them into their spot beneath the coats. “I won’t have any clean clothes for tomorrow if I don’t do some laundry tonight. Let me go get it started, and then, I’ll make us some food.”

Sunny watches me until I disappear upstairs to get my laundry basket. Then, he follows me with slow, unhurried footsteps.

“I only own three pairs of jeans and three pairs of shorts,” I say. “This was pair three of the shorts.”

“You know you can wear clothes more than once, right?”

I nod. “Of course, I do.” But…

“Do you?”

I take a breath. “No. It’s gross. And they lose that stiff freshness. Smell a bit iffy too.”

“Would it gross you out if I said I could go a week in the same T-shirt, if I had to?”

I feel the wrinkles form over my nose. “That’s disgusting.”

Sunny laughs. “You should try coming to Sturgis, one year. Biggest bike festival there is. Not even sure I showered last time I was there for a week.”

“Urgh. Can’t begin to imagine the bacteria in your groin.”

Sunny bends forward and busts a gut laughing. “Bacteria…” He laughs again. “Fucking groin. Only you.”

“Only me, what?” I can’t help but smile, even though I don’t get what’s so funny.

He takes a minute to catch his breath from the laughter, then takes hold of my hand. “As I was following you home on my bike, I was thinking about all the ways I could undress you and put you at ease because I was worried that you might struggle to relax.” With his other hand, he touches the first button on my linen shirt. “And then, as we walked inside, I was checking out your ass. And, honestly, Indy, it was all giving me a bit of a boner. And in spite of all my thoughts about fucking you, we’re standing here talking about groin bacteria, which is about as sexy as cream of tartar.”

He laughs again, quieter this time, but no less real. He tugs me closer, and without the benefit of my hiking boots, I feel so much shorter. Despite saying he wears his clothes over and over, he smells clean and fresh, like cedar and soap.

“I’m sorry. But laundry is important. Responsibilities don’t disappear because I would rather be doing something else. One of my early supervisors used to say that neglected tasks become overwhelming tasks.”

“You know what I say?”

“What?”

“Sometimes the laundry can wait. And sometimes the dishes can wait. And sometimes, even work can wait.”

I fold my arms across my chest. “I find the idea of all three of those horrifying. Because then, everything accumulates, and I can’t enjoy the fun thing I’m doing, because I’m stressing about what to wear or if my stomach is going to grumble.”

“Oh, sweetheart,” he says. “Where did you learn that it’s wrong to let anything slide?”

I shrug, but I think I know. When you grow up in an academically capable household, doing well is never good enough. Results need to be exceptional to warrant a mention. Self-reliance and self-motivation are rewarded. I blow out a breath and decide I’m going to try something new.

I’m going to be utterly honest with Sunny.

“It’s probably going to sound silly to you, but I’m, technically, the least academically capable in my family. My brother Cameron has four degrees and works for the space program. He is literally a rocket scientist. My mother was part of a team who won the Nobel Prize for chemistry. My father is a cardiac surgeon who lectures at Johns Hopkins whenever they’ll have him. My younger brother, Brett, is a theoretical physicist who somehow finds quantum mechanics easy. My grandmother chaired the mathematics department at Berkeley for fifteen years, and my grandfather on my father’s side pioneered a surgical technique for brain surgery that’s still taught to residents today.”

I give a tiny shrug, hoping that everything I said puts things in perspective for him.

“So, basically, how you feel around them is a little like I feel around you?” Sunny asks.

I reach for his wrist. “I hope not, Sunny. Because I feel wretched.”

“Why?” Sunny says. “You’re brilliant, Della.”

My heart warms a little at just how highly he thinks of me. “Thank you. But I’m just an assistant professor who specializes in the ecology of wetlands. I mean, I have a doctorate. It’s just…ecology isn’t exactly viewed as the family flagship. They tried to push me into medicine or particle physics because I was good at science. My father tells people I like to study large puddles. My mom tells people it’s ‘very worthy work.’ They aren’t cruel about it. They simply think I could have aimed higher.”

Sunny brushes a hand over my hair. “Sounds fucking cruel to me. Tell me they celebrate you all the same.”