work with a sense of pride that had been missing in her life for too long. Pride that had been stolen from her by her disheartening job search and compounded by Paul’s abandonment at her lowest moment.
It seemed silly now that she’d invested so much in someone who’d never exhibited more than a passing attachment to her. It was embarrassing that she’d allowed him to hurt her. To damage her sense of her own self-worth.
She didn’t need him or anyone else to validate her. She didn’t need an impressive academic position to prove she was a gifted mathematician either. Not once she’d published this proof. It would stand on its own as a testament to her worthiness.
A mathematical proof, but also proof that she was good enough.
And she’d done it on her own, without institutional support.
Take that, Princeton. What do you think of my CV now?
She was feeling confident enough to pack it in for the day, and made her way downstairs, in search of Josh. She found him in the kitchen, newly returned from milking the goats and in the middle of making dinner. For the two of them.
He looked up, smiling at the sight of her, and she threw herself into his arms, kissing him until he gently untangled himself so he could tend to the food that was in danger of burning on the stove.
Mia wasn’t used to people doing things for her. But she might be able to get used to it, she decided, standing in that farmhouse kitchen filled with the fragrant sizzle of cooking food.
“Do you like cooking?” she asked, grabbing two beers out of the fridge.
He shrugged as he pushed ground beef around a skillet. “I like to eat. It’s hard to do one without the other.”
“I never learned to cook.” She twisted the caps off both bottles and handed one to Josh.
He eyed her as he sipped his beer. “What do you eat?”
“I can make pasta. Grilled cheese sandwiches. Canned soup.”
“That’s cooking.”
“Not like this.” She nodded at the skillet of beef and onions he was stirring.
“Beef stroganoff is easy. Anyone can make it.” He tipped some beer into the pan. Stirred it some more. “I could teach you.”
“Could you?”
He shrugged. “If you want to learn.”
“Maybe? My brain’s pretty fried tonight though.”
“I’ll bet.” He took another swig of beer. “Doesn’t have to be tonight.”
“Does that mean I’m invited back?”
He set down his spatula and his beer. Abandoning his post at the stove, he took her in his arms and gave her a kiss that made her whole body light up. His hands cupped her face as he gazed at her. “You can come back anytime you want.”
She inhaled a shaky breath, in real danger of swooning dead away. “Careful, I might take you up on it.”
“I wouldn’t have said it if I didn’t mean it.”
She believed him. He wasn’t the most effusive man she’d ever met, but he didn’t speak frivolously. If he said he wanted her here, it was because he did.
He went back to the stove and picked up his spatula again. “Hand me those mushrooms, would you?” She brought him the bowl of sliced mushrooms on the butcher block and he dumped them in the skillet. As he stirred them in with the meat and onions, he pointed at a bag of noodles on the counter. “Think you can use your cheffing skills to cook those noodles?”
There was already a pot of water boiling on the stove. Mia dumped the noodles in and Josh handed her a wooden spoon to stir them with.
Ten minutes later, they sat down to eat. He’d mixed goat’s milk yogurt in with the meat to make a creamy sauce. Secretly, Mia had been a little skeptical, but it turned out delicious.
After dinner, she helped him do the dishes, and then he surprised her by asking if he could see what she’d been working on all day.
She took him by the hand and led him upstairs. Together, they stood in the middle of his bedroom looking at the sheets of butcher paper she’d covered with notes and drawings.
“What does it all mean? Explain it to me.”
“It’s pretty technical,” she said. “It won’t make any sense to you unless you’ve studied differential equations, algebraic geometry, and combinatorics.” Even then, it’d be difficult for anyone without a background in advanced topology to fully understand.
“That’s okay. I don’t expect to understand any of it. I just want to hear you explain it.”