She was trying to treat this move as an opportunity instead of a misfortune. This would be a rebuilding year for her. A chance to concentrate on her work without any distractions. Refocus on what she wanted from her career, figure out how she was going to get it, and adjust her twenty-year plan accordingly. And the first step was letting go of anything that might weigh her down.
Mia pulled her old winter coat out of the back of her closet. “How cold does it get in Central Texas in the winter?”
Olivia looked up from a box of Mia’s old books that she was poking through. “Colder than here, but not cold enough for that.”
“Won’t you need it if you go home for Christmas?” Brooke pointed out.
“I guess.” Reluctantly, Mia shoved the coat back into the closet.
“I can’t believe you’re moving to where we’re from,” Olivia said. “It’s weird.”
“I’m from Louisiana.” Brooke’s freckled cheeks dimpled as she made a face at Olivia. “Not Texas.”
Olivia shrugged. “Close enough.”
Brooke clasped her hands to her chest in mock offense. “Better not let any of my Louisiana relatives hear you say that.”
Olivia ignored her and turned back to Mia. “I’m having a real hard time picturing you in Texas. No offense, but you’re such a New Yorker.”
“None taken,” Mia said, since she was a New Yorker and proud of it. “I’m also having a hard time picturing me there.”
It had been a difficult enough adjustment when she’d moved to Los Angeles for graduate school eight years ago. But at least LA was a major metropolitan area with a large number of displaced New Yorkers like herself. Despite some of the peculiarities of West Coast living, Mia had found plenty of things to remind her of home and ease the transition.
“Especially Crowder of all places. Talk about culture clash. There’s basically nothing there but cow shit and rednecks—and ice cream, of course.” Olivia was originally from Houston, which was only two hours from the town where Mia would be living.
“Oh right! King’s ice cream is headquartered there.” Brooke slapped the heel of her hand against her forehead. “That’s where I’ve heard of it before. I’m addicted to their Way the Cookie Crumbles flavor.”
“I’m a Double Double Fudge and Truffle girl myself.” Olivia finished with the box she was going through and pushed it closer to the door. “We used to take field trips to the creamery in elementary school. We always got a paper hat and an ice cream cone at the end of the tour. Best day of the whole school year.”
Mia didn’t like ice cream because it gave her brain freeze, which resulted when a rapid change of temperature in the mouth caused the blood vessels to constrict in an attempt to maintain the body’s core temperature.
“The human brain doesn’t like rapid change,” she said, thinking about ice cream and brain freeze. But she supposed it also applied to her upcoming move. Unfortunately, in this case she didn’t have a choice, and her brain would have to deal.
Brook gave her a sympathetic look. “Maybe a little culture clash is what you need. Stepping out of your comfort zone is supposed to be good for you, right? Self-actualization through new experiences—or whatever it was Julia Roberts was doing in Eat, Pray, Love.”
Olivia snorted in amusement. “You’re going to Eat, Pray, Love your way through Crowder, Texas? Good luck with that.”
“What are you even going to do there?” Brooke asked. “Go cow tipping? Take up country-western dancing?”
“I’m going to work,” Mia said firmly. “I’ll have three courses to teach each semester, plus I need to get some papers published before I go back on the job market next year. That should be more than enough to keep me occupied.”
Mia’s primary field of concentration was knot theory, and she’d been obsessing over one specific problem since she’d finished her dissertation earlier this year. She was so close to solving it, she could practically taste the answer. If she could figure it out, it would be a game changer for her. The sort of thing that could open all the doors that had slammed shut in her face. It could be her ticket into the postdoc of her dreams, putting her twenty-year tenure plan back on track.
“How’s your research coming?” Brooke asked. She was a marine biology student in the last year of her PhD program. All she had left to finish was her dissertation, but she wasn’t in a big hurry, given the current