“Right, yes, my spooky season goals. Here’s my plan.”
I leaned forward as I listened to her and this had the unfortunate effect of putting Henry right in my line of sight. Even while I looked at Cami, I couldn’t help but track every move he made. “I’m afraid I don’t know much about Salem though I’ve always heard it’s overrun with tourists in October.”
Cami let out a sigh as her shoulders slumped. “I was worried about that.”
“We can still go,” Tori said. “I don’t believe that you should only go places when they’re not busy. We just need to be prepared for it.”
I found myself swept into an intense conversation with Cami and Tori about local destinations although I was getting the impression thatintensewas the only speed these two operated at. It was like looking back in time at me and Meri.
Before I knew it, I’d finished one drink and Tori was pressing another into my hand while Cami went through all the ways her husband’s residency program in New York was different from hers, but mostly how grueling it was to spend their first married year apart after being together through college and med school. It was a wonderful distraction from my own interpersonal issues. Entire minutes went by without being aware of the tender spot where Brie’s announcement had landed.
Henry, Ansari, and Jenelle were talking about some preprint research that had everyone up in arms as there seemed to be a lot of issues with the methodology. I knew Henry wasn’t as deeply invested in the conversation as Jenelle or Ansari, and I knew he shot a glimpse toward me every few minutes. He’d caught me glancing at him over the rim of my beer and responded with a slight quirk of his lips before shifting his attention to Jenelle’s position on the lack of gender and racial diversity in too many medical research studies.
I lost twenty minutes to wondering about that smirk.
Ansari was the first to leave. He had to get home to his cats, he’d said. Jenelle followed him, making some noises about being maxed out on hospital people for the week. This would’ve been a fine time for me to make my exit. All I had to do was stand up and say goodbye yet I couldn’t pull myself out of this chair. It was like all those covert looks had gathered into an impossible weight anchoring me in place and I couldn’t move. Not yet.
When Cami and Tori drifted toward the other side of the patio area to meet some dogs, I dug through my bag to keep myself from acknowledging that Henry and I were alone. Again. “I should get going.” I tossed a glance in his direction before grabbing my phone and responding to a few texts. I ignored Meri’s question about whether I was in need of emergency evacuation.
“Yeah, probably.” His gaze was far away. “Or you could stay and tell me what’s wrong.”
I put my phone down. “Nothing’s wrong.”
He leaned in, dropping his forearm to the table as he peered at me. He lifted his hand and tucked some hair over my ear. “That’s not what it looks like to me.”
It took everything inside me to keep from tilting toward him, which was how I ended up blurting out, “Why are you a first-year resident and not at the end of a fellowship?”
He studied me for a second before curling his hands around his glass. “We skipped over those details, huh?”
I grabbed my phone and purse, and pushed to my feet. “Forget it. I shouldn’t have asked and I really need to go?—”
Henry grabbed my wrist and tugged me back into the chair. His thumb pressed to my pulse point and we both knew how hard my heart was beating. “Sit down. Stay a minute. Please?”
“Just a few minutes.”
“That’s all I need.”
He drew lazy circles on the inside of my wrist. I thought about pulling my hand away, and maybe I should’ve, but I didn’t want to be sad anymore. I didn’t want to be lonely.
“I started as a paramedic,” he said, “and worked near Lake Tahoe. An opening on a mountain rescue unit in the Sierra Nevadas came up and I was in. It was everything I’d ever wanted. Mostly catastrophic injuries. Broken bones, serious wounds, major head and spinal stuff. Every call was an epic survivalquest. I mean, rappelling down from a helicopter to secure a hiker with a brain bleed into a basket at nine thousand feet in mudslide conditions and then keeping them stable all the way to UC San Francisco? That kind of survival quest.” He took a sip, drawing a slow gaze down the neckline of my shirt and over my bare arms. “I won’t say I got tired of it because that doesn’t happen when every day is unpredictable, but I decided I was up for a bigger challenge and went to med school. At thirty.”
“A bigger challenge.” Instead of laughing, a snort honked out of me. There was no disguising it, no pretending that I’d coughed or fumbled my way through a giggle. I slapped a hand over my eyes. “I can’t believe that just happened.”
“That was adorable,” Henry said through a laugh. He squeezed my wrist. “Do it again. Please.”
“First of all, over my dead body, and second, I have no control over these things.” I peeked at him between my fingers. “We’ll never speak of this again. There will be no resident rumors about the time I did my best impression of a clown horn.”
“Your secrets are safe with me, Whit.” He dragged his fingers up the inside of my arm and back down, and nothing had ever turned me on so fast as this. “All of them.”
I dropped the hand from my face. It would’ve been so easy to slide my fingers between his and pick up right where we’d left off at the lake. So easy. And it would begood. There was no reason to pretend otherwise. But then I’d wake up and find myself in the middle of a homegrown disaster far worse than my summer souvenir disaster, and I couldn’t jeopardize all my work for that. Iwouldn’tjeopardize my work just because I was low and needy tonight.
“You can’t call me that anymore,” I whispered.
He circled my wrist again. “I know.”
I gulped my beer. It wasn’t cold anymore and I wasn’t sure I liked the flavor, but it gave me something to do while I pulled myself together. “I take it you’re here for Stremmel and O’Rourke. They’re attracting a lot of interest in trauma surgery these days.”
“Maybe.” He shrugged. “It’s possible I’ll end up in trauma, if I’m being real, but I want to get a good look at my options first.” His gaze slipped from my eyes down to my lips as I chased a stray drop of beer. “Except transplant. That’s not an option.”
