With Meri it could be hard to tease out her real thoughts and feelings from the occasionally outrageous things she said. She liked to disarm people with her boldness. She could be brash and bawdy, but she talked so fast and smiled so bright that most people didn’t catch everything she said. Even when they did, it seemed to me that they dismissed anything that didn’t make sense. Which was most of her comments.
I knew better and I knew when she was being outrageous just because it suited her mood.
Yet I couldn’t tell whether any of this—the phone, the shots, the sprint to the tarot reader’s table—were all a product of her digging deep into a mood or her being raw and honest and telling me exactly how she felt.
Or both.
It had been a long time since it’d been both. A long time since I’d dragged her to a therapist and stayed with her through the first grueling session. Since I’d promised to see a therapist to sort out my own shit so long as she kept up with hers. We were nothing without our pacts.
When I caught up to her at the table tucked around the corner and behind a strip of game machines, she was already seated, staring down at the cards as the tarot reader placed them in front of her. Rather than listening, I leaned against an old-school pinball machine and tried to estimate how much longer Henry would be at the hospital. Assuming the procedure went well, they should’ve finished an hour or two ago. I was sure Hirano had Henry monitoring the patient in post-op, but that couldn’t take much longer and the fourth- and fifth-year residents covering that service overnight usually barked at anyone who intruded on their territory. He’d be here soon and then?—
I sensed someone approach from behind, but before I could turn, hands settled on the pinball machine, strong arms caging me in. “Do you know how to play?”
It took everything in me to keep from melting into him. “Yeah.”
I knew nothing about this game.
Henry ran a hand up the outside of my thigh and inserted some coins into the machine near my hip. The lights blinked to life and a ball dropped to the starting position. Mechanical music echoed under glass.
“People are watching,” I whispered.
“People are drunk. People are not paying attention to us.” Henry placed my hands on the control buttons, covering them with his. He pressed his hips forward, trapping me between him and the game. I was suddenly aware of my bra and the way my nipples tightened against the fabric. “People will believe me if I tell them I was teaching you how to play.”
We tapped the buttons, our fingers intertwined, and sent the ball flying across the board. When it went somewhere we didn’t like, Henry rocked against me, forcing the ball in a different direction and making me reevaluate my whole stanceon exhibitionism because all I needed was one more good thrust and it would be game over for me.
“Another round?” he asked when our score flashed across the screen and the ball went back into its hiding place.
“Even the drunk people will start to notice if we keep this up.”
He groaned into my shoulder. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Not yet. Meri’s in a mood and Cami has a checklist you need to complete before going anywhere.”
He squeezed my hips. His fingertips seemed to burn through my clothes, marking me. “Thirty minutes.”
I put some space between us before we forgot where we were. “Love the enthusiasm, but it will probably be longer than that.” I perked up as Meri rounded the wicker screen separating the tarot reader’s table from the games. “How’d it go?”
She slumped onto the pinball machine, burying her face in her hands. “Something about the Five of Swords and me banging my head against the wall. I don’t know. Apparently I try too hard and wring the life out of everything? Energetically, or whatever.” Trapping Henry with a hard stare, she asked, “Where did you come from?”
“Northern California,” he replied. “A little city in Nevada County, just north of Tahoe. Lived around that area until med school in San Francisco. Or did you mean, where did I come from right now? I was in a procedure with Hirano. Kidney transplant. Got a little hectic at the end, but all good.”
Pointing at Henry, she said to me, “Have you not taught your resident to present the most pertinent details first?”
Henry grinned down at the floor. “I notice you don’t have a drink, Dr. Mercer. Can I fix that problem?”
“Now you’re interesting to me,” she said. “I want a beer that tastes like dark chocolate. Can you do that?”
“Consider it done,” he replied.
When he was out of earshot, she asked, “Do you think I wring the life out of things?”
I eyed her carefully. Yep, this was a mood, and from the sound of it, a dark one. “I know for a fact that you don’t.”
“What if that’s my problem?” she continued as if I hadn’t spoken. “What if I’m just too much?”
“There is no such thing as too much. Just people who don’t have the strength to embrace all of you.” A moment passed while she went on scowling at the pinball machine. “What’s making you think this—and don’t tell me it was the reading.”
Meri started to respond but then lit up when Henry came around the corner with a pint of nearly black beer. “Nice and snappy, Hazlette. I like that about you.” She took a sip, bobbing her head as she sampled the beer. “Well done.” She glanced between us. “I’m going to mingle with the kiddos. See if I can lure any of them into the neonatal cult.”
