“Keys,” Sasha ordered as she brought Deb’s burger and fries, smacking the tray down on the table at the Indigo Lounge, next to a half-full, very not virgin strawberry margarita.
Deb’s motorcycle keys were already out and on the table next to the napkin holder. She stuffed a handful of fries into her mouth with one hand and fumbled the other one over the keys and slid them over. “There ya go.”
Sasha slipped the keys into her apron pocket and squinted at Deb. “How many of those have you had?”
“This is my first,” Deb snapped, mildly affronted. “And probably my last. I only had a scotch before that. I haven’t forgotten having to go to work after getting hammered here, I can sometimes learn from my bad choices, you know. Anyway, Esme bought it for me. She saw I had a bad day.”
“Ah.” Sasha sat down. “I got a minute. Want to spill?”
“Not really.” Deb swigged down a gulp of the margarita and grimaced. “Ugh, wholikesthese?”
“White people,” Sasha replied dryly, pointing to herself. “Although to be fair, I do prefer the mango with Tajin.”
Deb contemplated ordering that for a moment, then discarded the idea. It was irresponsible for the ER chief to get disreputably drunk and spend the next morning hooked up to a stolen banana bag… doubly so to do it more than once in a relatively short amount of time. Her day had been shitty, but she could find other ways to cope with it than excessive alcohol. She shoved another handful of spicy fries into her mouth.
One of Sasha’s dark eyebrows went right up under her curly quiff. “Wow, fuck my handmade garlic cayenne aioli then, right?”
“Oh, give me a break, and another basket of fries.” Deb rolled her eyes. “You got that turtle cheesecake of yours on the menu tonight? That, too.”
“And if I saidpleasewas a magic word?” Sasha snorted.
Deb opened her mouth to shoot back a retort, then realized it was probably not a good idea to antagonize her fry provider. “May I please have another basket of your delectable fries, and you don’t have to make me more aioli, I promise I will have this entire little bowl of it eaten by the time you get back. And also I would like a big slice of your really excellent turtle cheesecake. Please.”
“That’s more like it.” Sasha winked and got up to go back to the kitchen. “Be right back.”
Deb munched her way through the rest of the basket, dipping every third fry into the aioli, which really was very good. She made a start on her burger, too. Sash had really outdone herself with the whiskey barbecue sauce this evening, she noted.
She was focusing on her food to avoid thinking about how she’d treated Hayley Milton today. That really had been reprehensible of her. The look of hurt in those big blue eyes haunted her. The feel of Hayley’s hands gripping hers, centeringand grounding her during the panic attack… She could still feel the ghost of that grip on the backs of her hands. The soothing, wordless croon that had led her out of the lung-squeezing, tear-jerking black forest of the attack still burbled in the back of her head.
And she had been such a goddamnbitchin return.
When the panic attacks had started her junior year of high school, just before the SATs, Deb hadn’t known what was happening. No one in her family had ever experienced anything like that, as far as she knew. And it had been absolutely terrifying, the way she suddenly couldn’t breathe, the tunnel vision, the pain in her chest… She’d genuinely thought she was having a heart attack and dying at the age of sixteen and a half.
It wasn’t until she was nearly done with pre-med at UT Austin that she finally worked up the courage to talk to one of the university counselors and they referred her to a psychologist who helped her to understand what she had been dealing with for so long: anxiety. Not a heart attack, not a stroke, not any of the potentially fatal ailments she’d been frantically diagnosing herself with. Just anxiety. Except there was nothingjustabout it. Deb had been amazed at how much it was interfering with her life, beyond the panic attacks.
Everyone had thought she was insane for wanting to specialize in Emergency Medicine, as intense and high-energy as it could so often be. But that focus had been a big part of her anxiety management. She had to think too fast, to keep her brain too occupied. Taking up motorcycling, bungee jumping, skydiving, and other extreme adrenaline-junkie activities had helped as well. And of course, she still checked in with a therapist from time to time and had medication if she needed it. She had it all under control.
But there were times, like today, when the old demon could still get the best of her. Rattled her to her core, made herfeel weak, out of control. She hated the way the attacks made her feel, and that made them worse, and then having them witnessed by anyone—let alone her secret infatuation-slash-work nemesis?—was simply unbearable.
So she’d lashed out at Hayley. Mere days after they’d had what was almost a real heart-to-heart, a moment of connection. She’d been tempted to kiss her! And now Deb was, once again, going to have to apologize again.
Deb groaned and buried her head in her folded arms.What a clusterfuck.
A plastic basket rattled down onto her table, and then someone slid into the other booth seat. Deb looked up, expecting Sasha. To her surprise, it was Sasha’s partner, Ruby. “Hi,” Ruby chirped, beaming across a winning smile. “Sash had a kitchen emergency. She asked me to bring me your fresh fries. But she’ll bring the cheesecake later.” She tilted her head, her red and black ponytail swinging and slipping down over her shoulder with the movement. Behind thick-rimmed black glasses, her green eyes were bright yet gentle. “And she thought you might need to talk. I’m a good listener, if you like.”
Deb blinked. She didn’t really know Ruby. But she did know Ruby wrote romance novels, which to her mind made her feel like Ruby knew a little something about the human condition in general. “Sure,” she replied with caution. “Maybe.”
“Can I have a few fries?” When Deb nodded, Ruby reached into the basket and grabbed a couple, munching away while she focused on Deb with an unsettlingly candid gaze. “So,” she eventually said. “What’s on your mind?”
Deb grabbed a couple of fries for herself and chewed them slowly, buying time to figure out how to discuss this personal matter with someone she’d only rarely interacted with. “There’s this woman at work,” she began.
“Pretty?” Ruby asked, eyes twinkling.
“Exactly my type,” Deb said, allowing herself to think about Hayley, but only about what her thick blonde hair might look like down, how her ass looked great even in those dumb black scrubs, the way she kind of looked pretty even when she had a snotty nose and her blue eyes were bloodshot from crying but her cheeks were pink and the teary blinking was weirdly adorable. “Cute little California blonde with an attitude.”
“Oh, those are always a hoot. Fun-sized Bitch Snickers, I call them.” Ruby grinned. “I’m not one for a little animosity in my relationships, but I can see where it would be a draw.”
“Oh, it’s not, I don’t, um.” Deb’s face went hot. Thoroughly flustered, she sighed. “Okay, yes, fine, there’s a little of that at play, but that’s not the entire problem right now.”
