Or maybe it’s just me. Get it together!
“Yeah, no rush of any patients suffering from traumatic injuries,” I said with a slight smirk, hoping that he’d get it. “So, by all accounts, normal.”
Michael gave a genuine smile, the kind that either blew right past my smirk or acknowledged it but didn’t want to dwell on it. That smile was, frankly, really sweet and kind. It was...
Well, it was the smile that Robbie used to give Kristina before he had to move away. It was the smile that I’d wish to see someone give me and that, before Jason, I’d wished someone else had given her.
That didn’t mean anything, though. It just meant Michael had the facial structure for a good smile. Nothing more.
“Well, I’m glad to hear it,” Michael said. “You know...”
He looked like he wanted to broach a tough subject, perhaps hiring me to the hospital, but he decided last second to change the topic.
“You have one of the more interesting jobs in town,” he said. “Most people can’t say they deal with the things you do.”
Okay, maybe not a complete switch.
“I don’t know about that,” I said.
“I do,” he retorted. “It means you’ve got stories, Kaitlyn. And anyone who’s got stories is interesting in my book.”
Okay, I see how it is,I thought.
“That’s a statement coming from someone like you. I know you’ve been places.”
“Sure, Iraq. Afghanistan for a spell.”
“You served?”
Michael nodded. This man was just becoming more and more attractive by the second, and it was becoming the kind of thing where I wasn’t hating myself for doing so quite as much. I wasn’t a soldier seeker, but it wasn’t like it was unattractive to me.
“It’s not something that I like to talk about too frequently, just because, well, I’m like every other soldier who went over there, I’m not special.”
Michael hesitated just long enough when he said “just because” that it made me think there was more to the story.
“But yeah, I did. For about six years.”
“Well, good for you,” I said. “I can’t say that I did anything like that.”
“I dunno, you’d look cute in a military uniform.”
The words made me laugh and blush. Were we already at the point of fantasizing about what the other would look like in certain uniforms?
“Well, let’s not get into that,” I said.
“I mean, the military needs nurses too,” Michael said, still keeping that cute smile of his plastered onto his face. “Someone like you? I bet you could make a lot of difference in the field.”
I again just laughed it off, and we easily fell into a natural conversation about our pasts. It was so natural and so easy, in fact, that I completely forgot the whole reason I was there in the first place. I wasn’t hanging out with a Black Reaper. I was hanging out with Michael.
We fell into such easy conversation and bantered back and forth so much, in fact, that soon, we had hit closing time at Mama Sue’s. I didn’t think either of us realized we’d done so until our waiter came over and advised us that the restaurant had closed five minutes before. I stood immediately, flush with embarrassment at what this would look like. Michael, naturally, handled the situation with aplomb.
We walked outside, and though the evening had begun to settle in, it still felt very early for both of us. I’d gone into many a late-night working as a nurse, and I was sure that Michael had seen his fair share of late nights.
“I’m not ready for this to end,” Michael said. “I hope you don’t mind me saying that.”
“Not at all,” I said.
But while I was enjoying getting swept up in everything, to an extent, I also didn’t want us to dance around the subject for so long that when we finally did engage, we tried to pretend like it didn’t matter.
