“Filet or salmon?” the server asked.
“Filet, please. Oh, doesn’t that look wonderful!” I said as he put the plate in front of me.
“So, how do you know Chris?” his aunt asked, raising her voice.
I’m his girlfriend.I glanced at the center table, where Chris sat with his parents and Very Important Guests. Doctors from his department, I guessed, with their spouses and…Who was that blond girl? “We met his first year of residency.” Good answer, I congratulated myself. Safe answer.
“Great,” the cousin mumbled. “Another doctor.”
I craned my neck. Had I seen her before? Was she another resident?
“Don’t mind Bill. He’s still bitter he didn’t get accepted to med school,” the aunt confided. She raised her voice. “We’ll have another drink here!”
The physician snorted. “They’ll take anyone now. Not like in my day.”
The residents exchanged looks over their steaks.
“I’m not a doctor,” I said. “I’m an English teacher.”
“Too bad. Cause I’d love to play doctor with you.” Bill smirked. “But you can give me detention anytime.”
His fleshy thigh pressed mine under the table.
“Do that again and I’ll stab you with my fork.” Oops. Maybe it was time to lay off the cosmos. Although they were delicious. I took another sip. “Actually, I met Chris at a bar. I took one look at him and thought…and thought…”
“You found your meal ticket for life,” Cousin Bill said.
I glared. But I was an adult woman in a grown-up setting. I could not, after all, stab him with my fork.
My gaze strayed to the head table. Chris looked so at home, surrounded by love and ranks of silver forks, in hisstarched white shirt with his starched white parents. Another Dr.Harris. The chandelier gleamed on his new haircut, his perfect profile.
When I met him, I’d thought I’d found my One True Love. My Gilbert Blythe.
He leaned over to say something to the pretty girl, and the sight of the two golden heads so close, so alike, made my beef filet stick in my throat.
I took a boozy gulp. “I thought I’d like to get to know him.”
His aunt looked at me with pity in her eyes. My soul shriveled. “Server!” She thrust a diamond-ringed hand in the air. “Two more cosmos.”
—
I spooned upthe last of my champagne sorbet.
The piano man was playing something soft and jazzy, like you’d hear in a doctor’s waiting room. Across the table, the residents were eating their way through the yuzu meringue pie (deconstructed, of course). People were beginning to push back and get up from their seats.
“Almost time for the father-daughter dance,” I said gaily.
Which I would never have. My eyes swam with easy tears.No crying.This was a party. I reached for my cosmo.
The elderly physician frowned in my direction. “Doing rounds, Dr.Harris?” he asked.
I swallowed hastily.
“Something like that,” Chris said smoothly, coming to stand beside my chair. He smiled around the table. “Will you excuse us a moment?” He put his hand under my elbow, helping me up like a lover or an aide in an assisted living home.
“Sorry you were stuck back here on your own,” he saidwhen he had me in a corner. I swayed toward him. His hair was so short. The side of his neck, which I’d kissed a thousand times, looked bristly.
“It was fine. It was fun. Your aunt is a hoot.” With very good taste in cocktails.
