“You learned that at Harvard?”
She dared to look at him now, and he was smiling.
“You know that I learned that at Harvard,” she said, smiling back. “Anyway, how are things going with Betty?”
“Fine? I wouldn’t say she’s particularly expressive.”
“And you don’t have…anyone else in your life to keep you company?” Sybil was digging, obviously. She hadn’t worked up the nerve to ask him about his love life yet, but when she wasn’t thinking about true crime podcasts late at night and wasn’t playing Sudoku, she was googling Zeke’s ex-girlfriends, creeping onto gossip boards to see what sort of partner he was rumored to be.
“You’re the only girl in my life right now.”
Sybil felt her eyes go wide, and her knife stopped in midair.
“Oh shit,” he said, his own eyes wide. “I didn’t mean…I mean, obviously, there’s Mark. I wasn’t implying…”
“There is indeed Mark,” she concurred, and slid the knife cleanly through another tomato. He hadn’t meant anything by it; she needed to get a grip.
Mark had been charming at first. Of course. More than at first, if Sybil was being honest. They were each assigned to assist in a clinical oncology study, and it was immediately clear that he thought she was brilliant. She loved this about him. She loved this about herself. It helped that he had a curated stubble, a swimmer’s build and, honestly, he wasn’t dumb. He just wasn’t Sybil. He kissed her one night when they were trying to get a few hours of sleep in the break room, and then when their shift was over, they stumbled home bleary-eyed and took off each other’s clothes. Had she thought they would get marriedand have twins? She wasn’t sure she was a reliable narrator in her own story anymore. But if she hadn’t gotten pregnant during their residency, she suspected they would have fizzled out. Her heading off to a prestigious fellowship at Stanford or Hopkins; him landing at some midtier hospital where his dad, a retired but important cardiologist, had pull.
Sybil sighed aloud, and Zeke, popping a handful of supplements he’d read might alleviate the sleeplessness, sat up straighter.
“Okay, well, if you insist on cooking, how can I help?”
“You are down to one working arm,” she said. “Let me do this. Really, I enjoy it.”
“That’s a lie,” he laughed. “You know you’re very type A, right?”
“Eldest daughter. Workaholic parents. Tale as old as time.”
“So what happened?” he asked.
She set the knife down.
“What do you mean?”
“What happened with the doctor thing? You…I mean…you mention it…a lot? Maybe that would help, with the sleep. A job.”
Sybil angled her body so she was sure he couldn’t see the rush of blood to her cheeks.Obviously, that would fucking help, Zeke.
“I didn’t mean…” he said, then stuttered. “I just meant that you seem supercompetent. That’s all. Like, I happen to be good at one thing. And only one thing. But I think if we were in a foxhole, you’d be the person I’d want by my side.”
Now she turned toward him with a smile. This was exactly the sort of compliment that charged Sybil Foster’s battery. Her love language was appreciation, and Zeke unknowingly realized that. She couldn’t say that she wasn’t at least a little turned on.
“I basically raised my siblings,” she said. “My brother’s a state senator. My sister runs a tech company in Palo Alto.”
He rose, and for a brief moment, Sybil imagined that he was going to cut the distance between them into nothing and kiss her. He instead made his way to the refrigerator, opened it and tilted over, looking for something or other while Sybil admired the way that his T-shirt clung to his back muscles.
He righted himself. “Okay, so what are you going to do now with all that competence? I don’t think, um, er, I assume that you can’t still be a doctor?”
Sybil shook her head. If she knew what else she could do with her life, she’d be doing it.
“I guess I like helping people.”
“Well, that’s not nothing. That’s actually a very big something,” Zeke said.
“I’m not sure about that. It’s sort of already factored in when you have kids. The caretaking.”
“Okay, but they’re gone now. What about, like”—he stared up at the ceiling—“like a life coach?”
