‘Mae?’
For a moment she looked happy to see me, her face creasing into a smile that instantly seemed to bring more light into the room. My heart surged at the sight of her. I’d thought about her a lot over the last few days, and regretted not getting her phone number when I’d had the chance, because the urge to text her had been strong. I wanted to see how she was settling in. Make sure she wasn’t lonely. I also desperately wanted her to know that I hadn’t forgotten about her, the opposite in fact, but that life had been messy and complicated since that night, and when I wasn’t on the boat, I was at the hospital.
‘Hi, Jonah,’ she said, only a slight pink blush on her cheeks giving away that she was surprised to see me too.
I clocked the blood pressure machine on the bed and the stethoscope beside her. ‘You’re my dad’s nurse?’
‘I guess so. Although I didn’t know he was your dad until now.’
My father looked back and forward between us. ‘You two know each other?’
His speech was still slightly slurred, but easy enough to understand, thankfully, and getting better every day. He’d been discharged from the hospital late the afternoon before. The doctors had wanted to keep him in another day just to be safe, but he’d had enough and insisted they’d let him go.
‘Not really,’ Mae said, answering before I could. She released the sleeve on the blood-pressure cuff and unwrapped it from Dad’s arm. ‘We met briefly the other night.’
‘Her first night in town,’ I clarified. ‘I took her to The Cozy Catch for some lobster stew to warm her up after I found her nearly frozen on the pier.’
‘I wasn’t frozen.’ She looked up from making a note in a folder. ‘How’s your nose, by the way?’
‘Still a bit tender, but I’ll live.’
‘What happened to your nose?’ Dad asked, but again, Mae answered before I could.
‘Jonah found out the hard way what happens to men who sneak up on me.’
‘I didn’t sneak up on you,’ I protested.
‘And yet I had no idea you were behind me until you touched me.’
Dad sucked in sharply. ‘You touched her?’
‘I… Not like that. Jesus, Mae. You make it sound like I was attacking you.’
‘For a second I thought you were.’ She shrugged at my father. ‘So I punched him.’
He laughed, or at least tried to. ‘I’d have paid money to have seen that,’ he said when his mirth subsided. ‘Usually, women want to kiss my son, not hit him.’
‘I wasn’t trying to pick her up,’ I retorted. ‘I wasworriedabout her. She was standing in the middle of a snowstorm.’
‘It was hardly a snowstorm,’ Mae scoffed. ‘And I’m not completely useless. I can take care of myself.’ She placed theoximeter on Dad’s finger. ‘Maybe you should have been more worried about your wife.’
Dad stared at me, confused. ‘How long was I in the hospital?’
‘Five days.’
‘You got married sometime in the last five days?’
‘What do you think?’
‘What does she mean, then?’
‘I have no idea.’
Mae blushed as she removed the oximeter and scribbled more notes in the folder. ‘I’m sorry, that was really unprofessional. Your personal life has nothing to do with me.’ She cleared her throat. ‘How have you been sleeping, Gray?’
‘Fine.’
‘Don’t change the subject,’ I said. ‘What makes you think I’m married?’
