by K. Bromberg
“Blakely? I’m not sure who that is,” she said, the confusion in her voice about as clear as my own confusion. “This is Hillary with Edge Pharmaceuticals, can I help you?”
“The other night. You were drinking whiskey. I asked you about it?” I said to the silence on the other end of the connection. “The mountain retreat with your work. Your jerk of an ex-husband. All of that?”
“I’m sorry. I don’t—”
“The Bitter End?”
“Oh my god. You. You were the one with the dark hair, black shirt.”
Hallelujah.
“Yes. That was me.”
“I can’t believe she actually gave you my card.”
“Huh? What are you talking about?” I asked.
“I was too shy to approach you and let you know I was interested. I had on the pink dress and was sitting at the end of the bar? I gave the woman you were sitting with—your mom or sister or whoever—my card to give to you.”
My hand stopped my beer when it was halfway to my mouth.
My mom or sister or whoever. What the hell?
“Wait. So you’re telling me that we didn’t meet?”
“No. I was too shy to hand it to you myself.” Her laugh was throaty, sexy, and nothing like the shy woman she was claiming to be . . . and yet, I remembered her. The stunning brunette at the bar. The come-fuck-me eyes she kept trying to catch me with.
This woman was not shy.
No. She was trying to cut down any competition. Fucking females.
“Are you there?” she asked.
I didn’t have time for games.
“Thanks. I thought you were someone else.”
“But—”
“Maybe some other time.”
“Earth to Slade,” John says, snapping his fingers in front of my face.
“Definitely a woman,” Leigh says as she plucks the business card from her drink. Taking it from her hand would be a dick move, and frankly, I’ve lived, breathed, and suffered with these four, it isn’t as if they won’t get it out of me at some point. “Who’s Hillary? She the one who dumped you?”
“Nah.” I shake my head with a shy smile. “But she might just be the reason someone I wanted to get to know better walked away.”
I’d assumed Blakely had to leave when I’d taken the phone call. I’d figured she left me her card to let me know how to get in contact with her. I’d thought the attraction was mutual.
“C’mon, Romeo. Who is she?” Prisha asks.
“No one in particular. Just a woman in a bar.”
She is someone, who for some reason, I can’t seem to shake from my mind.
Maybe it’s because she was nothing like I’m used to and . . . so damn intriguing.
“Isn’t that how it always starts?” John teases. “Just a woman in a bar.”
“Ah,” Leigh coos, “did Slade find another lost puppy to fix and love before he adopts it back out?”
“Screw you.” I laugh and take a sip of my beer.
“It comes with the territory, doesn’t it?” John says with a shrug from across the table. He’s wearing scrubs, and I realize wearing my own scrubs is one of the random things I miss more than I can express. “The need to save and fix and make whole again.”
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.” I lean back, mimicking his casual posture.
“Projects. All of us residents love to have projects for the days we can’t save someone, then at least we can save the project we’re working on.” Prisha wraps her arm around my shoulders and gives me a quick squeeze.
Projects?
She’s crazy.
“I talked to the lady for like twenty minutes. She wasn’t a project. She was . . . I don’t know what she was.”
“The lady?” Prisha laughs. “Why so formal? That’s what you do when you’re hiding something from us.”
“Ohhh,” Leigh draws the sound out, “I think there was legitimate interest there with the lady, guys.” She clinks her glass of wine to the tip of John’s beer bottle. “Henderson doesn’t get like this over a booty call in the on-call room. I should know.” She raises her hand, and we all laugh, drawing the looks of those around us.
“Why you gotta bring up things that happened years ago?” I tease. Our fling was short, more than hot, but definitely magnified by the fact that we were merely two exhausted first-year residents who needed someone who understood them.
“It’s okay. We know how you roll, Henderson.” John chuckles. “In—make them get hooked on you. Out—oh crap, they’re hooked on you. Done—next, please.”
“You guys make me sound like a man whore,” I say and lean my head against the back of the booth with a shake of my head.
“But you do it in such a nice way,” Prisha says. “Never have I ever met a man who has so many exes—”
“Not really exes,” I try to explain.
“—who still love him after the fact.”
I lift my beer and ignore their razzing. I’m used to it with this group. “You guys are messed up.”
“And you miss the hell out of us,” John says, and the table quiets some, Prisha’s smile softens, and Leigh’s fingers play with the stem of her glass.
“I do.” I half snort, half laugh as my tone sobers. “More than you know.”
“How much longer?” Prisha asks.
“Your guess is as good as mine.” I shrug. “They want to hear from Ivy herself. She’s the victim, and until she can make a statement, it’s ‘my suspicions and overreactions’—their words, not mine—against his statements.”
“And so, what? You’re in limbo until then?” John asks.
“Basically. I’m waiting for the review board to reconvene in the next week or so, but I know nothing’s going to be decided until they hear from her. I’m sure that, at some point, I’ll have to do some dog and pony show to get the powers that be to accept me back into the program without prejudice.” I take a sip of my beer, acting as if it’s no big deal when they know it’s exactly the opposite. It’s my whole damn world. “But it is what it is.”
“How is she?” Leigh asks gently, and I meet each of their eyes, knowing I technically shouldn’t know the answer considering I’m not supposed to be anywhere near the hospital.
“Still in a coma. Still . . . hanging on. I’m not really allowed to check in on her, so that’s all I know.”
“The whole thing is fucked up.” John sighs. Each one of them has told me that they would have done the same thing had they been in my shoes. Would have let emotion get the better of them and protected their patient. That they would have acted how I did.
But they didn’t do it.
I did.
And I’m paying the price.
“I don’t regret it. I mean, I regret the suspension and the red tape I’m going to have to possibly cut through, but I don’t regret what I did when it comes to him . . . just don’t tell the board that.”
“Not a chance, brother,” John says.
“Not a chance,” Prisha reiterates.
Blakely
“I can do one better,” I say and take a bite of pizza before settling back against the couch.
“Nothing can be worse than walking into your very hot boss’s office with your skirt tucked into your panties. And panties is a loose term for the back-of-the-drawer ones I grabbed because I hadn’t done laundry. Nothing,” my best friend, Kelsie, says with a definitive nod as she empties her glass of wine and has no shame in refilling it with the bottle sitting on the coffee table between us.
“How about sitting in a bar, thinking the cute, sexy, young guy sitting next to you is flirting with you—”
“And the problem with that is what?”
“I’m far from finished, Kels.” I take a sip of my own wine, and the ridiculousness of my thinking he was actually flirting with me hits me once again. “The guy, Slade—”
“Slade?”
“Yes. Just go with it.”
“It’s kind of se
xy. Tell me what he looked like.” I stare at her and shake my head. “What? I need the whole visual, and besides, you should humor me. It’ll be the most action I’ve gotten in months.”
I laugh and am so grateful that I have her in my life. “Tall. Dark hair. Super light and gorgeous eyes. Great smile. Well dressed. And his hands and arms were super sexy with the rolled-up dress shirt thing going.”
“A watch?” she asks. “Watches are sexy.”
“I think so. Yes. I think. It doesn’t matter,” I say, but her eyes tell me it does matter for her complete visual. “Sure, yes, he had a watch.”
“That visual just gave me the chills.” She claps.
“Yeah, well, I kind of unloaded on him when I thought he was hitting on me, and—”
“Why would you do such a thing?” she shrieks.
“Can you let me finish, please?” I ask, this stop-and-start conversation between us not unusual.
“Yes. Sure. I just don’t understand why you’d tell off a hot, young guy.”
I eye her above the rim of my glass. “First, I didn’t tell him off. Second, I didn’t know he was hot when I started my rant. And third, I had just come from a shitty meeting with Heather—”
“Don’t ruin the visual by bringing her up. We don’t like her, but we like Slade.” She hums. “Slide-It-In-Slade.”
“Oh my god. You’re . . . you’re—”
“Just saying the things you’ve thought since.” She laughs in that loud, obnoxious hyena way of hers that dares me not to smile. “Finish. Slade. Hot. Sexy. Watch-wearing.”
“What I was going to say is that more than him being all those things, he was super nice. And funny. And interested. I mean, how often do you meet a guy who actually asks you a question and listens to the answer?”
“Any man will listen to you if he thinks he’s going to get laid.”
“It wasn’t like that—the half-listening, eyes-roaming, only-there-for-one-kind-of-thing attention like most guys give. He was different. I can’t explain why, but he was.”
“Was he gay?”
“I thought the same thing, but he mentioned how his mom doesn’t like the women he dates.”
“Oh.” She scrunches her nose. “A momma’s boy, then.”
“I don’t think that either.” And I shake my head because I’d thought that too. “He was just nice and funny and endearing. And . . . it was so great to talk to someone for a while. To have someone talk to me.”
“Shocker,” she says sarcastically.
“Kelsie!”
“What? Maybe your ‘Bitter Party of One’ sign wasn’t hanging around your neck for once, so you didn’t scare him off.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you do all the things that say you’re single but only because you feel like you have to. You go to a bar but seem unapproachable. You meet a nice guy but come off bitter. You put yourself out there because you’re figuring out how to navigate this new world, but when you do, it’s only for show.”
Leave it to my best friend to call me on the carpet.
“Can you blame me?”
Her expression softens. “No. I don’t blame you. I think you’ve been emotionally battered and bruised, and while you know that you’re better off without Paul, he also took some parts of you during your marriage that you’re trying to find again. That takes time and a willingness to acknowledge and accept that he did.”
My sigh fills the room because she didn’t say anything I didn’t already know. Still, it’s hard to hear.
“I’m sorry you are going through all this. Of course, you enjoyed Slade’s company. Hell, you were with dickhead Paul, who only listened to himself and cared about his own needs, for so long that anyone is better than him,” she says, her hatred for my ex growing exponentially with each and every passing day. “So, tell me the rest. If things were so nice, why are you comparing your conversation with him to me showing my ass to my boss?”
“Because, at some point, Slade had to go take a phone call so he stepped outside, and this gorgeous woman came up to me. She explained that she was super shy and asked if I could give my son her phone number.”
“Your son?” Kelsie chokes on her sip of wine. “You’re kidding me, right?” And before I can say anything else, she flops back into her seat and begins laughing so hard she can’t speak. The sound fills the room, and I can’t believe my lips are tugging up at the corners as I watch her wipe tears from beneath her eyes.
“Are you done?” I ask, making a show of crossing my arms over my chest in false annoyance.
“I just—how did she actually think you were his mother? Was he fifteen or something?”
“Funny.”
“No, I’m serious,” she says, setting her glass down and realizing that I don’t find her theatrics as amusing as she does. “Either she had no idea how offensive she was being or she thought that making you feel insecure would get you to walk away because she was truly one catty bitch. Bet you anything that’s why she did it.”
“Oh, please.”
“Oh, please? There is nothing more annoying than a skinny person complaining about how fat they are or a gorgeous woman acting as if she doesn’t understand why men think she’s attractive. Case in point,” she says, pointing at me.
“Whatever.” I wave a hand her way.
“You have great curves and salon-worthy hair—”
“I think you’ve drunk too much—”
“And you’re smart and dedicated, and I could go on and on.”
“Thank you, but you’re my best friend—you knew me when I had frizzy hair and wore glasses—so you have to say that.”
“I don’t.” She holds up her hand to stop my argument. “It’s a fight for another day.” She tops off my glass when I hold it out. “Let’s get back to how Little Miss Thang reacted when you tore her card up and told her to go to hell.”
I stare at my best friend of twenty-plus years and twist my lips in response. I may have replayed the scene in my head a couple of (hundred) times, and in each one of them, not once did I scamper away like a mousy female and let the gorgeous brunette get the better of me and my self-confidence.
“Please tell me you told her off.” There is a pleading disbelief in her voice that has me averting my eyes. “Blake.” She waits until I meet her eyes and then huffs. “Why would you not put her in her place?”
I stare at her as I fight the tears welling in my eyes and shrug, embarrassed. “I should have. I felt so good about myself for the first time in forever, and then . . . I didn’t.”
“What did you do?”
I cross my hands over my face as if to hide from her. “Don’t ask.”
“Blakely.” My name is a warning. “Spill it.”
“I slipped her card under his drink and snuck away while he was on his call.” Shame heats my cheeks as I force myself to meet her eyes.
“Why on earth would you do that?” she asks. “Why would you let her win?”
“I’ve asked myself that a million times. It isn’t as if anything would have come from it. He was there for whatever, and I was trying to unwind—”
“But you obviously hit it off.”
“That’s an exaggeration. We barely met.” I say the words, refusing to acknowledge that there was a connection so I don’t feel like more of an idiot than I already do.
“Did he flirt with you?”
“I don’t know. I mean, he was just being nice,” I deflect.
“Was there any casual touching? You know, the kind where his knee accidentally hits yours but doesn’t move away?”
I think of his hand on the back of my chair, of the soft graze of his thumb against my shoulder, and don’t answer.
“Was there the tingly feeling?” She waggles her eyebrows, and I laugh.
The funny thing? Kelsie and I are best friends on the level of we tell each other everything. She knows the things Paul did in bed that I hated and the ones that I loved. I know the quirks
of the men she dates. And yet, I’m hesitant to admit that I really liked Slade.
Well, I am glad that, for whatever reason it was, you stopped in here tonight.
“Hey, Blake?”
“Hmm?”
“You should never let another woman steal your sparkle. You know that.”
She’s right. I do know that. “This thing with Paul—his moving on—has really done a number on me.” It pains me to admit it, but there it is.
“It would do a number on anyone. Hell, you aren’t made of stone, but at the same time, who the hell was she to say that to you?”
“It was probably for the best. Did I really think anything was going to come of it?”
“That’s beside the point,” she says resolutely as she rises and heads to the kitchen to choose another bottle of wine. “For all you know, Slade was falling massively in love with you. You were going to have a quick, torrid love affair where he made you realize that you were a wildcat in bed, that Paul was more than selfish with giving oral, and that you are a badass at work who is going to get that promotion.”
“I think you’ve had too much to drink,” I say through a laugh as the neck of the bottle clinks against the rim of her wine glass as she refills it.
“And I think a man like Slade is just what you need—a little youthfulness to remind you that you may be divorced but you aren’t dead. A little reminder to you that—oh my god!” she screeches as if she just had the biggest epiphany ever.
“What?”
“Do you know how awesome it would be if he went with you on your company retreat? Some hot, sexy man who all the women would be jealous over? He would make the bitches in your office see you in a new light.”
“Gee. Thanks.” I roll my eyes. “Because, obviously, you have no faith that I can win them over on my own.”
“No, that isn’t what I mean. You know I have faith in you, but women pay attention to men. They’d all be vying for a scrap of his attention while he’s too busy doting on you. Then they’ll wonder what you have that he sees but they don’t, and then”—she throws her hands up—“voilà. They fall in line, and you become the one everyone wants to be.”