Aimee just frowned at me, oblivious to my cookie-related schemes. “Can I stop you from sitting with me?”
No. I sat down across from her. “Why would you want to?”
“Brandon, we aren’t friends.” She stared at me like I was a total moron. I ignored it.
“We’re colleagues though. Colleagues eat together.” I felt like this was a normal enough thing to do.
She raised her eyebrows condescendingly. “Maybe. But I don’t like you.”
I smirked at her. “Sure, you do. At least a little bit.”
She laughed in my face. “Oh really? Are you sure?”
“Well, I mean, you had sex with me. Pretty enthusiastically, too, if I recall correctly. So, you must like me at least a little bit.”
Her face went pale and she stared around herself in horror like anyone might be paying attention. They weren’t.
“That was a mistake.” Her voice was an urgent whisper.
I frowned at her. “Yeah, probably.”
She blinked her big blue eyes. “You think so too?”
I shrugged as casually as I could and tried not to give away my real feelings. “If we’d never done that, we could have just hated each other forever. It would have been easier.”
“I do hate you,” she snapped.
“Sure. But you like me too.”
“Don’t delude yourself.” She stared down her nose at me. “It’s really pathetic and hard to watch.”
“Oh, trust me, I’m not all that pleased about this situation. I was happier hating you.” She was my head-exploding fungus after all. I was basically doomed.
Her face had turned honestly curious all of a sudden. She seemed like she was almost interested. “Are you saying you don’t hate me anymore? Because while that’s objectively fascinating and totally inexplicable, I’ve got enough hate for the both of us.”
It was objectively fascinating and totally inexplicable that I no longer hated her? I filed that away for later study and focused on her final statement.
“So… about that,” I ventured. “Can you stop hating me, please?”
“Stop? Like, just stop?”
“Yeah. I think we should try to patch things up. I apologized for being a dick back when we were kids. You said you forgave me. So, can you please stop hating me?”
“No. I can’t, Brandon.” She looked exasperated. “I can’t believe we’re having this conversation. I can’t just stop hating you because you ask or because you apologized. I hate you because you’re an asshole. You’re rude, egotistical, arrogant, and cruel to everyone around you.”
That just wasn’t fair. Or even accurate.
“Not everyone. Not my patients. Not my friends. Not you.” I stared into her big blue eyes, wondering if she had any idea how hypnotic I found them.
She swallowed. “You have friends?”
I laughed. “You don’t have to look so damn shocked. Yes. I have friends.”
“Who like you?” She seemed to think I might not understand the concept of friendship. I couldn’t help my smirk.
“Impossibly, yes,” I told her. “I have friends who like me and who willingly spend time with me.”
Her face turned doubtful. “Are they women who just meet you for sex? Because those aren’t your real friends. They’re just using you.”
I raised an eyebrow. She gave me a lot more credit than I deserved. I didn’t get or want that sort of action. I wanted her. Just her. “They’re normal, non-sex friends.” Why did this have to be so hard? “I can take you to meet them if you don’t believe me.”
“You’re inviting me out to meet your friends?” She looked positively mystified. That was better than angry or dismissive, but it wasn’t exactly enthusiastic and happy, either. Still, it was an improvement, so I’d take it.
“Sure. We can go tonight. I’m meeting them for a drink after work. You can come.”
Maybe Lara and Mark could help me convince Aimee that I was a normal person. They’d help me if I asked. Actually, it wasn’t a bad idea. A little wingman and wingwoman assistance might really work out for me just fine. The gears in my head started turning excitedly.
“No, thank you,” Aimee said, rising and grabbing her tray. “I have a date tonight.”
Wait.
A date?
18
Aimee
I lied to Brandon. I didn’t have a date that night. I hadn’t had a date in almost two years. Other than the sex we had in the men’s locker room five months ago, I hadn’t had any action whatsoever. I was in a dry spell that was beginning to look more like climate change than a passing drought.
My job was not conducive to dating. I worked long, weird hours and came home emotionally and physically exhausted at the end of them. Even if I knew where to start looking for a man to date, and I didn’t, most of them were incredibly intimidated by a female doctor to begin with (men are fragile) or weirdly competitive. Those that weren’t frightened off or in a race to make more money tended to be either doctors themselves or worked in similarly brutal industries that didn’t leave much emotional space at all.
But I did have a few personal connections. I wasn’t a total hermit, just a partial one. I had a couple of friends, mostly introduced to me through Lucy. One of them, Lucy’s roommate, Daniel, was about to save my pride from Brandon. Daniel owed me from that time I helped him move, and honestly, free food and drink and an excuse to dress up was a lot better than lugging a mattress up to a fourth-floor walkup. Being my date was getting off easy.
“So, where did you meet him?” Faith asked at the Koels’ rehearsal dinner a few weeks later when we ran into each other in the bathroom. My future almost-step-sister-in-law was so pregnant she was about to pop, and she was leaning awkwardly with her swollen belly against the sink as she reapplied her lipstick. It was adorable and kind of ridiculous looking.
Next to her in the mirror, we were both blonde and petite. We could almost be sisters. Only I wasn’t hugely pregnant, and she wasn’t really blonde.
“We met at a club,” I replied to her question, feeling silly. It was true, actually. We did meet at a club that Lucy dragged me to after a particularly terrible day at the hospital. Back when I was still trying to have a life. “On eighties night.”
“Fun!” Faith replied. “What does he do?”
“He’s an attorney.” Perfectly respectable. Not a doctor, but you know, not chopped liver either. If he were really my boyfriend, I would feel perfectly happy bringing him home to meet my mom.
“Oh really? I’m frightened of lawyers, but he actually seems very nice and funny. Not at all what I thought lawyers were like. What kind of lawyer is he?” Faith was a real sweetie pie. I’d never had a sister before, but I’d definitely be getting a good one.
“Taxes,” I told her with a wry smile that concealed my guilt at lying to her. “The least interesting legal specialty, but probably the least frightening too.” I put on a fake-threatening voice. “As long as you pay your taxes, that is.”
Faith laughed merrily and her big tummy bounced. “It’s good I do then! I’m a born rule-follower. I won’t pretend that I find tax law interesting either, but he does seem nice though! Cute, too.” She winked at me.
I grinned back at her. “He’s definitely a catch.”
He would be, too, for the right man. Daniel was gay. He was definitely not my boyfriend. But he was pretending to be tonight and at the wedding, and for that I would carry a lot of mattresses up a lot of stairs. I’d be his mattress Sherpa for life if it meant I didn’t have to face another social engagement dateless or admit to Brandon that I was a sad, lonely mess.
Faith and I both returned to the party and I slid into my seat next to Daniel on my left and Rosary on my right. The dinner was just getting started. Brandon was supposed to be seated three seats to the right of me at his dad’s side, but he’d moved over to the bar and was sitting alone, drinking and looking typically broody.
I could feel his eyes on me. It was hard not
to stare right back when I knew he was looking at me. Brandon might be infuriating, but he was just as magnetic as he’d ever been. There was no point pretending that he didn’t command my attention like he owned it. In his dark slacks, button down shirt, and terrible bad mood, he really did look like someone who might be on billboards in Monaco.
“Is that him?” Daniel whispered to me, noticing that I was staring like I was hypnotized. “The guy you hate?”
“That’s him,” I whispered back. “Brandon.”
“He’s really hot.” Daniel sounded surprised. “You and Lucy never mentioned he was so… that.”
I stifled a long-suffering sigh. “Yeah.” Brandon definitely was that. He was a lot of things. Mostly bad things. I still had to deal with at least one staff member a week that wanted him fired.
“Are you sure you want me to pretend to be your boyfriend?” Daniel asked. “He seems, uh, really into you. I mean he’s staring pretty intensely in your direction and I think he might want to murder me.”
“I’m sure,” I promised Daniel in a low voice. “Trust me, he’s a bad person and I hate him.”
“Should I be worried?” he joked.
“I’ll protect you,” I promised. “His bark is worse than his bite.”
“Okay, okay.” Daniel took a sip of his wine and looked at me over the brim. “But I’m not looking to marry the guy or anything. Unlike you, I love me a good hate-fuck. He doesn’t swing both ways, does he?” Daniel was only joking, of course. He was a serial monogamist with a serious dislike of hookup culture. He was just pushing my buttons for fun.
I blinked. “I don’t think so. No.” For some reason, the thought of Brandon being pursued by anyone, even purely hypothetically, made me feel weirdly threatened.
My heart thumped against my ribs. Was I jealous? What the hell? I couldn’t be jealous. I hated Brandon. What a weird blip in my emotions. Must be my hormones.
“You’re welcome to try,” I heard myself saying. “When this is all over, of course.”
I wasn’t jealous. I wasn’t. I refused to be jealous. It was a preposterous prospect and I wouldn’t entertain it any further. There was no way.
No sooner had I promised myself that I would never experience a moment’s jealousy when it came to Brandon than some sexy redhead came up to him at the bar. The awful possessive feeling surged again, only worse this time.
Fuck.
This cannot be happening.
Who’s that girl?
No. I don’t care. This isn’t happening.
“So, Rosary,” I said weakly, desperate to distract myself. “How did the wedding planning go? Is everything squared away for tomorrow? Is there anything I can do to help?”
Rosary started telling me about flower selection with a high degree of detail and enthusiasm. I tried to focus on her words and care about her answers. I really did. But it was pointless. I couldn’t care less about the flowers at Rosary’s wedding. My palms were sweaty, my throat was dry, and I was hyper aware of what was going on at that bar.
The redhead was taller than me. She was curvy, well-dressed, and smiling slyly. Was she prettier than me? She was definitely older than me, and that was good. Except it wasn’t good. It was irrelevant. Totally irrelevant. I ripped my eyes away from her and Brandon and made myself look at Rosary instead.
“Why don’t you like lilies?” I said to keep the conversation going. Rosary responded with a long, rambling explanation on how they were funeral flowers. I made “mhmm’s” and “ohs” at appropriate intervals and she didn’t notice how distracted I was, but oh my God that redhead was still talking to Brandon.
Just who the fuck did she think she was? Why was he talking to her anyway? What did she have that I didn’t? Was he going to take her home tonight? Could I stand it if he did? Would I do anything to stop it?
My blood pressure was rising dangerously, and my body felt tingly all over. My heart thumped away like I was running instead of sitting sedately listening to the finer points of flower selection. The feelings I was experiencing didn’t fit into my brain properly. Their square edges hit the round holes and bounced off. I didn’t know how to stop my racing thoughts or the short-circuit that rerouted the hate feeling into something that felt a lot more like, well, not hate. Not love, obviously, but not hate. Something else. Something I didn’t know how to deal with.
Fabulous. Just fabulous. I officially self-diagnosed a weird fucking fixation on Brandon Koels. Again.
“Do you want some more wine, baby?” Daniel asked me, reading my mood and solicitously putting an arm around me.
I smiled at him gratefully.
“Yes, thanks.”
At least I had Daniel. He’d help me through this. After the wedding this weekend, I could go back to avoiding Brandon. His six months were almost up anyway. Only one more to go. Then I could forget him forever.
19
Aimee
“What do you mean he ate a sock?”
I was just putting the finishing touches on my makeup for the wedding when Daniel called. I was also pregaming a whole bottle of wine because this was going to be a long night and I didn’t want to face it sober. I didn’t want to face Brandon sober.
“I mean he just chewed it up and ate it,” Daniel replied. “Lucy opened the door to my bedroom, and he slipped in. He’s always had a penchant for getting into the dirty laundry. I think it comforts him, you know? Because it smells like me. Well, when I got home from work to get dressed for the wedding, he had half a sock in his mouth. I think he ate the other half.” Daniel sounded extremely worried.
Daniel had a seventy pound ‘puppy.’ A poodle named Bill Clinton, so named because of his propensity to hump everything that moved. He was objectively adorable and also an absolute nightmare dog. I took care of him once for a weekend and he chewed up three pairs of my shoes when he wasn’t humping my leg. Three. He was a shoe-eating machine. It didn’t surprise me at all that he had consumed a sock. He seemed like the kind of dog that might eat rocks if you left him unsupervised for too long.
“He’s fine!” Lucy’s guilty voice came from the other room. “Seriously, Daniel, he’s fine.”
I was inclined to agree with Lucy.
“Is it bad for dogs to eat socks?” I asked as I debated between two pairs of earrings. The crystal ones were flashier, but the pearls were real. I picked the pearls. “Do you think he can digest it?”
“I don’t know. You’re the doctor. God, I should have taken him to doggie day care. I’m a terrible father. What do I do?” He was starting to panic.
Meanwhile, the wine was starting to work on me. “I’m not a veterinarian. I don’t know anything about animals.” People asked me questions about their pets all the time though. All. The. Time.
“I know but… what would you do if a person ate a sock?”
“Order a psychological examination. Stat.” I giggled. Maybe a bottle wasn’t a good idea. Maybe a glass would have been better. Too late now. “I never actually get to say ‘stat’ at work, did you know that?” I added. “It’s only on TV that anyone says that. It’s really disappointing.”
“Aimee, please focus. You know what I mean. I’m really worried about him!” He was starting to freak out. He loved Bill Clinton.
I sighed and tried to think it through. “Okay. Okay. Um… if a toddler ate a sock what I would be worried about is an intestinal obstruction. That’s what happens when an undigestible object makes it through the stomach but can’t make it through the rest of the digestive system. Those can require surgery to remove, and failure to remove them can cause problems. If we caught the issue quickly, I’d do an endoscopy to confirm that it was in the stomach and then remove it. If not, and we were reasonably sure it was in the intestine, we’d monitor for a few days and reevaluate.”
“So, it’s an emergency?” Daniel asked. He truly sounded terrified.
“For a dog? I don’t know. You need to talk to a veterinarian. Maybe dogs can digest socks no problem. Was it cotto
n? A blend? I don’t know enough about canine stomachs to tell you if it even makes a difference. But humans, as a general rule, shouldn’t ever consume fabric. We can’t digest cellulose very well at all, which is what natural fibers are composed of. Some mammals can digest it though. Cows can. Artificial fibers are petroleum based and mammals can’t digest those, period.”
“So, it sounds like it might be an emergency. You said an intestinal obstruction can cause problems though. What kind of problems?”
I took a deep breath. “Don’t freak out, because, no matter what, you’ve got several days, but death. Intestinal obstructions can cause death.”
“What?!” He was freaking out.
“Don’t panic. You’ve got time. Days and potentially a week or more. Is Bill vomiting?”
“No. Wait. Maybe.” I heard a door open and then Daniel yelled, “Lucy, did Bill throw up?”
“No,” came her answer. Her voice sounded somewhat guilty. “But he’s not eating his dinner at all.”
“Is he swollen or behaving strangely?” I asked. I should have handled this conversation better from the start. Daniel was reasonably afraid that his dog was going to die, and I was being cavalier about it because I thought I knew better. Now he was terrified, and I’d made it worse. “There’s no reason to jump to conclusions at this point. The other half of the sock is probably under your bed.”
“I can’t tell if he’s behaving weirdly. I think he’s anxious because I’m anxious. Or maybe he is behaving strangely. Aimee, I think I need to go to the emergency vet.” He sounded apologetic, but my heart rate doubled. The wedding was in two hours. Two hours from now I’d see Brandon in a tuxedo.
“No, no. You’ve got at least a couple of days.”
“You don’t know that. You’re not a veterinarian. You said it yourself. What if waiting is the wrong thing to do?”
“But—” I sputtered. My mind was spinning.
Bad For You: An Enemies to Lovers Romance Page 9