Me: Come on. Who doesn’t like surprises? You’re gonna love what I’m working on now.
Unknown ID: I just realized I made a mistake the night I met you.
Shit. What now?
Unknown ID: I should have given you a CT scan to check for any signs of concussion. Your inflated ego has obviously swollen your head to dangerous proportions.
She was flirting. Now it was on.
Me: Funny you say that. My head is swollen right now. And every time I think about you. I think it’s ready to pop.
I took a moment to put her name in my list of contacts. She didn’t respond for several minutes. I must’ve pissed her off. Maybe she was more sensitive than I realized. Or not. She started typing.
Frigid Brigid: Then I suggest you ice it.
I smiled.
Me: Head #1 or Head #2?
Frigid Brigid: Both. But if your balls turn blue, remove the ice immediately.
I chuckled to myself.
Me: They’ve been blue since I met you.
Frigid Brigid: That was a week ago. You should see a doctor immediately.
Me: My thoughts exactly. What are you doing right now?
Frigid Brigid: I meant someone other than me.
Me: Your loss.
Frigid Brigid: If they’re that blue, I’m sure you can take care of it the old fashioned way.
Me: You mean fucking? Sounds like a plan. Wanna come over?
Frigid Brigid: Please. You don’t need my help. You have hands.
Me: I promise you, nothing will cure my blue balls better than coming inside you. My hand isn’t going to cut it.
Frigid Brigid: Then ask your fiancée. I’m sure she’ll be glad to help.
Me: Who told you I had a fiancée?
Frigid Brigid: Your friend Candy.
Me: She’s making shit up. Candy doesn’t know anything about me.
Frigid Brigid: Is that the truth?
Me: I swear it. Ask anyone who knows me. I don’t have a fiancée.
Not anymore I didn’t. Damn, it hurt every time I said it, but it was true.
Frigid Brigid: I don’t know anyone who knows you.
Me: So get to know me. Then you can ask them.
The dots flashed while she typed. Then they disappeared. They flashed again then stopped. She didn’t know what to say. I stared at my phone, waiting for her response. Maybe I shouldn’t have been so bold.
I waited.
Frigid Brigid: I don’t think that’s a good idea. I need to go. Thanks again for the sculpture. Please don’t send me anything else.
I knew it. I went too far.
I couldn’t decide if she meant not to send her anything else at the hospital or anything else ever. I was afraid to ask. I didn’t want to be too pushy and scare her off. A woman like her obviously needed her space. She was jumpy enough as it was.
I waited by the pool for another hour, checking my phone every five minutes for another text from Brigid, but that was the last I heard from her.
I couldn’t figure this woman out.
Right then, noise erupted from the bushes in the back of the jungle. A blue jay bulleted into the air, followed a second later by Tigger exploding straight up after it. In mid-air, he swiped at the bird, but it was quicker then he was. He fell to the lawn and landed on all fours, legs spread, eyes wide in disbelief, like he couldn’t understand how he hadn’t caught that blue jay. It was long gone.
“Got away, didn’t it?”
Tigger looked at me, his tail whipping in agitation.
“Don’t look at me. Go get it!”
Tigger tore across the lawn and disappeared into the far end of the yard.
“The bird went the other way!”
He didn’t care. He was already on to the next thing.
I wasn’t.
I checked my phone again.
No texts from Brigid.
Damn.
Chapter 5
BRIGID
What the heck was I thinking?
I just had a highly sexual textual exchange with my recently former patient. And there was a record of it. I deleted the entire conversation with Lion. Why hadn’t I just thanked him and asked him not to send me any more gifts and been done with it? But no, I had to start flirting.
Why?
It was driving me nuts. I needed to talk to somebody about it. If I didn’t, I was going to do something stupid and talk to Lion about it.
I texted Latisha.
Me: Do you have a minute?
Tisha: About to drive the boys to baseball practice. Can I call you later?
Me: Sure. Have fun.
She didn’t respond.
I sighed to myself. Whenever Latisha wasn’t at the hospital, she was having fun with her three sons. She always shared pictures of all the things they did together. In every one, she was smiling or her boys were laughing and it looked like a party no matter what the occasion. I knew it wasn’t like that all the time. Latisha had told me plenty of stories, but I knew for her, the good times far outweighed the bad. I was jealous she had such a wonderfully full family life outside of work. I didn’t. I often felt closer to my work family than my real family. That wasn’t the way I wanted things, but it was the way things were.
Welcome to life as a doctor.
I stood up from my couch and trudged to the kitchen. I opened the refrigerator and stared inside. There was food, but nothing I wanted to make. Everything was probably old anyway. I didn’t cook nearly as often as I would’ve liked because of my crazy schedule. It didn’t help that I was on call almost every night I wasn’t at work. There was nothing more annoying than sticking something in the oven for an hour and getting paged ten minutes later to go in for a consult or emergency surgery.
Since I was on call tonight, that meant takeout.
I wondered what Lion was doing for dinner.
No! Don’t wonder that!
At this very minute, he was probably sitting at home eating a TV dinner with his leg propped up on couch cushions, wearing nothing but tight boxers because of the warm weather. Would they be gold like the ones he wore the night he came in? And would his package be clearly defined like I remembered? Would he be hard from thinking about me? I felt myself clench pleasantly and squeezed my thighs together.
Stop picturing him half naked!
But those abs…
I hated those abs. They were trouble.
I tried to distract myself by cleaning the condo. I hadn’t so much as dusted in a month. Vacuuming and cleaning both bathrooms took almost two hours. The kitchen could wait until tomorrow. Did I check my phone every ten minutes while I cleaned? Of course. I had to make sure I hadn’t been paged by the hospital. I wasn’t checking for texts from Lion.
No really, I wasn’t.
When I finished cleaning, my stomach was grumbling. Time to go get takeout. There was nothing worse than being called in when you were starving. I grabbed my keys and phone and headed out the door.
My phone jingled.
Loin: You hungry?
For your abs? Yes. As an appetizer. I was thinking sausage for dinner.
I was going crazy. I also noticed that although I had deleted our text conversation, I hadn’t deleted him from my contacts yet. That was when I noticed I had misspelled his name. Loin. As in, loins. Geesh. I may as well have entered his name as Rock Hard Cock, or Huge Dick or My Former Patient Who Obviously Wants To Have Sex With Me And I Do Too. Before I could change it or delete it, he texted again.
Loin: I need to get some dinner. You wanna join me?
Me: Right now?
Loin: Yeah.
Loin, loin, loin.
Dick, dick, dick!
If I said yes, I was definitely crossing a line. If I actually met him for dinner, I was crossing so far over the line I would be in another county. Sex Offender County. Newest resident: Dr. Brigid Flanagan.
Me: I’m sorry. I can’t.
Loin: Some other time?
I wanted to say yes so b
adly.
My thumbs hovered over the keys.
A wave of conflicting emotions surged through me. I stopped myself from responding and thought long and hard about what I was doing.
Long and hard.
Wrong choice of words.
DICK!!!!
There was one very good reason I couldn’t allow myself to give in to my urges.
Daniel.
He was why I couldn’t get dinner with Lion. Or Loin. Or whatever his name was. I had to put a stop to this now.
Me: I can’t have dinner with you. Ever. Please don’t call or text me again. And don’t send any gifts. Forget we met. It’s for the best.
I deleted his name and number from my contacts, and all our messages. Then I left my phone on the kitchen counter and ran out my front door. I wanted to get away from my phone in case Lion texted or worse, called. If the hospital paged me, I would be back from getting takeout fast enough that it wouldn’t matter. When I pulled the front door shut and turned my key in the dead bolt, my phone rang.
No.
I ran to my car and jumped in.
My head was spinning and my heart was thudding.
Lion.
I hated myself for running away from him.
But I was doing the right thing.
Daniel.
I hated doing the right thing.
It was for the best. For everybody’s sake.
Daniel.
I drove to McDonald’s and bought Chicken McNuggets with extra sweet and sour sauce, and a vanilla milkshake. I knew it was bad for me but tonight I didn’t care. Then I went home and checked my phone. Luckily, the call had been a wrong number. I sat at the kitchen table and cried over my food for two hours while scrolling through photos of Daniel on my phone, and watching videos of us together.
Thank goodness the hospital didn’t page me that night.
I was a complete wreck.
Daniel…
I missed him so much I wanted to die.
Chapter 6
LION
I felt like someone had just rammed a telephone pole into my chest. I read the text from Brigid over and over again, thinking I’d misunderstood her meaning.
Nope.
It was pretty clear.
Stay the hell out of my life.
That was the last thing I wanted to do, but it was what I was going to do, no matter how bad it made me feel. If you didn’t honor other people’s wishes, it meant you didn’t give a shit about them. I gave the opposite about Brigid Flanagan. So what if I barely knew her? Call me crazy for trusting my gut.
So much for my gut.
It wasn’t always right.
It hadn’t been right about my ex-fiancée either, and I loved the hell out of her. Minka loved the hell out of me too. I thought we were gonna go the distance. But three years ago she surprised me and told me she wanted out of our relationship. I begged her to stay. She said she was tired of living the fight life. What was I gonna say? I couldn’t force her to stay. It broke my heart to let Minka go, but it was the right thing to do.
People changed and life didn’t always go the way you wanted.
Just like with Brigid.
I was suddenly disgusted by the sight of the unfinished basswood carving on my coffee table. When finished, it was going to be a majestic lion and his equally majestic lioness sitting in a bed of four leaf clovers (because Brigid made me feel like the luckiest man alive just by laying eyes on me). The lions’ tails curled together behind their backs in the shape of a heart. The clover was mostly finished and just needed detailing. The bodies of the two lions were still rough and needed a ton more work, but they were starting to take shape.
I was sitting on the couch, so I picked one of my crutches up off the floor and swung it awkwardly at the carving. The hunk of wood went sailing through the air along with a bunch of carving tools and sandpaper scraps and wood shavings.
CRASH!!
Everything smashed against the nearest wall and clattered to the hardwood floor.
The cats scattered like a bomb had gone off. Guenhwyvar bolted out from under the coffee table and shot across the room in a black streak before sliding on the floor and making a hard turn into the kitchen, claws clicking every step of the way. Tigger leapt seven feet in the air, launching off the easy chair where he’d been cat napping. If I didn’t have sixteen foot ceilings, he literally would’ve hit the roof. Instead, he ran for the front entry and pounded up the spiral stairs, looking for a place to hide. Aslan was perched on top of the huge twelve foot tall cat tree on the far side of the living room. He was sprawled on the highest shelf, watching like a stone-faced Sphinx, taking it all in like nothing had happened. He stared at me like he thought I was an asshole.
“What?” I grunted.
He blinked once. Asshole. Then he bounded down the cat tree and sauntered out of the room.
Cats.
They could be so temperamental. They’d come out of hiding when the dust settled. Or when I put their food out. Whichever came first.
“Sorry, guys,” I hollered. “I won’t do it again. Danger’s over.”
The wood carving was in pieces. What would have been the lioness had been snapped off at the base.
So much for that waste of time.
I stared at the rest of it on the floor.
The male lion carving stared back.
Are you gonna give up this easy?
Hell no I wasn’t.
I needed to come up with a plan of attack. I’d figure this shit out somehow. I could guess why they had rules about doctors and patients. It was the same reason they had rules about sexual harassment in the workplace. It was so the people on top didn’t take advantage of the people on the bottom.
The thing was, I was always the guy on top.
Always.
The only way anyone would ever have power over me was if I let them.
“You’re obsessed with getting your way, Lion! Obsessed!” Minka had said that to me the day she left. “In the cage, in business, in relationships, all you care about is what you want! You don’t think about what other people want unless you think it will benefit you. You’re selfish! Life isn’t about getting. It’s about giving. It’s about learning to take the good with the bad and being okay with it. I hope you figure that out someday. For your sake.”
Those were the last words she ever said to me when she left three years ago. They had haunted me to this day.
Kill me now.
Remembering that night made me want to dig a ditch and bury myself in a coffin. Whenever I thought about Minka, I felt half dead anyway. I really fucked things up with her. All because I had to have things my way.
Here I was doing it again, not two minutes after thinking I needed to honor Brigid’s wishes and stay out of her life.
I didn’t know why she didn’t want to date me. If she got to know me, she’d change her mind. I was a good guy.
It doesn’t matter why! Minka’s voice screamed in my head.
Shit.
She was right.
I needed to leave Brigid alone.
For all I knew, Brigid had a good reason for avoiding me.
Chapter 7
BRIGID
THREE WEEKS LATER
My doorbell rang and I jumped up from the couch.
I tore the door open.
“Daniel!”
“Hey, Mom.”
I knelt down and threw my arms around my son. It felt so good to hold him.
“Let go, Mom. You’re squashing me.”
I pulled away. “Sorry. Did you grow while you were gone?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well you look taller. You’re really shooting up like a weed these days.” He was ten going on sixteen.
“I’m not a weed,” he groused. Make that ten going on ten.
“I didn’t mean it like that.” Why was talking to my son always so difficult?
Daniel had gone to Europe with his dad and his dad’s parents, Grand
ma and Grandpa Wright. It was a month long trip. I hadn’t been too hot on the idea of him being gone so long, but Grandma and Grandpa insisted on it. They said you needed at least that long to do Europe. There was no way I could take that much time off. The Wrights could. They owned a flourishing insurance business that they’d built from the ground up over the last 35 years. In LA, that made them old money. So it was okay for the boss and the boss’ son to take a month off for a family vacation.
Excluding me.
The condo had felt painfully empty with Daniel gone for so long. Normally he was here every other week. A week on, a week off. All I had to keep me company for the past month was work. I was so happy to have him back.
Daniel groaned, “I have to go to the bathroom.”
I was still holding his arms. I let go. “Okay. You know where it is.”
Outside, his father waited in his black BMW. The glare on the windows hid his face. I couldn’t tell if he was watching or not. Donald never came to the door when he dropped off Daniel. It was just as well. Talking to him was always difficult. Like father, like son, I guess.
I waved to be polite.
“Bye, Dad!” Daniel said it with enthusiasm and waved excitedly.
Why was I always such a downer to my son? He wasn’t this distant with his father.
The Beemer’s horn honked and Donald drove away.
“How was Europe?” When there was no answer, I turned. Daniel was already gone. I heard the bathroom door close. It felt like he wasn’t even here. Just the ghost of my son passing through.
Would it be like this forever?
Would my son forget me altogether when he went off to college?
Or would it happen sooner? Would I walk into his bedroom one morning to find an open window with the curtains billowing into the cold empty room and a note on the bed that read I’d rather live with Dad.
I fought back tears.
It hurt that my own son wasn’t excited to see me anymore. It hurt worse that he was always sad to leave Donald’s house when I picked him up. I didn’t know what I did to make him so sad. It wasn’t like I was a taskmaster or a tyrant. I was nice. Like any parent, I made him do chores and pick up after himself and do his schoolwork, but I made sure he had fun too. Was there some unwritten law that moms were no longer cool once a boy turned ten?
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