Before Girl

by Kate Canterbary

  "I don't doubt that," she replied. "But—but I don't think I can do that with you. I don't think I want that with you."

  Her words sent me back a step. Two. "I understand," I lied, my gaze on the sidewalk. I did not understand any of this. "But you're wrong about something."

  "What's that?"

  "The lasagna, the trip to Ikea. That is who you are," I replied. "Those were your ideas, sweet thing. You opened the door. I just stepped through it."

  She tossed both hands in the air, waving them as if she was trying to shake something off her skin. I didn't think the truth came away that easily.

  "We have a good time together," she said, still ridding herself of my words. "We have chemistry. But you're a nice guy and you need to find yourself a girl in the market for that."

  "And you're not? Let me guess, you're in the market for the misunderstood rebel and the golden-hearted bad boy?"

  She blinked, her eyes fluttering for a second. Fine dots of mist were clinging to her lashes. Why the fuck were we outside? Why were we talking this over on the damn sidewalk? There was a dry, warm apartment no more than fifteen steps from here but yet we couldn't go there. We had to keep our private conversation public because once that door closed we both knew the clothes were coming off.

  Because we knew—regardless of the ways in which we pulled back and leaned in—this was it.

  And that made this fucking infuriating. We had chemistry? Yeah? Really? That was like saying Mount Everest was tall. If we had chemistry, it was volatile chemistry. We had to save ourselves from it or run headlong into it.

  She brought her fingers to her temples with a harsh sigh. "Actually, no. I have no time for either of those things. I'm not trying to play the work card here or paint myself as the busy businesswoman who can't live because she's so busy with business, but my job is a lifestyle."

  "Yeah." I shoved my hands into my pockets. "I know something about lifestyle careers."

  "Yes," she shouted. Heh. She thought I was agreeing with her. "Of course. You get it."

  "Okay, Stella." I stepped closer, edging into her space. "You don't want a relationship. Okay. I won't give you one."

  Her eyebrow arched up. I moved closer.

  "You don't want sex," I continued. "Okay. I won't give it to you."

  She glanced down, her gaze on my coat.

  "You don't want a nice guy." I shrugged. "Okay. I won't give you one."

  I inched closer, all the way into her space now. She sucked in a breath, blew it out slowly.

  "I won't give you anything, Stel," I said. "Not until you ask me for it."

  Her teeth sank into her bottom lip but then she laughed, a quick, fluttery sound that dissolved as fast as it appeared. "And if I ask you to leave me alone? You'll do that?"

  Without conscious thought, my jaw tightened and a steel band of tension pulled my shoulders taut. "I will," I replied, hating the taste of those words. I'd respect her wishes no matter what but goddamn I didn't want that to be her wish.

  She reached for my hands, squeezing them as she offered me a watery smile. "Thank you." She released my hands, backed away. "I should go now."

  Those were dropkick words. They knocked the wind right out of me.

  She slipped her hands into her pockets. The streetlights overhead illuminated the mist, casting her in a sparkling halo. It was strange but fitting. "I won't be on the trail tomorrow morning. I have too much to do before LA and I have to—"

  "Slay," I finished.

  "Slay," she repeated with a laugh. "But I'll be back on Monday evening and walking Tuesday morning."

  "Is that your sweet way of telling me to stay off the Jamaica Pond trail?"

  She stared at the night sky as if she was searching for the answer up there before glancing back to me. "Take all the things I've said tonight, all the things you've said. Spend the weekend with them. Come Tuesday, you know where I'll be if you still want to see me."

  "All right." My response sounded like a question.

  "We could talk," she offered. "Or not. We could just walk without saying anything. I do have some epic playlists."

  "All right," I repeated.

  Stella stepped toward me but stopped herself midstride, shook her head, and then continued into my arms. She hugged me tight for one perfect moment but quickly untangled herself, turned, and walked away without a word.

  I stood there, rooted into the sidewalk as I watched her stride up the hill. The streetlights kept her bathed in golden light and misty halos. She was complicated, of that I was certain. Complicated and once again out of reach.

  Yeah. She was the asset.

  14

  Cal

  "Then he leans in and kisses her, Gone With The Wind-style, right there on the sidewalk with me and Riley watching. I guess we can say that when Hartshorn goes for it, he goes all the way."

  Nick swung a glance in my direction before turning back to Alex. "Wow," he said. "That's unexpected."

  "Why, exactly?" I asked.

  "It really was," she continued, ignoring me. "And she was into it. I mean, for someone who'd just met her stalker—"

  "For fuck's sake, Emmerling," I growled. I glared over her shoulder at the rowing team gliding over the Charles River. I didn't know whose idea it was to eat lunch outside today but that person underestimated the wind chill.

  She gave me a you're not off that hook yet grin. "—she was shockingly into it. If Hartshorn goes all the way, this chick does too."

  "If memory serves, you were champagne drunk on a weeknight," I said. "Not sure your eyewitness testimony is credible."

  A gust of damp air blew her hair into her eyes but that didn't stop her. She held up a finger. "I was tipsy," she argued. "There is a major difference."

  Alex stopped analyzing the shit out of me and Stella to zip her jacket all the way up and burrow into the fleece. If only she knew how much had changed in the thirty-odd hours since running into us on the sidewalk.

  "She seemed cool?" Nick asked. He watched me, a cautious glint in his eyes. "Of sound mind despite all indicators otherwise?"

  "Oh, yeah," Alex agreed, balling her hands inside her sleeves. "Cute, sweet, outgoing. She was great."

  "She put up with your babbling," I grumbled.

  "Mmhmm," Alex hummed. "And you tackling her on the trail and confessing your not-so-small obsession with her. As far as questionable behavior goes, I think I'm in the clear."

  Nick held up a hand. "All right, man. You talked to the girl. You've hit the one in a million scenario where she's not married or awful or insane. I'm happy for you. I'm shocked but I'm happy this epic holding pattern has resulted in something decent. What happens next?"

  I stared at my sandwich for a second as I struggled to respond. I still didn't understand last night's conversation. I knew there was something Stella wasn't saying, something big. I knew she was holding herself back, putting up a wall. And I knew this wasn't ending with me on one side of that wall and Stella on the other.

  I wasn't exaggerating when I told her I didn't give up. I didn't know how. I didn't walk away when the going was tough or the odds were low. I didn't abandon my people, and whether she liked it or not I counted her in that group now.

  I cleared my throat, meeting their expectant stares. "She has business travel through the weekend. She'll be back in town next week." I hesitated, reaching for my drink but only to buy myself another second. "We'll see what happens when she gets back. No need to dictate the rest of the calendar year."

  "Does that mean you haven't convinced her to move in with you yet?" Alex asked.

  "Yeah, I was expecting a Save The Date card in my mailbox this weekend," Nick joked. "At least making it Facebook official."

  Yeah, me too.

  Instead, I said, "I'm not on Facebook."

  Nick and Alex shared a knowing eyeroll.

  "We're taking it slow," I continued. The vision of her bitten backside filled my mind's eye and no, there was nothing slow about me and Stella. "We're
still figuring it out."

  "What are you still figuring out?" Alex asked. "Aside from everything because you talked to her for the very first time in your life just the other day."

  I do that. I don't do this.

  "Where it's going. What we want," I said. The words tasted as lame as they sounded. "We're taking it slow."

  "Sure," Alex said. Her tone informed me she didn't believe a word of it. "That's why you were hustling her out of your apartment around midnight and eating her face on Cambridge Street. That's the textbook definition of taking it slow."

  "It's not what you think," I argued. "She—she doesn't do relationships."

  Nick and Alex gave each other that sounds bad eyes.

  "Mmhmm," Alex replied. "Where does that leave you?"

  I studied my sandwich. "She asked me to think about it and meet her on the trail next week. When she's back from LA. If I want to see her. If I'm interested."

  "You will, you do, you are," Alex said. I nodded because—yeah. She was right on all counts. "Why, Hartshorn?"

  "Because I know," I replied, frustrated. "Even if she doesn't know it, or doesn't believe it, I'm willing to wait until she does. And I'll tell you something, Emmerling, I think she's just being stubborn. Set in her ways."

  "Yeah," she said, snickering. "Don't mention that part to her. It won't make her any less stubborn or set in her ways. If anything, it makes me sympathize with her."

  I replied with an annoyed shrug.

  "But why do you want to put yourself through that?" she asked.

  "Why not?" I asked. "I mean, I've had months to think about this and—"

  "Build her up in your crazy head," Alex interrupted. "To invent her all on your own. You've created an idea of her, Hartshorn, and the complication is that your idea probably doesn't match the reality. You've run off with your fantasy-imagination version of her. I bet she's waiting for you to come down from that cloud and that's why she wants you to think it over."

  "Emmerling makes a solid point," Nick said, finally weighing in. "The information she shared with you—is it difficult to integrate that into your vision of her?"

  I don't do this. I do that.

  I don't do the thing you want.

  "Stella needs some time to catch up," I said. "That's what I'm going to do. Give her time."

  "What if she doesn't catch up?" Alex asked. "What then?"

  I studied my lunch again. "Then…the wait will have been worth it. I'll never wonder what could've been."

  Nick crossed his arms over his chest and turned his face to the sky. "Y'all have extremely complex romantic lives." He glanced from me to Alex, then back to the sky. "I don't know how you handle all this drama."

  "Dude," Alex said with a sigh.

  I leaned forward, my elbow braced on the table as I pointed at Nick and stared at Alex. "Is he for real right now?"

  She shook her head. "I hope not."

  "Same," I muttered. "Maybe his residents should wrestle him into the MRI this afternoon because there's no way he's forgetting the time he and his wife lived on different continents—"

  "For two fucking years," Alex finished.

  Nick shook his head, still soaking up the sun. "That situation is nothing like the two of y'all. I met a woman, I married her that day, and I played the long game in getting us under one roof." He shrugged. "Nothing outrageous."

  "Um, I'm going to push back on you there, Acevedo," Alex argued. "It's rather outrageous and I do recall you Charlie-Browning your ass around here between your trips to Iceland. And let's not forget the part about you spending every free minute writing emails and ditching us so you could video chat."

  "Or all the times you'd sit right there, sniffling over your sandwich because Erin liked bread or some shit like that," I added.

  "Yeah," Alex replied, jabbing a finger toward me in agreement. "That. Your wife is the tits and I'm really thrilled she's local but you were too damn emotional over bread to claim you have any kind of experience with normal relationships. Get off the moral high ground for a minute, would you?"

  Nick waved a hand at us. "Say what you will but I never sat here and told y'all I was taking it slow and low-key assaulting her in parks."

  "No," Alex replied with a sharp nod. "You never did those specific things. However, you did drag me to a jeweler because I had to help you pick out a wedding band for your wife some three months after you eloped. I also had to try on sweatshirts for you even though I have a solid fifty pounds on your wife. I'd argue these things are the same but different. Excessively dramatic and unnecessarily complex."

  I stared at the platinum band shining on his left hand. I resented it, just a bit. Like he said, he met a woman and then he married her the same night. I couldn't execute on that move.

  "We'll agree to disagree on this point," Nick said.

  "It must be a neurosurgeon thing," she mused. "This intractability. It's what happens when you assume one organ system is more important than the others."

  "It is," he replied. "When the brain shuts down, the game's over."

  Alex squared her shoulders and let out a long breath. "Gastric functions continue, unaided, for at least a week following brain death."

  "Yeah. With a ventilator," he snapped.

  Because I couldn't listen to this argument without fighting for my service's supremacy, I added, "You're both wrong because none of it matters without a beating heart."

  The three of us stared at each other for a second, each ready to drop our specialized hammers. Then Nick said, "We need to get a urologist at this table. Someone to stand up for balls."

  Immediately, I thought of Stella and all the balls she juggled.

  "That's the lamest argument you've lodged yet," Alex replied. "The last thing anyone needs is balls and the urologist would come down hard for kidneys."

  "I'll see her again on Tuesday morning," I said, swinging the conversation all the way back to my complex affairs. "Stella. On the trail. I'll see what happens."

  Nick sighed as if I was causing him real pain. "I need you to use an abundance of caution. No more incidents, please. Once is an accident. Twice is cause for concern. Three times is us passing the hat for bail money."

  I scowled at him. "You can afford it on your own."

  "We're focusing on the wrong things here," Alex said.

  "Don't injure the woman again," Nick warned. "Even if she's the one who causes the accident, I need you to be far away from it."

  I glanced back to the river. It must've been freezing out there, with the wet wind blowing right off the water. "I'm working on it."

  Behind me, I heard, "It's funny how you people call this spring." Turning, I saw Stremmel jogging toward our table with his head ducked low into his shoulders. "This is winter. Hell, there are still piles of snow around the city."

  "Yeah, those aren't going anywhere until June. It will be eighty degrees before the last remnants of blizzard season are gone," Nick said. "Believe me, man, I get it. Coming here from Texas was tough." He gestured around the table. "We're all transplants. None of us natives. It's tough but it grows on you."

  "So does MRSA," he grumbled, dropping beside me on the bench. He pointed at the paper-wrapped sandwich on the center of the table. "Is that mine?"

  "Yep," Alex replied. "Extra avocado too. I watched them put it on."

  "Probably not ripe," he said under his breath.

  It took a fair amount of restraint to keep myself from kicking him under the table. But if I kicked him over a snide remark now, I'd have to pound his ass for the truly obnoxious things he said every day. It was like he had a quota to meet.

  "Mine was ripe," Nick said. "I'm sure yours will be too."

  "We were just rehashing the recent events of Hartshorn's love life," Alex said, gesturing to me. "It's been entertaining."

  "I'm certain I do not care," Stremmel replied before biting into his sandwich.

  I watched his reaction—we all did—praying that damn avocado was to his specifications. When
he went in for another bite without slamming the region's avocado supply chain, we breathed a collective sigh of relief. And that was a fucking problem.

  "Well?" Stremmel prompted.

  "Well, what?" Nick asked, his Texas drawl thicker than ever.

  Stremmel rolled his eyes. "Where are we with Hartshorn's relationship drama du jour? Rumor has it you talked to your mystery woman."

  "The avocado is to your liking?" I asked.

  He jerked a shoulder up, tipped his head to the side. After a pause, he said, "It'll do."

  "You're welcome," Alex said to him. There was a hefty pinch of salt in those words.

  Stremmel looked down at his sandwich and then up at her. "My bad," he said under his breath. "Thank you. Let me know what I owe you."

  She waved him off. "It's good. We take turns picking up lunch." She tipped her chin up. "Your day will come and you'll hear all about Acevedo's cilantro needs and my mustard-to-mayo ratio requirements."

  A slice of avocado fell from his sandwich and landed on the wax paper. He grabbed it, popped it in his mouth. "This is an ongoing thing?"

  "Fresh air, sunlight, food," Nick said, ticking off the items on his fingers. "Arguments about the hierarchy of organ systems but mostly surgical services. Why not?"

  "That's easy," Stremmel said. "You can't survive without vessels carrying blood from one place to another. Vascular wins."

  "Oh my god," Nick said with a groan. "How is that—no. No. That's not a reasonable answer. Try again."

  "Is your objective to aim low and finish high?" Alex asked, staring at him with unmasked horror. "Because you can't possibly believe that."

  I stared at him for a beat. Blinked. Stared a bit longer. He knew I was keeping an eye on him and he seemed to tolerate me. He knew I had some experience in his specialty—trauma—and he seemed to respect that. If there was anything I knew as well as hearts and lungs, it was treating patients with the worst injuries and the least amount of time. But that tiny bit of respect wasn't going to be enough to tame this shrew and everyone knew he didn't give two shits about positional authority.

  But maybe respect and authority weren't the ways to winning Stremmel over. Maybe it was meeting him where he was, misery and all, and accepting that baggage.