“Hmm…”
“Come on, Em, I’m starving.” I flick her ear.
She giggles, looking over all the car keys—Ferrari, Maserati, Land Rover, pretty much anything. But only ten. Money is nice, money is good, but my dad raised all my brothers and me to give almost as much as we get because ‘you still have to live good when you earned it.’
I miss him.
“Carson, come on.” Emily tugs me out of my head.
Finally, she picked something. I open the driver door to the Rolls for her, jog around the side, and then we’re off. We get to the sports bar downtown around one, and everything at the bar is taken, so we sit at the cocktail table instead.
“I barely made it here with my hearing intact, thanks to your insane music.” I nudge Emily under the table.
We come here often, so we don’t even have to look at the menu. One of the things we like to do together is food search. If we want some awesome hot dog that is out of this world, we go to Chicago together and get it.
“It isn’t insane. But not your usual mainstream or whatever it is you listen to.” She chides me.
“I like normal stuff, you like eclectic stuff.”
“Florence and the Machine, Imagine Dragons… that is not eclectic.” She makes hands at me.
“Okay. Fine. Brant’s music is as mainstream as it gets.” We laugh together.
Eventually we get to ordering—sweet tea and shrimp tacos. I think our exercise habits are the only thing keeping us from obesity. We talk about the games on the televisions, both the NFL and college games. I played football in high school, and it was only for fun. The scholarships I was offered could be better used for someone who needed help paying for school. Plus, Yale isn’t even that good.
“So, I went on a date last night.” Emily almost loses her shrimp from her mouth, so I keep from laughing by listening to the sheer revelation.
“Oh yeah?” I scratch the back of my neck as I always do in situations like this. Stressful, and I don’t know why. At least at work, I can clench my jaw and make a face. Now I try to figure stuff out.
“Yeah. He was nice. A doctor.”
I refrain from rolling my eyes. “You and doctors again?” I flash a smile to hide the disdain in my voice.
She blinks and sets down her half-eaten taco. “It’s not like I did it on purpose.”
I laugh and lean forward. “Oh yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“How is that? Don’t you see their info on the app?”
Emily crosses her arms with a sneer. “What are you saying?”
I exhale deeply and stop scratching my neck to clench my jaw instead. I look at her, the question in her faux green eyes digging in deep. I liked her brown hazel eyes better. She didn’t change it until her ex which leads me to my answer.
“The last time you dated a doctor, you were three days away from a nose job and breast implants. And that’s after you already traded your red librarian glasses for contacts and stopped eating red meat.” I laugh a little at the sound of it, but it’s true. That guy was a train wreck, and I never liked him.
“That’s… not all of them are the same.”
“Yeah, but you like them.”
“I don’t.”
“No, think about it.” I touch her arm gently. “You always said you would marry a doctor, and we were kids then, but you never stopped saying it. You can’t idolize people like that, pick and choose because that’s how you ended up in a relationship you knew was toxic.”
“I didn’t…”
“You did. You’ve had a 4.0 GPA all your life and an IQ comparable to Hawking. You knew.”
She giggles softly. “I’m not that smart, Carson. But thank you for complimenting me in the same sentence you insulted me in.” Her brows raised. I forgot about the microbladed brows too.
“I just mean that… I don’t want the same thing to happen.”
“It won’t, and it was one date.”
“But you already have stars in your eyes.” I reach to poke at her, but she beats me and grabs my hand to tug it away.
“I don’t. And the implants were my idea, anyway.”
“He gladly encouraged you right along to the surgeon.” I eat more chips.
“Because he knew someone good. Well, I didn’t get it anyway.” She purses her lips.
“What made you think you needed one in the first place?” I ask.
She gives me a funny look before she laughs, but I’m not in on whatever is funny until she can calm herself down.
“Carson, I’m a solid B cup on a good day, or if I’m on my cycle or with padding. It isn’t uncommon to want to look a different way.”
“Yeah, but…” I can’t stop my eyes from trailing down until she nudges my knee. “I don’t see a problem. I never did.”
“You don’t count.” She tilts her head with a smile.
“Yeah, I do. I’m a man. I am allowed to have an opinion.”
“I mean your reaction to me doesn’t count. And it was never just about men.”
“So why change your mind?”
I have her there. She ignores me to finish her taco, and I finish eating too.
“I didn’t change my mind. It was right before I started at work, and it would have been too complicated.”
“Oh, so it’s been put off?” I stick my card in the check that got dropped off when we were ignoring each other.
“Yeah.”
I sigh. “Look, Emily. I don’t think you need it, but I know it isn’t my choice. I can’t tell you what to do.”
“Nope. You can’t.”
I swallow back my imaginary discomfort and scratching my neck again.
“Okay, so tell me about the date.”
* * *
Holden, Evan, and Dylan are the brothers I see the most since we work together. I dislike them more every day. It’s getting up to be the same amount I love them.
We’re having dinner together, and it always turns into talk about work.
“Can we stop talking about the international stock rate and focus on me now?”
“Typical,” Dylan scoffs. He is always so bitter. More lately than normal after Dad died which is understandable. But still bitter nonetheless.
“Sorry, I am only asking for your help.” I frown at him.
He flashes the smug grin we all have and finishes off a Mich, our beer of choice to go with our steak dinner. Holden has a chef, so it only makes sense to go to his place for dinner—his unnecessary right-on-top-of-the hill mansion. To each their own, I guess. Dylan lives in a flat above a fire station, and Evan in a trailer on a plot of land.
“Look, we have been singing the same song to you since you hit puberty. We aren’t Brant, it isn’t our specialty.” Evan laughs.
“What have you been saying?” I humor them.
They all laugh in turn. I sink farther into the couch and lean forward on my elbows. Dylan takes the bait.
“That you are starry-eyed for your best friend.” He makes air quotes. “And that you get hard-ons every time you looked at her since your balls dropped. Pft, a blind person could tell.”
I flip him off. “That isn’t true, maybe I was just a normal teenage dude.”
Holden laughs. “Yeah. Right. That’s why you are all messed up about her going on one date?”
I roll my eyes. “Oh my… I wasn’t. I only brought it up.”
“And why would that be good dinner conversation for us? She isn’t our best friend, she’s yours.”
“We’re all friends,” I say to Evan.
“True. But we didn’t ask.” He swigs back his beer.
We all drink in silence until they decide to be supportive brothers.
“What did she say about him? Already hearing wedding bells?” Well, Evan can never go without stabbing sarcasm.
I sigh. “She said he was a doctor. I’m thinking sterile and boring.”
“So, nothing like you?” Dylan snipes.
“If I were comparing him to m
e, sure.”
“I mean it was one date from a dating site. Those are just sign-ups for free food.” Holden shrugs.
“Like you would know. You refuse to date.” I don’t even mean that to annoy him. Holden gets all his female interaction from the same four women who understand he refuses to settle down. Until recently, he hasn’t been doing it.
“I know.”
“Look, if you want Emily to stop dating, just say so.”
“I don’t want that.”
“Then why do you care? Is she in danger or something?”
I look at Evan. “No, but she has horrible taste in men. Her last boyfriend…”
“Almost turned you into a UFC fighter, we know,” Dylan scoffs.
“And I don’t know… I just want her to be happy. Dating a doctor won’t get her there.”
“That is such a stereotype. People say the same thing about us.”
I nod. Finance and Consulting—we have a bad reputation.
“Yeah but proven. And it wasn’t just the ex, it was tons of others.” I can recollect every med student or someone who is already a doctor that she met since college. And it wasn’t that some of them were older either.
“Carson, you won’t like anyone she dates. Because you have feelings for her, big or small.” Holden gives me a look that I return back—contempt.
I don’t know if they’re right, and I don’t know if they are wrong. I do know that they are seeing things that I don’t, and sooner or later I might start asking myself what I see too.
4
Emily
Listening to Kevin talk is like watching an episode of Grey’s Anatomy. Maybe I do go for doctors too much, and maybe that is why. But it’s interesting. Doctors are very motivated people, smart and dedicated. You have to be to go through all that training.
Kevin is no different, but I won’t compare him to Hank. Consciously. He recently finished his residency and is now in his fellowship for neonatal surgery—literally operating on babies before they are even born.
“Do they get two birthdays?”
“No.” He laughs. His smile is as charming as him—blond hair, brown eyes, slight muscular build. And tall. I am barely five eight, but I still like to wear heels.
“Sorry, I must sound so stupid.” I giggle like a school girl. I don’t even like him that much. Though it is only our second date.
It’s been a week since I told Carson about our first date, he is still being weird about it, and I don’t know why. I didn’t actively seek Kevin out, I really didn’t. But the same way men go after a certain type of women shouldn’t be any better than how women do the same thing. I used to say I would marry a doctor when I was little because I thought it was cool. But now… now it’s something completely different.
“You don’t sound stupid. I used to think the same thing. But, during my third year of residency, I did start giving my patients two birthdays.” He raises his glass as he smiles.
“Really?”
“Yeah, since I see them when they are born and up to twenty-four months after, I figured I could. It became something I liked to do.”
“It sounds really sweet.” I smile.
He looks at me and goes on about more stuff that goes over my head. I’m smart, but not surgery smart. Kevin gives me a nice night, wines and dines me properly. I don’t see any glaring issues with him, and I feel like maybe I have finally gotten over Hank completely. It isn’t easy to do when you make plans to marry someone and spend the rest of your life together. It wasn’t easy.
Kevin drops me off, and we make plans to see each other again. He only has the weekends off, so I have to wait until next week to see him again, probably Friday. But for a Friday night, I am bored once I get back home.
My apartment is nice and brand new. The entire building is. The Wilde’s actually own the land it was built on, but I still don’t get it rent free. I learned a long time ago that there are so many tiers to their properties, the landlord is like nineteen degrees of seperation from them. I finished decorating it too. I like how it turned out, the grays and the pinks, neutral colors. My gray rug is so plush I lose my feet in it and sometimes food too.
My place should really be in a magazine—the living room is always immaculate, my nude-colored sectional accounts for half of it, the back is high up like the old days. My glass coffee table is harder to keep clean than I thought, but I am still going to keep it, of course. The apartment isn’t that big, but everything has its own room. Kitchen, library office, my bedroom, and the other bedroom I made into a closet. Good thing I never have guests.
Once I shower and get out of my fancy clothes, I lounge around in sweats and a tank top while I try to find something to watch and wait a respectable amount of time before eating my leftovers.
“Only nine?” I ask myself in shock.
I don’t have work tomorrow, nothing but an event-filled day of watching the game with Carson—Fletcher’s game. Which means we are going to the stadium to sit in the huge arena box thing and endure his entire family. Well, the brothers and wives. It’s the first season home game, so we do it every year. This is the first year with both Mia and Cora. They’ll both be pregnant, and I love pregnant people. I don’t know why considering I don’t even know if I want kids.
When my phone rings, I jump for it eagerly, but really only two people call me, and my dad is asleep.
“Thank God, I was so bored.”
“Oh, you only want to hear from me when you are bored out of your mind?” Carson chuckles.
I smile to myself.
“Of course not. But I got home from my date a little early.”
“That bad?” His voice changes. Why does it all of a sudden change when I talk about my dates?
“No, he was great. He told me all about surgery and stuff, it was cool.”
“I bet it was… is that why you like doctors? For the cool stories?”
I hear the smile in his voice, but the unease at the same time. I give him a vague answer, but I know I can’t hold it off that much longer. I don’t even know if it’s true. It isn’t like I saw a therapist or anything. When my mom died, I had my dad to talk to. And Carson. I was fifteen and had barely figured my life out, but something draws me to doctors, and I think I know what it is.
“Hello? Earth to Emily?”
“Oh sorry… can you bring me ice cream?”
* * *
Carson is at my door in record time with my favorite flavor—key lime pie.
“So, the date wasn’t bad, but you asked for ice cream? What’s wrong?”
Carson sticks his spoon in the pint of ice cream leaning on the counter, standing up while I sit on it.
Sometimes it surprises me how well he knows me. I’m no health nut, but I only eat ice cream in dire circumstances, or when I am in my feelings. Like now. Otherwise, it’s usually frozen yogurt.
“Nothing. The date was good, but you have to chill out with the doctor thing.”
“What doctor thing?” He licks ice cream from his lips and smiles. I take a good huge bite that gives me brain freeze and a funny face before I answer.
“You know, making fun of me for dating doctors all the time.” I have dated other people, and it is purely coincidence. I met Hank at a party, Kevin online. The others in coffee shops and… malls or something.
“I don’t. I was only pointing it out.”
“I know, and you know that I believe in a lot of spiritual things, right?”
“Yes. Missing souls and stuff.”
I smile. “It isn’t that serious anymore.” I giggle softly. “But…”
He nudges me. “But?”
I eat more ice cream.
“Me, dating doctors. Meeting them randomly… it’s more than chance. It’s like I’m destined to meet them.”
“Because you made a wish when we were little that you would.”
“You believed that tree worked?”
His eyes light up. “I did because you did. We were fourteen, it
had to count for something.”
“What did you wish for? If you think it worked.”
He laughs, his boomy laugh from his chest that fills the whole room—deep and infectious. If I think hard enough, I can remember how his laughs changed, his voice too. Once childish and cute, now throaty and sexy. Just an observation, not that I really notice it.
“I wished for hot babes and nice cars, so yeah it worked.”
I laugh, he isn’t wrong there.
“So, what is it?” He rubs my elbow.
I take a deep breath. Carson would never laugh at me, he would never think I’m being irrational either.
“I think I fall for a certain type of guy because of my mom.”
He furrows his brow. “Your mom was a homemaker.”
“I know. I don’t mean that. I mean… when she was dying.”
“Oh… are you okay?” His expression grows more serious, and he rubs my lower back.
I smile down at him. “I’m fine.”
He looks down kind of smiling to himself before he looks back up to me. “You think you cross paths with them so much because your mom was so sick when she died. You spent more time with doctors than anyone else.”
“Yeah, “I sigh, “and it’s not like I thought anything of them. And at the end of the day, they couldn’t even save her. But I just… I don’t know. When I was a kid, I thought it was cool, and now I can’t get away from them.”
“I get it, and it isn’t a bad thing, Emily. As long as you’re happy, I don’t care. I tease, but I could never judge you.”
I smile at him and poke his dimple, and he smiles wider. Even in sweats and a baggy sweatshirt, he looks perfect. I think my best friend is perfect. I consider myself lucky. Carson has a charm to him that never goes away but only grows stronger over the years. His genuineness isn’t a mistake, or a rouse, it’s natural and trustworthy. Part of who he is. If he were just good looking that would be one thing, but he is easy on the eyes, on the heart, and our friendship is the same way.
“Yeah, but it’s true. I actually don’t think I have ever kissed anyone who isn’t a doctor. The spirits laugh at me.” I pick at a piece of pie in the key lime pie ice cream.
Wilde About Carson: The Brothers Wilde Series — Book Three Page 3