Her Forever Fling

by Kimmie Ferrell

  “Okay.” He could see Melissa chewing thoughtfully on her lower lip, something she did a lot of when contemplating a decision. “Umm…would you be open to meeting afterward? Like at nine-thirty? Nine-forty-five?”

  “That works. There are a couple places nearby if—”

  “Actually, I have a place in mind. Jayla introduced me to it, and I love the food. It’s not too far from the hospital and near my place. Have you ever heard of Lovely’s?”

  Heard of it? Elijah wanted to laugh. Lovely’s was one of his favorite hangout spots in the city. He, AJ, and Patrick often met there for drinks when their schedules allowed. The jazz club and restaurant were within walking distance from AJ’s townhouse community and a central location between his and Patrick’s places. Instead of questioning where Melissa stayed within the neighborhood, Elijah nodded. “Yeah, I have.”

  “Can you meet me there?”

  “Yeah, I’ll see you in a few hours.”

  As Elijah ended the call and slipped the phone back into his pocket, he couldn’t ignore the gamut of emotions coursing through him: confusion, wariness, and even a bit of anger at the secret she’d kept. But one emotion stuck out most. It warmed him from his toes to the top of his head.

  Hope.

  Chapter Eleven

  Melissa opened the double doors of the restaurant and rushed over to the hostess stand, prepared to give the young man standing there her name. However, before she could utter her name, her eyes landed on Elijah, seated in a booth near the back of the establishment. Commanding her feet to move, Melissa headed toward the table. Her eyes cataloged features indelibly etched in her head since their last “until we see each other again,” a month ago.

  This Elijah Grayson was different. The deep grooves creasing his forehead, furrowed eyebrows, and those lips that brought Melissa nothing but pleasure were turned down in a perpetual frown, giving him the appearance of a stern, no-nonsense man. Nothing like the easy-spirited, fun-seeking man who she’d frolicked around Chaud with three months ago, danced on Beale Street with two months ago, or had dinner with on a riverboat while in Savannah a month ago. Although he still resembled the man who’d torn down the walls around her heart and opened her to the possibility to love again, Melissa couldn’t help but wonder if this change in him had anything to do with whatever he was doing on his phone or everything to do with her.

  As if he’d sensed her perusal, Elijah looked up from his phone. Their gazes locked. Her lips curved into a tentative smile Elijah didn’t return. In fact, as Elijah slid from his seat once Melissa reached the table, she noted his expression hadn’t changed.

  “I was beginning to think you stood me up.”

  “No, sorry,” Melissa said, leaning in for a hug. Elijah’s hard body stiffened at first contact before he slowly wrapped his arms around her to return the hug. Her heart plummeted into her sneakers. “There was an, uh,” she cleared her throat, stepping out of his embrace, “an accident. I planned to walk, but Jayla told me to drive, even though the restaurant is about fifteen minutes from our condo. She didn’t think it was safe enough.” Melissa groaned inwardly, silently berating herself for rambling and the awkwardness now standing between them like a concrete wall. How had things gotten this bad? It was all good just a week ago.

  “It was,” Elijah responded. At the apparent confusion on her face, he continued. “Things between us, it was good…no,” he shook his head, “they were great. We planned a trip to Orlando together. Made plans to spend Labor Day weekend together. We’ve talked about everything and nothing at all. Hence my confusion about everything that led to you moving to Baltimore and working at BCMH.”

  Slowly, Melissa slid into her seat, watching as Elijah did the same. She folded and unfolded her hands on the tabletop, shifted against the worn leather of the booth that, like the piercing glare of the man across from her, was suddenly uncomfortable and hard to handle. Melissa opened her mouth to speak but snapped it closed. What could she say at a time like this? When Elijah obviously felt slighted. Hurt by her not telling him they would be working together. But telling him she was sorry wouldn’t change things.

  Because she wasn’t sorry at all. She hadn’t done anything wrong.

  “That’s all true, Elijah, and I understand why you would have questions.” Melissa took a deep breath and released it slowly. “But what I need you to realize is I never hid anything from you. I told you when I applied for the job and about the interviews on the island. I also expressed my disappointment in not hearing anything back. You were there every single step of the way during this process until a week ago.”

  “A week ago?” Elijah parroted. His eyes narrowed, and his face twisted into a frown.

  Before Melissa could respond, the waitress appeared, placing a glass of ice water in front of her. “Do you need a minute to take a look at the menu, or do you know what you want?”

  “I’d like to order,” Melissa said, handing the waitress the menu. “I’ll have the lump crab cake meal with hush puppies and coleslaw.” She looked over at Elijah, unsure if he planned to order anything or not.

  “Can I have the NY strip steak, sweet potato fries, and steamed veggies?”

  “How would you like your steak done?”

  “Medium rare,” he answered, closing the menu and handing it to the young woman. “Also, I’d like a glass of sweet tea.”

  “Of course.” The waitress faced Melissa. “And would you like anything to drink?”

  Melissa shook her head. “No thanks. I’m good with water.”

  “I’ll put your orders in and bring your drink over right away.” Spinning on her heel, she walked away, leaving them alone again.

  “Besides you being unable to go to Orlando, what happened last week?” His eyes widened with a spark of recognition. “Your interview.”

  Although his voice remained neutral with no undertone of animosity, Melissa flinched at his dig about their canceled trip. She pulled in a deep breath to steel herself against the myriad of emotions overwhelming her and nodded slowly. “I didn’t know you worked at BCMH. I didn’t even know you lived in Baltimore. As much time as we spent together, we never broached that subject, which thinking about it now might be a little weird and should have probably been a red flag.”

  “Not really,” Elijah said, accepting his drink from the waitress. He waited until they were alone again to continue. “There was never a lapse in subject matter with us, and when it seemed like there were, it was because we were content on sharing the silence.”

  “Yeah,” Melissa whispered more to herself, but Elijah’s nodding signaled he’d heard it as well. “I learned you worked there the day of the interview. Once it concluded, Nurse Kemp and Nurse Collins took me on an unofficial tour of the hospital. We were walking into the ICU when I noticed your headshot.”

  At first, Melissa thought she was dreaming. That her mind and hypersensitive body were playing tricks on her, conjuring up his smiling face to wreak havoc on her psyche. Stopping to examine the picture only added to the fray. Her breasts had grown heavy, her nipples tightened painfully against the fabric of her bra, and her clit pulsed with a cadence that rivaled an HBCU drumline.

  She shook off the memory. “The day I called you I had just left the hospital. I wanted to tell you about the interview, about me possibly working with you, despite not knowing if I would get the job. But—”

  “I told you I would call you back.” Elijah scrubbed a hand down his face.

  He appeared to be visibly warring with himself. Melissa heart ached at that moment, and she couldn’t be sure it was because she felt an extension of whatever was going on in Elijah’s head or if the uncertainty of where they stood—and their future—contributed to the pain.

  “Look,” Melissa said, interrupting the terse silence that fell between them while they were both lost in their own thoughts. “My lack of talking about this opportunity had nothing to do with wanting to keep it a secret from you and everything to do with not wanting to get my
hopes up high only to be—”

  The waitress reappeared, this time placing their orders in front of them and refilling Melissa’s glass of water. “Is there anything else I can get for you?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “I’m okay, thank you.”

  Once they were alone, Melissa and Elijah joined hands, bowed their heads, and said a quick blessing over the food before digging in.

  “As I was saying,” Melissa began after taking a bite of her crab cake, “I didn’t want to get my hopes up high only to be disappointed in the end. Nothing about the interview and hiring process for this position was normal, and each time I spoke to someone from the hospital, I never felt I would be offered a job.”

  “But you were.”

  “On a Wednesday.” Melissa smiled, remembering the tandem emotions of excitement and fear she experienced. “I’d been back home for less than forty-eight hours when I received a call stating the hospital received the paperwork for my license transfer and wanted me to start right away.” The smile on her face faded as Melissa chewed thoughtfully on the corner of her lip.

  “I called you after I accepted the position.” She finally looked up from her food to catch Elijah staring at her with his fork suspended in the air. “I wanted to share the news of my employment with you, but also tell you that we would be working together. You didn’t answer.”

  Elijah placed his fork down on his plate. “Sweetheart, I—”

  Melissa threw up a hand to cut Elijah off. “It’s okay. I’m not telling you this to make you feel like you’ve done anything wrong. You haven’t. Neither of us has. I know how busy you are. I know all about the days when you would go without sleep for twenty-four-hour periods, when all you ate for the day was a PayDay from a vending machine, how many times you canceled hanging out with your friends, Sunday dinners with your parents, and our weekly movie nights. I never took our lack of communication personally. But I would be lying if I said I didn’t feel hurt and confused this past week.”

  “But why?” Elijah shifted in his chair.

  “Because…” Melissa drew her eyes away from the muscles flexing in his arms. She glanced around the restaurant, taking in the pictures of great jazz musicians, actors, and film stars that hung in gold frames on the cream-colored walls, looking anywhere she could to avoid falling headfirst into the depths of his stare. Lovely’s was a Baltimore staple, at least that’s what she’d been told by the owner, Ms. Lovely Sampson herself. While the outside looked unassuming and unpretentious to any tourist passing by, the red brick building held a true gem beyond its double doors. Toward the front of the establishment, small, circular tables that seated no more than four people comfortably were situated in front of a large stage, while booths were placed on risers throughout, allowing just about everyone to have the “best seat in the house” no matter where they sat.

  “Melissa?”

  Turning her attention back to Elijah, Melissa thought about how best to proceed. When she saw Elijah’s picture on the wall, her mind had run rampant with questions, but the most prominent one was how their relationship would fair once Elijah learned of the truth. The time had come to broach that subject, and regardless of how it played out, Melissa would walk away with her head held high, even if her heart was shattered into a thousand pieces. “Because I spent quite a bit of time overthinking and overanalyzing our relationship. I kept reminding myself that you were busy with work, but no matter how many times I did, there were those thoughts that played on my insecurities and past relationships.”

  “Your ex.” He said the two words more like a statement than a question.

  “Yes.” Melissa pushed her plate toward the middle of the table, signaling she was done. The heaviness of the conversation snatched her appetite away. “I couldn’t stop thinking about how things ended with Steven. The signs I was too blind to see—him not spending the night at my place, the constant rumors of him cheating with this nurse or that doctor, but the biggest indicator that he’d checked out of the relationship was us no longer having sex. He became distant, claiming he was always working on this article, that patient, or running those trials.” She chuckled bitterly. “He didn’t have time for me, and several times during the past week, you didn’t either. Once again, I lumped you in the same category as my ex-boyfriend. I wanted to believe the absolute worst about you with the hopes that maybe, just maybe, it would make it easier to bear if—” Her voice cracked under the weight of her emotions. “You were indeed done with me, with our relationship.” She hated how speaking those words, her fears, left her feeling completely vulnerable and exposed more than she’d been in a long while. Yet, this was Elijah. The same man who challenged her to live a little, encouraged her to show emotion, and celebrated even the tiniest of her victories. She trusted him, and whatever happened next, Melissa would be grateful she’d met him.

  “Sweetheart, lemme tell you this…” He reached across the table, taking her hand in his. His thumb brushed over the backs of her hands, its warmth sending sparks up her arm. “I thought about you every single day of the past week. I wanted to see you. I yearned to hear your voice.”

  His words knocked the wind from Melissa’s lungs, but she schooled her features, wanting, needing to hear more.

  “When I returned from Orlando, I walked into a shit show at the hospital. Instead of easing back into the flow of surgery, as I’d planned, I was thrown into the gauntlet, performing two and three surgeries a day for three days straight. My twelve-hour days morphed into sixteen and eighteen-hour shifts. Not only was I overworked, but exhausted. Still, even then, I thought about you.” Elijah scrubbed a hand down his face. “I never wanted to hurt you or cause you to question me or yourself. I’m sorry.”

  “And I’m sorry you had to learn about me working at BCMH the way you did.” She smiled sheepishly. “But to be fair, I did text you and tell you to call me when I didn’t see you in the meeting this morning.”

  “You did, but my phone was on vibrate. I didn’t get your text until after I saw you. By that time, I was running through conversations we’d had trying to figure out if I’d missed you saying you were moving to Baltimore.” Elijah laughed, and it took everything in Melissa to not close her eyes and surrender to the heartiness of the sound.

  “Not that I have an issue with you being and living here.”

  His voice dipped an octave, and Melissa shivered in her seat. “So, what happens now?” Melissa asked quietly. She focused her gaze on their joint hands, unable to look at Elijah.

  Elijah cupped her chin, forcing her eyes to his. “I refuse to pretend like we haven’t spent the past few months getting to know one another. I know you need time to adjust. You need to get acquainted with the staff, procedures, and overall get a routine that works for you. But I’d be lying if I said I don’t want to pick up where we left off. I want to know all there is about you. What makes you laugh. What pisses you off. I want to continue to see all the sides of yourself you tend to hide from everyone.”

  With her heart doing a series of Olympic-worthy flips that would surely bring home the gold medal, Melissa stared, unblinking at Elijah. It wasn’t just the weight of his words that sent her pulse racing, but the sincerity in his eyes caused her breath to stack in her lungs like a Jenga tower.

  “But I also see the hesitation in your eyes,” he added.

  “We work together now.” Melissa chewed on the inside of her cheek. “When we were dating long-distance, it was different. I didn’t care who saw us together when we were together. I enjoyed the public displays of affection.” She tucked her head to hide the warmth flooding her cheeks at the memories that came swooshing through her mind. “But here, it’ll be different. The last thing I need is for my new co-workers to think I’m dating and sleeping with you for special privileges. I don’t want this,” she waved a hand between them, “to cause us to get swept up into the hospital rumor mill. I’ve been there, done that. I even have the emotional scars to prove it.”

  “I
know, and you should know I would never do anything to jeopardize your career or mine, especially doing anything that would warrant rumors about us. At work, we’ll be professional and cordial. I will treat you with the utmost respect as I do all the nurses in the ICU.”

  “And what about outside of the hospital?” Melissa asked. “How will things go when we’re not at work? Will we make time for one another? Should I expect you to take me on dates?”

  Elijah flashed her a sexy smirk. Had she not been sitting, Melissa would’ve slunk to the floor. “Sweetheart, you already know the answers to those questions.” He left his seat, slid next to Melissa, and took her hand in his. “How about you set the pace of how we move forward, like you did in Chaud?”

  Pressing her lips together in a thin line, Melissa weighed the pros and cons of Elijah’s offer. The choice shouldn’t have been difficult. She’d wanted to continue her relationship with Elijah and had hoped to do so when she learned they would be working together, but the fear of someone finding out about their love affair, then using the information against them in any capacity, scared the living hell out of her. Still, her heart knew what it wanted, and despite the blaring alarms going off in her head, Melissa was ready to accept her answer.

  “I think I like the sound of that.”

  Melissa hoped she wouldn’t come to regret this decision.

  “I think what we can do is advise the patient to take aspirin at home upon discharge,” Elijah said to the group of residents following him. “That way—”

  “With all due respect, Dr. Grayson, I don’t believe that’s the correct approach to treating this patient.”

  Several sharp gasps pierced the relatively quiet hall of the ICU. Elijah spun around, looking for the source of the voice he was more than familiar with. His gaze locked on Melissa, standing only a couple of feet away, with her head hung low as she flipped through the pages on a clipboard in her hand. He fought back a groan. How was it possible for her to look positively radiant while dressed in something as simple as navy blue scrubs and black tennis shoes with her hair pulled up in a messy bun on the top of her head? Elijah had no idea, but damn if Melissa didn’t look good enough to pull into the nearest on-call room and bury his face between her thighs to refamiliarize himself with her taste and scent.