I Wanna Sext You Up

by Evie Claire

  Lorie chewed her cheek, thinking over his admission. It was an admirable reason for not talking to reps. Even more so given his age. Most guys in their late twenties weren’t mature enough to load a dishwasher, let alone cure the human body. Being a doctor meant Saam couldn’t shirk responsibility.

  “So, that’s it. That’s why you’re always such an asshole to reps?” Lorie crossed her arms and leaned in, not backing down and actually enjoying the prospect of a friendly challenge.

  “Asshole?” He sat back, running a hand along his neck. His ridiculously muscled neck.

  “Asshole,” Lorie confirmed. “You won’t talk to two of my counterparts. You banned another from your office. And you’re only here tonight because I have something you need.” Lorie pulled his phone from her pocket and tossed it on the table.

  “We could’ve met at a gas station to switch phones, Lorie.” He leaned in, placed a finger on his phone, and slowly dragged it closer.

  “Then why are we here?” The moment she asked the question a weird sensation curled into her belly. What she wanted him to say and what she should want him to say weren’t the same thing.

  “Can I be honest, and you not take it the wrong way?” Saam fingered the silverware in front of him.

  “I just called you an asshole to your face. I think we’ve established an honest rapport, haven’t we?” Lorie grimaced slightly, showing a hint of remorse.

  “You intrigue me.” Saam’s shoulders lifted to his ears while he spoke and then settled into place again.

  “Go on.”

  “You’re not like most of the drug reps that come in my office.”

  “How am I different?”

  “You seem serious about selling drugs. I’m serious about treating patients. I respect your passion. So, here I am.” Saam lifted his gaze to meet hers. “Sell me.”

  The gaze he held her in also held about a million meanings. Sure, he was open to hearing about Lampalin. But it was insulin, not Viagra. Diabetes wasn’t a sexy sell.

  His demeanor was.

  So much so her nipples decided to rebel against her bra again. She cleared her throat, crossed her arms, and seized the moment.

  “Why don’t you write Lampalin for your patients?”

  “It’s new. I’m not familiar with it.”

  “Our efficacy is the same as every other insulin on the market. You can’t change insulin. What you can change is the route of administration. Which is where Lampalin is far superior. We have the smallest needle on the market, and the ability to premeasure doses.”

  “What’s your formulary status? I don’t want my patients paying for drugs they can’t afford.”

  “We’re covered by GoldCross. Forty percent of your patients are insured by GoldCross.”

  “How do you know that?”

  Lorie lifted her brows and averted her gaze. She wasn’t supposed to share those trade secrets.

  “Okay, I give you permission to talk with my nurse. Have her flag the charts of all GoldCross patients on insulin. I’ll agree to try it.”

  “Really?”

  “Assuming you can provide me with the research articles backing up your claims.”

  “I can have them delivered to your inbox this evening.” Lorie looked around for her phone to make herself a note, patting her pockets before she remembered.

  Saam chuckled from across the table, sliding her phone her way.

  “Where do you usually run?” he asked.

  “Grant Park.”

  “I’m over closer to Freedom.”

  “Do you run?”

  “Yes, I played soccer growing up.”

  “I bet you were good,” Lorie said, looking up from her phone to find his brows quirked up. “If you play soccer with the same intensity you practice medicine you must have been.”

  “I attended Cornell on scholarship.”

  Soccer scholarship? Okay, that was hot.

  “See, proves my point.” Lorie put her phone back on the table, nervously tapping a finger beside it.

  “Let’s get some pizza.” Saam waved to the bartender.

  “Sounds great. What do you usually get?”

  “Um…” Saam pursed his lips, thinking. “Sausage, pepperoni, bacon, and…mushroom?”

  “You are so busted.” Lorie narrowed her eyes playfully even though she didn’t really care. He had studied her. Presumably with the same intensity he did most things. The thought made her stomach tighten.

  “You watched Amal’s video,” he accused.

  “It was adorable.” Lorie wasn’t sorry for that.

  “You like Adele.”

  “Well, that’s obvious.”

  “You meditate.”

  “Again. So. Busted.”

  Saam shrugged it off and turned to the bartender to order their pizza.

  Lorie let him, because she needed time to absorb her situation. And reassess Dr. Saam Sherazi.

  Nerdy, yes. But in that Q from the new James Bond films kind of way. Smart and sexy and so self-assured you had to admire it. He owned being an asshole. And when she thought about his reasons, she couldn’t blame him. His patients should come first.

  Awkward, absolutely. But in a Darcy kind of way.

  Wait…what the hell did I just think? Saam and Darcy?

  Umm, no. No way. Right?

  She watched the way he settled back into his chair, chest out, arms crossed, posture ramrod straight while he ordered their pizza. There was something Darcy-esque about him. Seen in a new light, his awkwardness came off as reserve. Quiet. Introverted. Not at all in a Unabomber sociopathic kind of way. But in the kind of way that made you feel like if you cracked his code, you were something special for having done it.

  He was a man of few words. Silence implied confidence. Unlike Lorie, he didn’t have the need to please everyone. Words only left his mouth when he intended them to.

  “Dogwood Pilsner or IPA?” he asked, breaking her from her obsessing.

  “Oh, IPA.”

  “I’ll take a Blue Moon, with an orange.”

  The bartender made mental notes and disappeared.

  “So…um…your sister? Her kids are adorable.” It was the first thing that came to mind.

  “We’re twins. Amal and I.”

  Jeez, even his manner of speaking was slightly awkward. Even if grammatically correct.

  “Twins? That’s cool.”

  “Amal is still in Florida. With her family. Just down the street from my parents.”

  “Your parents are still together?”

  “Yes.”

  “Mine, too.” Despite everything that had happened her parents had stayed together. “That makes us a minority these days, doesn’t it?”

  “Sadly, yes.”

  “That is one thing I feel like their generation got right,” Lorie admitted a bit begrudgingly.

  “Dating? Or love?” Saam asked, squeezing the orange into his beer when it arrived.

  “All of the above.” Lorie took a sip of her IPA and rested on her elbows.

  “I don’t understand online dating,” Saam admitted, brows wrinkled, face drawn tight. “How am I supposed to get to know someone better on a digital screen than I am meeting her face-to-face?”

  “That’s a valid point.”

  “Amal created my profile once.” Saam winced.

  “Didn’t go so well?” Lorie guessed.

  His grimace and headshake said everything. Lorie giggled.

  “I think it’s the weed-out process people like. No one wants to be an asshole. With online dating you can avoid potentially awkward situations if you aren’t into them. Unlike a blind date.”

  “Well buckle up, buttercup, that’s life. I find it hard to believe a computer quiz can tell me who I’m going to love. That’s
chemistry. Not an algorithm.”

  “Buckle up? Buttercup? Who are you?” Lorie couldn’t contain her giggles.

  “It’s something my sister tells her kids all the time. That’s life, you know? You deal with it best you can, and you move on. Life is messy or you aren’t doing it right.”

  “I had no idea you were a philosopher, too.”

  “Pfft. I’m no expert. I just feel like…” He used his hands to talk. Lorie liked his hands. They were capable hands. Well trained. Now he laced his long fingers together and rolled them over in front of him. “…love has a huge placebo effect and if you don’t do it yourself, the probability of getting it wrong is pretty high.”

  “Placebo effect because everyone on those sites obviously wants love?”

  “Exactly, and they’re basing their selections off an arbitrary profile. A friend in med school was on Tinder. On a whim, he put MD behind his name even though we were only second year. He immediately got forty percent higher returns. That’s not love.”

  “I guess I see what you’re saying,” Lorie said and folded her hands in her lap. She’d dabbled on Bumble but hadn’t found much. Maybe Saam was onto something.

  “So, you’re a fan of Hamilton?” Lorie asked, turning her beer stein on the tabletop. “I mean…sorry.” She gave a half-frown. “I needed some running music this morning and the soundtrack was paused on your Spotify app.”

  Saam remained silent, staring blankly at the foam on his beer. He didn’t answer her. Quickly, she thought back over her comment. Had she said something she shouldn’t have? Crossed a line with the phone swap? It wasn’t like she could hum a tune in her head while she ran. Lorie cleared her throat.

  “You ran to Hamilton.” Neither his voice nor face gave the first context clue for how she should read him. Was their moment losing its magic?

  “Well, it’s just…I have to have something to listen to or I can’t run.” Lorie twisted her hair through her fingers and looked to the side. “I’m sorry. Was that too far?”

  “Why haven’t I ever thought of running to Hamilton? That’s actually…genius.” A smile broke over Saam’s face—every part but his mouth that is. His lips, instead, quirked into some twisted corkscrew of emotion that ran counterintuitive to the genuine appreciation dancing in his eyes. Again, with the whiplash of emotions.

  “Have you seen it live?” she asked, pushing a loose tendril behind her ear.

  “Twice on Broadway. My sister and I take a trip to NYC for our birthday every year. She raved about it so much we decided to take our mother to see it for her birthday.”

  “In New York?”

  “Yep. My mother loves to travel. That’s how she met my father.”

  “Oh, that’s sweet. Where did they meet?”

  “My mother was a flight attendant. She and my father met when he was flying back to Iran after he finished med school at Cornell.”

  “You guys both went to Cornell?” Lorie’s eyes went wide. That was seriously impressive.

  “Yes. He had plans to practice in the UAE when he finished. But my mother changed those plans.”

  “Where are they in Florida?”

  “Jacksonville. He’s director of the Vascular Institute at Johns Hopkins Jacksonville.”

  “That’s super impressive.”

  “You have no idea.” Saam crossed his fingers on the table in front of him, looking at the tangle of digits as he thought. “Sometimes, I’m not entirely sure I ever had a choice about my career. Medicine was the only option I ever remember having.” Saam chewed at his inner lip.

  She huffed a small laugh and nodded in agreement. Well-meaning parents. Couldn’t live with ’em, couldn’t live without ’em.

  “What?” he asked, utterly confused by her reaction.

  “My mother raised me my entire life to live her life. She still has a hard time believing I can find anything of value in Atlanta when I had everything I ever could have wanted in tiny little Social Circle, Georgia.” Lorie put extra twang in her last words, imitating the genteel lilt of her mother’s overly Southern drawl.

  Saam stared at her, opening his mouth, closing it, and opening it again.

  “I don’t know the whole story, but it sounds like you’re better off.”

  “Umm…w-what?” Lorie shook her head.

  “Your phone.” Saam shrugged. “There was a text from a girl named Liza. I shouldn’t have read it, but your phone beeped. I picked it up out of habit. You don’t have a password…” Saam grimaced and reached across the table, tapping the table beside her phone.

  Lorie quickly scrolled to her texts, her face falling with each word her well-meaning friend had sent. Outside of her current situation it would have been so nice. Inside the current situation, it sucked.

  She stared at the floor, took a deep breath, and screwed up her courage. What else could she do?

  “That’s awkward, huh? You reading something like that about me.”

  “Is it?”

  Lorie huffed out a laugh, nodding wildly, like such awkwardness should be absolutely obvious. “I bet you’ve never failed at anything. Have you, Dr. Sherazi?”

  “Saam,” he corrected. “Failure is relative. Most goals are in your mind’s eye.”

  “You don’t know what you don’t know, Dr….Saam.” Lorie shrugged, paused, opened her mouth to say more, then stopped again. He wasn’t that kind of guy. His focus was too intent to fail.

  Saam inhaled slowly, nodding, waiting to see if Lorie would continue. When she instead reached for her beer, he spoke. “I have been lucky enough to accomplish most of my goals.” Saam tapped his thumb against the tabletop. “I have diplomas on the wall. I have a successful practice. Practicing medicine comes easily to me. But there are many things I would like in life that elude me. Does that make me a failure?”

  “Hardly.”

  “What did eighteen-year-old you want?” He leaned across the table, whispering as if to imply the secret would stay exactly where it fell. It was tempting. An hour ago, she never would have dreamed they’d be having a conversation like this. Part of her wanted to give him what he wanted. The larger part couldn’t let go.

  “Something I couldn’t have. Now, I have new goals.” Lorie pushed back from the table, crossing her arms over her chest.

  “Your work?” he guessed.

  Damn. How did he pin her down so easily?

  “Yes.”

  “Specifically?”

  “Well, the girl before me won Rookie of the Year. I’d like to measure up to that, at least.”

  “And surpass it, too?”

  Lorie nodded. Yes, he had her number. “My boss went from sales rep to sales manager in five years.”

  “What happened to the Rookie of the Year?”

  Lorie faltered. Shit.

  “She got a better job at another company.”

  “And Durden did nothing to keep her? I thought retaining top talent was a priority in sales.”

  Lorie shrugged. Relief washed over her when the bartender appeared with their pizza. Saved by the pie, she thought. But it did make her think. Was this how things started for Shaye? An innocent dinner that wasn’t technically work? Lorie brushed the braid off her shoulder so it hung down her back.

  “Have you seen Hamilton?” Saam asked, sliding a piece onto his plate.

  Lorie shook her head, and Saam dove headfirst into a blazing summarization of Hamilton. As he spoke, she noticed the way his eyes grew darker, his words fueled with a passion that animated him. They became more sapphire, or cerulean if she wanted to get technical about it. Which made her quietly wonder, What color do they turn when he makes love?

  And then she mentally slapped her crazy ass for even considering such absurdities. Saam…no Dr. Sherazi…was a client. And even if he was totally McSteamy out of his lab coat he was still w
ay beyond the limits of where she could go. At least in the flesh.

  When Hamilton wrapped up, she quickly switched the topic back to work. Where she was determined it would remain.

  “Are you currently working on any research?”

  Saam nodded, winding a string of cheese into his mouth before speaking. “I’m studying the effects of gut flora on pancreatic performance in the adolescent type 2 diabetic patient population,” he said without hesitation.

  Lots of insider lingo. But Lorie could keep up.

  “Where are you in the process?”

  “Right now, my findings are based on a mountain of accumulated research. So unfounded until I can arrange funding to actually put it into trial.”

  “My company offers grants to fund research. I’m the research and development liaison for this area. I might be able to help you get that funding.”

  Again, Saam’s eyes went sapphire, but before she could get lost in them, she redirected her gaze.

  “I would appreciate that.” His tone was clipped, and she couldn’t help but feel like it was because she had looked away. And somehow confused him in doing so.

  With the pizza nearly finished, and the glasses of beer following suit, Lorie tossed a credit card on the table.

  “I guess I need to get an Uber,” she said. “It’s almost past my bedtime.” She laughed.

  “You’re not going out?” Saam asked, genuinely surprised.

  “Tonight? No. I’ve got this thing tomorrow. And Brad’s at home.”

  “Brad?” Saam questioned, taking the card she offered and placing his beside it.

  She stilled, wondering why she didn’t want to immediately come clean. Brad was her dog, but on occasion, she’d also used him as an excuse to get rid of assholes. I have to get back to Brad usually stopped a bad date immediately. Zero questions asked.

  This wasn’t a bad date, but there could be some benefit in him thinking she had a boyfriend.

  “Saam…I mean Brad,” she said, her words confused by the beer. She did not mean to say his name when she was thinking boyfriend. Shit.

  “Who’s Brad?” he doubled down.

  “A friend. A really good friend.”