“Just a quick kiss,” he said. “Then you can get back to work.”
“That’s not a good idea.” Still, she leaned closer.
“I know. But I can’t…”
Lauren’s protest died on her lips, because suddenly his were pressed against them, causing the most wonderful friction and sending her stomach into a free fall.
The door opened.
Lauren pushed Andrew back at the same time he lurched away from her.
Kiara froze with the door partially open.
It looked bad. Even if Kiara hadn’t seen the actual kiss—and that was a big IF—the scene now was just as bad. Lauren’s back was against the wall, her cheeks flushed and her hands shaking. Andrew stood awkwardly in the middle of the room looking like a child caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
“I—” Andrew began.
“I’ll come back,” Kiara interrupted. With a purse of her lips and a disapproving glance at Lauren, she shut the door.
Lauren’s hands flew to cover her mouth. “Oh no.” Her voice came out muffled.
Andrew moved farther away from her. “I’m so sorry. Shit, Lauren, I’m sorry.”
Fear automatically coiled in her stomach, even though it had been Kiara. Kiara was her friend…she wouldn’t say anything. Right?
“I can fix this. I see Kiara every time I’m here; she likes me. She likes Jeni. I’ll talk to her,” Andrew spit the words out rapid fire.
Lauren held up a hand. “No, please don’t talk to her about it. Let me. She’s my friend…I think it will be okay.” She gave him a stern look. “But see? We can’t do that.”
He sat down, still looking like a little boy who knew he’d been caught and was bravely awaiting his punishment. Lauren wouldn’t have pegged him as a back-talker, though. “We can’t do that today. After today I won’t need chemo anymore.”
“You don’t know that. We won’t know until after your scan next week. Which is Thursday at seven thirty, by the way.”
“Damn, that’s early.” He rested his elbows on his knees. “You keep talking about my PET scan like you don’t think it’s going to be good. Is there something that makes you think we didn’t get it all?”
Lauren was torn, the girlfriend part of her wanting to do nothing but assure him all would be well, and the oncology provider part of her wanting to prepare him for every possible outcome. She went with a mixture of both.
“Of course not. I think it will be perfect.” She prayed for it every day. “But it’s possible you’ll need more chemo. It’s a small possibility, but it’s there.”
“I can’t think like that. I’ve focused on today for months, knowing this would be my last one. I’ve kept this to myself, and saying it will probably piss you off, but chemo sucks. It really sucks, and I don’t want any more of it.”
“You’re right. That does piss me off.” Lauren clenched her teeth. “Let us help you, you big, stubborn man!”
Andrew smiled at her. “You’ve helped me more than you’ll ever know, my beautiful girl.”
His words and the soft expression in his eyes made Lauren’s knees go weak. But he didn’t stop there, and the next sentence out of his mouth made her heart seize up, but not in a good way.
“You’ve been the perfect distraction during this miserable process and taken my mind off the worst thing I’ve ever been through.”
Lauren felt like she’d been punched in the stomach, and all the air left her lungs. She blinked. “Is that all I’ve been? A distraction?”
Andrew’s expression turned horrified. “That’s not what I—”
“Stop.” Lauren put her hand on the door handle. “I need to get out of here and talk to Kiara. There’s no telling what she thinks we’re doing in here.”
Andrew stood up. “Wait—”
“No. Not right now, we’ll talk later.” Lauren slipped through the door and shut it behind her. Her hands trembled, and her eyes filled with hot tears.
Not now. Keep it together. Focus on what happened before he called you a distraction… You can deal with that later.
Lauren dreaded facing Kiara and felt like she was walking straight toward a firing squad. As she feared, when she entered the workroom, Kiara and Emma were waiting, the room otherwise empty. Both were unsmiling with arms crossed in front of their chests, eyebrows raised.
Lauren opened her mouth to speak, but Emma cut her off. “Are you insane?” She turned to Kiara. “Also, I told you so.”
Lauren’s eyes widened at that last comment. “What do you mean, ‘you told her so?’ How long have you known?”
Kiara’s head whipped toward Lauren. “How long has there been something for her to know about?”
Lauren lifted a hand and rubbed her forehead, trying to ignore the sensation of a knife in her heart. She needed to deal with what Kiara saw before processing what Andrew had just said.
“I didn’t mean for it to happen.” She spoke quietly, aware that someone could enter the room at any minute. “I told him multiple times that I couldn’t get involved with him. And for the longest time nothing…inappropriate happened. We did start talking, and became friends, and I saw him a few times outside of work at Children’s Hospital—”
“And you spent Thanksgiving with his family,” Emma cut in.
“How did you know about that?” Lauren squeaked.
“Why do I not know any of this?” Kiara whined.
Emma uncrossed her arms and propped her hands on her hips.
“His sister, Jeni, invited me over for Thanksgiving. I said no, but then I just sort of found myself there…” Lauren lowered herself into her usual chair and slumped her shoulders. She looked between her two friends, knowing they were responding this way out of concern. “You guys, I’ve tried so hard to be professional, and ignore the way I feel about him. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. I love it here, and I want to stay so badly, and I’m so terrified of what could happen if someone finds ou—” She stopped short when Dr. Patel came in.
“Kiara, can you make a renal ultrasound appointment for Mrs. Garcia? I’m not sure why her creatinine keeps rising…um, why is everyone staring at me?”
The three women were grouped in the middle of the floor and had all gone silent and focused on Dr. Patel when she entered.
Mothersmucker. Lauren froze. She was never cool in situations like this.
Kiara’s eyes widened.
Emma spoke quietly and smoothly. “Don’t mind us, Lauren was just telling us about a date she had this weekend. One that went horribly wrong.” She gave Lauren a hard look. “We’ll pick it back up, later.”
Dr. Patel accepted this, and Kiara returned to her computer. Lauren breathed a sigh of relief, though it was short-lived.
This conversation was far from over.
Chapter Sixteen
The pounding started at five-thirty. Not the pounding in Andrew’s head…that had begun the second Lauren had walked out of his exam room. This was the beat of his fist against her front door. “Lauren!”
Nothing.
“Let me in. I’m not leaving until you talk to me. You’re not a distract—”
Lauren pulled open the door, and he stopped mid-sentence. She seemed so small, as he stood with one hand gripping the doorframe above his head. The other was in a fist, poised to hit the door again, and he dropped it to his side. The sky behind him was gray and the ground covered in snow, creating a scene as dismal as the air between them. She still wore her blue scrubs. Still looked beautiful.
“Get in here, it’s freezing,” Lauren snapped. “Why aren’t you wearing a hat?”
He walked past her without responding. He went straight to her living room and stopped in the middle, turning to face her. She stood behind the couch, resting her hands on the back, like she wanted something between them, or something to hold on to.
He tucked his hands into his front pockets. “I’ve been calling you all day.”
“I know.”
“Did you get in trouble at work?”
“No.”
“Lauren, please. Tell me what happened. Tell me I didn’t fuck everything up for you, and for us.”
She sighed and walked around the couch to sit down. “Kiara and Emma won’t say anything. No one else knows. They agree it’s questionable for me to be with you, and it just reminded me of the reasons why I was hesitant in the first place.” She blinked, a tear streaming down her cheek. “But I don’t think it matters, because even though I think you’re worth it, I don’t think we feel the same—”
“Lauren,” he choked out. He lurched forward and dropped to his knees in front of her. He took her hands in his. “Please, I beg you. Hear me. What I said, about you being a distraction—I didn’t mean it like it sounded. The second I saw your face I knew what you thought, and it nearly killed me.”
He pressed her palm flat against his firm chest, so she would feel his pounding heart. “What I meant was that I don’t know how I ever would have gotten through this without you. From the first time I saw you, you’ve been this bright light of beauty and joy, making this dark road bearable. When I’m so tired I can barely walk up the stairs to my apartment, or when I don’t eat for two days because my stomach is on fire…I think about you, and the next time I get to see you. I tell myself it’s worth it to push through, because not only do I want to see you at my next visit, I want to see you next month. Next year. Five years from now. When I want to quit, I tell myself it’s not an option, because I can see the life I want to live, and I want you to be in it. Beyond all this. Beyond chemo, and scans, and lab work every week that tells me I need to be careful who I see and what I do. I want to get past all this and for you to still be there, by my side.
“If all you are is a distraction, I hope you’ll be that for the rest of my life. Be my distraction on the hard days when work gets me down. When I lose a case, or when I don’t get the promotion I wanted. Be my distraction when my sisters drive me to the brink of insanity and I need someone to bring me back. Be my distraction when we turn on the news and when the world is falling apart and it’s hard to see the good in it. If you’re there, I’ll have faith that God is real and that He still cares.”
Tears streamed down her cheeks and he cupped her face, wiping them away with his thumbs. “I can’t do this without you, Lauren.”
“Yes, you can.” Her voice wavered, and her bright green eyes looked deep into his. “But I don’t want you to.”
Andrew’s eyes closed, and he mouthed a wordless thank you before he crushed her to his chest. They held each other tightly for a long moment, Andrew still on his knees, Lauren supported by his arms around her.
Andrew pulled back and kissed her softly, reverently. He didn’t think he’d ever tire of kissing her, of touching her.
He worked his way down the column of her throat, loving the way her breath hitched with each press of his lips. Her hands roamed his shoulders and arms, causing goosebumps to break out along his skin.
Just when he’d made his way back up, his phone rang. Lauren tried to move away, but he held firm.
“Ignore it,” he said against her mouth.
The tone stopped for a few seconds, then started up again.
With a muttered curse, Andrew rocked back on his heels and reached into his pocket.
“What the hell do you want, Logan?”
Lauren watched with an amused expression while Andrew listened to Logan’s proposition. “I’m at Lauren’s. I know. I know. I’ll ask her, okay? She had a long day, and I’m not going anywhere without her. I’ll let you know.”
He ended the call and looked at her. “Logan wants to go out tonight to celebrate my last chemo. What do you think?”
Lauren thought for a moment. She gifted him with a wide smile, the first he’d seen since she first walked into his exam room that morning.
“I’m in.”
…
The following Wednesday, Andrew found himself sitting on a rickety wooden bench, hunched over his feet to make sure the laces were tight.
“Ready?” Lauren asked.
“No.”
“Come on. Stand up already.”
“Don’t rush me, woman.”
“They’re tight enough, I promise. I won’t let you fall.”
Andrew gave her the side-eye. “If I go down, there’s no way your tiny body can stop me.”
Lauren put her hands on her hips, wobbling slightly. “I’m hardly tiny.”
“Compared to me you are.”
“Being a giant is no excuse. Stand up and let’s get out there. The couple’s song is about to start. I always had to sit this one out as a kid, because I never had a boyfriend to skate with. Let me have my moment.”
Andrew groaned. “Fine.” He was happy to share firsts with her and give her a reason to feel like she was proving a point to all the assholes who’d passed her by. He had no idea how rolling around a skating rink hand in hand with him would do that, but it hadn’t been up to him. She’d insisted they do something fun tonight to keep his mind off the PET scan tomorrow morning, and he’d let her pick the activity.
It was working—he’d only thought about his scan twice. He pushed himself up from the bench, his arms immediately flailing.
Lauren blinked, keeping her expression flat. “We’re on carpet. You can’t be off-balance yet.”
“Are you going to be heckling me all night?”
“Probably.”
“Maybe I’m just trying to throw you off. Once I get out there, you’ll be blown away by my blazing speed.”
“Pfft. Get inline, buddy,” she said with a wink.
He laughed and shrugged. “That’s how I roll.”
“See? You’re having fun already.” She grabbed his hand, and they began the awkward clomp across the carpeted floor to the rink entrance. “I had a feeling this would be a wheelie good time.”
“Stop. I can’t handle it.” He also couldn’t handle how good she looked in black leggings. Thank God she had a long sweater that covered her perfect backside. He wouldn’t mind a better view, but there were a lot of teenage boys here, and a surprising number of other couples his and Lauren’s age—Was hanging out at the skating rink coming back in style?—and he would’ve had to spend the entire evening standing behind her if he thought they were checking her out.
He took a few rotations around the floor to get the hang of it. He hadn’t spent time at a skating rink as a kid, but he had gotten a pair of roller blades for his tenth birthday and had worn them out that summer. Somehow his body remembered the basics, and soon he and Lauren were flying around the outside, hand in hand.
She looked up at him and laughed, and he smiled down at her, feeling ridiculous and happy. The DJ announced it was time for the couple’s song, and those who were with someone paired up across the floor while others went for the exit to wait it out. Lauren squeezed his hand, and the first notes of a Khalid song came across the speakers.
The lights went low, and a few colored beams strobed across the floor, passing across the bodies of the skaters who circled the rink. The beat of the song, the feel of Lauren’s hand wrapped around his, and the sudden darkness in the room did something to him. When they came around a narrow curve near the wall, on the opposite side of the benches and social area, Andrew veered off course, successfully slowing enough that when his shoulder hit the wall it barely stung. Following his momentum, Lauren collided with him, cushioned by his body.
She yelped as their skates crashed together. He put his arms around her as he braced his back against the wall to keep them on their feet.
“Are you okay?” she asked, trying to pull back and look up at him. “Did you lose control?”
Andrew gazed do
wn at her in the darkness. The music pulsed around them and people continued to glide by, either not noticing them embracing in the corner, or not caring.
“Yeah. I kind of think I have.” He kissed her, loving the way she responded with enthusiasm, even here. He wasn’t typically one to put on public displays of affection, but he’d also never been this into a woman before. He forgot about everything else when he was with her. They could have done anything tonight, and as long as she was there, he wouldn’t worry about tomorrow.
When he traced the seam of her lips with his tongue she sighed, opening to him, and a passing skater called out, “Get a room!”
They broke apart, Andrew’s eyes searching the crowd for whoever had said that, wanting to tell him to mind his own damn business. Lauren giggled and pressed her face to his chest.
The song ended and the lights flipped on. Lauren slid back a few inches and grabbed his hand, her eyes bright and happy.
“Come on,” she said. “Let’s skate some more, and then we’ll go get ice cream.”
Andrew didn’t want to move an inch from this spot. He wanted to stay here and hold her but he sighed and said, “Okay, gorgeous. You lead, I’ll follow.”
It was one of the truest statements he’d ever said.
…
The next morning, Lauren was waiting for him immediately after his PET scan, and her presence gave him strength. A year ago, if someone had told him he would live his life in sections of time—revolving around chemo appointments and scans, he’d have looked at them like they were crazy. But here he was, doing exactly that. And he prayed that after today, he’d be finished with it all.
She walked him to his car in the parking garage, keeping what felt like yards between them. Once there, he pulled her between his car and the one parked beside him, so they were completely hidden. He kissed her hard before he let her go, trying to convey what he felt through his touch. Her cheeks were pink when he released her, and she wobbled a step, grabbing his arm.
Pleased with himself, he smiled at her. She knocked him off-balance, too, but he was better at hiding it. “Thanks for coming with me. I hope the rest of your day is great.”
Perfect Distraction Page 18