Chapter 7 #2
My eyes flutter closed on a low, satisfied moan. I can’t help myself. It’s that good. As they flutter open again, I find his eyes on me, on my mouth, and everything inside me shivers in the best kind of way. ‘Mmm,’ I murmur after I align enough brain cells to form words. ‘Amazing.’
I expect some kind of smug, cocky rejoinder, but he merely nods. ‘Good. Eat up.’
I shove my fork into the bowl. ‘How’s the arm?’ I ask as I spear pasta. He’s pushed his sweater sleeves up and I can see the small adhesive dressing that covers his sutures.
‘All good. I have an appointment in a few days to get the stitches out.’
I nod as I take my first bite and then I don’t say anything else. It’s delicious and I devour it in no time at all. I am done and his bowl is still half full. I give an embarrassed half laugh as I place my fork in the bowl. ‘Sorry, I was hungrier than I thought.’
He shakes his head. ‘Don’t apologise. I like a woman who knows how to eat.’
My insides loop-the-loop at his suggestive words and I search his gaze for any sexual innuendo, but he returns his attention to his food with only the merest smile tugging at his mouth. ‘Where’d you learn to cook like that?’
Danny smiles around a mouthful of pasta. ‘Bob.’
I blink. ‘Bob?’
I know they’re related but I didn’t realise Danny and Bob knew each other that well. The older man had never mentioned Danny prior to him arriving, although I suppose whilst friendly, Bob isn’t exactly chatty.
‘How? I’m pretty sure he has Uber Eats on speed dial.’ I’ve spoken to enough drivers on their way to Bob’s apartment to assume that cooking isn’t one of his skills.
Danny shrugs. ‘It’s harder to be motivated when you’re cooking for one.’
Oof. Isn’t that the truth? When do I ever cook for myself? Properly cook, like Danny has cooked for me today? ‘Yeah.’
As if he knows I’m talking about myself he asks, ‘Do you cook?’
I laugh at the suggestion. Cooking takes time I don’t have. ‘I’m more into food… construction.’
‘Oh yeah?’ He raises two eyebrows. ‘What does that mean?’
‘It means taking several pre-packaged items and putting them together to form another dish. Like some corn chips, a jar of salsa and a handful of cheese. Throw it in the microwave for a couple of minutes and hey presto – nachos.’
He winces a little like I’ve just insulted Mexico. ‘Bad nachos.’
I shrug. ‘It takes three minutes. I’ll eat gourmet after I become an attending.’
Of course I know better than most about the health benefits of good nutrition and fuelling my body properly, but I’m also perpetually busy and tired. Eating has become more about function than indulgence.
He shoots me a piteous look but doesn’t push.
‘Bob has a four-dish repertoire which he claims is all you need for an evening meal. This.’ He stabs his fork at the bowl.
‘Fried rice. Beef stroganoff and shepherd’s pie.
But he also taught me how to make eggs and pancakes because they’re a breakfast thing. ’
‘Oh.’ I blink again. So they do know each other well? ‘You’re close, then?’
‘I lived with him for a couple of years before I went to college.’
More blinking. Danny went to college?
‘My father, who died when I was a baby, he was Bob’s cousin and I probably only saw him briefly every few years or so.
But when my mother got remarried – for the third time – when I was fifteen and I didn’t want to go to buttfuck Arizona with her and Waldo the wonderful, he offered me a place here. ’
The derision in Danny’s voice tells me he has history with his mom’s husbands. ‘That was… good of him.’
‘Poor bastard.’ Danny shakes his head and laughs.
‘His wife had died ten years before I came on the scene and they’d had trouble in the pregnancy department, including having a stillborn baby, so they’d never had kids of their own.
He had no idea how to look after a teenager with a chip on his shoulder and an appetite that wouldn’t quit, but he just game-planned me like I was a military mission to accomplish.
He was no gourmet but insisted a person only needed a few dishes to get by and that every guy needed to know how to cook.
Compared to my mom who could burn water, it was a revelation. ’
It’s way more than I want to know but I realise in his telling that I’ve assumed a lot about this cocky young guy who looks at me in such a direct way, and I don’t like that about myself one little bit.
Not only had Danny gone to college but he’d never known his father and been shunted to a relative he barely knew as a teenager when his mother moved on.
Is it any wonder he had a chip on his shoulder? He doesn’t appear to have one now, but I wonder if the band and the tatts were a consequence of that time in his life.
My flip-floppy heart flipped and flopped again.
‘That’s how you know how to fix stuff?’
Danny nods. ‘Pretty much. I used to help him on his jobs. Which is why he knows I’m capable of handling the building while he’s away on his Reno trip.’
‘Does Bob ever win anything on these extended gambling adventures?’
A laugh bursts from his mouth. ‘I doubt it. I think it’s more a camaraderie thing, for him. Meeting up with old buddies, shooting the shit.’ Danny shrugs. ‘Whatever. He deserves it. He’s a good guy. He’s been good to me.’
I nod. ‘It sounds like it.’
‘He also bought me my first drum kit.’
‘So I have him to thank for the racket?’
A sharp laugh escapes his throat as his eyes twinkle – freaking twinkle – at me. ‘Him and rock and roll. Sorry about that.’
He doesn’t look remotely sorry as I wave his apology away with a flap of my hand.
‘What’s your band’s name?’
Danny takes a mouthful, which he bites, chews and swallows before he answers.
‘The first band I ever joined when I was eighteen was Garage Nights. The music wasn’t bad but we didn’t really like each other much outside of the band.
The one after that was Penny for Them and the one after that was Gunpowder and Lace. My current band is Neon Dicks.’
I laugh even as I wonder if four bands in a decade means he doesn’t play well with others or he moves around a lot. ‘Colourful.’
His lips twitch. ‘We thought so.’
‘Any good?’
He smiles, oozing that confidence I have come to know so well. Everything about that smile, that demeanour, says whatdaya reckon?
‘I think you know how good I am with a stick.’
Heat warms my face and I squirm. A stick. Other inanimate objects…
‘We’re not about to play at Madison Square Garden,’ he continues with a shrug as he loads up another forkful, ‘but we have a good local following. Enough gigs to get by, which is not nothing.’
I suppose it’s not and I have no idea how talented Danny really is or how tough it is out there to be a musician, but… the fact he doesn’t seemed bothered by such a loosey-goosey life plan is a revelation.
‘And you’re okay with that?’
He laughs at my question and I realise that I may have come across as questioning his ambition, which I guess I am.
But… who lives like that? I have goals for the next decade.
Short term. Medium term. Long term. They’re listed in a bullet journal I started on my first day of med school, and I continuously update.
Another shrug. ‘It’ll do for now.’
God… imagine. Imagine living life with so little clear direction. My chest tightens at the thought. But something else loosens at the allure of it.
‘You don’t approve?’ he says.
The side of his mouth kicks up like he doesn’t give a rat’s ass whether I approve or not. As he shouldn’t. If Danny wants to half-ass his life, he’s perfectly entitled. ‘Not my business.’
‘But you know what you want and where you’re heading, right? You have direction.’
‘Sure.’ I nod. ‘I’m specialising in emergency medicine.’
‘You plan on staying here or do you want to take those skills somewhere big, like New York or Chicago?’
I shake my head. ‘No. I want to go rural.’
He blinks like I’ve finally surprised him. ‘Rural?’
‘Yes,’ I say stiffly.
As ever, I’m defensive over my choice just like I’d always been with my ex, who’d never taken my career aspirations seriously. Why is it so hard to believe that I would want to take my skills to a place screaming out for them?
New York and Chicago have a plethora of emergency medicine specialists.
‘Do you know how inadequately staffed and resourced our rural hospitals are? How hard it is to attract skilled doctors? Which means rural people get an inferior service. That’s grossly inequitable.
And—’ I fix him with a steely stare. ‘That means rural people are sicker and sometimes they die completely unnecessarily because they turn up to an ER in a critical condition and there’s only an inadequately trained doctor who’s scared witless. ’
The room is silent for long beats as he regards me seriously. ‘What happened?’ he asks quietly.
I open my mouth to deny that anything happened. But there’s compassion in his blue, blue gaze and it’s like he sees me. Something my ex never did. It makes me want to tell him.
‘My grandmother. She died. After a car accident on a rural road. I still remember my mother getting that phone call.’ I shudder as her wailing comes back to me now.
‘How old were you?’
‘Almost fourteen.’
‘You were close?’
‘Very.’
I smile as I think about my grandmother and how she was my Gilmore Girls buddy, watching along with me, always with some freshly popped corn, drooling over Luke in an exaggerated way because she knew how much it scandalised me.
‘She ended up in an ER with only one junior doctor who was out of his depth and didn’t act quickly enough. I’ve seen the autopsy. She could have lived if he’d known what to do or if he’d evac’d her earlier to somewhere that did.’
‘I’m sorry.’
I shake my head. It’s not his fault. But his apology is surprisingly heartfelt. ‘Thank you.’
‘So, that’s what motivates you to push yourself?’
‘Yeah.’ I nod. ‘I know I can’t save everybody but…’
‘You can try.’
I nod again. He does see me. ‘Right.’
‘Well, I think that’s amazing.’