Chapter 16
danielle
Aris was such a gentleman, parking as close as he could get to the building and then helping me inside. “I’ll ask Doc to get you a temporary handicap permit,” he offered as we rode the elevator up to my appointment with Dr. Riley.
“Thanks, I appreciate everything you’ve done to help me.” I basked in his smile as he received my gratitude, and then he helped me off the elevator when the doors slid open.
“I’m going to take you in the back. Less walking for you,” he said with a wink. He unlocked a door with his ID badge and ushered me down a hallway.
Nurses and other office staff were buzzing about as Aris guided me to Exam Room 3. “Have a seat in here, and I’ll be right back to take your vitals.”
A shiver of excitement coursed through me as I thought about Aris being my nurse. How did I go from hating doctors to maybe having a bit of a medical fetish? This was weird…and unexpected.
He returned with my chart and a blood pressure machine. “How tall are you, darling?”
“Five-five.” I tensed up. I knew what question was coming next.
“Gonna leave the weight blank unless you want to tell me.” He looked up over the chart with kind eyes.
I smiled, relief washing over me. “Blank is good.”
“Let’s get your temp, blood pressure and heart rate.” He stuck the thermometer under my tongue and wrapped the blood pressure cuff around my arm. Adorably, he put his finger to his lips to remind me not to speak while the machine squeezed the ever-loving shit out of my arm.
“Temp is ninety-eight point three. So that’s fine. And blood pressure is 125 over 84. That’s pretty good. Are you comfortable?” He made a few notes in my chart and looked me over as I sat on the exam table.
“As comfortable as I can be on this paper-covered table,” I joked.
“Well, how could I make you more comfortable?” His eyebrows shot up quizzically.
Something about his effervescent personality had put me in a playful mood. “Oh, I think you may have some ideas…”
“Oh, Dani!” His hands flew to his mouth in fake surprise. “So naughty!”
“Guess you can’t do that at work though, huh?”
“Dr. Riley is pretty cool, but maybe not that cool.” He closed the file with my chart and pressed it to his chest. “She’ll be right in, okay?”
“Thanks again.” I blew him a kiss.
Twenty minutes later, it was over. Dr. Riley looked over my x-ray, examined my leg, and basically told me that staying off it for six to eight weeks was the best course of action. She had Aris make me an appointment for six weeks in the future so she could repeat my x-ray and make sure it was healing properly.
“And, of course,” she said, “if you have any new pain or your pain worsens, please call the office right away.”
Aris sat with me for a moment after she left the room. “Are you okay?”
I nodded. “I don’t know what I expected her to say. I guess maybe that I was healing magically and I’d be back to normal in a few days.”
“I mean, some have said I have a magical cock,” he chuckled, “but, yeah, unfortunately, that’s not the way the human body works.”
“I suppose not. Well, I’m preparing myself for further disappointment when I meet with my advisor, so I guess I’ll just get all the disappointment over with in one fell swoop.”
“I hope you’ll get some good news.” He helped me down from the table. “You have a ride to campus?”
“Yeah, Raine is coming to pick me up. Just need to text her to pull up to the door. She should already be here.” I leaned on my crutches and started to pull out my phone.
Aris held up a hand. “Allow me, my goddess.” He did a mock bow and pulled out his phone in one fluid motion. Magical cock or not, this guy was a magician when it came to making any lingering sadness disappear. It was almost impossible to be depressed when he was around. He was like the sun when it parts the clouds and scatters them all away.
He pressed a few buttons on his phone, then grinned. “Your chariot awaits, my goddess.”
“You’ve gotta stop calling me that. I’m going to get a big head or something.”
“Can’t stop, won’t stop!” He beamed as he escorted me out the back door of the practice and down the hall to the elevator.
Once we hit the lobby, he guided me out to where Raine was indeed waiting in her black Ford Focus. He opened the door for me, got me settled inside, and pressed a kiss to my lips. “Let me know how it goes with your advisor.”
“I will,” I promised.
As we pulled away, he watched from the sidewalk, not far from where our collision happened just a couple of days ago.
So much had happened since then.
And yet the promise I made to Cynda was still fluttering through my memory like a butterfly taking off on its inaugural flight.
* * *
“So, now what?” Raine asked as we settled into the booth at The Trojan Horse.
Disappointing news called for a gyro with extra tzatziki sauce. I didn’t make the rules.
“I wonder what Aris thinks of this place.” I ignored her question. “He’s Greek, you know.”
“Um, yeah, you were seeming pretty smitten with each other in the parking lot back there. How’s that going?” She wisely picked up on my not-wanting-to-talk-about-my-plans vibe.
“It’s going very well.” My traitorous cheeks flushed as soon as I said it.
“My god, Dani, you’re blushing! Tell me everything.” She laced her fingers together, cracked her knuckles and settled her hands on the table, leaning forward in preparation for all the news I dared to share.
“Well…”
I couldn’t tell her about what was going to happen this weekend with Noah, but I could certainly dish about Aris.
“He is amazing!” I practically squealed. “He’s so sweet and kind and thoughtful and?—”
“This is the guy who hit you with his bike and broke your leg. You remember that, right?” she teased me.
“Yeah, yeah.” I brushed away her joke with my hand. “I know it’s possible he’s just being so nice to me because he feels guilty, but I don’t think so because he was super sweet and thoughtful before too, like when he held me during the thunderstorm instead of expecting to get laid. That was on our first date.”
Her black eyebrows arched. “And has there been a second date?”
“Well, I’m staying at his house… I guess our second date was in the ER. And our third date was us sleeping together that night.”
She looked like she was about to gobble up her favorite dessert. “Oh? Do tell. How did that go?”
“Well… I hadn’t been with a man in a long time because I’d never been too impressed with sex. I’ve only had a handful of partners, my high school boyfriend, a one-night stand freshman year of college at a frat party, and then Nathan. He wasn’t into giving oral—loved receiving it though. He struggled to last more than a few minutes, plus he could only go once a night.”
“Ugh.” Raine looked unimpressed.
“Let’s just say Aris blew them all out of the water.” I fanned myself because now, not only my cheeks were flushed, but my whole body felt on fire.
“Good!” She beamed. “You deserve good sex, Dani. You know that, right?”
“I do!” I agreed. “He also calls me his goddess, and he told me he loves my figure. He said I was ‘zaftig.’”
“Wow, I’m impressed he knows that word.” Raine sighed and seemed to swallow hard, looking down at her hands before her gaze rose to meet mine again. “I’m glad things are going so well, Dani. Now, can we talk about the elephant in the room?”
I stared at her, blinking.
“Your leg?” she reminded me. “Your living situation? Your master’s degree and future career?”
I kept blinking.
“Do any of those ring a bell?”
I huffed out a long, weary sigh. “Yes, Mom.”
“Speaking of your parents?—”
“No, we’re not gonna talk about them.” I held up my hand. “Boundaries, Raine. We don’t talk about the parental units. Much like,” I whispered, “Bruno.”
“Okay.” She bit her lower lip while she stared at me, presumably trying to figure out how to rile me up some more. “So, are you still moving to New York at the end of the summer? Gonna start auditioning?”
I rolled my eyes. “Can’t you just give me a moment to regroup? Let me enjoy myself for just a nanosecond?”
“Wow.” Raine shook her head in disbelief. “Three days with Aris Belevonis, and you’re a changed woman. I thought you said this was just a fling.”
“It is,” I fired back, even though I wasn’t sure I believed myself. “I am taking a breather, Raine. I’m healing. I have a broken leg. I need surgery on my nose. I just had to give up my dream of playing Marian the Librarian in The Music Man due to these things. I just found out I’m not graduating with my Masters in Fine Arts in May like I always thought I would.”
“You’re handling the disappointment remarkably well,” she observed, but she didn’t seem one hundred percent convinced.
I licked my lips. “Well, getting some good cock can apparently do that to you.”
“Huh.” Raine took a sip of her ice water. “Maybe I need to look into getting me some of that too.”
A couldn’t help but smile. “Yeah, maybe you should.”
“There’s my beautiful goddess!” I exclaimed as soon as I walked through the door and found Danielle in her usual spot, her leg propped up on the ottoman. Cynda was sitting in the chair across from her knitting.
“Why, thank you!” Cynda exclaimed, looking particularly cheeky.
“Two beautiful goddesses,” I corrected myself.
She waved away my compliment. “I think that’s my cue to go start dinner. Tacos tonight—does that sound acceptable?”
“Tacos are always more than acceptable,” Danielle finally spoke, looking up from something she was watching on her phone.
“Excellent.” Cynda smiled and headed to the kitchen, where I knew delicious smells would soon be wafting out to us and teasing our taste buds.
I sat down next to Danielle. Sushi was curled up in her lap. “You get home okay? What did your advisor say?”
She set her phone down and seemed to collect her thoughts as she stroked the cat’s striped fur. “Oh, not much. She told me to take an incomplete for the semester and basically try again in the fall.”
“Ouch.”
“Yeah. Not the best news, but…it’s not like I can really prepare for auditions or think about moving when I’m dealing with this.” She pointed to her cast. “It’s just going to be a long eight weeks.”
“Well, you’ll still have the summer,” I pointed out.
“There aren’t any shows or classes in the summer.” She sighed. The cat looked up at her in apparent commiseration.
“Gotcha.” I put my arm around her. “You seem to be handling the news pretty well.”
She shrugged. “Well, what am I gonna do? Cry about it? Get angry? It’s out of my control. Not much I can do at this point, other than wait.”
“Very true.” I reached out to give Sushi a scritch behind the ear. “Hopefully we can distract you and make the eight weeks go by quickly at least.”
One eyebrow arched. “We?”
“Noah and I,” I clarified. “So, what are you wearing to this ball on Saturday? Do I get to see you model your dress options?”
A flash of confusion crossed her face. “Oh, fuck. I just remembered?—”
“What?”
“I had some formal dresses in my closet here until winter break, when I moved a bunch of my stuff to my parents’ house. I wanted to cut down on the stuff I had to move from here to New York, so I was lightening the load. I didn’t think I’d need any of that stuff…”
“Hmmm.” I considered our options. “Well, where do your parents live? I can take you there to get a dress for the ball?”
She laughed. “I thought I told you… I grew up near Chicago. It’s like three or four hours away from here.”
“Oh, shit. Yeah, I guess we don’t have time to do that before Saturday.”
“Um, no.”
“Well, may I suggest an alternative?”
Her face brightened with hope. “What kind of alternative?”
“I’ll take you shopping?”
She looked at me like I had two heads. “You’ll…you’ll take me shopping,” she repeated.
I cocked my head and shrugged. “Yeah, why wouldn’t I?”
“Aris, who the hell are you? Did an alien inhabit your body or something? Am I on candid camera? Who the hell are you?” she demanded.
I chuckled and leaned toward her, pressing a kiss to her cheek. “Dani, I care about you. I want to see you happy. Would having a new dress to wear to the ball make you happy?”
Something like surprise and delight flickered across her features. “Yes…actually, yes. I think it would.”
“Then let’s go!”
She wagged her finger at me. “After tacos.”
I could hear the beef sizzling in the pan in the kitchen. “Oh, excellent call. Yes, after tacos. I completely agree.”