25
He came to the end of Dr. Wilder’s notes on Mrs. Nunez, and thought about lowering the dosage of her blood pressure meds.
He was jealous.
It wasn’t until Clara smiled at Charles that he realized she hadn’t smiled at him since before The Incident. She usually smiled at him kind of a lot. Way more than other people did. In fact, she’d pretty much smiled every time he looked at her.
But no longer.
Shouldn’t Charles be at work on a Tuesday morning? For that matter, wouldn’t it look kind of stupid for her to date someone whose name also began with a C?
Yoli knocked briefly on his door. “Mrs. Nunez is ready for you. She thinks her blood pressure meds might need an adjustment.”
“Thanks,” he said mechanically.
“Don’t mess around with Clara,” she added. “I’ll dump your body in the creek.”
“Take a hike, Yoli.”
“Yep,” she said meekly, and disappeared down the hall.
It disturbed him that he didn’t want Clara to go out with Charles. He needed distance from her and the whole situation, but every time he recalled that she’d been moping because she’d been worried that the kiss had grossed him out, he was just tickled pink.
Kissing her had been great, but being kissed by her had been one of the highlights of his mundane little life. Sweet and fierce, that was Clara. Just exactly what you’d expect from her, come to think of it. No one had ever kissed him like that, and the unfortunate takeaway was that now he hated, hated, to think of her kissing anyone else.
He needed to get back to Austin, where he wouldn’t have a front-row seat to The Clara Show .
There was another knock at his door, this time the woman herself.
“One of Mrs. Nunez’s friends just brought another covered dish for you. I put it in the freezer.”
“Oh. Thanks.”
“Yoli’s done with her, you know.”
“Yeah, she told me. I was just reading your mom’s notes.”
Clara smiled—not a real smile. The kind a woman gives you when you pass her on the sidewalk or accidentally make eye contact with her in an elevator—not too friendly, not too unfriendly, and utterly joyless.
He was feeling a little mopey himself.