Chapter 6 #2
He caught it and began to squeeze. “You’re full of laughs today. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you have a sense of humor underneath that dipped-cone exterior or yours.”
“Dipped cone?”
“Yeah, you know, like those shells that get hard after they dip the cone? Like we used to get when we lived in Minny? I used to take you and Brianna to Dairy Queen, remember? She always got cherry, and you got chocolate.”
“I remember. You got the Oreo Blizzard. What’s your point?”
“Those shells are brittle, but they crack. That’s my point.”
A smile twitched her lips. “Are you saying I’m like the shell on one of those cones?”
“Exactly.”
Her mouth twisted side to side as if she were seriously contemplating his inane comparison. “Okay. Guess that also means I’m sweet.”
She began to move toward her keyboard again, but he stopped her when he held up the elephant. “I didn’t mean I wanted to talk about this squeeze toy.” He didn’t particularly want to talk about her and him either, but he also didn’t want to keep lugging this anchor around.
“Obviously, you’ve got something on your mind. What do you want to talk about?”
“Did you ever talk to Brianna after … that night?”
Fuck me. Why was he even going there? It was the wrong damn elephant, and honestly, as large beasts went, the subject of Brianna was a baby elephant. Maybe a peanut that baby elephant would scoop up in its trunk.
Her smile disappeared into a grim line. “I haven’t spoken to her since the night you two broke up, so no.”
“So Brianna doesn’t know …” He gestured between them. Yeah, he was a certifiable idiot.
“About you and me? Not unless you told her.”
“Not me. What would be the point?”
“Exactly. Now that we have that settled, I really do need to get back to work.”
He tossed the elephant in the air and caught it. “Maybe we could grab a cup of coffee after this.” What the fuck was wrong with him?
“Why?”
I have no idea. My mouth is doing all the thinking for me today. “So we can clear out the elephant.”
“Look, Sam, no offense, but I buried that elephant years ago, and I don’t have any interest in exhuming his decayed corpse. Let’s keep our relationship strictly patient to therapist, okay? Much less brain damage that way.”
“Are you saying dealing with me gives you brain damage?” Jesus, why was he making his self-inflicted bull’s-eye an even bigger target?
Her mouth swung open and immediately snapped closed.
“Looking back, I thought we had … fun.” He certainly had.
She blew out a breath that ruffled her hairline. “Sam, I really need to get through my work.” She began to roll her workstation away.
“Wait. Just have coffee with me. Or lunch. You get a lunch break, right?”
“I’m working through lunch.”
“Okay. After work, then.”
“I have somewhere to be.”
“What, are you getting your hair done? A manicure? Meeting a girlfriend?” Please don’t say you’re going on a date. “Going to the gym?”
“It’s none of your business, but if you must know, I have a standing date at the animal shelter.”
“What do you do there?”
“I’m a volunteer, so I do whatever they need me to do.”
“You’re kidding.”
She gave him an epic eye-roll. “Is that so surprising? Why would I kid, Sam? Never mind.”
“Yeah, never mind. Dumb question.”
With a disgusted huff, she dragged the workstation to her desk and turned her back on him.
“Why the hell would I expect someone with zip sense of humor to kid?” he grumbled.
He blew out an exasperated breath of his own, tossed the elephant in the air a few more times, and finally plugged in his earbuds.
He couldn’t concentrate on the photography narrative.
Or his favorite hockey podcast. Or his playlist.
Instead, he slipped out one of his earbuds and covertly watched and listened as Angie interacted with some of the other therapists.
One was a guy in his early fifties, and she joked with him as easily as she did with his sixty-something patient, a woman with a messed-up shoulder.
Same behavior with a different therapist, a younger guy who wore one of those silicone wedding rings, and a woman who acted like his wife.
She even took a phone call where she was all sunshine smiles with someone asking her about some exercises she’d prescribed.
Why didn’t Sam get that Angie? The one from six years ago? Was it him? Did she hate him that much? Two could play this little game.
It seemed like forever before she turned off the machine and freed him from the cold compression sleeve.
The smile she’d so liberally shared with everyone else was nowhere to be seen.
In a voice as dry as the Colorado air, she listed off the usual exercises, plus two more, and went back to tapping on her keyboard.
She sat at an angle—so she could watch him in her peripheral vision like one of the vindictive high school teachers from his past. He’d skipped a few of his steps to test her, and sure enough, he got the evil eye for it.
God, he needed to get through this and get out of here!
He tossed the elephant a few more times, seriously tempted to chuck it at her head, but then she left the room.
He sat up and massaged the ankle. It felt pretty good.
In fact, it had been feeling pretty good the past few days, and today he’d made it through the exercises without any twinges of pain.
So she didn’t want him using one crutch because it threw his gait off. What about no crutches?
He swung his legs over the edge of the table and eased himself off it, gradually adding more weight to his ankle as he stood. Hey, that didn’t hurt! A little more and he’d be fully upright. Oh yeah, this was working.
I’m a hockey player. Balance and coordination are my middle names. I’ve got this!
Maybe one baby step. But which foot first?
He was a rightie, so he wanted to lead with the right, but something told him his bad ankle might not be ready yet, so he led with the left, then dragged the right behind him and planted it.
Sharp pain shot up his calf, and he gasped like that girl being chased by chain saws in a horror movie.
“Jesus!”
Completely off balance, he brought his right foot up and nearly toppled. With a little cry, Angie streaked across the room in a flash of blond hair. Before he could tilt too far, her shoulder was in his armpit, her arm wrapped around his waist, and she was leaning him upright again.
“I got you.” Her voice was steady, reassuring. He’d expected a rant, at least a curse, but she was all calmness and ease as she helped him back on the table. “Let me take a look.” Her hands were on his ankle, and he gritted his teeth. “Does that hurt?”
“Not what you’re doing. It just hurts like a motherfu—”
“I bet it does. That’s what you get for playing Superman.” She grasped his shoulders and maneuvered him flat on his back. “Lie back and relax.”
“If I were Superman, I’d just fly. Fuck walking.”
She glanced up at him, a smile quirking her lips. And if he wasn’t mistaken, genuine warmth danced in her icy blues.
That expression encouraged him to blither. “Hey, if I were Superman, I could be Clark Kent and use my mad photography skills.”
She brought herself upright, jutted a hip, and perched a hand on it. “Clark Kent was a reporter. You’re confusing him with Jimmy Olsen.”
“Right. I knew that.”
A cute little smirk formed. “No, you didn’t.”
A memory surfaced. “I forgot you were a Superman superfan back in the day.” She had watched every single Superman movie and old serial known to mankind.
She even had the comic books, which he’d looked at with her once when they’d been sprawled across her bed, waiting for Brianna to come over after cheer practice.
She checked her watch. “How much time have you got?”
Confused, he frowned. “What, are you going to tick off the ten most-watched Superman episodes?”
“No. I want to put you back in the compression sleeve for a few minutes.”
Shit. He dragged a hand over his jaw. “Did I cause more damage?”
“I don’t think so, but I’m worried about it swelling again, and I want take some precautions.”
“Sure,” he exhaled. “Got nowhere else to be.”
“Good. I have another patient showing up in about five minutes, but I should be able to get you set up and take care of him at the same time.”
Why the “him” in that sentence bugged him, Sam couldn’t say.
After she hauled the machine back over and got him hooked up, she changed out her usual instructions about icing and added, “I want you to forgo the exercises at home for the rest of the day and just take it easy. And if it looks like it’s swelling, I want you to call me, okay?”
He gave her a cockeyed salute and lay back.
Instead of plugging in, he watched her help her next patient, an old dude with an obvious hip problem who was there with a younger woman.
A daughter or a niece or an in-home caretaker.
The way Angie handled the guy gave Sam pause—she was good at this.
She was skilled and sympathetic, and she took the time to put her patients at ease.
All her patients except him, that is.
It dawned on him that Angie handled him the same way professionally, but with a bite to her personality. Was it only past Sam she had a problem with or was it present-day Sam too? The question crawled beneath his skin and jabbed at him like the spines of a goat’s head.
Suddenly, he wanted the answer.