Chapter 19
KENDALL
“Excuse me.” Maria waits for me next to the cardio equipment. Her arms are crossed over her chest. “What was that?” She points a blue-polished finger toward the locker rooms.
She follows me when I start to walk that direction myself. I glance at her.
“Can you keep a secret?”
She stops me with a hand on my arm. “Are you serious?” She almost looks disappointed in me, which sends an arrow of shame into my gut. “The guy who was so awful to you when you were teenagers? And to think I’ve been worried about you.”
I nod. “I know. He’s better now, though. I swear.”
She rolls her eyes, but then she smiles at me. “First Joan, now you. I’m going to start charging for these secrets.”
I just found out our friend Joan has had a secret thing going with her best guy friend, Lucas, and Maria knew about it early. She’s the best secret-keeper of all of us, though. I am admittedly the worst.
“I’m sorry. I’ll buy you a banana smoothie after this if you want?”
“Deal.”
We start walking again.
“He is cute, though,” she says. “And he looks at you like he wants to eat you. Or marry you. I can’t really tell which.”
I laugh, but my stomach churns. The idea of something serious with him still makes me twitchy.
Also, Maria and her long-term boyfriend, Jay, broke up a few months ago, and I thought they would get married. If they couldn’t make it work, what hope is there for me and my high school bully?
And can my justification really be that he’s been pleasant and he buys me stuff? I ponder this as we get ready to go.
Besides that, I feel like he might just want me because he can’t have me. It drives him crazy.
It’s a good thing we have a deadline. I can avoid getting further tangled up with him. We’ll put a period at the end of it, and we’ll move on with our lives.
An email arrives in my inbox on a Wednesday in October.
It’s been there all day, but I haven’t had the courage to check it.
It’s evening, and I’m home now, which seems to be a good place to open it, but every time I try a swooping sensation fills my chest. It’s from the med school, and my guess is it will instruct me to check the online portal for my results.
Is this it? Am I being rejected? I drum my fingers on my coffee table.
I’ve poured myself a glass of white wine, but I haven’t had any yet.
My dinner, some leftover casserole, cooks in the oven, and the garlicky scent almost makes me feel nauseous.
The low drone of the television is on in the background—a home improvement show I’m not really watching—but nothing is drowning out the thump of my own heart.
I don’t really want to do this alone. I could call my brother, or one of my friends, but my first instinct is to talk to Grant, and that confuses me.
Sure, we’ve been hooking up for a couple of weeks now, but that’s it.
This itchy need to talk to him crawls over my skin until I open my contacts to video call him.
He answers after the first ring. It’s after nine, and we’ve both been at work today, but his eyes almost look bright when he speaks. “Did you miss me already?” He rubs his hand over his light scruff, and an unfortunate zip of electricity shoots up my spine.
“I’m in need of moral support,” I tell him. I have my computer in front of me now, and I swing the phone around so he can see my email account.
“Oh. Well, shit.” He’s quiet for a moment. “And you wanted to call me first?”
“Don’t read too much into it.” I push my mouse so that it hovers over the email. “But I’m logging into the portal, and I need someone to be here either way.”
“Of course.” He rubs his jaw again. Damn him. Why is that so sexy? “I’m here. You can laugh, scream, cry. Whatever you need.”
His words dig into my tender feelings like little hooks. I can’t believe how sappy I’ve become lately. It’s honestly disgusting.
He’s silent while I open the email and follow the portal instructions. He’s holding his breath with me, I can tell. His lips are pursed.
I cover my mouth with my hand. “Holy shit.” My eyes water. “I got in!”
When I look at Grant, his smile stretches wide. He gives me a little fist pump. “I knew it! Congrats. You were an excellent candidate, clearly. I never had doubts.”
To my horror, tears threaten. I never cry in front of other people. In fact, the last time I cried in front of this man, I swore I would never do it again. I fan my face.
“I’m really happy for you, Kendall.” If Grant notices my tearfulness, he doesn’t comment on it. “You’re going to do great.”
“God. This is such a trip.”
He grins at me again. “I’m so thrilled for you. It’s better than when I got my own letter. I’ve been waiting with bated breath.”
“Stop that.” My smile mirrors his.
“I’m serious. I’m ecstatic.”
“I don’t know how in the hell I’m going to pay for it, but I’ve decided that if I have to take out loans, I’ll make it work.”
“Plenty of people do that,” Grant says. “Lots of my classmates. Most of them, really. You’ll be able to pay them back on a physician’s salary.”
“Yeah.” I tug on the collar of my T-shirt.
“The thing that scares me, though, is that I might take out loans and then not be able to finish school for some reason. Anything can happen. I could fail, or I could be in a terrible accident. Or maybe I’ll just hate it.
Then I’ll be stuck paying back thousands of dollars. ”
Grant’s face softens. He’s in his bedroom, I notice, lounging on his bed.
He stares at me with so much sympathy I want to look away.
“Yeah, anything can happen. I know it’s way different for me, but I don’t have unlimited funds, either.
I would be devastated if things didn’t work out for me as a physician now. ”
“Yes, but you have a safety net.”
He tilts his head from side to side. “Yes. But you were talking about hypothetical bad things. By that logic, we don’t know that my parents aren’t going to get arrested for money laundering or tax evasion or something like that.
” At my raised eyebrows, he laughs. “They aren’t doing those things, obviously.
But you’ll drive yourself crazy thinking about how life can go wrong. ”
“Point taken.” I take my phone with me to go get my dinner out of the oven. I’m still not very hungry, so I leave it sitting on the stove. I go back to the couch and pick up my wine.
“I can let you go eat if you want.”
“I don’t think I can actually take a bite.” I sip on my wine. “I’m full of so much adrenaline I feel like I could circle the earth, Superman style.”
“What now, then?”
I laugh. “Are you suggesting phone sex?”
His cheeks pink a little. God, I love making him blush like that. “I certainly wouldn’t say no to that.” His molten look could melt my phone’s screen. “I like just talking to you, though. You deflect a lot with sex.”
My nose wrinkles. “Yes. If the alternative is pretending we’re friends.” I’m trying to be funny, but my comment lands like a dropped egg. His face falls before I respond. “I’m sorry. That was unkind, and I don’t even mean it. You’re obviously my friend. I wanted to call you first, after all.”
The admission costs me. I’ve started to like Grant as a person, and I’m not even sure when it happened. He’s become a good person, an active listener, and someone I trust.
“I don’t want to be your friend, Kendall.”
“Grant . . .”
“I know, I know. Can I ask you something, though?”
I suck in a breath. “Of course.”
“You would give me a chance if I weren’t me, right? That’s what the hang up is for you. Or do you just not want a relationship at all?”
He’s stolen my words for a moment. We’re looking at each other as he waits for me to speak.
“Can’t I just take my shirt off?”
“Come on, Kendall. Let’s have a real conversation.”
My eyes sting again. What is wrong with me? “I’m open to something serious.” I hold his eye contact. “You say all the right things. I even like you as a person now. I just can’t get past who you were.”
He looks up at his ceiling. “All right.” His eyes fix on me again. “I think we’ve had this talk enough times now that I get the point. I just had to be sure.”
“Do you want to stop what we’re doing?”
He shakes his head. “I’m not smart enough for that.”
My hands find the hem of my threadbare T-shirt, toying with the fabric. My mouth stretches into a smirk when his gaze snags there.
“About what you mentioned,” he says.
“Yes?” I lift my shirt a little.
He gulps. His Adam’s apple shifts as he watches me. “The phone sex.”
“You’d be into that?”
“I could not be more enthusiastic,” he says. His voice lowers. “Can I see you?”
I position my phone on my coffee table so that it’s propped up. His sharp intake of breath when I peel my shirt off sends warmth flooding into my pelvis.
He groans, low and long. “You’ve been braless this whole time?”
I work on my shorts next. I’m standing now, moving slowly, watching his rapt attention that presses on my skin like a weight. I slide them off so that I’m left in my black silky thong.
Grant looks absolutely wrecked. His eyes are glassy, like he’s drunk, and his face has taken on a flushed cast.
“God fucking damn. You—”
“What?” I hesitate, just for a brief moment, then sit and spread my thighs a little for him. I can’t believe I’m letting him watch this on camera.
His hand trembles a little when he pushes it through his hair. “I didn’t think I could be any more into you.”
My belly flutters.
“What else do you want to see?” I brush a finger along my thigh, a tease, and his eyes shoot there. “And you can touch yourself, but no coming yet.”
“Ah.” His body shakes again as he sits forward. I’ve never seen a man like this. He holds his phone with one hand, and I can tell he’s undoing his pants with this other. “Oh, God,” he says. “Play with your nipples for me.”
I trail my hands over my chest, circling the tops of my breasts and under them, but not giving him what he wants yet. It’s delicious torture for both of us.
“Please, Kendall.” His hand disappears below the frame.