Chapter 6
Dallin Conforth, resident anesthesiologist and guest lecturer, stood in front of a whiteboard in a conference room at the technical college in Rexburg, Idaho.
“We need a concept for a theme, and that’s not my forte,” Doctor Conforth said. “I’d rather do a spinal block on a hippo than think of party colors and decorations.”
Mabel laughed, along with nine other poor souls who volunteered to help with the gala.
A couple of the women offered some suggestions for a theme for the formal gala, but Mabel barely heard any of it.
And it wasn’t because she’d been totally wrecked on account of seeing Zane at the grocery store an hour earlier.
Which, for the record, seeing him had wrecked her. Besides the ER fiasco, it had been the first time she’d seen him since The Incident Part Deux. The pain of all that had happened seared through her rejection wounds all over again.
But that wasn’t why she couldn’t seem to engage in this meeting.
The only reason she’d raised her hand to volunteer in the first place was that no one else in her cohort had.
Mabel had zero ability to just sit there in awkward silence, and their instructor had looked half-panicked, half-angry at the lack of response.
So Mabel had caved and raised her hand, and now she was at the planning meeting.
Thankfully, she knew Dallin—sort of. As a guest lecturer, he’d been engaging and so good at what he did that he made you feel like you were part of the conversation too. She’d asked him a couple of questions afterward, and he was generous with his time.
Being the most junior doctor in the anesthesiology department at the hospital, he’d been roped into heading the committee in charge of the food for the gala.
Normally, she would have liked an assignment like this, but not this time around. She was drowning in nursing school stuff, already studying for the NCLEX, and helping Mack with the water authority. The small stipend from the city wasn’t even worth it, but Mack was a good friend.
The thing with Silver Plummers was, when duty called, there was usually enough fierce loyalty in their blood that they rose up and did it.
It was the principle of the thing. Silver Plum had been overlooked and forgotten about so much of the time over the years by state and county governments, and just people in general.
That misfortune had the effect of bonding the city residents together even tighter and stronger than before.
“We’ve priced some options from a couple of grocery stores for the savory hors d’oeuvres, but someone needs to be able to meet with the cookie company for a tasting beforehand.” Dallin stopped his whiteboard marker in midair and glanced around.
Mabel’s gaze darted to the floor.
A chance to sample catered delights? Normally, it was a given that she’d want to participate. But she didn’t know if she could handle yet another thing to do.
She’d been frozen when she saw Zane at the store, at war with not wanting him to see her with Dallin for fear he’d think she was with him versus the small hum of satisfaction from knowing that she just might, with any luck, make him jealous.
See what you coulda had, Zane? This good-looking doctor is interested in me, and that could’ve been you if you hadn’t been acting weird and avoiding me for the last couple of months.
Dallin was good-looking. There was something sexy about a single, rich doctor with golden skin and thick blond hair. Plus, he paid more attention to her than the other women there.
And? He wasn’t Zane. That much was clear in Food ‘N’ Friends. It was like something sizzled between her and Zane, her heart ratcheted up, and she was a metallurgist to his ore. Drawn to him, wanting to extract every bit of meaning from every sigh, shift, or movement from him that she could.
But he didn’t want her. Ever since he’d rejected her after she kissed him in the library a lifetime ago, she’d known he didn’t want her. Bizarre behavior in Jamaica aside, he’d done nothing to make her think otherwise.
“The tasting is next Wednesday?” one of the nursing students asked, running a hand through her red pixie cut. “My kid has a soccer game that night.”
As the reasons people couldn’t go to the tasting poured in, Dallin turned to her. “Mabel? You up for a tasting in Idaho Falls? I could meet you there or even pick you up after your clinical. You’re still doing the ER one, right?”
Wednesdays were often her “hurry and attempt to catch up on all things water authority before something drastic happens and we go into a huge drought because of me” night, especially since the once-a-month town council meetings fell on a Wednesday too.
No fuss, no muss with trying to schedule her life.
If she kept things on the same nights, the easier it was to remember everything.
Except that now everyone in the group was staring at her, waiting for a response. From the looks of it, most of them had half-smiles of anticipation, like they were reading between the lines of Dallin’s offer.
She half expected one of them to do a mocking cat call after how he asked her.
“I probably can. I’ll text you later to let you know for sure.”
That’s when she did an internal groan because that made it sound like she already had his number. She did have his number, but only because they’d run into each other at the hospital and he’d asked for it to take care of committee stuff.
The rest of the meeting, Mabel ignored the knowing glances, smirks, and a few rolled eyes about the—whatever it was—goings on between her and Dallin. Could she imagine something sometime in the future with a guy like Dallin? Sure.
Did she want to?
No. But at some point, she would need to start wanting to, right?
In a lull in the meeting, before she gave in to all the hypotheticals riddling away in her brain, she rose from her chair.
This event was a big deal and had been drilled into the students from the very beginning that it was something they all needed to participate in.
But that didn’t mean she had to stick around for more curiosity about her and Dallin.
She and Dallin. Considered long enough, it might start to gel in her brain as something of a good thing. Logically speaking. Because she couldn’t pine after a man who didn’t love her for the rest of her life. That would just be…sad.
She left the room and headed down the hall, the memory of the look on Zane’s face haunting her. Zane had seemed really bothered when Dallin showed up.
Come on. She had already decided to move on from him. One little look of longing, and now she was ready to plan the wedding?
The fact that there were no less than three different iterations of all the details of a Mabel and Zane wedding in her mind and in possibly a few random notebooks from high school—okay one from college too—was neither here nor there.
Pulling her phone out of her bag, she looked for some relief from the doldrums about Zane. Her drug of choice at the moment? TikToks of product unboxings.
Before she could even get into the TikTok app, several group texts from the KNO women came up.
Hannah: Do you guys realize that I’m getting married in one week from today to the hottest man on the planet? Squee! Here’s to hoping Mabel and Zane get their act together and show up as a couple on my big day.
Anjali: Amen to all the above. Except the hottest-man part. You know I’ll fight to the death over Parker’s title on that.
Tory: I would insist that Liam’s the hottest one—and he is—but the man impregnated me and I have heartburn so bad I might puke. Again. So I’m not going to die on that sword right now.
Tory: However, I do agree with the Mabel-and-Zane thing. Stop fighting it and let it happen, kids!
Cady: Ooooh. Hannah, I think you should try to ensure Mabel catches the bouquet. That could get things going…
Ruby: Nope. She caught the bouquet at the first wedding of all of us, Tory and Liam’s. I’m thinking that pretty much jinxed her.
Mabel shook her head and responded to the insanity: You all sound like you’re twelve years old. Do you know that? Twelve. Maybe even eleven.
Hannah: She speaks! And she’s not denying it. Which means she’s saying there’s a chance!
Mabel shoved her phone in her back pocket.
It would do no good whatsoever to keep responding to this crap.
It felt like more than just harmless teasing from her oldest and best friends.
Because the fact that they all of a sudden were jumping on this bandwagon was unsettling.
To Mabel, it screamed of a prickliness she didn’t want to have to face.
She loved her friends dearly, but all of this felt like they were trying to somehow ease their worries a little. That maybe if they “shipped” Mabel and Zane, they wouldn’t have to feel guilty about leaving the two of them behind as they started their new lives with their own significant others.
Just no.
This smelled terribly like a charity case, and that was so not okay to Mabel.
“Can I walk with you to your car?” Dallin’s gentle nudge with his shoulder woke her from her thoughts as he caught up with her at the school’s doors.
She twisted her mouth to one side, knowing it would make her dimple pop. “I’d love that.”
There was absolutely nothing wrong with letting her dimple pop for an attractive and successful doctor.
Nothing.