Chapter 14
14
“Why did you go into medicine?” It took me about forty-five minutes of driving to get up the nerve to ask Mike. There was more to the story than being five and wanting to be a doctor when he grew up, I was hesitant to ask. It was something big, and I wasn't sure if he would tell me, or if I really wanted to know the answer.
We were in Jubal's truck headed back to Anchorage and for once, all alone. Since Jubal was taking the return trip on the train, we got his ride.
Alaskan weather was unpredictable. The clear skies of the morning were gone. It was now overcast, the clouds thick enough to hide the sun from view, making it impossible to gauge the time of day. Without the dashboard clock, it could have been ten in the morning or ten at night.
I was back in my turquoise hoodie as the temperatures had dipped.
Mike, on the other hand, still only wore his T-shirt. Clearly the hundred pounds he had on me kept him warm. He sighed and kept his eyes on the road. “I went away to camp every summer from the time I was nine.”
I remembered. Remembered how excited he was to go every year, talked about packing his trunk and then...he was gone. Some place in Idaho. “Camp Kid-be-gone or something.”
He chuckled. “Weehawken. There was this one kid, Jake, who I met my first summer. He was from California. We were together every year after that for those two, awesome weeks when we were young, then four when we turned twelve, and then the whole summer once we were junior counselors.”
Mike glanced in the rearview mirror, then back out the windshield.
“He was allergic to nuts. All kinds. We were sixteen and off in the woods for an overnight. Backpacking as a group. Somehow, peanut butter came in contact with the food I was carrying in my pack. He went into anaphylactic shock.”
I sucked in some air, knowing this was going to be bad.
“Even though he had an EpiPen with him, which we used, he died. Right there on the mountain. We were too remote to get him to help. He didn't have a chance.”
“Oh, my God.” I reached out and ran my hand down Mike's arm, ached for the boy he'd been. “It wasn't your fault. You know that, right?” I murmured.
Mike nodded. “Yeah. I think we all felt responsible though. The counselors, especially, who couldn't do anything to save him. The staff at the camp. Everyone.”
I could only imagine the guilt he had, that he'd carried around with him all this time. He’d been just a kid. Just a kid watching a good friend die, with no way to help him. No wonder he was so driven.
Glancing at me, he continued. “That's when I knew I wanted to become a doctor. Right there on the side of a mountain in Idaho. I had to help people. To prevent something like that from happening to someone else I cared about.”
Mike put on the blinker and moved into a left turn lane.
“Now you're a successful podiatrist with his own practice in rural America.”
“For now.”
“For now?”
“There's this group in New York who've hinted they want me to join them.”
“New York City?” I felt like a salsa commercial. My heart squeezed uncomfortably.
Stupid. I was so stupid. How could I have thought we had any kind of future? That the kisses meant something, anything to Mike. Nothing had changed. Nothing.
He nodded. “This group is the epitome of what I trained for. They sent me an email this morning saying I made the short list.”
I didn't know what to say. I didn't really know that much about him as a man, but I was starting to. This week was, or least I had thought it was, a turning point for us. But if New York was a real possibility, none of it really mattered. He was putting medicine above everything. Again.
“Wow. That's great, Mike. I know you've worked so hard.” I meant the words, but I couldn't put much feeling behind them. It was hard to be happy for him to leave when I really wanted him to stay.
“It's not a sure thing. I'm hoping to hear something more while I'm here.”
“So you'd close your practice and move away?”
He shrugged as if it didn't matter, but I could tell this was something he really wanted. He wouldn't go through the process if it wasn't the perfect next step for him. For his career. “Maybe. We'll see.”
There wasn't really anything else to ask about it. If I poked and prodded, he'd probably get his hackles raised, and we currently weren't mad at each other, and I wanted to keep it that way. Besides, I couldn't keep him from leaving. It had happened once before, so I knew, this time with my eyes wide open, that I wasn't enough. I couldn't compete with the ghost of a dead friend. So I picked a benign question. “Why podiatry?”
We turned onto a side road, not in the direction of Anchorage. Mike shrugged again. “You've got to pick a specialty. Foot injuries fascinated me.”
I smiled. “Oh, you have a foot fetish or something?”
“Or something,” he replied, smiling back.
The tense mood broke. The unknown about the job in New York was put to the side. For now. His friend was still gone, Mike—and anyone else so far from a hospital—unable to save him. After years of schooling, Mike must have learned not everyone could be saved. Even I knew that and I could only apply a Band-Aid to a cut. That didn't make the loss of a friend any easier to bear or the feeling of helplessness to lessen. Was he continuing to strive for more, career-wise, as atonement? Was he considering moving to New York because he really hadn't come to terms with his friend's death?
Mike had given me a glimpse into his cache of emotions, seeing more of him than I ever had before. What made him tick. What made him the man he was today. The more I learned, the more I liked who he'd become. I darted a glance at him. He was backlit by the sun that bled through a hole in the clouds, his face set in dark shadows, but his smile, his straight white teeth were unmistakable. He hadn't changed much; a few laugh lines, stronger jaw, and more facial hair than at eighteen. More.
I wanted him. Wanted a relationship that was based on more than assumptions and youthful fantasy. But was sex worth it? I couldn't have a one night stand, especially with Mike. Emotions were involved. Hell, emotions had always been involved. But any kind of casual relationship, if only for a few weeks before he left me again, was still that—casual. I was terrible at casual.
A deep rut in the road brought me out of my depressing thoughts. I grabbed the “oh, shit” bar as we went over a patch of potholes and upheaved pavement from what appeared to have been a washout. Mud and small rocks covered the road.
“I love my uncle's truck. Winters can be rough here and he likes to hunt. It's man-sized. Not like that?—”
“Clown car,” I added.
“—clown car of a rental,” he finished off with angst. This Monster Truck was his kind of vehicle. In fact, he had one similarly sized at home.
The interior was decked out with leather seats, a center console with enough gadgets to coordinate a space launch, and spacious enough for three lumberjacks side-by-side, I could still pick up Mike's scent. It was as if it had been hard coded on my brain graduation night. Soap, fabric softener and pure male. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.
In the window of time before this trip and since Mike had moved back to Bozeman, we'd run into each other occasionally, at a party or a wedding. Veronica was a close friend, so we went out as a group here and there. But we hadn't been alone together since...since graduation night. We'd been in a truck then, too. And he'd given me a much different ride. Maybe he was hard coded to other parts of my body, too, because I felt tingles in all the right places. I shouldn't want him. It would only lead to heartache, but my body seemed to think differently, or didn't care. I was in big trouble.
“I've been waiting to hear about this book of yours.”
Oh, crap.
I waved my hand in the air with fake nonchalance. “It's nothing.”
“When someone who reads the book needs new panties, it's not nothing.”
I glanced at him, felt my cheeks heat. “You remember Goldie saying that?”
“I'm a man. How could I forget?”
I stared at the scenery for a minute or two, getting up enough nerve to spill the beans. “Goldie talked me into writing a romance novel. I guess she shared it with someone on her flight. That's it.”
“And the panties?”
I rolled my eyes and mumbled, “One track mind.” I paused. “Fine. It's what some people might consider erotic.”
Mike turned to glance at me. Smiled. “Really? That's pretty hot.”
“You think everything is hot.”
He ignored my comment. “Can I read it?”
“Hell, no.”
He studied me for a second before watching the road again. “You seem...embarrassed by it.”
“Absolutely. It's personal and I feel...exposed...knowing Goldie shared it with others.”
“Will you read it to me instead?”
I just gave him the evil eye as he grinned. “We're clearly not headed back to town,” I said, changing the subject.
“I'm taking you into the wilds of Alaska to give you what you want.”
Yes, please!
My mouth fell open, a current of heated energy coursed through me as if I was zapped by a live wire. My nipples hardened and other places got damp at the very thought of Mike giving me what I wanted. “Oh?” I asked breathlessly. “And what might that be?”
I hoped he hadn't taken a mind reading class in med school.
Mike grinned wickedly. “Fishing, babe. Fishing.”