Chapter 17 #2
So I tell Robbie I’d like to take him up on his offer to end my lease early. At Drew’s suggestion, I ask Robbie to send me an email to confirm the arrangement, and he does. He even agrees to return the last month’s rent I paid when I moved in, provided I move out by the end of the month.
Drew and I drive to Wal-Mart for cardboard boxes, then spend the afternoon moving me into his condo.
Fortunately, I don’t have much stuff, and nothing’s too big to fit in Drew’s SUV.
Equally fortunately, Drew’s condo came with a storage unit in the basement that was sitting empty until today.
It easily holds a small armchair, a nightstand, and my disassembled twin bed.
The rest of the furniture came with the apartment, and I’m not sorry to leave it behind.
The move takes three trips, and by six-thirty we’re unloading the last of the boxes from Drew’s car. This is the pots and plates from my kitchen, which are also destined for his storage unit. I’m carrying one box to Drew’s three, because he’s worried about the cut on my arm.
“Not a lot of cyclists in your building, huh,” I joke as we walk past the bike rack. There’s exactly one bike chained there, and it’s mine.
“I think you’re the first,” Drew replies with a grin.
We dump the last of the boxes in his storage unit and head up to his condo.
“Tired?” Drew asks me. “How’s your arm holding up?”
“It’s fine.” Moving didn’t put much stress on my injured arm, mostly because Drew did all the heavy lifting. “I’m hungry, though. We forgot to eat lunch.”
I walk to the fridge, which looks a lot more normal since we moved the food from my fridge into it. “Yesterday’s leftovers?” I ask.
“Sounds great.”
I scoop the leftovers onto plates and pop the first one in the microwave.
“I guess you’ll need to give Robbie back the key?” Drew asks, as we wait for the food to heat up.
“Yeah, I was planning to do that tomorrow.”
“I’ll take care of it. Just give me the key and his number.”
“You don’t have to—” I begin, but I pause when I catch Drew’s expression. Clearly, he thinks he does, and this isn’t an argument I’m going to win. “Thank you.”
After dinner, I change into sweatpants and come back out to the living room. There’s no sign of Drew, so I assume he’s in his room.
I turn the TV on and lower the volume so it won’t bother him, then hit play on Grace General. Drew didn’t seem too into the show, so I doubt he’ll care if I watch it without him.
Two minutes later, Drew appears with his laptop in hand.
“Was the noise bothering you?” I ask, reaching for the remote to turn it down.
“No, it’s fine.”
“Do you care if I watch Grace General without you?” I tease.
That earns me a roll of his eyes. “I think I’ll get over it.”
He sits on the opposite end of the couch and opens his laptop. At first, he pretends he’s not watching the show, but ten minutes later he sets his computer on the floor.
“I doubt whoever wrote this show has ever met a doctor,” he scoffs. “Or been to a hospital.”
“Not realistic?”
“Ally, that orthopedic surgeon has a stethoscope around his neck.”
I blink at him. “Is that not a thing?”
“No,” he replies. “Surgeons don’t carry stethoscopes.”
“Really? Never?”
“I guess cardiac surgeons do, and maybe keen general surgeons who do ICU. But definitely not ortho. They don’t listen to hearts.”
“What about neurosurgeons? Do you have a stethoscope?”
He quirks an eyebrow. “You can’t listen to the brain, Ally.”
I giggle. “So, no? You must have bought one when you got into med school, though?”
He pretends to think about it. “I think I had one in med school, yeah. You can use it as a reflex hammer.”
“Really?” I’m struggling to imagine this. “What part?”
“The edge of the diaphragm. That’s the part that goes on the chest.”
“It wouldn’t work on me,” I tell him. “I barely have reflexes.”
“You barely have reflexes,” he repeats, as though I’ve said something absurd. “Of course you have reflexes, Ally.”
“Well, some people must not have them, otherwise why would you bother to test for them?”
I’m pretty impressed by my logic, but Drew just looks amused. “You’re young and healthy. You have reflexes.”
I shake my head. “My sister Hayley tested my reflexes last year, when she was practicing for school, and she could barely get anything. Even with a real reflex hammer. She said some people barely have reflexes.”
“I could get your reflexes,” Drew says confidently.
“You think so?”
His smile broadens. “Ally, I do this for a living.”
“Show me.”
“Some other time.”
“You’re worried you won’t be able to do it,” I taunt.
He rolls his eyes. “Ally—”
“Get your reflex hammer.” I’m determined not to let him get a reflex out of me. I’ll hold my knee flexed if it kills me.
“You didn’t hurt your knees when you fell off your bike?” he asks.
“The left one’s scraped a little, but the right’s fine.”
He stands up with a sigh. “Then roll your pants up above your right knee and lie on your back.”
I obediently pull up my sweatpants and lie back on the sofa.
“Bend your knee a little,” he instructs. “Yeah, like that.”
He slips one hand under my knee to support it, then runs the other hand over my kneecap. His hands are warm and his touch confident, and a shiver of excitement ripples through me.
“Relax,” he murmurs. “I’m just finding your patellar tendon.”
But before I know what’s happening, he taps the tendon with the side of his hand, like a gentle karate chop.
And my traitorous leg jerks forward. Reflexively.
“Huh,” he says, with a smirk of satisfaction. “I guess you do have reflexes after all.”
I frown at him. I was expecting him to go for a reflex hammer, and he caught me unprepared. “How’d you do that? With just your hand, I mean.”
He shrugs. “There’s nothing magic about a reflex hammer, Ally. It’s just a question of finding the right spot.”
Against my will, I imagine what it would be like to go to bed with this man. I have a feeling he knows how to find all the right spots.
“Do it again,” I demand.
He grins. “That would be showing off.”
“Come on, Drew.”
He sits down at the end of the couch, by my feet, then gently scrapes his thumb up the bottom of my foot.
I yank my foot away with a laugh. “What was that?”
“It’s the plantar reflex,” he says innocently. “If you stroke the bottom of the foot, the toes should point down.”
“Really?” I’m pretty sure he’s making this up to mess with me.
He nods. “Yeah.”
“Did mine?”
He hesitates. “Not really, no.”
“Well, what does that mean?” He looks so serious that I’m a little alarmed. Surely he’s not about to diagnose me with some awful disease just because my toes didn’t point down when he scratched my foot.
“I don’t want to worry you, Ally,” he says gravely, “but it means you’re ticklish as hell.”
It takes me a moment to realize he is just messing with me, but when it does, I spring up and reach for him. “How about you, Drew Malone?” I ask. “Are you ticklish?” I go for his underarms, which, in my experience, are a particularly vulnerable spot.
But apparently he’s not susceptible to tickling. And he’s definitely not laughing.
“Ally, stop,” he says, looking pained. “Ally—”
I look down and realize I’m straddling him, and I’m inches away from his crotch.
“I’m sorry.” I feel like my cheeks are on fire as I twist away from him and retreat to the other side of the couch.
“It was my fault,” he replies, before disappearing down the hall to his bedroom.
When he comes back ten minutes later, he avoids the couch and takes his laptop to the wing chair by the window.
There’s no more commentary about the TV show, or about anything else.
And half an hour later, he says good night and disappears into his bedroom.