2. Rose
2
ROSE
I babied my little Toyota Corolla the whole way home thinking I might have problems with it again, but it really was just a dumb mistake. I'd left my charging wire plugged into the port after having given my cell a boost on the drive across town to work. I forgot to plug it in last night, so the fifteen-minute drive was all the charge I had and my forgetfulness cost me in the form of a dead battery.
Thankfully, Dr. Cole Hastings was there to save the day. And make me blush. I felt a little giddy for a few seconds after we bumped heads and he looked into my eyes like that. But it faded a little as I drove home and thought about how unlikely it was that he'd even take an interest in me. Smacking heads in a parking garage over a dead battery wasn't exactly a recipe for love at first sight.
I stopped by the market on my way home and got a few snacks knowing Alana would appreciate them. When I first moved into the city to accept the job at Twin Peaks Memorial, I didn't know where I'd live. But I met Alana on my first day after overhearing how her roommate skipped town and left her with the rent. She was a pharmaceutical rep, and since I was a nurse, we happened to be in the right place at the right time—the administrative offices of the hospital.
Now we were practically like sisters. It'd only been two weeks, but I felt like we knew each other our whole lives. We shared the car and all our living expenses, and it made accepting this job that much easier.
"I'm home," I called as I struggled through the door with the bags of groceries. I made sure to double-check that my charging wire in the car wasn't plugged in this time so I didn't head out tomorrow expecting to go to work and have a dead battery again.
"Oh, good! I'm so snacky… Did you get pretzels?" Alana bounced toward me with a grin on her face and took a few bags from my hands as I used my foot to kick the door shut. She was about as eager to eat as I was to tell her about my day. Nothing even remotely interesting had happened to me since I met her besides being vomited or peed on, and she wasn't interested in hearing those things.
"Yes, well, they came at a price." I chuckled, and she eyed me as she set the plastic sacks on the countertop. I kicked off my shoes and joined her at the kitchen counter. The simple open floorplan felt too hollow and empty at first, but I'd grown used to being able to see the living room, dining room, and kitchen the instant I walked through the front door.
"What do you mean?" Alana found the bag of pretzels and the package of peanut M&M's and claimed them as she leaned back on the counter and watched me set the other bags down.
"Oh, nothing… Just an interesting afternoon. That's all." I breathed in the scents of lilac and lavender and glanced at the candle she had burning on the peninsula that separated the counter from the dining table. It smelled good. this place always smelled good. It was either her perfume or a scented candle.
"Dish," she said, tearing open the pretzels, and I grabbed the container of Rocky Road and a spoon and turned to face her expectant expression. Her eyebrows were so high she looked like a cartoon character.
I chuckled. "Well, so after work, I went to my car to leave like normal, and when I got in the car, the battery was so dead it wouldn’t even power the radio."
She deadpanned and lifted an eyebrow at me. "You got me all excited about a dead battery? Man, life in a small town must've sucked."
I laughed and snorted and shook my head as I tried to swallow the large spoonful of ice cream I'd just shoved into my mouth.
"No," I said, gasping and choking on the bite. I managed to swallow my food and wipe my mouth before continuing. "Okay, so I was sitting there with my hood up, and a hot doctor came out and helped jumpstart my car, and I definitely think he was checking me out."
She snickered and smirked, then said, "Jump your car or jump your bones?"
I rolled my eyes at her as I continued my story. "Seriously, though, he was so frickin' hot. I mean, silver fox hot. He had these blue eyes that?—"
"Okay, hold on." Alana pushed off from the counter and walked over to a bar stool and sat down on the far side of the peninsula. I took a bite of ice cream and put the rest of the snacks away listening to her try to be all wise and everything. "Don't get me wrong. I totally want you to meet a super hot guy and get laid and all, but a doctor? Isn't there some sort of policy against dating coworkers? And what if he's married?"
I slid the box of granola bars onto the shelf in the cupboard next to the cereal and sighed. I hadn't even looked at his wedding ring finger, but the way he looked at me didn't say "Married—hands off." It said, "I'm prowling."
"Okay, so a girl can fantasize, right?" I tried to chuckle it off, but she made another good point.
"And besides, do you really think a silver fox wants something serious from a twenty-something? Men who rob the cradle only want sex. You shouldn't get all dreamy eyed about Dr. Hot Pants unless you know his intentions. He could've been checking you out for sex and nothing more. I'd hate to see you get hurt."
I heard the crunch of her chewing before I turned back around to steal another bite of my ice cream. Hearing those words took the wind right out of my sails. It was just crushing. I knew that, but her wisdom brought me down to Earth where my head belonged, not in the clouds.
"Okay, okay… but he was still super hot." I grinned at her and shoveled more icy confection into my mouth, and she rolled her eyes as she popped a handful of M&M's into hers.
We watched a movie and ate our snacks, and later when I finally crawled into bed, all I could think about was my single mother and how much we struggled financially when I was growing up. Dad had really hurt her, and all she wanted for me was a successful life where I wasn't dependent on any man. It was why she forced me to go to college, why she pushed me toward nursing. It paid well.
If I got roped into some fling with a silver fox who only wanted sex, I was risking my heart and potentially ending up a single mom like her. It wasn’t what I wanted. I decided right then and there to at least try to stay on the straight and narrow the way Mom would expect. But if that hot doctor flirted with me, I wasn't responsible for my reaction. His grin detonated a bomb inside my body when he flashed it at me. I didn’t think outright flirting would be something I could walk away from.