36. Keeley
KEELEY
I wake, worried sick over what I’m in for this morning. Yes, there’s the question of whether or not I’m about to get fired—especially once they hear I went onto Mindy and Mills —but my most pressing concern is Graham.
I’ve been in this position before and I know how it unfolds: men laud you for being “laid back” about sex at first .
“Yeah, I’m not looking for serious either, ” the guy says, but then he randomly shows up where you work, or texts you forty times in a row while liking every one of your Instagram posts, and has his publicist or assistant call for him when you haven’t replied.
Eventually, when you realize he’s not getting the hint, you politely explain to him that you’re just really busy right now—that’s when he freaks out and calls you a fucking whore.
So, yes, I’m expecting the worst when I walk out of my room dressed for work.
Perhaps not the texts, or stalking, but at least some puppy-dog eyes and tension.
A terse “ when will you be home? ” at the very least. And he still needs his car—the long drive to the studio will almost certainly entail some dreary talk about feelings, blah blah blah.
Graham is just getting off one of his East Coast calls—I hear mentions of artificial organs and Russian wheat futures—as I’m finishing up with Mark’s toast. He walks in, clean shaven, wearing a button-down and tie.
The man was made to wear a tie. If I weren’t so desperate to avoid him, I’d yank his mouth to mine with that tie and pull him down to the floor seconds later.
The sounds he made last night—him saying, “do it hard” and “I’ve come a hundred times thinking about this” —play in my head, and I squeeze my thighs together as I try to forget.
He moves toward me and puts the butter and jam in the fridge as if it’s any other day. I see no hint of strain in his face whatsoever. I focus on his long, capable fingers before forcing my gaze away.
“I know we need to get your car,” I begin. “If you can wait until lunch I can—”
He shakes his head. “I picked it up a few hours ago, but take a lunch break anyway.” He moves to the other side of the counter and pulls Mark’s toast toward him. “I can take it down today. I need to tell him he was right about shorting Tesla.”
I watch, astonished, as he leaves with Mark’s toast and paper. I’m still waiting for… something . A longing look, some tension or upheaval. There was nothing at all, as if he forgot, and who could forget me ? I’m amazing in bed.
At least I used to be. No, I’m definitely still amazing in bed .
That it ended too quickly for me to show off any skills is hardly my fault.
But I can’t believe we recovered from it all so easily.
I guess we were both just scratching an itch, and that it was fucking fantastic isn’t even relevant.
No matter how good it is to scratch an itch, you’re better off just, you know, not having an itch in the first place.
And I don’t. I’m all squared away, and so is he. I mean, maybe I’m not a hundred percent squared away, but whatever.
I should be ecstatic.
I am ecstatic, I’m sure. It’s just buried under all this disappointment.
On the way to work, I swing by the bakery and get three Sunday muffins—one for myself and one for Mark since we missed out yesterday. A third for Trinny because she’s probably earned one by now and will likely endure a whole lot of attitude from our bosses this week.
As will I.
A Mindy and Mills appearance is probably the kind of thing I was supposed to run by them first. I knew it even at the time—it’s just that I wanted what Trevor MacNulty was offering more.
And now I don’t, which leaves me stuck at a job I hate with two bosses who are going to be very, very pissed off.
I can’t believe I might be forced to grovel to remain there now.
I deposit the muffin in front of Trinny but she looks more concerned than pleased.
“What’s this for? Oh my God, this thing is…is it a muffin or is it candy?”
“Don’t judge,” I tell her. “But if we call it a muffin, we can pretend it’s healthy.”
“I wouldn’t say muffins are—”
“Don’t ruin this for me,” I warn, waving a finger at her.
I send an email to both Fox and Joliet, notifying them about Mindy and Mills , which airs this afternoon, relieved neither of them will be in for a while so I don’t have to hear about it. It’s eleven before Dr. Fox appears at my office door.
“Are you serious?” she demands, holding her phone aloft. “You went onto a nationally televised broadcast as a representative of this practice without running it by us first? You had no business—”
“Where I work was never discussed,” I reply, enjoying the irritation on her face far more than I should.
“So you just lost the practice a very valuable opportunity to get some good publicity.”
I meant to grovel. I really did. But I’ve seen ten patients already and she’s just walking in, and I know for a fact that she’ll be cutting out of here long before rush hour, leaving me to handle all the last-minute additions this afternoon.
“If it’s a problem to say I’m with the practice and a problem if I don’t, what did you want?
Is there any way I could come out of this having not displeased you? ”
She stares at me, her arms now folded across her chest. She expected an apology and isn’t sure how to react in its absence.
Her brow raises. “Since you don’t seem to care about this job, you should probably start looking for a new one,” she finally says, glancing at my stomach. “Good luck finding anything now .”
Great. Just fucking great.
Why didn’t I grovel? I sigh as I rise from my desk to see my next patient.
I should probably be calling Gemma, but the truth is Graham is the only one I want to talk to.
To vent, and possibly to rest my head against his chest the way I did last night.
Perhaps, even, to climb into his bed and pick up where we left off, though obviously I’m not going to do that.
I spend the rest of the day counting the minutes until I can talk to him, but when I get to the apartment, he is on his way out. “Dinner’s in the fridge if you’re hungry,” he says, distracted. “Colin and Mandy had a fight so I’m meeting him out.”
I stare at him, feeling lost. I wanted him to solve my problems, to make it all better. I wanted him to act like a boyfriend, basically, while refusing to give him any of the benefits of actually being one. “Is there anything I can do?” I ask.
He glances up at me from his phone. “Just eat something, okay?”
“Sure,” I reply, pretending to be nonchalant.
I was so busy worrying about Graham’s reaction after we slept together...it never occurred to me I might need to worry a little bit about myself.
I ignore dinner and go downstairs to bring Mark his muffin. “Sorry it’s a day late,” I tell him.
He grins. “You know how many carbs are in this thing? You should be apologizing for getting me addicted to them in the first place.”
“How have you been, anyway? I feel like ever since Graham moved in and work got busy, I barely see you.”
He smiles. “Things are real good, Keeley. Seems like they’re good for you too.”
My eyes widen. Graham wouldn’t have told him we slept together, would he? That’s the kind of oversharing I’d be prone to, not him.
“What do you mean?”
“You and Graham. I can tell it’s changed. The things you used to tell me…you now tell him. Which is exactly how it should be.”
“It’s not like we’re a couple,” I say quickly. “He’s still leaving for New York once the baby’s born.”
Mark glances at me through one eye. “You’re definitely a couple, whether you’re calling it that or not.”
“We aren’t. You know I don’t want that.”
He nods, staring off into the distance for a moment. “Did I ever tell you I used to own a ’59 Les Paul?”
I put my chin in my hand. “I don’t know what that is, but it sounds exclusive so now I want one.”
He laughs. “It’s a guitar. A really good guitar. But the fucked-up thing was I barely played guitar. I didn’t need to blow two hundred grand on anything, much less that, but I was trying to convince myself that…it was all worth it.”
“That what was worth it?”
“The hours I worked, the pressure. This panic begins anytime the market dips. Your investors get scared and start calling you, and if enough of them call and you can’t talk them down, you’re fucked.
Or you take some gamble, certain it’s going to pay off, and discover you’ve lost billions.
So anyway, buying stuff—stupid stuff I didn’t need—was how I convinced myself it was worth it. ”
I love Mark, but he’s a little heavy-handed with the allegories. Irrelevant allegories, as I wasn’t even talking about shopping for once.
“Is this your way of saying I wanted that Birkin because I’m empty inside and trying to justify it? Because I love my Birkin. Every time I carry it, I feel like a shiny little jewel on my way to better things.”
“I loved my guitar too. Same reason. But you know what the most freeing moment of my entire life was? When I stood on the ledge of my building and realized I didn’t have to jump. That I could just fucking walk away.”
I blink. Sure, I realized Mark’s life hadn’t been a bed of roses leading up to this moment, but I kind of thought he’d grown into the person he is. Like a man who figures shit out and joins a Buddhist monastery, with this busy corner of central LA his ashram.
“I don’t understand what you’re trying to tell me,” I reply. “I can’t walk away from anything. I’m having a kid.”
“But that’s just it, Keels,” he says. “You’ve spent your whole life jumping because you’re so terrified of what happens if you don’t.
And now you’re stuck on that metaphorical ledge, telling yourself you want to jump when maybe you just need to ask yourself why sticking around terrifies you as much as it does. ”
“Sometimes I think you’re too smart for us to be friends. If you’d explain stuff using examples from reality TV, I’d probably understand you better.”
He laughs. “You’ll figure it out. But I’ll try to come up with an example using the Kardashians for next time.”
I go back upstairs, sadder than I was and no less confused. I don’t entirely understand what he was saying to me and yet…I sort of do. I have spent many, many years trying not to get too close to anyone, but now it’s happened, almost by accident. I love this baby. And I think I might love Graham.
If I gave him the baby and walked away simply to avoid being devastated later on…
I’d be devastated anyway. If I discover in a year that I’ve got cancer, am I going to be glad I didn’t spend that year with him?
Will it be a relief that he never knew how I felt?
That I never allowed myself just to fall head over heels for him?
No. Of course it won’t.
I want him with me, for every second I’ve got left. And I guess this is what Mark was saying: maybe my path is simply to step off the ledge and face all the pain that’s going to come with living a life I love. In the end, I might be glad I did.
But I don’t even know if that’s what Graham wants—he’s sure not acting like our night meant much to him—and the not-knowing is so awkward, so painful.
I’m glad he’s not on Instagram. I’d probably be on there, liking every one of his posts, until I could figure out how to ask.
He comes in late. I stumble across my room in the dark, half-asleep, wanting to see him and check on him and maybe tell him all the things I fell asleep thinking.
He’s standing by the sink, drinking a glass of water.
His Adam’s apple—which is actually just thyroid cartilage surrounding the larynx—bobs as he drinks.
It’s my favorite thyroid cartilage in the entire world.
“Hey,” he says, looking up, frowning. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you.”
You can always wake me, Graham. I want to see you. I miss you when you’re gone .
I’m not telling him that. Especially when he looks so wary, the way I do when I know a guy is about to say too much and I’m thinking please don’t do this. Don’t profess your feelings when I’m about to ask if we can take a break . “It’s okay. How’s Colin?”
He runs a hand over his head. “Not great. He thinks she’s got cold feet.”
The old Keeley would come alive at drama like this.
I’d race to the counter and climb on a stool, placing my chin in my hands as I said, “tell me everything!” I’d pry and pry, doing my best to get Graham to admit he doesn’t like Mandy, or to reveal something shady Colin did that brought this on.
I’d suggest Mandy is cheating, and he’d accuse me of enjoying other people’s tragedy too much, which is completely true and about which I would be wildly unrepentant.
But the realizations I’ve had over the past day or two about myself and Graham have thrown me into internal disarray. I find myself tongue-tied, a big tub of awkward as I try to find a path between being the old me and being the girl who begs a guy to like her back.
“The crib’s being delivered Friday,” I say, struggling to meet his eye. When have I ever struggled to meet someone’s eye? “They left a message. Can you let them in?”
He stills. “I’m actually leaving for New York Friday. Did they give you a window?”
“ New York ?”
He never goes to New York. He’s been here for months without going back once, but suddenly now a visit is a necessity?
“I have a few loose ends to take care of, and as we get closer to your due date it’ll be harder to go.” He’s looking off to the left, which is a sign of evasiveness. I learned this from Criminal Minds , not med school, so it’s definitely true.
And what loose ends? With technology, no meetings actually have to take place in person, and the only loose ends I can think of that demand a face-to-face are personal ones.
Is it Anna? And is he doing this for closure, or is he doing this because she’s a loose end he might want to pick back up, now that the end is in sight?
God, did sleeping with me make him realize how good he had it with her?
My mouth opens but I can’t think of a way to ask without sounding like a jealous harpy.
“Go back to bed, Keeley,” he says softly. “It’s late.” Even hearing the word bed fall from his lips is a turn-on for me.
My gaze lingers on him for a moment, and something shifts between us. His eyes are suddenly hazy in a way that looks a lot like interest. But he’s turning toward his room before I can even say a word.
Maybe I can pretend I’m going into labor so he misses his flight. That, to me, sounds like an entirely reasonable way to handle this situation. And a lot easier than admitting I don’t want him to go.