7. Megan
CHAPTER 7
MEGAN
I t was the end of her first month of residency. As Megan gathered her things in the locker room, she heard the other residents talking about what they were all going to do that evening. Amy and Keith were determined to go out, and they were talking Kayla into joining them.
“Come on,” Amy was saying. “You’ve gotta blow off some steam. If you don’t, it will all come out at the wrong time. You’ll be working on some poor patient and blow your top at him. It’s true! Just ask Keith.”
Keith nodded vigorously. “It’s true.”
Kayla wrung her hands and chewed her lower lip. “It’s just… what about sleep?”
“What about it?” Amy nudged her with an elbow. “If you wanted to get sleep on a regular basis, you shouldn’t have gone into medicine.”
“She’s right,” Keith said.
After another minute of deliberation, Kayla turned to Megan. “I’ll go if she’s going.”
“Oh, no no no no no.” Megan slammed her locker shut. “You’re not dragging me into this.”
“Please!” Kayla begged. “I’m too shy to go alone.”
“You won’t be alone. Keith and Amy will be with you.”
“Charlie’s coming, too,” Amy added.
Every muscle in Megan’s body tensed. “If he’s coming, then I’m definitely not.”
“Don’t be boring,” Amy said. “We need to be entertained. You and Charlie are the best entertainment we’ve got.”
“Absolutely,” Keith agreed. “We’ve been enjoying the show so far. Now we need a climax.”
Amy giggled at that. “Right? A climax .”
“Stop, oh my God.” Megan shook her head and gave in, acting like it wasn’t a sure bet, even though it definitely was. “I’ll go with you.”
“Yay!” Kayla jumped up and down and hugged Megan tight. “My human security blanket. We’re going to have the best night ever.”
Megan changed into her street clothes and packed the books she had intended to take home and study back into her locker. Looked like it was going to be a less productive night than she’d hoped for. Well, at least Charlie would be in the same boat. She wondered briefly how they’d managed to get him to go along. No chance in hell he could be peer pressured into anything. He struck Megan as the type who couldn’t be pressured to do anything at all, let alone go to a little after-hours party.
They took public transportation to a bar across the neighborhood. It was, apparently, a favorite of Keith’s. Charlie had taken his own car with his own driver because he could. Had he been a gentleman, Megan thought, he would have offered all of them a ride. But of course he hadn’t because he was a grade-A asshole.
The bar itself was nice, not a dive bar at all. It had a rustic feel, like a log cabin with warm lighting and natural woodgrain everywhere. There were booths around the perimeter, up against the walls, and round tables over what appeared to be a dance floor. The dance floor was likely only used when there was live music and warmer weather, but it was a chilly fall night with no special events other than some medical students celebrating completing their first month of residency.
The four of them slid into a booth with Amy and Keith on one side and Megan and Kayla on the other. Megan sat on the outside and waved down a server. They each ordered their preferred drinks. Megan ordered an old fashioned and a plate of nachos for the table.
When their server brought the food and drinks, she glanced around the place but didn’t see anyone else she recognized. “I thought you said Dr. Sourpuss was going to be here.”
Amy shrugged. “I’m sure he’s around. But let’s not let him ruin the night, shall we? Or will he be making it a hell of a lot better for you?” She waggled her eyebrows.
“He’d make me feel better if he smiled more and stopped saying mean things,” Megan said. “Why does everything have to be so serious with him? It’s like he thinks he’ll fail everything if he laughs too much.”
“It’s just his family, I bet,” Kayla said, her mouth still full of chips. “The pressure must be insane.”
“Well, I don’t care.” Megan took another sip of her drink. “He doesn’t have to take it out on the rest of us. We’ve never done anything to him, and he’s making our residency really unpleasant.”
“Speak for yourself,” Amy said. “The rest of us are having a grand old time watching you two go at it. We’ve got a pool going on how long you’ll last.”
“What do you mean how long I’ll last ?”
Keith clarified. “How long you’ll last before you sleep with him.”
Megan’s mouth fell open. “Excuse me?” She was mortified. Was her attraction to Charlie really so obvious? No. It couldn’t be. She worked so hard to keep from blushing every time he entered the room. There was no chance she’d given herself away so easily. But then, even Kayla was covering her mouth to hide her giggle. “Kayla? Are you in on this too?”
Kayla flushed and stuffed her mouth with more nachos, probably to avoid having to answer the question.
“ Et tu, Brute? ” Megan added, giving her a stern look. But it was all in good fun, and she knew it as well as any of them. She couldn’t help laughing regardless of how mortified she was. There was no denying how it looked, and Charlie’s being a perfect ten wasn’t helping matters.
They ate and laughed, and Megan finished her first drink. She’d spent so much time studying in medical school that she hadn’t had a single drink in years. Apparently, she’d lost her ability to handle any alcohol whatsoever, because she began to feel like she’d just had three or four shots of vodka on an empty stomach.
Megan was just starting to relax — maybe a little too much if she was entirely honest — when she spotted a familiar face at the bar. It was Charlie… having the gall to just stand there and order a drink without even coming over to say hello. This was even worse than his usual bad attitude. At least he would scowl at her from time to time in the hospital. Now he wasn’t even going to look at her.
She stood and swayed on her feet. Kayla tugged at her sleeve. “Hey, you might want to sit down.”
“No, lemme just…” Megan said, slurring her words already. “Lemme go over there and talk to him. He can’t be treating us like this.”
“I don’t think you really want to do that,” Kayla said.
“Sure I do! He can’t just pretend we don’t exist. We work together every damn day, and he’s gonna treat us like strangers? It’s rude!”
“Yeah, but you’re a little drunk, don’t you think?” Kayla was being cautious, but Keith and Amy were egging Megan on silently, and Megan had already made up her mind.
“I’m just gonna say a couple things. I need another drink anyway.” She tugged her sleeve out of Kayla’s hand and made her way toward the bar, toward Charlie, probably toward her doom. “It’s gonna be fine,” she muttered to herself. “Just a couple things.”
Once at the bar, she tried to slide into a seat in a dignified manner, but she slipped out the other side and finally gave up completely. She held up a hand to the bartender and ordered her second drink, which got Charlie’s attention. He leaned casually on the counter, seated comfortably on his own stool. Megan felt momentarily jealous that he could do so with all the grace she lacked.
The bartender brought him his drink, which was something sophisticated, Megan assumed, even though she didn’t recognize it at all. Charlie took it in hand and turned to Megan. “Are you feeling okay, Bright? You don’t look well.”
Megan spat out a laugh. “I’m feeling better than you feel, Dr. Sourpuss.”
“You’re drunk,” he said matter-of-factly.
“Please, I’ve only had one drink.”
“Then you’re a lightweight.”
She waved his observations away. “Don’t be ridiculous. Listen.” She leaned closer to him as the bartender set her second drink in front of her. “Listen. Listen.”
Charlie rolled his gorgeous blue eyes. “I’m listening.”
“Right.” Megan paused, unsure exactly why it was she had even begun this conversation. Then she remembered. “Oh, yeah! I have a bean to pick with you.”
“A bone?”
“That’s what I said, a bone . Your attitude is the worst. We’re supposed to be working together, all of us, and you… you just act like you’re the only one here. And maybe you’re right that we’re in competition, so you’re uncomfortable talking to us casually in the hospital, but you can’t even come over on our off hours and say hello, good game, whatever ?” She glared hard at him, but Charlie didn’t seem bothered by her anger. In fact, he seemed to be enjoying it more than anything. She was sure she saw him pinch his lips to hide a smile a second ago.
“Hello,” he said, still fighting a smile. “Good game. Whatever.”
Megan felt her cheeks heat up and knew she was blushing up a storm. She hid it as best she could by increasing her already overexaggerated rage. “Whatever you think, Dr. Sullivan, this is not a joke. I am not a joke! Okay? I’m dead serious here. You have a bad, bad attitude, and it’s going to affect your performance one day, since that’s all you seem to care about. Funny how you chose to be a doctor despite hating people so much. Have you ever thought of going into stocks and bonds?”
She’d been poking him in his chest to make her point, and he caught her hand with a deep sigh. “Why don’t we take this conversation outside, so we can both say what we really mean without bothering the other patrons.”
She protested. “I am saying what I really mean.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Yes,” she snapped, yanking her hand away, “I am. You think you know me so well.”
“Come on.” He took her by the wrist again and began pulling her toward the door.
Megan got up halfheartedly. “But my drink…”
“Trust me,” he said, still tugging her toward the door, “you don’t need it.”
He pulled her outside while she stumbled after him. “If I don’t get to drink it, you’re paying for it.”
“I’m already paying for it,” he said. “I was telling the bartender to put your table on my tab. That’s why I hadn’t come over to say hello yet.”
“More lies,” Megan grumbled, but suddenly she wasn’t so sure. The one thing she could say for certain about Charlie Sullivan was that he never ceased to surprise her. “Why?” she finally asked when he stopped walking under a streetlamp. “Why would you pay for all of us? You don’t even like us.”
He smirked at her. “Because you’re all so poor it depresses me, and I didn’t feel like being depressed tonight.”
“More lies,” she said, poking him in the chest again. “It’s like all you ever do is?—”
He yanked her closer under the streetlamp, and before she could get another word out, his mouth was on hers. The kiss shocked her so much that she didn’t react at first. Then she tensed. Then she went limp in his arms. He kept kissing her, and for some reason, it made her feel like she’d just had three more drinks. Megan couldn’t decide whether to pull away and demand to know why he was doing this or just let herself enjoy the probably once-in-a-lifetime high of being kissed by a man who supposedly hated her. And she hated him, too, didn’t she?
He was a jerk, a grouch, a loner. He was everything she thought she disliked. Then again, she’d never been kissed like this in her life, and she was quickly losing her resolve to make him stop. How could such a cold fish be so damned passionate. Just when she’d decided to let him go on kissing her forever, he pulled back.
“Why?” she murmured, still hanging from his neck.
His eyes were on fire, but he answered, “I had to shut you up before you made a fool of yourself.”
“No.” She stood on her toes and pulled him back down. “Why’d you stop?”
“Because the kiss did its job. I wouldn’t want to kiss you any more than I had to.”
Megan scowled and dropped back onto her heels. “Fine. I didn’t want to kiss you either.”
“You seemed to enjoy it all right.”
“That was just the alcohol,” she said.
He bent a bit closer. “You only had one drink.”
His lips were inches from hers again, and she wanted so badly to kiss him even harder than he had kissed her. Instead, she managed to say, “Studies show there are no safe levels of alcohol, you know.”
“Better not have a second, then.”
She shook her head. “No. Better not.”