Chapter 3 #2
I shook my head, patted him patronisingly on the shoulder and made my exit.
Fallon was early, by which I mean she was on time and I was slightly late. Her dark hair shone, dark eyes assessed me as I walked towards her from the bar, because there was no point arriving at the table she’d bagged without drinks.
“You have a new feature on your face.”
“Upset teenager. I was in the way.”
She shrugged. “Happens. Have you iced it?”
“Yes.” Carter did. But I didn’t want to tell her that.
“Arnica?”
“Will put it on when I get home. How was work?”
She shrugged and looked at her nails. “The usual. Have you checked your phone in the last three hours?”
I scrambled in my bag for it because I hadn’t. I hadn’t had time and I was at the end of my capacity for dealing with Eliza’s texts.
“Save looking for it, you might bruise yourself again. Harriet’s had her offer on a house accepted, but it’s empty and the owner has said she can move in as soon as she likes which takes the pressure off her having to rent somewhere else while it all goes through.
” Fallon looked rather murderous. Her nails were acrylics, fresh on, which suggested she had a few days off work because they would not be allowed otherwise.
“Crap.” I’d been trying to ignore the fact that my housemate and best friend would be packing soon.
“I know. You’re off this weekend, aren’t you?” Fallon inspected her talons.
“How do you know?”
“I checked your rota. It’s on your fridge.”
“It’s my new rota – have you been breaking into my flat again?” I frowned, aware that Fallon would probably comment on the creases in my forehead – just because she knew it irritated me.
“I needed a decent coffee and you live far too close to the hospital. You have a key safe.”
“We’d changed the code.”
“You shouldn’t have made it so obvious.”
“It wasn’t obvious. You just have talents you choose to use for evil.” Fallon had won awards for codebreaking things in school and maths competitions; she’d been some type of mathematical genius who’d decided to go into medicine rather than research or whatever maths people did.
“I cleaned your coffee machine out and filled it with new beans. It was about to stop working because neither you nor Harriet even attempt to service it. Which is a shame, because it’s the only thing servicing you at the moment.”
“Which beans did you use?”
“Blue Mountain. They were about to go out of date and why are you worried about it? You drink two coffees a week. I left you some tea bags too, something I picked up from Harrods.” She sounded grumpy, but she wasn’t really.
Fallon’s love language was pretending to be standoffish and doing nice things for her friends as a surprise. She hated to be thanked.
Fallon was our leader, in a way. She was decisive and strong-willed, academically brilliant at the same time as dying her hair jet black and leading a heavy metal band – something she’d only given up when she’d left university and only because she didn’t have enough time to make all the rehearsals.
She loved with all her mended heart.
Out of all of us, Fallon’s heart condition had been the most serious.
She’d had the most time spent in hospital, under the care of Carter’s father; she’d clocked up the most operations, the most check-ups.
She’d also clocked up the most qualifications and the highest grades, a feature in newspapers about how well she’d done despite the odds and missing so much school.
She was also wild, skydiving, cliff jumping, riding a motorbike and racing cars. Toying with death because she said she jived with the Grim Reaper; he was always on her dance card.
“Please leave a calling card so we don’t think we have some weird stalker in future. If Harriet thought someone had been in without us knowing, she’d freak out.” This was true. Harriet was Fallon’s opposite in terms of risk taking.
“Noted. How’s Doctor Suave? You’re dodging talking about Harriet moving, so I thought we’d go onto another subject you want to avoid.” She sipped her wine. “How are you feeling about him being back? You’ve barely said anything about him.”
I looked at the menu even though I already knew what I was going to have. It was always the same here – cottage pie with veggies, home-made and comforting and predictable, perfect for a grim January night when I hadn’t seen daylight for at least three days.
“I don’t know how I feel. I haven’t worked it out yet.
” It had taken me years to understand that I process emotions slowly.
I wouldn’t always be able to name how I felt immediately, and sometimes I had to think through an event and work out based on my patterns of behaviour what I wanted my response to be, often versus what it should be.
Fallon knew this. She specialised in trauma and emergency surgery and read situations like a first responder.
She’d been talking to one of my dad’s cousins about joining Doctors Without Borders, frontline work, but something was holding her back.
“Fair enough. Have you seen much of him?”
“I saw him about an hour ago.” I recounted the encounter, working out whether Carter had been much different than before he left to go back to America. “He seemed like him just - ” I paused, trying to work out what it was.
“Just what?” Fallon had never been the most patient.
“Like I was missing a big chunk of his narrative.” I pushed the menu away. “We need to order before the kitchen closes.”
Fallon shook her head and left her seat, not needing to ask what I was going to have.
Carter was making me nervous. I could identify that.
He hadn’t given me any notice that he was coming back to London, which he knew would throw me.
He hadn’t given me any chance to ask him questions and his reasons for coming back here were sketchy.
There was no depth to them and information was missing. Deliberately.
That would make me nervous on its own, because I liked to have all the facts. Then I felt secure.
Fallon sat back down, putting a numbered flag on the table that’d seen better days.
“So? What conclusion have you come to?”
“He’s not telling me everything, but he doesn’t have to.
I think he’s deliberately not gotten in touch before coming back.
” It wasn’t that I didn’t like that – it was up to him what he told me – but it wasn’t like Carter.
He wore his heart on his sleeve, was straightforward and usually easy to read.
Which was possibly why I’d always liked him so much.
Fallon didn’t say anything. She’d have made a good cop, partly because she would let the other person fill a silence and somehow they’d spill their secrets, but also because she was fierce.
No one messed with her. Maybe a couple of men had tried but I doubted they’d come away unscathed.
“It feels weird seeing him again.” The words felt like a hole had been drilled in a dam.
“What does weird mean in this context?”
I rubbed at my thumb nail feeling the rough surface of it. “Nervous. Jittery.”
“Reverse it back, Rosie. If one of your teenage patients said that when they were describing how they felt about a boy, what would you think?”
“Either red flags or a crush, depending on the context – shit.” I felt heat start to burn my cheeks.
“Just for my amusement, is this how you used to feel when you saw Carter when you were fourteen? I remember something like that.”
“I remember you teasing me about fancying him.” I’d denied all of that because Carter was a friend, and should’ve been like a big brother, only he wasn’t related to me, and I’d never really thought about him as a brother. That would’ve been weird and wrong.
“Have you ever thought about you and Carter together? As in together together?” Fallon, to her credit, wasn’t gloating.
“No. Not really, because he was my friend. He is gorgeous though.” More so now he was older. There was a peppering of grey at his temples, barely noticeable but different. He was broader, still obviously lifting weights, and his smile was still the same, reaching his eyes and making them crinkle.
“He is gorgeous. Smart. Kind.” Fallon smiled at the waiter who delivered our cutlery. “He always got you too.”
“He did.” I was confused. “He’s my friend though.”
“Only because you friend zoned him years ago, and then you had that ridiculous thing with Rory.” She rolled her eyes. “Carter couldn’t stand him.”
“How did you know that?” Carter had said barely anything to me about Rory. I’d got the feeling that he wasn’t a fan, and Rory hadn’t been keen on Carter either, finding it odd that we were friends and nothing had ever happened between us.
Although it had. I’d just never really talked about it. I’d stopped thinking about it too, about five years after it happened. Obviously, prior to that I’d overthought it like a freight train crossing the Asian continent, on repeat.
Fallon sighed and smiled, one of those moments when she made me realise how much I missed about my own situations while being capable of reading anyone else’s.
“I think Carter wanted to ask you out when you started seeing Rory. He asked me a few things at work once and was a bit pissed off about you having a boyfriend. That’s all I know for sure.” She unfolded a napkin and refolded it, needing to fiddle with her hands, a frequent Fallon trait.
“And it’s taken you how many years to tell me this?” I wasn’t sure why I was so bothered by it. Things that happened in the past couldn’t be changed, just accepted and that was my psychologist’s brain in play.
Fallon shrugged. “I didn’t think it was information you needed and it would just make you awkward with Carter.
You were mad about Rory at the time even though he was a walking red flag with red flags flagging from the red flag.
” She looked wary. “And I wasn’t a hundred percent sure that Carter was into you like that or whether I was hallucinating after two thirty-six-hour shifts in four days. ”
“Is that even possible? And flagging is the wrong word.”
“What? Me not being sure about something? Flagging worked just fine.”
“No, two thirty-six-hour shifts in four days. And flagging didn’t, but let’s leave it there.”
“I had eight hours sleep between two shifts, and didn’t you need maths for a psychology degree?” She tapped her wine glass with a talon.
“It wasn’t my strongest subject.” I smiled at the waiter bringing our food which looked like it was just what I needed. Hot, comforting, rich stodge.
Fallon’s was fancier, of course, some kind of wellington with fat chips that looked like they’d been cooked at least four times.
I was jealous of the chips.
“You’re not addressing the subject.” She sliced a delicate piece of the wellington.
“No. I suppose I’m not. I hadn’t thought of Carter like that. I didn’t think he saw me as anything apart from an annoying friend that he looked after.” My head was trying not to race with what ifs.
“Really?”
“Really. He’s never flirted with me. He kissed me once when I was fourteen and at a party – it was kind of a dare thing.
” My first kiss. The only one, apparently, in my year at school who had never been kissed and my so-called school friends were teasing me about it.
I was denying it, saying I’d kissed a boy on a holiday, but they wanted proof, to see me kiss someone in front of them.
Carter had volunteered, saving me from one awkward social situation at a time. All he needed was a red cape.
“I know. He told me.”
I almost dropped my fork and the only thing that prevented me from responding loudly was that my mouth was full of cottage pie, which was also too hot.
I managed to retain some dignity although the roof of my mouth suffered. “He told you?”
Fallon nodded. “I saw him the day after. We were both at the hospital – he came in with his dad and I was in for another op. He told me then.”
“That was fifteen years ago. You’ve known for that long and never said anything.”
“Why did I need to say anything? You seemed loads more confident afterwards so I didn’t need to ruin his face. And I was pretty sure you only liked him as a friend.” She took another mouthful and savoured it.
For a moment, I regretted my food choice.
“I did. I didn’t think he’d ever like me apart from as a friend. All the girls liked him – and some of the boys.”
Fallon nodded. “If you want me to be honest, I think he liked you as more than a friend.”
That was where the damage was done, only I didn’t realise it then. It was only a few weeks later, when my heart was in ruins again, that I’d wish Fallon hadn’t opened a Pandora’s Box in my mind.
One that should’ve stayed shut.