Chapter 23
TWENTY-THREE
Peppermint
Celeste
My back aches from the plethora of textbooks crammed into my backpack, my purse slung across my chest, and my water bottle gripped in my hand.
I feel like a pack mule. When I finally make it to my car from the long-ass walk across campus from the library, I feel like I need to be wrung out and beaten like one of those carpet cleaning videos.
I sag into the front seat and shoot off a text to Delaney about my no-shows for the last two students I was supposed to meet for tutoring, before heading home.
When I pull up at my house, I look over my shoulder at the pile of textbooks strewn across my backseat.
I whine and grimace before deciding to leave them there.
They can wait for tomorrow. Mom is supposed to be at a follow-up appointment with her doctor this afternoon.
I pull my keys out to unlock the front door, frowning as I realize it’s already unlocked.
I slowly creak the door open and look around, no one in sight.
“Mom?” I ask the empty space. No answer, but I hear some tinkering coming from upstairs.
I guess she finished her appointment early.
I make my way to my room, flopping backwards onto my bed and pulling out my phone.
No answer from Delaney yet. I stretch my arms out, my wrists popping at the movement from all the notes I’d taken for my thesis project.
I had my personal essay, MCATs, and references finished last winter.
Only the program specific questions remained, including that stupid essay question that I think I can clearly now answer:
How have you tested your decision to become a doctor through your personal life?
This damned question has nagged at my brain since the first time I read it.
It was almost taunting. Even though all those hours I spent studying weren’t wasteful, this stupid question makes me feel like I haven’t had a personal life.
Just an academic one. That I’ve been missing something, something that I could have had all along.
I breathe deeply trying to calm the tiny rise of panic in my chest not just from the fear of missing out, but the timeline this question poses for me. Packages are due soon and I need to be able to answer this question by then. I close my eyes and mentally recite my mental first draft:
Through my conducted experiment to juggle dating, excel academically, and earn an income through various endeavours simultaneously, I have found that upon engaging in romantic experiences…that my heart fucking hurts. I shouldn’t have fallen for—
“Arg!”
My eyes fly open when I hear a grunt coming from the bathroom. I push up to my elbows, willing my ears to suddenly take on the hearing ability of, well, an owl. I roll my eyes at the irony of it when I hear another grunt. A very male grunt.
Is someone breaking into our house?
I shoot to my feet and look around my room for some sort of weapon, my eyes catching on my ceramic unicorn statue I painted when I was ten. I clutch it tight in my sweaty grip, my heart beat pounding in my palms. I try to even out my breathing, turning the unicorn’s horn outward like a tiny sword.
I take three slow steps to the threshold of my room avoiding the squeaky floorboards.
I stand in my doorway adjacent to the bathroom where I think I heard the grunts coming from.
I step out into the hallway and slowly move to the bathroom doorway.
My breaths come in shaky little pants and my fight or flight response is telling me to run, run, run!
I ignore it, force my shoulders back, and go to surprise the asshole that dared break into my adorable little house. I run full force into the door shoving it open and run smack into a wall of man meat.
“Ow! What the fuck!”
I look up to see a very well defined chest before me.
Shirtless, no less. I freeze at the amount of human flesh I’m seeing and look to where my unicorn’s horn is poking into a pectoral muscle.
A pectoral muscle with a glittery shark tattooed just below and to the right of it. I reel back as I look up.
“Dominic?” I ask.
“Hi, um, what the fuck, Hoot?” he asks, just as surprised as I am.
“No…What the fuck, you?” I shake my head still not understanding why Dominic is in my bathroom. Still shirtless. A brief and very annoying heat flares in my belly as my eyes can’t help but take in the incredibly sculpted figure in front of me.
“Can you remove the horn please?” he says more lightheartedly, plucking the little figurine from my grasp and placing it gently on the counter top. He rubs at the indent the little savage made, and a tiny evil part of me smiles at the mark.
“Sorry,” I begin, trying not to look at his nipples, “Wait. No, not sorry. Why are you here?”
“I’m fixing the toilet,” he says as if that was a reasonable thing.
“Um, okay. Thank you?”
He sighs and rubs the back of his neck, the movement making his bicep bulge and his abs tighten deliciously, and so help me God I will not drool right now.
“Your mom never told you, did she?” he asks with a small laugh and shake of his head, bracing his hands on his hips as he awaits an answer to a question I barely understand.
“Told me what?” I ask with more frustration.
“I’ve been coming over to help out with random tasks, like I did that time…” he falters, looking pained. I look away biting my lower lip.
Like that time my mom collapsed and you were the one to tell me after yelling at me about not being authentic? Yeah I remember.
A fresh wave of frustration fills me, but the look on his face only stirs sympathy for what he went through.
Yes, we have our own shit going on, and I’m still mad at him for talking to me the way he did, but…
It is scary watching someone collapse, especially if you don’t know why or their medical history.
He acted. He helped my Mom when I wasn’t there. He called 9-1-1. He called me.
I look down at my hands, the tension between us like a stormy cloud, hanging around waiting to either let the rain fall or float away on a wind. I’m not sure which one I’d prefer. I shift back and forth on my feet in indecision.
“Well, I’ve just been helping out, that’s all. I’m sorry you didn’t know and I’ll go. I really don’t want to invade your space,” he says with a stiff smile, bending down to grab his shirt before exiting the bathroom, leaving me reeling.
“Wait!” I half yell as he takes the first step down the stairs. My eyes shift around trying to find words, a sign, a reason for him to stay, an outlet to yell at him to leave.
“It’s okay. If my Mom invited you, then it’s alright. I-I’m fine with it.” I try to give him the most authentic smile I can muster, because I do, despite her meddling, trust my mom’s intuition.
“You sure?” he questions, a foot hovering over the next step waiting for my reply. But I do really appreciate his intentions to make me comfortable and not invade my space.
“Yeah, it’s totally fine.”
We walk together downstairs and he makes his way towards the front door.
“So your mom and I had a standing meeting time to do things but with my new schedule I might be over at random times, is that alright? I know you’re busy, but I really want to be clear that this is in no way my attempt at trying to be around you, or get on your good side or whatever.
June just asked and,” He pauses to laugh as if he has inside jokes with my mom already.
“She has this way of asking but making it known it’s not really up to you.
” His casual use of her name throws me off kilter.
“Well, that we can both agree on.” I smile, knowing exactly how my mom asks for things.
He waves a hand from the porch and begins his walk home or to Biblio & Brew.
I haven’t been to the cafe for a while now and I have no idea of his work schedule anymore.
It’s all different and familiar simultaneously.
I close the door and plop into my designated plush chair.
Since everything happened, plus the beginning of my final undergrad year, I’ve been note taking, reviewing, and hunched over in the library in my minimal spare time.
My schedule is filled to the brim with my thesis classes, lab time, tutoring, TA’ing, and carving out time to complete and turn in my med school applications.
It’s been crazy and we’re barely even into the semester.
I close my eyes and just sit with this never ending to-do list circulating around in my brain.
The last thing I need is to have any kind of distraction.
And Dominic hanging around to help with little repairs around the house is definitely a distraction.
I guess it does take some stress off Mom’s plate, especially with having a few more follow ups than usual since she collapsed.
Honestly I’m so busy and our schedules are so crazy I’m sure today was just a fluke.
I bet I won’t even see that much of him.
* * *
I’m staring at much more of Dominic than I’ve ever seen.
Our upstairs bathroom toilet is still leaking and he is back to finish the job he started yesterday.
Unlike yesterday however, he’s wearing even less clothing.
With the sudden heat wave that hit last night, Dominic is in running shorts and again, no shirt.
And, of course, our air conditioner decided to crap out in the middle of the night.
I could barely tolerate the heat myself, tossing and turning most of the night.
I even had to change into a tank top and short shorts just to stay moderately comfortable.
This morning was supposed to be my morning off where I could catch up on some sleep but then I heard Mom greet Dominic at the door and soon his tinkering in the bathroom pulled me from my restlessness.