Chapter Twenty-Six
It was close to midnight by the time Juliette shepherded the others out of her apartment, all of them hoarse and slightly drunk off an old bottle of cotton candy vodka Juliette found in her freezer.
Kate insisted on hugging her one last time, Kennedy couldn’t stop giggling about Veeta’s stone-cold version of “Drop It Like It’s Hot,” and Veeta was quieter than usual as they stopped on the threshold.
Kate’s and Kennedy’s voices drifted up from the stairwell, singing very wrong words to the Spice Girls’ classic “Wannabe.”
“I’ve already emailed Simon and told him you’re out sick on Monday,” Veeta said, staring her down like she might argue. Which was fair, because her body rolled its eyes without her even instructing it to.
“I’m fine, Veeta, seriously. I’ve been through worse.”
Veeta gave her a frank look. “Worse than finding a dead body and being accused of murder?”
“It’s up there, sure,” Juliette said, breezing right over the way Veeta’s statement made all that delicious Thai food churn in her stomach. “But I changed a flat tire in an Arizona desert in the dead of August one time. I literally got third-degree burns from the road. This is way more manageable.”
Veeta heaved a sigh, glancing toward the stairs but still not stepping out of the doorway. It would be sweet, the way they worried about her, if it weren’t so inconvenient at the moment. She really needed to pee.
“You don’t have to do this on your own,” Veeta said. “I know you think you do. I know you think you’re best on your own.”
Juliette crossed her arms. “You don’t know that at all.”
“Juliette, I’ve worked for you for two years now.
I know you think Frappuccinos are for preteens and cowards and you judge Clementine in accounting every time she orders one.
And I know you think forming attachments to other people is right up there with donating your organs to a stranger or oversharing on Facebook. ”
Juliette shuddered. “The greatest crime against humanity was creating the relationship status ‘It’s complicated.’”
“You aren’t alone, Juliette,” Veeta said, their golden gaze so steady and serious. “We are here, and we want to help. But you have to let us in.”
“Okay, okay, I get it,” Juliette said, rolling her eyes again to stop them feeling so watery. Must be something in the air. “If I need something, I’ll call.”
“You promise?”
“Yes, yes, I promise. Now get out and never question me again.”
That got the ghost of a smile out of Veeta. “See you Tuesday.”
Juliette had barely managed the world’s most satisfying pee and a quick round of trash collection from the Thai feast when someone knocked on her door again.
“No more impulse hugs,” Juliette said as she wrenched the door open. “Oh. Charlie?”
Charlie Hawkins stood outside her door, looking stiff and awkward and not entirely sure what he was doing there.
Juliette checked the time on her smartwatch—definitely after nine—and gave him a smirk.
She might be wearing borrowed sweats with a shapeless silhouette and be more pad thai than woman, but she knew a booty call when one showed up on her doorstep.
She leaned against the frame, letting the sweater ride up and expose one hip.
“Well, well,” she said.
“I’m not here for sex,” he blurted out.
Juliette snorted, turning away and sauntering into her apartment. “And I’m not wearing crotchless panties.”
“I just wanted to—wait, did you say you were wearing crotchless panties?”
“Only one way to find out.”
Charlie seemed lost in space for a long moment before shaking his head. “I didn’t actually get a chance to check you out.”
“So, you’re here to check me out?” Juliette said, dropping on the couch and throwing her arms wide. She put one leg up on the coffee table, making it clear exactly what he could examine.
Charlie went pink to the tips of his ears, but to his credit he didn’t flee in abject terror. Instead, he stepped into her apartment and closed the door firmly behind him. She noticed he left it unlocked, though. Quick exit.
“I assumed, obviously correctly, that you wouldn’t get yourself checked out on your own,” Charlie said, setting a leather bag on her tabletop and flipping it open to pull out a stethoscope and an otoscope. “And while I’m not your doctor, I am a doctor, and I felt an obligation.”
“Oh, did you?” Juliette said, full of amusement. She looked over the leather bag, an old-school satchel with CLH embossed in gold. “That’s adorable, very country doctor chic.”
“My mum got it for me, when I graduated medical school,” Charlie said, flushing pink again.
“Well, she said it was from her and my dad, but I don’t think my father’s bought a gift in his life.
He didn’t even propose to my mum with a ring, just drove her to a chapel and said, ‘Don’t you think we oughta? ’”
“Your dad sounds like a real treat,” Juliette said dryly as Charlie sat on the opposite end of her love seat. There wasn’t much room for more than two people, but Charlie managed to perch as far away from her as possible.
“My dad is from farming stock, they’re not exactly known for their eloquence and charm,” Charlie said, his expression concentrated as he lifted the otoscope, the light startling her. “A détente would have been lost on him. Follow my finger, if you would.”
“Mm, did you read that in a Kissinger biography?” Juliette said sardonically, oddly mesmerized by the movement of his index finger as he went to the left and right.
He really did have perfect surgeon’s hands—long, graceful fingers, precise fine motor control.
He could have had a future as an orchestra conductor, the way his finger commanded her attention.
Charlie made a face. “I have a confession to make. I don’t actually read presidential biographies.”
“What? Kate says you have them stacked all around your apartment.”
“I buy them, and I strategically place them around the house so my dad has something to read when my parents are visiting.” Charlie switched to checking her other eye. “I actually just look up basic Wikipedia facts so I can pretend to know what he’s talking about when he discusses them with me.”
“That is devious,” Juliette said, pleased to find such deceptive behavior in the rule-abiding man. “But why lie about something so mundane?”
“My dad is always on us about educating ourselves, reading about great men who did what he thinks are incredible things so we can rise above,” Charlie said.
“My brother obviously went in a wildly different direction, but I never was headstrong like Jake. Every year for my birthday my dad gives me a new biography. And I tried reading them, really I did. But they’re full of dates, and names of battles, and every other person is named Johnson for some reason.
They’re so dead boring, I always fall asleep within two pages.
But I don’t have the heart to tell my dad, so we play this little game of pretend. ”
“Wait, does this mean the bread baking is a ruse, too?” Juliette asked. “Are you secretly buying loaves from a local bakery and passing them off as your own?”
“No, I genuinely like bread baking,” Charlie said.
Juliette shook her head. “That’s so weird.”
“Why?” Charlie asked, looking confused. “What’s wrong with bread making?”
“Nothing, it’s just so … homey. I mean, you’re a surgeon, you work with your hands all day. You literally hold life and death in them. And then you go home and, what? Knead? Shape? Rise? I don’t really know bread lingo, my only carbs are noodle-shaped. It just seems kind of anticlimactic.”
“That’s why I like it, actually,” Charlie said.
“Every day, every decision I make is truly life or death. One false move, one errant twitch, and I could kill someone. And don’t get me wrong, saving someone’s life is incredible.
Intoxicating. I understand why so many surgeons have a god complex.
But it’s also hell on my nervous system.
So, when I get home, I want to do something kind and caring for my hands.
I want to create something nourishing, and joyful, and fulfilling.
Something that if I screw it up, the worst that goes wrong is a dense crumb or a bad chew.
Nobody has to die. Well, except for my first starter. Rest in peace, Sally.”
He clicked the otoscope light off, setting it down. “Your vision looks fine, but you’ve worked up a nasty bruise where Troy caught you. Let me check it, make sure the bone beneath didn’t sustain any fractures or breaks.”
And now he was putting those lovely, long fingers to work on her temple, brushing her cheek, gently sweeping back a stray lock of hair and running his fingers along the edge of her ear.
Charlie wasn’t the only one turning pink, though she knew that her reaction had nothing to do with embarrassment.
Still, the heat flushed across her face.
She could hardly feel the pressure or the slight sensation of pain as his fingers did their work.
Actually, the pain was sort of adding to the whole experience.
Juliette tried to distract herself. “You named your first starter Sally? Sally Starter?”
“She was a good girl, until my roommate moved out and she died of loneliness,” Charlie said with a smile. But his expression sank, turning chagrined. “I know, yet another unsurgeonly thing to learn about me.”
“More surgeons should be like you,” Juliette said.
Charlie looked up, meeting her gaze. “I’d accuse you of being nice again, but I know what that would get me.”