Adriana #5
Hemming. There was that name again. How many of them are there?
! Could the three she was aware of be responsible for this much chatter?
Adriana didn’t understand why the name felt inescapable, dogging her heels since the night she’d pulled into town.
What if this is family he visits? Who cares if it is, she countered immediately, arguing with herself.
He and his wife had matched into a residency on the other side of the Unification.
They would be too busy with glamorous private practice careers of their own, more than likely, too busy to ever be close.
“Close enough to run him over with your car, maybe,” she mumbled.
Xenna was close enough to hear her grumble, turning with a smile. “Here’s my favorite doctor! What was that?”
She flushed, not really wanting the whole coffee shop to hear her discussing vehicular homicide fantasies this early in the day.
“Oh, ha, just um, that name you mentioned,” Adriana choked out, forcing a laugh, feeling heat climb her neck. “It’s . . . it’s not a doctor, is it?”
“Fireman,” the tiefling supplied, and Adriana practically melted in relief.
“Oh!” she laughed, the sound of it a little manic even to her ears.
“Well, that’s a relief! I went to school with a Hemming.
Maybe a relative of the guy who lives here.
He was . . . not my favorite person,” she finished with a chuckle, content to silently step to the side of the counter and fade into invisibility once more.
All three heads behind the counter lifted, practically in unison, turning to her, their work forgotten. Adriana gulped.
“School?” the tiefling asked, her voice casual, moving down the counter a hair closer to Adriana. “Was this . . . med school? What was he like? The guy you went to school with, I mean.”
Her cheeks heated, nodding somewhat unwillingly. “It was. I’m sure the guy who lives here is perfectly nice,” she added quickly. “I met him, at the fair, and he seemed really friendly. The guy I went to school with . . . he was the worst. Just an obnoxious jerk.”
Brother and sister said nothing, but the tiefling nodded encouragingly. “Did he even graduate?!”
Adriana’s fists balled at the memory of competing with Trapp Hemming for everything, every exam, every lab, every point.
She had always known that the playing field wasn’t even, but sitting beside the handsome, cocky werewolf who seemed to have everything handed to him for nearly two years had cemented the lesson.
“He did. In fairness, he was really smart. We were at the top of our class, always within a few points of each other, and he was like, psychotically competitive. He once threw a fit because a professor marked him down in an anatomy lab, and he argued about it in the middle of the lecture. Like, went crazy, almost started a fight arguing!”
“But was he a huge slut?” the tiefling demanded, leaning over the counter.
“Oh, you are ridiculous!” Xenna laughed, shooing the girl with the edge of her apron. “One-track mind! And you’re so wrong!”
Heat burned up her neck. Why does she care?
! It’s not like it’s the same guy. She didn’t like the thought of strangers knowing too much about her, butting into her private life, but these people already knew so much.
This isn’t any different than the orc from work, right?
You see every single day the way everyone chit-chats, the way everyone trades stories. You want to fit in here, don’t you?
“We actually hooked up once,” she choked out, forcing herself to laugh.
“It was right after a huge exam. Then the results came out, and I scored higher than him. He ghosted me, like the big fragile crybaby he was. We wound up as lab partners the following term and for the whole next year, and it was miserable. He was just . . . so mean.” Her laughter was weak and hollow, even to her own ears.
“By then he had a girlfriend, and she was hateful. I heard they got married after they matched. I hope he’s gone bald and has a beer gut now.
Hopefully the fireman you know is a lot nicer. ”
She didn’t mind bald and found bodies of every shape attractive, but for someone as vain as Trapp Hemming had been, it would be fitting.
“Adriana,” a troll called out, having taken over the order sorting for Xenna once she’d come out from the back, passing the coffee and pastry over the counter.
The sheepwoman was frowning again, a furrow between her eyes, her brother’s eyebrows raised, but similarly silent.
The tiefling, Adriana saw, already had her phone in hand, thumb dancing over the screen as she lined up cups with the other hand.
“You all have a good day,” she mumbled awkwardly when neither the siblings nor the tiefling said anything further, taking her order from the countertop.
“You too, doc!” Xenna seemed to shake herself back to focus, her mouth pushing up in a thin smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes.
Adriana left quickly, ducking her head. She wanted to hurry up and leave before she was forced to run into Trapp Hemming’s potential uncle or distant cousin.
He was an asshole and no one else in her life had ever made her feel so small, but he was an asshole from her past, and it was a long time ago.
You’re a whole new person now, and you don’t need to think about him ever again.