Chapter 7 #2
“Yes. You’re smart without being condescending the way MDs can be. You’re honest without being cruel. And when we talk, you listen.” Harper paused, smiling again. “And you make me laugh, which is harder than most people think.”
“That’s because you have a great sense of humor.”
She arched an eyebrow. “Or maybe I’m easily amused.”
I smiled and tipped my glass, swallowing the last of the wine. As if he’d been watching and waiting, Derek refilled both glasses.
“So,” Harper said when we were alone again. “If we’re both being honest about why we are here…”
“Are we being honest?”
“We’re trying to be.” The candlelight caught her face; it made her eyes seem darker, almost shadowed. “I’ve been thinking about last night,” she said. “Our conversation.”
“And…”
“And what you said—seeing the system clearly, not wasting time on things you can’t control—has been replaying in my mind. I don’t do…this.”
She gestured between us. “I don’t go out with colleagues. I went to Rowan’s first child’s birthday party, but I don’t get drinks with Liz Rice or have dinner with Dr. Webb. I keep work at work and my personal life separate.”
“Okay. But we are here. Together. So?”
“So talking to you doesn’t feel like work.”
“What does it feel like?” I asked.
The spread of Harper’s smile was a slow, simmering thing. Dangerous. Sultry. I almost forgot we were sitting in the middle of a restaurant.
“I’m still trying to figure that out.”
The conversation looped and meandered, touching on everything and nothing. Childhood stories and college mistakes and the worst jobs we had ever had.
Harper told me about working retail during undergrad and having to smile at customers who looked straight through her like she was invisible. I told her about my first day of medical school when I had been so nervous, I dropped a scalpel inside a cadaver and had to fish it out.
“You did not,” Harper said, laughing so hard she had to set down her water glass.
“I did. I almost dropped out.”
“But you stayed.”
I nodded. “Mostly because I didn’t know how to tell my dad—well, my step-dad but he’s been my dad since he married my mom—that I was punking out. He’s a physician, so that was never gonna fly. You never had a day that made you feel like quitting?”
“Oh, of course,” Harper admitted. “Especially in the first year. I spent so much time translating, making everyone feel heard, while knowing the organization isn’t really going to do anything. I started to wonder if I was part of the problem instead of finding the solution.”
“But you stayed.”
“Mostly because patients that look like us need to see someone that looks like us in a suit in the admin wing. Some days, I have to wonder,” she said, “whether being good at something is reason enough to keep doing it.”
“What would you do instead?”
“Live the dream! Buy a plane ticket, disappear for months on end and just exist.”
“Nice. Where would you exist?”
“Italy, maybe. Spain. Bali—I don’t know, but somewhere where they serve the wine fast and the food slow and people don’t apologize for taking three-hour lunches and naps in the middle of the afternoon.”
“That sounds incredible.”
“What about you?” Harper asked. “If you could do anything other than surgery?”
I thought about it. The wine had made me honest. More honest than I usually was.
“Okay, don’t laugh, but I’d learn how to cook.
Really cook, not just throw together chicken and pasta or grill a steak.
I want to know how to make food that makes people stop talking and just eat because it’s that good. ”
Harper’s expression softened. “That’s really specific.”
“My mom used to cook like that,” I said, nostalgia taking over.
“When we were kids, she would spend all day in the kitchen making these elaborate meals. The whole house would smell like whatever she was cooking. We would sit down to eat and nobody would talk for the first few minutes because the food was too good to interrupt with conversation.”
“Does she still cook like that?”
“Not often. All the kids grew up and moved out, so most of the time it’s just her and my dad. These days, they’d rather go out for a nice meal.” I picked at the edge of my napkin. “I keep thinking I should learn how to make those meals she used to make. Kick up my own tradition.”
The server appeared with the check. I grabbed the folio before Harper could reach for it.
“I invited you,” I said when she opened her mouth to protest.
“Next time is on me, then.”
“Next time?”
She smiled. “Next time.”
I signed the receipt, left a generous tip because the food had been excellent and the service had been perfectly timed, and stood. I was pleasantly loose, like all my edges had gone soft.
Harper stood, reaching for her coat, and I grabbed it before she could, held it out for her. She gave me a look that was half amused, half surprised, but she let me help her into it.
Outside, the air was cold enough to make my breath visible. Crisp and clean after the warmth of the restaurant. The parking lot was mostly empty now, just a few scattered cars under the streetlights.
We walked side by side, not talking. My hands were shoved deep in my pockets; hers were wrapped around herself, holding her coat closed against the chill.
At her car, she stopped and turned to face me. “Thank you for inviting me to dinner,” she said. “The food was great and the conversation was…” She paused, sighing with a wide smile.
“Same,” I said. “Same.”
“And for the record…” She stepped closer, enough that I could smell her perfume again. “I’m really glad we ran into each other today.”
“Harper,” I said in a near-whisper.
“Cole,” she replied.
“You think I could kiss you? It’s fine if you don’t want me to, but I’d really like to.”
She pondered the question, pausing for so long I thought she was going to say no. But then…
“Yes.”
I closed the distance between us, bringing a hand up to cup her face. Her skin warmed against my palm despite the cool air. Her eyes stayed on mine, dark and intent, until the moment I leaned in, then they fluttered closed.
The kiss began soft. Chaste. My lips against hers, asking the question though I already had the answer. Testing to see if this was real or if I had imagined the electricity between us all night.
She made a small sound in the back of her throat. Stepped even closer, moving her hands up my chest. I deepened the kiss, sliding my other hand around to the small of her back to pull her against me.
Harper opened her mouth; I tasted wine and want and something that felt dangerously close to need.
She kissed the way she did everything else—direct, confident, no hesitation. Her tongue met mine and I forgot about the cold, about the parking lot, about every reason this was complicated.
Her hands slid further north, around my neck. I backed her up against her car, felt her arch into me, heard her breath catch when I gave her a few seconds to breathe.
This was dangerous. This was reckless. This was everything I should not be doing in a public parking lot where anyone could see us.
The sudden vibration against my hip cut through everything. Then the alert—loud, insistent, and impossible to ignore.
“Fuck,” I said against her mouth.
“Saved by the bell, I guess,” Harper said, her voice breathless.
I finally stepped back, pulled the phone from my pocket, and checked the display. The screen showed:
L1 TRAUMA ALERT ED ETA 8 MIN AH
Level one trauma. Incoming in eight minutes. All hands on deck.
“Damn. I’m on call until midnight.”
“Go,” she said immediately. “Someone needs you.”
“I’m sorry—”
“Cole. This is one instance where you’re with someone that understands your job. Go. I’m fine.”
She was beautiful. Flushed, lips slightly swollen from kissing, hair messed up from my hands. Beautiful but completely off-limits, and I had just kissed her anyway in a restaurant parking lot like a teenager who couldn’t control himself.
“To be continued,” I said.
“I know.”
I walked to my car, got in, started the engine, and pulled out of the parking lot, heading toward the hospital with her taste still on my lips and the feel of her body burned into my memory like a brand.
This was going to be a problem.
I did not care even a little bit.