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I want him to go on, but I don’t press him. Mostly because whatever we’ve started today is new and I don’t feel like I have that right.
“Except it’s not just one job,” I say, giving him a very poignant side-eye.
The corners of his mouth turn up. “Well, I came here initially to work at the med clinic off Alder, and I’ve been moonlighting at the Aspen Lake Lodge spa for a year and a half, and now I’m here.”
“Why so many jobs?”
“Medical school is expensive,” he says, the corner of his mouth pulling up on one side.
“Right.”
“Your turn.”
I feel my stomach do a small flip. The feeling I get every time someone wants to talk about this. It’s been a while, since everyone around here who cares already knows, so I haven’t had to talk about it in a long time.
“I was on the swim team in high school and ended up being recruited by USC. A full-ride scholarship.”
“Wow, that’s really great,” he says.
“It would have been, if I had gone.”
He looks confused, and rightfully so. “Why didn’t you go?”
“The short story is,” I say, reciting his own words back to him, “I got in a car accident a week before the end of my senior year and broke my back—a moderate compression fracture in my lumbar spine, to be exact—and was told I can never swim competitively again.”
Technology has only gotten better in the past ten years, and maybe if I had had the same injury now, the treatment would have been different. Fortunately, after years of physical therapy, I made what my doctors have called a “miraculous” recovery from the injury, but it was too late for the swimming career I’d dreamed of.
“Oh,” he says, his eyes on mine. I look away because even after all these years, I still don’t enjoy that look of pity people tend to give you when they find out all your youthful dreams were shattered. Let’s be honest here: Does anyone enjoy pity?
I look back because I’m curious to see what kind of face Graham pulls when he’s offering his condolences. It’s not the look I’m expecting—not down-turned lips or droopy, sad eyes. He looks more contemplative.
“I had no idea,” Graham says.
I lift a shoulder and let it drop. “You were in medical school then. No reason to keep tabs on your best friend’s little sister.”
I could be mistaken, but it seems like he flinches when I refer to Kyle as his best friend.
“So then how did you end up becoming a nurse?”
“Those first couple of days in the hospital after the accident, the nurses were amazing. First in the ER and then after they moved me to orthopedics. I just—” I pause, looking off to the side, remembering how much I appreciated the comfort the nurses offered me. I had no idea all that I’d lost at that point. “I wanted to do something like that for other people. Offer comfort.”
He nods. “Thank goodness your initial nurse wasn’t Evie,” he says.
I let out a laugh. “That might have made me run for the hills.”
“What would you have been if you hadn’t become a nurse?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “Maybe a teacher.” Although I definitely wouldn’t be a middle school teacher, after hearing from Morgan what they put her through. She should be sainted.
“What about you?”
“Probably a horse wrangler,” he says.
“Really?”
“That was my eight-year-old dream.”
“Oh, well, if we’re going back that far, I wanted to deliver pizzas.”
