“Same time tomorrow?”
“Actually, my shifts are all over the place now that the academic term has started. More students, more hours,” I explain. I see her face fall and without thinking I stumble overa way to help her out again. “But I can come after my shift tomorrow? Around three? If that’s okay…with everyone?” I hope that she knows I’m trying my best not to step on Celeste’s toes.
“Sounds perfect,” June says, that scheming smile back again.
TWENTY-THREE
Peppermint
Celeste
My back achesfrom 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 thefront 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 beenmissingsomething, 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 verymalegrunt.
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. Abrief 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.
