“Please!” He shook his head. “And please stop saying ‘up there.’ ”
I put my finger over my mouth and made a shushing sound. This made him smile.
“Connie, that’s her name, by the way . . .” He held his drink up and I clanked mine against it. We tossed the shots back. “Connie thought it was funny too. She once asked me why I couldn’t be a cool doctor. She said she was embarrassed telling her friends what kind of doctor I was.”
“What’s a cool doctor?” I asked.
Alex shrugged. “I don’t know. Plastic surgeon, maybe? A neurosurgeon possibly?”
“So basically she wanted McDreamy or McSteamy fromGrey’s Anatomy?” I pointed out.
He laughed loudly. “Colorectal surgeons can be sexy too, right?”
“Yeaaaahh.” I stretched that word out and scrunched my nose up a little. “I mean, suuuure. Maybe it could be, sort of, maybe, possibly.” I was trying to sound reassuring, but was failing miserably.
“It’s not all prostate exams, you know. I do complicated surgery with these special robotic arm things. It’s very sci-fi, actually.”
“Now that’s cool,” I said. “You should lead with that. ‘I do surgery with cool robot arms.’ ”
“Okay.” He nodded and smiled at me again. “Good suggestion. Maybe I should put that on my business card.”
“It’s Matt, by the way. His name is Matt.”
“Matt,” he repeated thoughtfully. “Matt and Connie. Monnie. We should call them that while talking about them.” He laughed again; clearly he was as drunk as I was by now. “Or Connt,” he suddenly added.
I burst out laughing again at the sound of it. “Let’s stick to Monnie.” I paused and looked at him. His cheeks were flushed a pretty pink color, and his gray eyes were slightly hooded which made him look rather sexy. This was not how I ever imagined a doctor would be. The back of my knee suddenly itched and I scratched it. “Soooo,” I slurred, “how on earth did you become a proctologist?”
“Colorectal surgeon,” he corrected me. “We prefer that, makes us sound far more fancy and less proctologist-y.”
“Colorectal surgeon,” I repeated.
“Truthfully?”
“Total truth.” I poured us both another shot of tequila and passed him one. I’d lost count as to how many we’d had. Probably a bad sign. A very bad sign.
“It was to rebel against my parents,” he said, between grimaces from the burn of the tequila.
“Isn’t rebelling becoming a serial killer, or a member of the Hell’s Angels?”
“Not in my family. Both my parents are really well-known surgeons. My mother is London’s top cardiologist and my father is this hotshot vascular surgeon that leads teams around the world specializing in separating conjoined twins.”
“Whoa! That’s intense.”
“Exactly!”
“So where is the rebellion in this story?” I asked, my face tingling from the alcohol now.
“Well, I was forced to go to med school. I wasn’t allowed to become anything other than a doctor, you see. But I’d once heard my parents make a joke about proctologists at a dinner party with all their other fancy surgeon friends, so I decided to become one just to piss them off and embarrass them!”
I looked at him for a moment and then burst out laughing. I was laughing so much that I clung onto the bar counter and almost toppled over. “Wait,” I said, in between snorts of laughter, “you became a . . .” I was screeching now, “a . . . a . . . proc . . . rectal . . . surgeon . . .” tears were streaming down my face now, “of bums, basically . . . to, to . . . embarrass your parents?!”
Alex started laughing too and out of the corner of my eye, I could see the happy honeymoon couples looking at us.
“Basically,” he said, his laughter finally tapering off. “But . . .” He looked thoughtful for a moment. “But it’s so much more than that now. When people come to me, they’re usually at their most vulnerable. You learn how to put them at ease and make them feel better.” He shrugged, more to himself. “It’s very rewarding. And it’s a less hectic life, I’m not constantly on call like other doctors. You don’t have many rectal emergencies coming into the ER . . .well, only every now and again.” He smiled softly.
I shook my head at him, his story was even more funny because I could actually relate to it. I’d done the exact same thing. “I also became what I am to embarrass my family,” I finally said.
“Oh? Do tell me.” He leaned closer to me. His eyes were even more heavy-lidded from the alcohol, and he had this kind of sleepy, sexy quality to him. Suddenly, he wasn’t so nice and warm and friendly anymore. A guy you could just hang with. Suddenly, he became one of the sexiest men I’d seen in a while. I was completely caught off guard by this realization. Before Matt I used to look at men all the time, but I hadn’t looked at one like this in ages. I felt my cheeks go a little hotter. I was glad he’d called me over, despite my initial nonsocial feelings.
