Page 58 of The Doctors Will See You Now

In the meantime, I would just have to make sure she knew the difference between her and everyone else, that she felt the difference I so clearly did, and it wasn’t going to happen in a conversation. At least, not entirely.

There was no way I’d say the right thing.

No, actions were going to have to be my words, and I was going to have to be really fucking eloquent.

Too bad I’d been nothing but a big bag of awkward since I’d first laid eyes on her.

Fuck. Make the best of this, Will.

“You’re right. It was fun.” It was safe to say I paraphrased my inner monologue a bit. “And I want to keep having more of it. But I was kind of thinking our fun would be a two-person, no exceptions kind of activity. Aka, not having guys like Eli—”

His name reeked of disdain as it rolled off of my tongue.

“—show up with flowers for you. If you get flowers, they’re from me, and they’re made of fucking tongue depressors, goddammit.”

Okay. Maybe I should have taken another breath in the middle of that little speech. Seems the good attitude wore off by the end.

“What?”

I thought she was confused, naturally, but if I’d been paying attention to her more than my own mental breakdown, I would have noticed she wasn’t confused at all before she moved.

She pushed me aside, her hand reaching for the garbage behind me, and as I turned to look, I spotted what I already knew was there—the bouquet of tongue depressors I’d made this morning lying almost pristinely on top. Did I mention the five hours of uncertainty I’d had after she left? Well, turns out, I also had an old box of tongue depressors in my home office.

Goddammit. I would have thought I’d destroyed those things a little more.

Plucking one from the bundle, she held it up for closer inspection and read aloud the ridiculous words I’d written.

“There’s nothing depressing about your tongue.”

I looked away. Christ, that was a bad one.

“The back of your throat has never looked prettier.”

Okay, that one was worse.

“Will? What are these?”

I shook my head, but the intensity of her stare forced the motion to a stop. “Will.”

“They’re tongue-depressor-themed affirmations. You said you like to use them—”

“I know what I said,” she interrupted, her voice dropping to a whisper and her eyes dropping to the sticks in her hands. “I just can’t believe you did.”

I shrugged and told the truth. “I like you, Mel. It’s not that hard to remember when you say things. It’s not that hard at all.”

“Hi,” I started to greet, but I had to glance down at the chart in my hand in search of the patient’s name. “Elise,” I finished and gestured her into the exam room. “I’m Melody, Dr. Cummings’s nurse. I’ll be assisting him with your checkup today.”

“Oh, I don’t think an assistant is necessary for my appointment,” she said and sashayed into the exam room on her black stilettos. “It’s just a yearly pap smear. I’ve done them, like, a thousand times.”

I internally called bullshit. This woman didn’t look a day over thirty. One thousand pap smears was either a gross exaggeration, or her prior OB/GYN was giving out pap smears like condoms at the free clinic.

“It’s actually our new policy,” I corrected and moved toward the cabinet and started to set out the needed sterile supplies on the counter. “Moving forward, all of our physicians have a nurse with them during exams to ensure patients are comfortable and the physicians have all of the assistance they might need.”

Also, now that I was officially dating Will, having a chaperone in the room with this woman was my policy. She looked like she was ripe for more than a pelvic exam.

We hadn’t told our coworkers about our current dating status yet, and considering who they were, I honestly didn’t know if I’d ever want to, but things had finally settled.

Two weeks after the Eli Incident, as we were now calling it, and things between Will and me had maintained a steady pace of getting to know each other in all the ways that included the ah-mazing, toe-curling sex that occurred when we were together.