Page 48 of True Blue

“Theodore James, what on earth are you thinking?”

“That my girlfriend got her dream job,” Teddy replies, squeezing my waist. “And that I want to be where she is, forever.”

“But what about your dreams?”

“Being an electrician is not my dream, Mom.”

“But Cape May is almost nine hundred miles away,” she says. “You’d just... leave? Leave your father’s business? Leave your family? Leave me?! For what?”

“For Indie,” Teddy smiles, looking right at me. “I’d be going for Indie.”

I return his smile and cuddle into his chest, but glance at Dawn. Her jaw is clenched hard enough to look painful, and her bloodshot eyes are burning green. I shiver. Teddy must feel it because his arm tightens around me.

The smile on Dawn’s face looks like she’s just declared war.

9

INDIE

DECEMBER

“Ican’t believe you did this.”

I glance around the bar, seeing pretty much everyone I know crammed into this building, drinking and laughing and mingling and celebrating.

Me.

They’re celebrating me because Teddy organized this party.

For me.

“You deserve it,” Teddy says against my neck, pressing a kiss there, and then he nuzzles the skin like he can’t help himself. “And more.”

I turn to kiss his lips softly, my eyes taking him in—his dark hair is, for once, not in a hat. Instead, he pushed it back from his forehead with a pomade. He’s wearing a crisp white button-down with the sleeves rolled up to his forearms—thick, hairy, insanely attractive forearms—and black slacks.

It’s very rare that I see Teddy dressed up, but when I do, it’s quite the sight.

As I look at him, I can feel his eyes traveling over my body, lingering in a way that makes my skin warm. I’m in a little black dress, backless—the kind he always goes absolutely feral over—and heels that make my legs look a mile long.

We almost didn’t even make it here after I opened my apartment door for him. His jaw dropped when I did a little twirl, and he took one slow, deliberate step toward me, like he was genuinely considering canceling all our plans.

“No one’s ever⁠—”

“I know, honey,” Teddy murmurs, his eyes going a little soft and sad. “But I did. I always will.”

If I had a nickel for every time I’ve thought through our relationship, no one has ever done this for me, I would be debt-free, and then some.

But no one ever has. Not when I studied for and got my GED at sixteen. Not when I graduated from college at twenty. Not when I graduated from med school at twenty-three.

Teddy did this for me, and my eyes trail to the blue banner hanging across the ceiling.

Congratulations, Doctor Indie Miller!

Blue balloons are tied to the backs of chairs and bunched in the corners, and there’s confetti scattered across the sticky bar and the little round tables.

A huge blackboard with Teddy’s blocky handwriting lists custom mixed drinks and beers available—Miller High Life, Cape May Bay Breeze, Indie Sour—with little syringes, a stethoscope, and a perfectly drawn Rod of Asclepius done by my talented boyfriend.

And somehow, horrifyingly and sweetly, everyone is wearing buttons with my official hospital portrait pinned to their shirts.