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And then she turned and walked back the way they came. Drew couldn’t tear his gaze away from her. Even after she’d rounded the line of customers and exited through the building’s double doors, his eyes remained focused in that direction, as if she would change her mind and come running back. He would put Elias up in a hotel suite for the night, and he and London could pick up where their plans had left off.
“Shit, man, why didn’t you say something?” Elias said, smacking Drew in the chest.
“Me?” Drew said. “Why didn’t you text before you left Dallas?”
“It’s called a surprise,” Elias said. “But if you had told me you were going to be otherwise occupied in the evenings, I would have known better than to just show up unannounced.”
“Well, you did say you would be stopping by on your way to your camping trip,” Drew said. “I just didn’t remember it was this week.”
“Because the trip was originally planned fornextweek, but there was some kind of mix-up and they offered me and my friends a bigger cabin if we agreed to come a week early. But I could have gone straight to Big Bend if I knew I’d be interrupting…well, that.” He hooked a thumb back toward where London had gone. “Damn, Drew. EvenIwould tell me to get the hell outta here if I were you.”
Drew chuckled, shaking his head. “You don’t want to know how close I came to doing that.”
“You should at least go make sure she’s okay. You keep looking back for her.”
“I should,” Drew said. He sent London a quick text, telling her that he was on his way. But she responded just as quickly, letting him know that she was already at the crosswalk across from the hospital’s parking garage.
“Too late,” he said, putting his phone away. He picked up the duffel bag at Elias’s feet and wrapped his other arm around his uncle’s shoulders. “Now that you’ve fucked up my plans for the night, let’s get drunk.”
They took the elevator up to the twenty-second floor.
“I’m not sure if you knew this when you mentioned it downstairs, but you actuallydohave to sleep on the couch,” Drew told him as he deposited the duffel on the coffee table. “Trident is using the spare bedroom as a conference room.”
“You want me to show you where I’ll be sleeping over the next few days?” Elias asked. “You could put me in the bathtub and this place would still feel like the Ritz compared to those cabins.” He walked over to the expanse of windows and let out a low whistle. “It’s unfair for one man to have such a great view all to himself.” His uncle looked at him over his shoulder. “Youareliving here alone, right?”
“Technically,” Drew answered.
Elias turned around fully and crossed his arms over his chest, waiting for further explanation. He wasn’t getting anything more.
“Don’t ask,” Drew said. “And don’t try to make it into something it isn’t. London and I reconnected at our class reunion a couple of weeks ago, and she happens to work at Travis County Hospital, where Trident is working. We’ve just been hanging out.”
He skipped the part about their being naked most of the time they hung out, because his uncle didn’t need to know that. Of course, Elias likely already expected it, given his reaction to seeing Drew and London together.
He went over to the refrigerator and grabbed two bottles of a local IPA he’d picked up from the gastropub downstairs. He brought the beer over to where Elias still stood, looking out the window.
“What the hell is this?” his uncle asked when Drew handed him a bottle.
“Try it before you turn your nose up at it. There’s more to life than Budweiser.”
“Yeah, it’s called Bud Light.” He took a swig from the bottle and grimaced. He swallowed and took another sip. He looked at Drew out of the corner of his eye. “Whatever,” he muttered as he tipped the bottle back again.
Chuckling, Drew took a sip from his own bottle before he motioned at the window. “You know, there are some pretty nice condos in Deep Ellum where you could have a view like this all the time. Just say the word and my real estate guy would have you moved in.”
“No thanks. I’ll stick to my little hovel in North Dallas. Move me to Deep Ellum and the next thing you know I’ll be drinking weak shit like this every day.”
Drew could only shake his head. They both knew that he would offer to buy Elias a new house, because he always offered to buy his uncle a new house. They also both knew that E would turn him down, because he always turned him down.
Drew figured if his uncle was ever in true financial need, he would push his pride to the side long enough to come to him. Maybe.
They walked over to the couch and plopped down, simultaneously stretching their legs out and crossing their ankles on the coffee table on either side of the duffel bag.
“You gonna admit that you and the pretty doctor are doing more than just hanging out?” Elias asked.
“Nope,” Drew said.
“That’s fair.” His uncle nodded. “Not my business anyway.” He took a long pull on the so-calledweakbeer. “How’s the work you’re doing here in Austin going?”
“We’re trying to save a state-run hospital that is so far in the red that it would have been shut down years ago if it wasn’t publicly funded.”
