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“Stevie.” He hummed. “Alright.”
“How are you not going through everything you know to find a cure for Jasmine?”
“Because I can’t, Stevie,” Adrian said.
I stared at him, mouth open. He had just been letting us run off on a wild goose chase?
“What?”
“I can’t spend every moment of my life trying to find an answer. I can spend all my time at work trying. I can even do an hour or two of research every night when I get home. I will call everyone I can and see if they’ve heard anything, but at the end of the day, Jasmine is a patient. I can’t do anything for her if I don’t look after myself first, and what I know I need right now is to eat my sandwich and talk to someone I might consider a friend.”
His face was calm, accepting his decision. I could definitely see his point, but it didn’t stop me from feeling it was a little cruel, the blasé way he dismissed what I perceived to be his duty. I didn’t have any right to tell him about his duty though, so I put away my phone and stared at the soup in front of me. It seemed a lot less appetizing when I wasn’t doing what I thought I should be. Then, something else he’d said hit me.
“You consider me a friend?”
I didn’t tell him that my brain struggled to see him as something purely platonic.
“Of course. I know Jonah does as well, so I’m going to apologize in advance for his particular brand of friendship. If you’re wondering, though, I couldn’t treat you differently in front of the other interns. First of all, it would be grossly unfair to them, and secondly, I’ve heard the whispers.”
“Whispers?”
“The ones about you using your connection to your father to fast-track your med school graduation, not to mention getting you a placement here.”
I huffed a laugh out and even smiled a little. I was glad he was treating me like the other students, and the whispers didn’t surprise me all that much.
“Honestly, this was the last place I wanted to work,” I said dryly. “Preciselybecauseof my father.”
Adrian raised an eyebrow.
“I get the impression you’re not as fond of him as everyone assumes. Did he skip your daddy/daughter dance in the fifth grade?”
It was a mocking sentence, but his eyes were sparkling with bright humor. I shot him an overly sarcastic grin.
“Try all of them. Most times, he wasn’t even working. A couple of times, he activelyscheduledshifts to get out of going to them.”
I thought of my mother on the phone, arguing with him. I had never even bought a dress, never even wanted to go, because showing up with a man I cared for as little as him was even worse than not going.
“Oof, that’s rough,” Adrian said, but he had a cheeky smile on his face that said he didn’t pity me. I appreciated it.
“Eh. Now, he’s some hotshot. Aren’t you supposed to be so stuck up his ass that you can smell his breath, anyway?”
He laughed at that, genuinely laughed, and I couldn’t help the way my brain went haywire. His laugh was a full thing, not too loud but hearty. His eyes crinkled at the corners, and I could see where crow’s feet would soon form from all his laughing and smiling. His mouth briefly pursed in an adorable way, before revealing rows of white teeth when he opened his mouth to let out a chuckle. I wished I could crawl inside the warmth of his eyes and take a nap, but I knew that wasn’t possible. Not only because crawling inside his head would be highly surreal and strange but because we were nothing more than friends.
Nothing more than friends.
My heart beat in time with it, and even with my head telling me that it would never be enough, I repeated it with each thump of my pulse.
Friends.
Friends.
Friends.
Chapter Seven
Stevie
Friends.
