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“Brody, sweetheart,you areinteresting. You’re amazing. No, stop,” she said when I sat up and began shaking my head. She plucked my hand from the table and held it tightly in both of hers. “I’m serious. You’ve dealt with so many challenges—losing your parents and your brother in that accident, living on your own, putting yourself through college—”
“Fen, I love you, but that’s not the same thing. Grant—crap.I need to stop slipping up, or I’m gonna end up calling him that to his face one of these days.Dr. Brightonis a freaking trauma surgeon. He goes to work every day and puts his hands inside people’s bodies and puts them back together. He saves lives. He speaks fluent Spanish. He volunteers at a clinic downtown. He’s just… a really good person.”
“Yes, he’s a nice guy, and yes, he does important work,” she agreed, “but so do you—”
“His ex-wife just won an award for some photos she took of the floods in Australia that brought a lot of attention to the crisis,” the throbbing bruise of jealousy in the center of my chest compelled me to add.
Fen huffed and let go of my hand to drink her coffee. “Liza also left town five years ago, and she only comes back for a week here and there to see her kids. Which is fine, that’s her choice, and I’m sure she has many excellent qualities. But she’s no saint, babydoll.”
No, Liza wasn’t a saint. I’d never actually met her, since Grant—fuck!Dr. Brighton, Dr. Brighton, Dr. Brighton—always gave me time off when she came to town, but as far as I was concerned, any woman who hadn’t clung to a guy like him with both hands was suspect.
“Anyway.” I pushed myself upright and sipped at my coffee before opening my laptop again. “I need to get back to work. Mia has jazz and ballet after camp, Cleo needs me to take her shopping, Dr. Brighton wants to talk to me tonight about ‘expectations at Mountbatten,’ whatever that means, and I have a project due in Probability and Statistics.” I opened my file and shook my head. “I really hate this class. Tell me again why I saved it for my last semester?”
Fen tapped her lip with her pen. “Maybe because you have a problem where you put off stuff you know you’re not going to enjoy?” she asked innocently.
My face heated. “My problem is that my best friend has taken too many psych classes and tries to analyze me.”
Fen was undeterred. “Exhibit A: You have not told Dr. Boss that you are madly in love with him.”
“My god.” I shuddered at the very thought. “Never in a million years. Why the hell would I do that?”
“Because it’s possible that he feels the same about you! No, I’m being serious.” She shut my laptop screen when I attempted to ignore her. “You don’t know his sexuality. For all you know, he’s bi. Maybe he’s fluid. You don’t know everything there is to know about Dr. Boss’s late-night love needs.”
“Ew,” I said, even though Grant’s late-night love needs were a particular interest of mine.
“The man’s a workaholic, Brody. But did you ever ask yourself why he throws himself into his work?”
“Uh, because he’s damn good at it?” I shot back.
“Exactly,” she approved. “Know what he’s not good at? Figuring out emotional stuff. You know this. Just think of how hard it was for him to relate to the girls a couple years ago. How hard itstillis for him sometimes. Maybe he needs to be reminded there’s more to life than blood and guts in the emergency room.”
I shook my head. “The man could be bi or pan or gay as fuck, and it doesn’t mean he’d want anything to do withme, Fen. He’s never made a single sexy eyeball in my direction, and believe me, I would have noticed. He’s never even asked me to call him Grant.” And that hurt. It was a sure sign he viewed me as an employee. Worse, as a kid.
“Okay, then.” Fen studied me for a long moment while she sipped her drink. “Have you told him you’re leaving?”
Oof.
“Kinda. Sorta.” My stomach flipped over and landed with a sickeningthump. “Okay, no. Not exactly,” I admitted, though I heard Fen mentally tagging this as exhibit B in her Brody Doesn’t Deal With Shit argument. “He knows I graduate at the end of this semester.Finally.”
“Brody.My boo. This is a man who forgets to eat dinner unless you remind him. You think he’s put together ‘Brody graduates’ and ‘Oh, shit, I need a new nanny’?”
“Full-time childcare specialist,” I muttered, pulling my laptop open again.
“Babydoll, you need to that particular bull by the horns, for the girls’ sake if not your own—”
“Shhhh! No talking.” I said, putting a finger to my lips and nodding at my screen. “Busy. So busy. Probability.Statistics. Cannot be disturbed. Don’t you have a class now?”
She sighed and grabbed her backpack, but before she left, she leaned toward me over the small table, impossible to ignore… though I tried. “I know you, Brody. You have a massive crush on this guy. You adore those girls. In some ways, it probably feels like you have a family back again, doesn’t it? But babe, this is not real. And if you don’t changesomethingreally soon—either shoot your shot or move on— you’re gonna end up being his nanny for years, forgoing your own career… hell, forgoing all the loving, healthyrelationshipsyou could have. There’s a good chance you’re gonna end up miserable.”
As she walked away, my phone dinged with an incoming text message, and my stupid heart beat out a crazy rhythm just seeing the name on my lock screen.
Dr. Brighton: I’m grabbing pizza on the way home. We can surprise the girls at dinner.
We. That single word made my stomach flip and my hands tremble. There was nowe, though I’d do just about anything for a chance to make that happen.
As I stared out the door and across the sunny quad without really seeing any of it, I realized that I didn’t need any skill in probabilities and statistics to know Fen was right.
* * *
