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“Do you remember what you came in here for?” she asks.
I nod, smiling. I remember. And she said yes.
“Is there a plan?” she asks.
I guess we didn’t make it that far. Got a little distracted by dragons or something. I glance at her fingers again. Orsomething.
“Dinner tomorrow?” I ask.
“Tomorrow I’m working the four to midnight shift,” she says. “Lunch?”
“I’ll check my schedule and see if I get a lunch break tomorrow,” I say, but I rarely leave the clinic during open hours. I’ll skip a midday break in order to keep appointments running on time.
“Maybe the weekend,” she says, and I hope what I’m hearing is disappointment, because that’s what I feel at the idea of waiting three days.
I don’t want to walk out of here without a definite idea of when I’ll see her again, but it’s way past time for me to leave.
“Call me,” she says, as casually as she’d say it to any friend. Like it’s the most natural thing in the world for me to pick up my phone and press her contact and hear her voice in my ear.
I nod and leave and is it weird that I’m not sure my feet touch the ground?
4
SAGE
Did I just say, “Call me,” to Dr. Grayson Mercer?
Yes. Yes, I did.
As an actual adult (I turned twenty-one last month) who still looks the same as I did when I was a student here, I really try to keep my speech and reactions and voice and habits grown up. You know, avoiding the squealing. But sometimes a girl just needs a squeal.
This is one of those times. And of course, Desi is pulling on her jacket and walking past. She glances at me, but she’s very good at reading people. All she needs is a glance.
When she asks, she makes each word last about ten seconds. “What’s up?”
And even though she was leaving, she sits up on the desk beside me and waits.
Desi is the greatest, and she’s a wonderful friend, but sometimes you can’t tell your boss that you’re going on a date with your doctor.
Right? I mean, that’s one of those things that crosses all the professional lines, right?
But we talked about Hank when she was starting to date him. And it was fun.
It’s different for me, though. Because I’m younger. And because I failed at becoming a university student. And I probably don’t really belong here at Chamberlain.
Except I want to belong here. It feels like home.
But that doesn’t mean I get all giddy and tell Desi that Grayson Mercer asked me out.
Oh, why not?
I lean closer and use my library voice. “Is it weird to go on a date with your doctor?”
She nods. “It would be very weird for me. My doctor is a sixty-year-old married woman.”
“You and your linguistic precision.”
She shrugs and spins a ring on her middle finger. “Poetic job hazard.”
