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She laughs. “Well, I don’t know that we could …”
“I need to apologize to a special lady.”
I give her the rough lowdown of the apology I need to make and why. Her eyes grow round.
“Anyway,” I conclude, “I have to find something to give to her by tomorrow.” I want more from Kate than a chaste kiss and a taking-her-time message.
She stares over toward the central payment desk as if she’s trying to decide something, probably working out her commission. “Let me go and find out,” she says.
She talks to an older guy at the counter gesturing toward me and the bed. He shakes his head, but she carries on waving her hand, and I can’t help smiling: I told the perfect saleslady the ideal story. In five minutes, she’s back.
“We can sell you this one, and we’ll give you 10 percent off with it being ex-display, but of course we can’t do a plaque.”
She’s a genius, and I’ve even wangled a discount. I don’t care about some crazy nameplate; all I can think about is what Kate will say when she sees it. However, I’m not so flush with money that I’m not going to push and see what else she’ll give me.
“Make it fifteen and you have yourself a deal,” I say, and she narrows her eyes at me and holds up her hands, but then she weaves her way through the beds to discuss my proposal with her manager.
Another couple of minutes go by while I lie back on the covers, then she appears again and says, “Twelve and a half percent is our best offer.”
So, I smile and give her my credit card, hoping like fuck the thing got paid off. Then I root around in my pocket and pull out my phone to call the one guy I know who can sort this for me.
“Seamus?” I say to the man who answers, my Mr. Fixit. There’s nothing Seamus can’t get done in Manhattan, and I pay him in kind with his clients who want some difficult computer problem sorted.
“I need a couple of guys who can dismantle a bed and install it in my apartment by tomorrow night.”
A loud laugh bounces back down the line.
“Where the fuck are you?”
“Bloomingdale’s.”
There’s a long-suffering sigh on the other end. “Text me the details.”
28
Kate
July passes in a sparkling blur, like sunlight dancing on water. I head to Fabian’s or he comes to mine, and we potter around the kitchen together, shoveling in food and trying to sleep. He won’t wear anything in bed, and most nights I find it impossible not to put my hands on his body, running my fingers over the lines and patterns, as he watches me with serious gray eyes that grow increasingly heated. I never thought I’d be insatiable, and Fabian always wants to take his time. I’m so sleep-deprived I don’t know how I’m standing up and making sense in the ER, but something has clicked over like the cog of a well-oiled wheel. I’m not confident, but perhaps I’m getting used to the ebb and flow. Either way, the chaos and responsibility don’t make my stomach churn in quite the same way they did when I first started.
What with the arm slashing and the roses, I’m now something of a celebrity at Bellevue, or as much as you can be in a hospital where people are heroes every day. When I turn up in people’s offices for advice, I get a smile of recognition and a generous amount of medical explanation. I’m no longer some lowly new intern, I’m the one with the crazy but romantic boyfriend, and this gets me nods in corridors and smiles everywhere. What happened to quiet Dr. Dull? Before Fabian, this would all have made me mutter under my breath about concentrating on the job, but now I like the fact that people know who I am, that they stop and talk, that they’re happy to answer my questions.
The bed, my God, the bed! The day after I went to his apartment to check on his arm, he growled at me down the phone to come over, clearly keen to end whatever time he thought I was taking with him. There’s something heartwarming about the way he pushes through obstacles and refuses to stand still. He blindfolded me the minute I arrived, despite my protests and jokes about sexual things we hadn’t tried yet. He told me to stop being such a doctor and questioning everything. Then he led me into his bedroom, squeezing my shoulders and weaving his hand through mine before standing behind me, body pressed all the way down my back, chin on my shoulder. When he took off my blindfold, I don’t think I’d seen anything quite so beautiful … all that white gauze and the wood. When he grunted, “This is yours,” in my ear, I turned around and grabbed his T-shirt, pulling him onto the covers with me. Then I did other delicious things to him, and that was the end of that.
The honeyed wood of the floor glows in the afternoon sunlight, and my eyes droop as I curl up into Fabian’s heat on the couch, joints aching. His chest underneath my head is rising and falling, in and out, and everything goes hazy around the edges. We’re like some old couple sleeping during the day. When I wake, I’m stretched out and covered by a blanket. I can hear keys tap-tapping away in the next room. I straighten my legs, joints complaining. The throw smells of man and soap, and I press it to my nose and inhale. How sweetly he takes care of me! I’ve fallen asleep here every day this week; maybe it’s my shifts moving between days and nights.
I stand and stretch, heading into the bedroom, and Fabian stops typing, swiveling around in his chair to grin at me.
My jaw cracks as I yawn. “Have I been out long?”
He studies the clock on his screen, frowning. “About four hours actually.”
Jesus. “I need to track my sleep better. I think you’re keeping me awake too long at night.”
“I’m keepingyouawake?” His face curls into a smirk, and he’s thinking about last night when I woke him up by taking his cock—which I happened to find erect under the sheets—into my mouth.
“You need to stop sleeping naked,” I say.
This gets me a husky laugh. “You know it’s a ploy, right? To get the kind of thing you did to me last night.”
