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Sunny: Do you have plans this weekend?
Me: Nope. It’s a great weekend for you to visit.
ChapterFifteen
Ian
Last Year in early July
The elevator dings, and I lean against the doorjamb, arms crossed, heart noticeably palpitating beneath my sternum, waiting. My palms sweat and my fingers and bare toes ice over in the overpowering air conditioning. It’s either the freezing AC, or it’s a spike in adrenaline. Probably a combination of the two.
The doors slide open, and cornflower blue eyes peer down the hall. She’s wearing a long off-white t-shirt dress that falls off one shoulder with a light brown woven belt. The loose dress is just tight enough to hint at the nubile curves beneath. Strappy high heeled sandals with braided leather the same light tan color as her belt give her height and accentuate toned, shapely calves.
Her gold bracelets glisten under the fluorescent light as she adjusts the overnight tote on her shoulder. Her blonde hair cascades softly over lightly tanned shoulders, and her glossy, rose-colored lips curve into a smile.
With one arm, I hold my apartment door wide, gesturing for her to come on through. In my eagerness, I didn’t grab a key, and if the door closes, it will automatically lock, so I stand there, glued to the spot, gawking at the woman who may bear my child.
There’s nothing strange at all about that thought.
As she passes me, I lift the straps over her overnight bag, a multi-colored cloth bag that surprises me by its notably heavy weight. She saunters down the hall, and my gaze falls to the sway of her hips and the way the cotton dress drapes over the globes of her ass. I’d like to push her up against the wall, lift the hem of her dress, caress her curves, and find out why she doesn’t have any panty lines, but I shake that line of thought away as I flick the lock on the apartment door. I’m getting ahead of myself. Way too ahead of myself. She’s still expecting a jar.
“How was the drive?”
“Fine. No traffic on a Saturday evening.” She gives me that girl-next-door, blushing smile, and the rest of the room fades to black. “Well, on good days,” she amends.
Congestion in this city can occur at seemingly any time, but yes, the traffic gods favor drivers in off-times like the weekend.
“I’ll put this in the guest room.” As I say it, I wonder if she might be expecting me to deposit her things in my room. Does me putting her stuff in the guest room communicate I’m fully expecting to hand her my jar?
I return from depositing her overnight bag in the guest room and find her standing at the end of the hall where I left her. The corner of her lip moves up and down ever so slightly, a sure sign she’s chewing that corner of her lip. The awkwardness between us needs to be resolved or she’ll be backing out and driving back to Austin before we share a drink.
“Have you eaten dinner?” She shakes her head, and I say, “Good. I’m starving. Let me get some shoes on and we can head out. Make yourself at home.”
When I return with socks on my feet and shoes dangling from my fingers, she remains in the same spot, leaning against the wall that separates the galley kitchen and the entry hall. She opens her pocketbook, which could double as a small overnight bag. It’s in the same light color leather as her belt and sandals.
“I’ve got a contract. We can review it at dinner if you want. Everyone says that in situations like this, it’s important for the arrangement be agreed to in writing, so we don’t have any misunderstandings.”
She holds the papers out to me, and I simply stare at them.A contract between friends?
“This removes any parental obligations. You won’t need to pay child support. That kind of stuff.”
A memory of her sense of fairness hits me hard. “Is this another situation where you want to outline the parameters of the contest?”
We used to do our own homegrown version of barrel racing, but she and my brothers were older, and she’d always insisted on adjusting the rules to create an equal playing field regardless of our differences in sizes.
“This isn’t a game.”
Her words slap like a well-deserved reprimand. Of course, she’s right. I take the papers from her and set them down on the kitchen counter.
“Why don’t we talk about it over dinner?” I propose.
Her gaze cuts to the discarded papers.
“I’ll agree to anything you want. And I agree, this is important. It’s not a game. We should talk about it, and then you can mark up the contract in any way you wish.”
On the way to the restaurant, she asks about work. As a matter of principle, I never share specifics on cases. Even in the cloak of anonymity, it slips into murky waters, and a non-medical person would rarely understand, anyway. But I share that it's been a good week. Mostly scheduled surgeries, with one exception. A construction worker fell from a building about five stories high. Before I entered the OR, he’d been stable, or so I had been told, but the staff didn’t catch internal cranial hemorrhaging and he died on the table while I worked on repairing his pelvic bone.
I spent a good amount of time reviewing the case today and determined there were few signs, and even if someone had picked up on it, there was little chance we could’ve saved him. The bigger miracle was that he’d made it into the OR at all.
