It's Complicated (37 page)

Fifty-fifty.

Both needs would soon be satisfied.

Cheerful and excited, she took a huge leap of faith in coming here. After walking past his building three times today, her day off, she had finally seen his car in the driveway. Dinnertime made for the perfect excuse to surprise him. What man could resist a woman bearing pad Thai and chicken satay?

And her heart. Oh—yes. That part. Laura had encouraged her to just jump in and see where things went with Alex.

Impulsivity wasn’t exactly her trademark when it came to her emotions.

Alex, though, was different. Worth being different for.

Struggling with the bags, she set one down and rang his buzzer. Waited. No answer. Was it the kind with an intercom, or would he just—

“Josie?” Alex stood at the door, wet hair, a shirt on backwards.

“Hi!” she said, chipper and overly friendly. Holding up the bags, she added, “You hungry?”

Confusion clouded his features. Had he been showering? Why else would his clothes be on backwards?

Oh.

Oh.

What if she’d misjudged everything and was horribly, painfully wrong? Maybe he’d just been fucking someone else in his apartment, and this was that bleak moment when she realized his interest was just a sham. A vortex of fear opened up before her, an abyss of nothingness, calling her name, beckoning.

And then he stepped forward and smiled. “I am, actually. Come on in.” He planted a kiss on her cheek.

It was the best kiss
ever
.

Feeling stupid for doubting him, she walked into his apartment a bit dazed, haunted by the sudden horror that had enveloped her, so all-consuming at the thought of Alex with someone else.

“I hope you like Thai,” she said, looking around the apartment. Something was off. Unlike her last visit here, the room was disheveled, as if no one had bothered to do anything for a week or two. Not filthy—just neglected. Items stood where they’d been casually thrown or abandoned. Beer bottles (good beer, she noted) dotted all the tables, along with cereal bowls, spoons adhered to the bottom by dried milk.

Alex caught her looking. “I’ve worked a crazy set of shifts this week, and, well…”

She waved her hand. “I wasn’t judging.”

He laughed, removing the food from the bags. “Yes, you were.”

“Okay, I was. This is more what I expected to see the first time I came over,” she admitted.

“Good. Because this is more the normal me. I cleaned before you came over last time.” His sidelong glance made a part of her melt.

How intimate were they? The kiss in the alley yesterday, his leg pressing between hers, the way his mouth stole all the air and blew a desperate need into her rose to the surface.

“I’m sorry I didn’t call,” Josie said, stumbling over her words. “I just thought I’d pop in and—”

“I’m glad you didn’t. I might have begged off.” The aroma of spicy peanut sauce, lemongrass, and fish sauce filled the small kitchen, making Josie’s stomach groan once more. And then her appetite faded completely as she digested his words.

What did
that
mean? Should she leave? Was this a bad time? He stood next to her, two feet away, and yet he might as well be on Mars. The red cotton t-shirt was on backwards, blue jeans shorts showing off powerful thighs, and his bare feet were planted firmly on the floor, his body casual and there. Yet a tension ran through every muscle, the lines of his veins straining against his skin, jaw tight and face immutable. A mask.

So much for coming here in a spirit of openness and renewal.

“Is this a bad time?” she asked, taking a step toward the door. Panic rushed into her, like a wave crashing over her on a beach, unexpected and choking, making it hard to breathe.

He seemed to sense her shift and immediately responded, closing the gap between them, arms around her like a rescuer. “No, no, not at all. In fact, I’m really glad you’re here.” A deep inhale from him against her neck made her feel welcome as his chest expanded, filling with her.

“I am so glad you’re here,” he repeated.

Josie at his door. Bearing Thai food. If she was wearing crotchless panties then she was
the one
, no doubt.

Why, then, was he being such an ass? If he didn’t pull it together he’d ruin everything before they could get in a bite of Pad Thai. The second meeting at work today had been far, far worse than the initial one. The parents weren’t suing, the baby was out of the NICU, and everything was fine, but Alex’s judgment was being called into question and it was chipping away at his soul, sliver by chunk. Holding the line on unnecessary interventions and preserving the mother’s wishes for a birth that made sense—within medically responsible boundaries—had never been easy.

Now it was downright grueling, and he didn’t know how to explain to Josie that he was fighting for his soul right now at work.

So he didn’t explain. Why burden her with any of this? None of the other women he’d dated had cared about his stressors. From pre-med undergrad days through med school, he’d kept his professional life separate from his personal experiences, finding most women completely uninterested in what he did. Shining eyes loved the fact that he was a doctor-in-training or, now, a true physician. But they were more enamored with the idea of dating (and, perhaps, marrying) a doctor than with the reality of being with a doctor.

Keeping that line intact would probably be the only way to save his relationship with Josie, already tenuous. He had no inclination to put any of his shit on her right now.

Suck it up, dude
, he told himself. A deep breath, inhaling the scent of lavender and coffee that clung to Josie like a second skin, rejuvenated him. He pulled back from the embrace and kissed her softly.

“You read my mind.”

“You were thinking about Thai?”

“I was thinking about you.”

“Clearly you weren’t thinking about your shirt.” She snickered, breaking the embrace and dishing up some noodles. He looked down. Damn it. He’d been in the shower when she’d buzzed and his clothes were thrown on hastily.

Maybe they’d be yanked off just as hastily in the next few minutes. The thought should have excited him, but it only made him feel stunted. Inadequate. As if he’d failed her somehow by not being the centered man she expected him to be, by having his judgment questioned at work. Could it bleed into his personal life? Lately, the stress had.

What else should he question? You had to have at least a touch—even the tiniest taste—of a God complex to become a physician. Especially a surgeon. Alex’s entire life had been built one one major premise: education and hard work will set you free. His compass was that simple, from watching his mother make her way through teen motherhood and poverty to a clinical psychologist’s license and building her own practice through his own educational journey as the child of a poor teen mother.

For the first time in his life he wasn’t being interrogated about his knowledge, or his skills, but rather how he assessed a situation and then acted.

And it sucked.

Sinking himself into Josie was what he needed most. Skin to skin, rolling in bed, making love until his last gasp was her name and all the stress and horror of his internal self-flagellation was gone. Drained. Depleted.

That was what he needed.

Thank God she’d appeared.

Josie reached out to touch Alex’s elbow. Saying this was important—she wanted to get it out of the way so it wouldn’t weigh on her this evening A fun evening of food, movies and sex—lots of sex—shouldn’t be marred by her worry. He turned his shining eyes on her, focused completely on whatever she was about to say.

“I did the paperwork on your grandfather’s most recent eval, and he’s…he’s definitely deteriorating,” she said quietly.

Alex closed his eyes and nodded slowly, letting out a long exhale. “I’m not surprised,” he said. “That matches what my mom and aunts have been telling me.”

“Alex, I…I want to be careful here, because I don’t want to cross any ethical lines…”

His face went hard, suddenly, like granite, a look she’d never seen on his face. “Then don’t.” The two words hung in the air, suspended by a tone of judgment.

“Then don’t—what?” she countered, her voice taking on the same hard edge. Perhaps she shouldn’t have brought it up. Their plates sat in front of them, ignored, and her stomach clenched.

“Don’t do anything that would violate your professional ethics, or anyone else’s.”

“What would make you think I would do that?” she hissed back. This was not the conversation she had expected. What the hell had just happened?

“If you’re going to try to tell me,” he said, standing and leaning forward, eyes angry, “that you are at all tempted to find out whether my grandfather is in the control group or is receiving the medication, then we need to stop this conversation, right here, right now.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” she protested, hands up, palms facing him, standing up herself. She nearly took a step backwards, simply to give herself distance from the near vitriol in his voice, his disdainful face, the puffed-out chest and the balled-up hands. “I wasn’t implying that I would do anything like that,” she said, her body mimicking his. If she could have stepped up on a stool and been face to face, eye to eye with him, she would have. As it was, she had to look up, craning her neck, and stand up, stand tall, as straight as possible to get her point across. A forcefield of fury buzzed between the two of them, seeming to come out of nowhere.

“You just said that you’re worried that my grandfather’s failing, and that he might…”

“He might
what
?”

“You were the one who was about to say it,” he answered after a long pause.

“I was about to say that you might want to get a second opinion, or a third opinion, or a
whatever
opinion,” she said, snarkily, “because Ed is falling apart, and I can’t imagine that he’s going to be safe living independently for much longer. Whether he’s in the control group or not is not something that I’m privy to know, I’m just trying to tell you, as a friend—”

“
Friend
?”

The acid in his tone made her throat well up with salty tears. Her anger, still there, but now replaced with an ever-increasing layer of hurt.

“Is that what we are, Josie? Friends? ’Cause”—he leaned in, hot breath against her ear—“cause I don’t fuck my friends by the side of the river. I don’t invite my friends over, and make them dinner, and sleep with them. I don’t let them fall asleep in my lap, and cuddle with them, and stroke their hair, and marvel at them. I don’t know what kind of
friends
you have, but I don’t do that with my
friends
.” He pulled back.

There was a look of such hurt, and confusion, and anger, and frustration, and about 217 other emotions that she couldn’t identify as her own brain raced, trying to process the implications of this conversation. “Fine, then.” She lowered her shoulders, straightened up her neck, and looked him in the eye again. “I’m telling you, as someone who has just interacted with Ed on a professional
and
personal level, that for whatever reason you and your mother and her sisters may want to consider getting more opinions on how you can slow down the deterioration that he’s experiencing.”

“And that’s your professional opinion, doctor?” he said, a nasty sneer twisting his face. Who the hell had he become?

Oh, no, he didn’t.

“You went there? Really? You…
went
there?” she seethed. This was going to be about pulling rank? She was always going to be the cute little nurse, and he was always going to be the big, bad doctor? It was her turn to stick her finger in his face. “I may not be a doctor, and I may not have prescription powers, or have suffered through all the years of med school, internship, residency, and all the other shit that you guys go through, but I can tell you one thing. I can tell with reasonable accuracy, based solely on symptoms, which people are in the control group and which are not. Now, I’m never going to cross a line that would jeopardize a multimillion-dollar National Institutes of Health-funded research project. This isn’t
Grey’s Anatomy
, and I’m not that Meredith chick.”