That Thing Between Eli and Gwen (22 page)

“Are you trying to seduce me, Doctor?” I wiped the corner of my mouth.

His eyebrow went up. “Is it working?”

“I think I’ll just keep you guessing.” I grinned, reaching into my bag when my phone rang. The number looked familiar but there was no ID. “Guinevere Poe.”

“Gwen, it’s me. Please don’t hang up,” he shouted into the phone.

I did anyway and dropped it beside me, looking back to Eli, who just stared at me.

“Is everything okay?”

“Yep. It was no one important—” Before I could even finish, my phone rang again and vibrated against the counter.

“Do they know they aren’t important?” he asked softly, placing the fresh cut lettuce in a bowl.

“It’s Sebastian.”

“I figured. Want me to answer?” he questioned.

I couldn’t tell at all what he was thinking. The phone stopped, and I let out a sigh of relief, only to have it start ringing again.

“Please make him stop. He called before, and I told him I didn’t want anything to do with him. For some reason, he doesn’t believe me.” I grabbed the phone and handed it to him.

He smirked, wiping his hands before taking it. “How can I help you, Sebastian?” he questioned.

I wished I could hear him on the other side.

“I’m going to have to stop you right there, because we had this conversation already. What my girlfriend and I do is none of your business.”

I walked around the counter to Eli. He looked at me oddly as I squeezed between him and the counter, kissing up his neck. He pressed up against me.

“Eli…” I moaned, louder than necessary.

Eli placed his thumb on my bottom lip, his eyes never off of them. “Sebastian, if you’ll excuse me, my girlfriend is begging for my attention.”

“I’m begging for a lot more than that,” I said to him, and I was sure that was the last thing Sebastian heard before he hung up.

I watched Eli’s hands go on either side of me after returning my phone to my bag. “You called me your girlfriend.”

“Aren’t you?” he asked, gripping my breast. “You are only seeing me, aren’t you?”

Licking my lip, I nodded.

“Then by definition, you are mine. Just like I’m your boyfriend. Now I am tempted beyond measure to take you right here. But, I promised you dinner.” He moved his hands back down. “So you are safe until then.”

“Are you sure?” I said, reaching for him.

He bit his lip, glaring at me.

“Because what your body and mouth are telling me are two different things right now.”

“Thank God,” he muttered to himself when the timer went off.

Laughing, I backed away, allowing him to finish with his cooking. “Saved for now, but the night is still young,” I said, moving to get the wine.

“When I first kissed you, I thought my appetite for sex might put you off. Yet, you are enjoying yourself as you tempt me every step of the way,” he said, grabbing plates.

“Would you prefer me to be nervous? Pretend I don’t like the way you bend me over and—”

“You are evil.” He kissed my lips. “I like it.”

I kissed him back, and bit his bottom lip. “Good. I’m too stubborn to change now.”

“Let’s eat, we can talk about that later,” he said, moving to the dishes.

I watched as he took his time, like the perfectionist he was, putting everything together elegantly on the table. It looked better than if we had ordered it off a menu at a five-star restaurant and tasted just as good.

“Grab the salad?” he said, moving toward his dining room.

“We are eating in your dining room?”

“That is where people usually eat dinner, Guinevere,” he said, placing my plate on a silver mat on top of his black wooden table. The whole table was already set up for two, with wine glasses and a pitcher of water in the center.

“You really went all out,” I whispered when he took the bottle and salad from me, placing them on the table before pulling out my chair.

“There is even vanilla ice cream in the freezer.”

“Don’t you hate it?”

“But you believe it is the cornerstone of ice cream, remember? And this isn’t really going all out. When I go all out, you will know.”

“Honestly, I thought you would make hamburgers and we would watch Animal Planet together again. What is this? It smells good.”

“It’s just chicken with prosciutto and tomatoes over polenta,” he replied.

I was tempted to point out that he had said
just
before that description.

“What kind of first date would hamburgers and Animal Planet be?”

I shrugged. “You’ve just done so much today—”

“Good, you’ll always remember how amazing I am.” He winked.

There’s that ego.
Saying nothing, I took a bite. I kind of wished it didn’t taste as delicious as it did. I could feel him staring at me, waiting. Chewing slowly, I reached for the glass of wine.

“You are trying so hard not to compliment me right now, aren’t you?”

“I really am. It’s so good.” I caved, cutting into more of it.

Eli

Because I’d cooked, she refused to let me help clean up. Instead, she made me sit where she had at the counter, placing the gloves on her hands and getting to work.

“Guinevere, it’s fine—”

“I had a really amazing night. You wouldn't let me do anything, so please at least let me clean up.”

Raising my hands in defeat, I sat back down, noticing the book that hung out of her bag. “What are you reading?” I asked.

“A collection of poems by W. H. Auden.” She scrubbed.

“May I?” I asked, already reaching for it.

She nodded.

Taking the book out, I flipped to the page she had dog-eared. I noticed how worn the spine was, to the point that if I closed the book, it would still open right back to this page.
She must really love it.
Smirking to myself, I cleared my throat, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw her look up at me. I read, my voice barely over a whisper.

“And down by the brimming river I heard a lover sing under an arch of the railway:
Love has no ending.
I’ll love you, dear…I’ll love
you
till China and Africa meet, and the river jumps over the mountain, and the salmon sing in the street,
I’ll love you…
till the ocean is folded and hung up to dry and the seven stars go squawking like geese about the sky…”

Even with all my dramatic pauses, it took only two minutes to read. When I looked back up at her, she had stopped doing the dishes. Her brown eyes were warmer than ever before, and the corner of her lip turned up slightly.

“You win.”

“What?”

“This date. It’s officially the best one of my whole life. You win. I admit that you, Eli Philip Davenport, are remarkable,” she whispered before looking back down to scrub away at my plates.

I walked over and came up behind her, grabbing her hands. I pulled off the gloves myself and she didn’t stop me. She had long since taken off her jacket, forcing me to stare at her shoulders and chest all night long. Brushing her hair over, I kissed the base of her neck, sliding the straps of her dress and bra off her shoulder. Her dress fell to the floor with ease, the bra still cupped to her chest.

“Come to bed.”

Chapter Eighteen

Miracles and Tragedies

Guinevere

It had been a week since our first official date, and I still couldn’t get it out of my head. Whatever he’d wanted from me that night, he could have gotten, but instead we only made out. Yes, it got…passionate, and lust poured off us both in waves, but we just had stripped down to nothing but our underwear and kissed each other. There were times where we talked about random things, like his childhood home and things he enjoyed doing—apparently he really enjoyed swimming, too. We talked until I fell asleep with his arms around me. His reason for not sleeping with me was simple: it was our first date. He said you don’t sleep with the girl on the first date…at least, that's how it worked for him. People often say that dating is a game, and if it was, Eli had mastered it to an art form. It was funny though, at least to me: the fact that we didn’t sleep together made the night all the more memorable.

“Dr. Davenport, please do the surgery.”

When I turned the corner, I heard a sob.

There stood Toby Wesley, gripping Eli’s white coat.

His three interns all tried to help, but he just waved them off. “Toby—”

“She’s all I have left. She’s my little girl, there has to be something else you can try. We’ve poked and prodded her, we’ve pumped her veins full of poison! You have to do the surgery!”

“The tumor is—”

“Fuck the tumor!” he yelled, releasing Eli's coat and pushing him away. “Fuck the damn tumor! I want it out of her, and if you won’t do it, I will find someone else who will!” He walked back into the room, the door slamming behind.

Eli took a deep breath, saying something to the doctors around him before heading toward the stairs.

Only when they were all gone did I head to the patient's door, gripping the painting in my hands. Unsure whether or not I should go in, I put the painting by the door, but before I could leave, it opened again. “Sorry.” I backed up quickly. Toby looked understandably worse than the last time I had seen him; the dark circles around his eyes made me feel like he hadn’t really slept in years. His gaze shifted down to the painting that had fallen into the room.

“Did you bring it?” Molly waved behind him.

“I made a promise, didn’t I?” I smiled, bending down to pick the painting off the ground. Without a word, he moved over for me to enter.

I walked up to her bedside. Her skin looked almost gray, and she couldn’t even lift herself up. Her scarf was the brightest sparkling pink I had ever seen, and she wore a bow on her arm where her IV was.

Pulling up a chair, I sat, placing the painting on my lap. “Can I open it for you?” I asked her.

She tried her best to nod.

Pulling the brown paper off, I held it up closer for her to see. “What do you think?”

“Daddy, it’s Mommy and the baby.” She reached up to touch it and smiled to her dad, who leaned against the window with his hand over his mouth, looking at the family portrait of them. Swallowing a lump in his throat, he knelt by her bed, taking her hand. “Yes…yes sweetheart, it is,” he whispered.

Seeing them, I felt my eyes burn.

“What do you say to Ms. Poe?”

“Can I really have it?” she asked.

Laughing, I nodded. “Of course you can have it. I made it for you…the both of you.”

He glanced up at me and stood on his own two feet again. “Molly, you still need to say thank you,” he said to her.

“Thank you!”

“You're very welcome. Keep looking at it, and hopefully it makes you feel better, okay?”
If only it was that easy.

“I feel better now.” She touched her mother's face.

“I’ll come visit you later, all right?”

“I’ll walk you out,” her father said when she nodded.

He didn’t have to, but I felt like he wouldn’t take no for an answer. The moment I stepped out, he closed the door behind us.

He stood there, fighting back tears, but failing. Taking a deep breath, he smiled at me. “I know you don’t know me too well, but can I hug you?”

Nodding, I wrapped my arms around him.

He let out a small cry, but stifled it to the best of his ability.

It felt like he was falling, or just crumbling in my arms.

Finally he let go, then wiped his eyes. “How did you know about the baby she was going to have?”

“I heard a few nurses whispering about it. It’s all right—”

“It’s more than that. Thank you. Thank you so much.” He took my hands and turned back to look into her room. “I’m so scared. I’m not sure what to do. She’s suffering so much, and I can’t do anything but sit here and watch. She collapsed this morning, she’s dying, and her doctors are saying they can’t operate. I should go, right? I should try for other opinions, right?”

I wished it was a rhetorical question, but he was really asking for an answer. “Toby, I’m not a doctor, I don’t know.”

“But if it was your child—”

I sighed. “I’m so sorry, Toby, I wish I could help you. I really don’t know what to say. I can’t answer that because I don’t have children. I can’t understand the position or pain you are in. All I can do is tell you to trust yourself. Do what you think is right for Molly. That’s all you can do, isn’t it?”

He was silent, and it was almost as painful as him speaking.

“Go in, she's calling for you.” I waved back to the small girl inside.

“Thank you again,” he whispered, his hand on the door.

“Of course.”

I stayed there for a little while longer before walking back to my station. If I felt this bad, I wondered how Eli felt. I couldn’t imagine having that much pressure on his shoulders, and that was just one of his patients. How did he do it? How did he deal with it all? When he was home, it was like the hospital him was switched off. He never went into detail about anything. He would always just say 'saved one'…but what about the people he couldn’t save?

Does he not tell me because he doesn’t think I can understand?
I knew he couldn’t break doctor-patient confidentiality, and I didn’t want him to—I just wanted to know how he was doing.

“Gwen!” Logan came up to me, dressed in dark jeans and a pretty nice leather jacket.

I had noticed that after he had declared he wasn’t going to be a doctor, his fashion was changing slightly. I guessed he was just finally being who he really was. He’d even gotten his ear pierced.

“Hey, aren’t you going on tour?” I asked when he reached me.

He frowned. “Can’t wait to get me out of the way, can you?”

“That’s not what I meant.” I laughed.

“I know. I leave tomorrow. Just came to have lunch with my mother and ask you a small favor.”

“What?”

He nodded behind me to the mural. “I won’t be back for the unveiling, and it’s been killing me wanting to see what you’re doing back there. I swear some people have already peeked in.”