I headed for the stairwell at the far end of the wing, the one no one else used because it dead-ended on the second floor and required a journey past a bunch of offices to reach an actual exit.
Glancing at the notifications on my phone as I descended the stairs, I didn't realize until too late that I wasn't alone.
Sebastian didn't notice me right away, and it was a good thing because I needed a second to fortify myself. He was wearing another set of near-death scrubs and that annoyed me for no good reason. I mean, did he have to be a rain cloud all the time? And again with the forearms. Really. This was becoming flagrant. It was like he wanted me staring.
He probably relished the attention. Look, ladies and gentlemen, look at these arms! They can flip you on your belly and fuck you from behind before you can say yes, please.
We reached the landing at almost the same time and it was hilarious to watch as recognition slackened the permafrost of his scowl.
I had no intention of stopping to chat with him—as if there was anything to chat about. Oh, yes, you're right, you are the only person to give me an orgasm without prolonged and significant attention to my clit. And two of them! So good of you to remind me.
As if Sebastian had exactly that discussion in mind, he reached for the railings on either side of the stairs and trapped me on the landing. I could've retreated up the stairs so I wasn't truly trapped but the gesture made his prerogative plain.
"There you are." He managed to sound exasperated as he said this, as if I'd been avoiding him.
Obviously, that was not the case. I merely left my apartment two hours earlier than usual to take a yoga class in the Back Bay before work and bypassed the attending surgeons' lounge entirely when I arrived at the hospital. No avoidance to be found.
"Here I am." I gestured down the stairs. "There, I am going."
"Wait just a minute." He winced before dragging a glance up from my sneakers to settle on my plain hospital-issued scrub v-neck. "No wordy t-shirt today?"
I shook my head. No t-shirt today because I never went to yoga before work, and I failed to bring the right clothes in my haste to get out the door. "Evidently."
The frown dissolved into his usual scowl, and there was a second where he loomed over me, his thick, roped arms stretched out and his jaw scruffier than ever, where he seemed to be staring at my mouth.
But then he ruined it by speaking.
"Listen, about last night—"
"You don't have to finish that sentence," I said.
"—obviously, it happened and—"
"Really, you don't need to do this," I said.
"—I don't want there to be anything awkward between us. Anything more awkward—"
"Oh my god," I muttered.
"—but I need you to know I'm not looking for anything. Anything serious. Anything at all, actually. I'm not interested in repeating—"
"Wow. Wow."
"—and I hope you can understand."
I blinked up at him, shocked but also a bit impressed by his ability to cram that much destruction into a couple of minutes. It was remarkable in its messiness. I almost admired it, as someone who was also known to engage in tragic messiness—not as the woman with whom he was making the mess.
"Okay. About that." I wiggled a hand in his direction. "I just need you to know that I have neither the desire nor the expectation of ever"—I dropped a repulsed glance at his scrub pants to guarantee no misunderstanding—"enduring that again."
"Enduring? I'm pretty sure you did better than endure it."
"Whatever gets you through the night," I replied. "If it were up to me, we'd never cross paths again, let alone—ahem." Another below-the-waist glance. "As far as I'm concerned, it's already forgotten. Hell, it wouldn't have crossed my mind once today if you hadn't brought it up, but since you did, we can agree it's best left in the past. Okay? All right. I'm on my way out so I'd love it if you could scoot aside."
He shifted to lean back against the stairwell wall. "You—what?" he called.
"Yeah, I'm heading out."
"Where?" he growled.
The balls on this guy. The epic, arrogant, presumptuous balls. He wasn't looking for anything serious—as if any guy who pinched pussies in a hallway was teed up for serious—yet here he was, badgering me about going for a walk.
Yeah, like I needed serious with that maniac.
His scowl faltered and with it went the cornerstone of my confidence. I could play this game so long as we stayed in the roles we'd assigned each other. I couldn't do it if he wasn't going to hold up his end of the bargain. I couldn't. If I let go for even a minute, I'd have to reckon with the reality that I'd had wild, filthy, satisfying sex with a man I despised on an exhaustive, thorough level.
With my neighbor.
With my colleague.
With my cellmate for the next six weeks of conflict resolution counseling.
And it had been so good, I couldn't really think about it because it made me angry to know I'd wasted decades of my life on trash sex. I'd convinced myself that I couldn't get out of my head enough to find sex pleasurable and that it was a me problem, not a partner problem.
Yet all along, Sebastian with the good dick was living upstairs and working down the hall and busy being the moodiest, most antagonistic asshole in the world.
No, I couldn't think about any of this, and there was no way he could stop playing the game. If he did, I'd have to acknowledge that he'd touched every last inch of me, even the places I'd just stopped hating and didn't know how to love yet—and I didn't have time for that kind of work today. Probably not tomorrow either.
I motioned for him to say something, to give me a single reason to explain myself to him. He stared at me for a long, crackling moment before blinking away with a shrug. "Fine. Go. Whatever."
"Good talk," I called to him. "It definitely didn't sound rehearsed. Well done, Stremmel."
From two flights above, I heard him laugh. Then, "Shut up, Shap."
Chapter 9
Sebastian
Despite all quirks to the contrary, I did not have a death wish.
I wasn't depressed either, though I'd been evaluated more times than I could count, especially during my emo-goth phase in high school. On more than one occasion, my mother had dragged me into the pediatrician's office, waved at my skintight, safety-pin-studded black jeans, my dress-code-violating black eyeliner, and the hair I insisted on wearing long and in front of my eyes, and begged the doctor to explain how any of that was okay. Each time, the doctor told my mother I was all right. She also explained that "all right" could be a lot weird.
By the time I left for college, I'd been evaluated for everything. I could ramble off the depression and mood disorder screening questions by heart. For a minute, I contemplated going into psychiatry because it seemed like I already knew the drill.
That said, I did spend the entirety of my twenties and a good portion of my thirties unpacking a storage unit full of deadbeat dad drama in therapy.
I wasn't depressed. Not anxious. I just lived with a simmering cauldron of rage and contempt for the assholes and idiots of the world, and that took up a lot of my time.