“Thank you.”
“Any time,” Rina answers with a frown. “But for real, one fucking code a night, Grace. There are only so many sundaes I can eat.”
Heat crawls up my skin that has nothing to do with my near-death experience just now. I just hope the true reason for my choking and subsequent blushing isn’t noticeable, or they’ll never let me deny anything. I don’t even know where that came from.
I mean, not entirely anyway.
“So now that you’re not dying, you never answered me about boning Carter.”
Is the woman trying to kill me?
“Carter is my attending,” I explain to Margot because it’s true and it’s simple and it’s easy. I wipe at a few tears from my eyes and straighten myself back up, resuming my position against the wall. “Nothing is happening there.” Also true.
Though yesterday was all moments. A series of them, one after the other.
But I don’t know how to read them or him for that matter. It’s all so confusing. One second, I think there is some heat, a spark between us only to have it snuffed out just as quickly. Every time anything has been flirted with; he runs in the opposite direction. He couldn’t get off me fast enough last night and the look in his eyes when he realized our position told me everything.
Horror.
He was horrified, and that’s the last thing I ever want to see on a man’s face when he’s on top of me, pinning me down. Even when I teased him when we were in the bathroom, I could see there was no intent or interest to him.
It’s just as well. Awesome really.
I live with him and I’m raw and sore from my breakup and the last thing I need is to jump into bed with another man. Especially a man as complicated as Carter Fritz. I need time for me. I need time to heal and get myself and my life back on track.
“Come on. The best way to get over someone is to get under them, and Carter is wicked hot. Plus, you know, he’s not a serial killer or a random dude you have to vet before you spread.”
“You’re making the ice cream in my stomach curdle.”
Margot waves Rina away.
I shake my head at Margot. “Work is my focus and nothing else.” It’s the safest way to be. “Dick complicates things I don’t need complicating,” I continue when neither of them feels the need to say anything, but exchange looks that say a whole lot. “I’m not in a place where I’m ready for anything with anyone, let alone someone like Carter.”
“Why does it have to be something?” Margot persists. “Why can’t it just be fun?”
“Because I’ve never done that before. I have no idea if my stupid heart would be in on the casual fun my vagina needs or go and catch feelings like she’s apt to do.”
“Just because you’ve never done it before doesn’t mean you can’t. Dick can be just dick with the right guy. Especially if you know the score from the start.”
“Can you stop saying the word dick when referencing my brother?”
“Sorry,” Margot apologizes. “But isn’t that what we’re talking about here? Her getting jiggy with her hottie attending?”
“Well, yeah. Kind of, I guess.” Rina pretends to shove her spoon down her throat, making a gagging sound as she does. “But it’s against hospital policy for her to do that. And, you know, he’s my fucking brother and Oliver’s brother.”
“Whatever.” Margot waves her away, turning her focus back to me like she’s ready to get down to business. “If Carter weren’t your attending, Oliver’s brother, and you weren’t recently out of a nasty relationship, he’d be perfect for you.”
I laugh at Margot and Rina grins, shaking her head, staring in at one of the babies who is starting to cry just as a nurse comes over and picks him up to soothe him.
“Oh, you mean if he weren’t Carter, and she weren’t Grace, they’d be perfect?” Rina smarts.
“Carter doesn’t see me that way,” I protest. “I don’t see him that way either and it’s how it should be.”
Only, that feels like a lie. At least the second half of that does. Because I’ve always had a small thing for Carter. I wasn’t lying when I said all the girls used to swoon over the hot pitcher because we did. Myself included though I would have never admitted to that as Oliver’s BFF.
Carter was older, god-like, devilishly handsome, and untouchable. So serious and reserved unless you were part of his inner sanctum and then you saw him. The real Carter Fritz.
It was like discovering a rare gem among lumps of coal.
That’s what this past week with him has been like. Glimpses, flirts, teases of the man beneath. He keeps so much of himself closed off and all it makes me want to do is dig deeper. Search harder. Uncover more.
But any attraction I’ve ever felt for him, I was quick to brush aside. I was engaged.
Now I’m not and though I’m trying still not to think about him in that way or confuse myself further, it’s getting harder to do so.
“Still, he would be fun for an easy fling,” Margot muses. “That’s all Carter does, right? That might be exactly what you need to get over what Tony did once and for all.”
“When is a fling ever easy?” Rina challenges, dropping her plastic spoon in her now empty cup before throwing it in a nearby trash bin. “It certainly didn’t go that way for me and Brecken.”
Margot laughs, leaning against the wall and playing with her hospital ID badge while throwing Rina a no-shit look. “That’s because Brecken always had other ideas when it came to you. Carter doesn’t strike me as that type. Just the kind who flings hot and fast and then moves on. He’s a total workaholic and so is Grace. That’s why it’s perfect.”
I shake my head, holding up my hand. “Stop. I’m not going to have a fling with Carter, hot, easy, fast, or otherwise.”
“If not Carter then someone else,” Margot persists. “You should definitely fling with someone. We’ll set the whole thing up. I might even have the perfect guy for you. He’s sex on legs and—”
“Evening ladies,” Carter drawls, coming up behind me out of freaking nowhere, and my eyes bulge out of my head. Oh shit!
Rina looks like she just swallowed a bug and I think Margot is about to pass out since all the blood has officially left her face.
“What brings you two to our neck of the woods?” he continues, coming to stand beside me and I think I want to die. If he heard our conversation… But it’s not like I said anything, right? Just that we’re not going to fling. Totally true.
Rina holds up her hand. “Patient decided tonight should be his night.”
“Was it?” Carter queries.
“No, thankfully, but I still felt life-affirming ice cream was in order along with seeing new life.”
“I’m just here for the girl talk and babies,” Margot states.
Carter turns to me, ever the stern attending. “No patients, Dr. Hammond?”
“My lady is only five centimeters and is still walking the halls with her wife. Dylan is on it. I was going to check on them after my lunch break.”
“And this is your lunch break? At one in the morning?”