“Brandon’s in surgery right now,” I explained to Mark. “He’s working on a complex case and it might be several hours if you insist on waiting for him. I know you want him to treat you, but trust me, he’d want you to let me do this.”
“Mark, let her put your shoulder back,” Lara told him. She frowned deeply at him. “Stop being such a baby.”
“I’m not being a baby,” he growled.
“You’re right. Babies can’t help themselves,” she teased. “You’re just being a stubborn immature fool. You shouldn’t have attempted that jump after you saw me do it, even though this was only your third time and you promised you’d go easy. You shouldn’t have gone dirt biking at all when you have a film role starting in less than two weeks. And now you demand to be taken to your favorite doctor even though it means you wait in pain for longer? Yeah, there’s definitely no immature behavior going on here.”
“No,” he said sullenly. “Maybe.”
“Mark, if you keep doing stupid shit, you’re gonna’ get really hurt or mess up your pretty face. Then you won’t have an acting career at all,” she told him. “Be smart.”
Mark frowned and looked from Lara to me. “Ten seconds of pain?” he asked.
“Or less,” I replied confidently.
He swallowed. “I guess I can deal with ten seconds of just about anything.”
“That’s the spirit,” I told him. I came closer to him and gently touched his deformed shoulder joint with my left hand. He jumped a little but didn’t wince away. Without putting enough pressure on him to cause pain, I could easily feel where the humerus was sitting, a few centimeters shy of the joint socket where it should be. It must hurt like a motherfucker. With my other arm, I put my stethoscope to his chest and pretended to listen to his heartbeat.
“Breathe deeply,” I ordered. He complied obediently. With little movements of my left hand, I gently probed to make sure there was nothing else going on with his shoulder. There wasn’t. This would be easy. He had no idea what I was doing.
Mark’s eyes had gone wide and panicked when I touched him, but he relaxed when he realized I wasn’t going to start moving his injured arm immediately. Men. Always so gullible.
“What are you going to do?” Mark asked when I finished with my stethoscope.
“I’m going to press your humerus bone back into the socket,” I explained. “It’ll hurt very badly for a split second and then you’ll feel immediate, total relief.”
“You promise it’ll only be a second of pain?”
“I promise.”
“And then immediate, total relief?” His eyes were still untrusting.
“Yes.”
He swallowed. “Okay.”
“Alright.” I looked at Lara. “Lara, will you stand on Mark’s other side and hold his opposite shoulder?”
“Sure,” she said, starting to walk to the other side of the room. While she moved, and Mark was thoroughly distracted, I firmly grabbed Mark’s right arm and popped it smoothly back to where it belonged. It was done and over before either of them had a chance to react.
“What the—” he started. “Hey, I wasn’t ready!”
I raised an eyebrow. “Sorry. Now how do you feel?” I asked him.
He looked surprised. “Better, actually.” He carefully lifted his right arm. “Much better.”
“Good,” I replied. “Now let me go get the nurse and we’ll have you evaluated for ligament damage.”
“Okay, but first, you have to tell us all about Brandon when he was a kid,” Lara insisted. “Was he a total shithead? I bet he was a shithead.”
“We want to know everything,” Mark added. “So, we can tease him mercilessly later.”
I grinned.
26
Brandon
When I got out of surgery to see that I had a text from Lara and a page from the ER, I panicked and ran downstairs. Mark had fallen from a dirt bike? Thoughts of complex spinal or brain issues, internal bleeding, organ damage, and burns proliferated through my brain as I took the stairs three at a time. Was this going to be worse than the last time I had to patch him up? That time he’d played the hero and ended up with a bullet in his left leg. He’d been damn lucky I’d been right there with him to keep him from bleeding out. The man was too brave and too confident for his own good.
I was still thinking horrible thoughts about what Mark would want me to say at his funeral or to his mom if I couldn’t save him, when I slid to a Risky Business stop in front of his ER bay. It was only then I heard the laughter.
It took me a moment to place the laughter. It wasn’t a sound I was that used to hearing, but something about it was familiar. Finally, I realized. It was Aimee’s laughter!
The sound brought a smile to my face. She had a wonderful laugh. I’d never made her laugh before. At least, not a real laugh. Not like she was laughing now.
I pulled back the hospital curtain to see Lara, Mark, and Aimee. They looked over to me in surprise.
“Hey, Doc!” Mark said, sitting up in bed and looking not very injured whatsoever. “After putting my arm back in its socket, Aimee here was telling us all your embarrassing teenage secrets.”
Aimee shook her head. “I was not,” she said defensively, although I wouldn’t hold it against her. “I was just telling them about your marijuana arrest in high school.”
I winced but tried to smother it. I’d been such a dumbass. “Go ahead and tell them,” I said as confidently as I could. “You don’t know my real embarrassing secrets, Aimee. We weren’t exactly best friends.”
Lara and Mark exchanged an uneasy glance as they felt the tension between Aimee and me.
“No,” Aimee replied, a knowing expression on her face. “Your best friend was Hunter Clements, who’s now serving a double murder charge for killing his ex-girlfriend and her sister by running them over with a truck while high on meth.”
I couldn’t smother the wince that followed that announcement. “Hunter’s in jail?” I hadn’t known, but I honestly wasn’t all that surprised. I shook my head. He was never that smart and he had horrible impulse control. “He was a troubled kid and I shouldn’t have hung around with him. I was a jerk, too, though. Especially to you.” The thought of Hunter’s near-attack on Aimee panged a guilty wave through me. I should never have left him alone with her.
Aimee’s mouth dropped open and then snapped shut as if surprised I would admit to it publicly. Lara and Mark were still looking on interestedly. “Well, you turned out alright, I guess,” Aimee added. “Lara and Mark were just telling me about your military medals. I had no idea.”
I swallowed uncomfortably. This was worse than talking about my teenage years. I didn’t feel like I deserved to have a chest full of medals for saving people’s lives in a warzone. Doctors were supposed to save people’s lives, period. It was the job. I didn’t want a bunch of medals for just doing my damn job. I felt like it diminished all the lives I couldn’t save, of which there had been many. Too many. I’d failed at least as much as I’d succeeded. Getting any kind of medal when my success rate was only fifty percent felt awfully disingenuous.
“Yeah, well, they give that shit out like candy in the military,” I said eventually.
Aimee looked at Lara, who shook her head. “They don’t,” she told her. “They really don’t. I don’t have any. Neither does Mark.”
“That’s not true,” Mark interjected. “You have a purple heart. So do I.”
“I meant real medals. A purple heart is the participation trophy of a war,” Lara said. “And I only have mine because I was stupid and sloppy.” Aimee was looking at her curiously, so she elaborated. “I got cocky and ended up getting stabbed in the abdomen,” she explained with a bemused shake of her head. “I was just being stupid, but now I can’t ever have kids.”
“Oh my God. That’s awful!” Aimee said, putting a hand to her mouth in horror. “I’m so sorry, Lara.”
Lara shrugged. “It’s okay.” She cocked her head to the side. “
I can always adopt or foster. It’s not that big of a deal to me.” She smiled at Aimee’s horrified expression. “At least I got a neat medal, right?”
“I guess so,” Aimee stuttered awkwardly. “I’m just glad you’re okay.”
Part of me wondered if Lara had ever acknowledged or ever really mourned her loss. I admired her resilience and ability to move on, but I couldn’t help but wonder if it was real. I hadn’t been serving with her when she received that particular injury, so I didn’t know if things had been different right afterwards. Her attitude did seem genuine, though. Maybe she just was really that strong. I wouldn’t put it past her.
“Lara is tougher than Doc and I combined,” Mark said, and I felt myself nodding in agreement. “She’s something else.”
“She certainly sounds like it,” Aimee agreed with a somewhat awed expression on her pretty features. “I scream like a little girl if I see a spider any larger than a penny. I wouldn’t last five minutes in your shoes,” she told Lara.
“Oh, I don’t like spiders either,” Lara replied with a sly smile. “Mark has to kill them for me. Roaches too. That’s his job.”
Aimee looked from her to Mark. “Have you two been together a long time?”
They both turned purple and I hid a smile. They were definitely in love. It was so obvious it was almost painful. “No,” Lara stuttered after a moment. “We’re just roommates. Normal roommates. Pals, you know?”
“Oh, okay,” Aimee replied with a shrug. “Sorry.”
Pals. Right.
She looked at me and I shook my head subtly to tell her she wasn’t that off base at all. She smirked a tiny, answering smirk. We were getting better at reading one another. It actually felt pretty good.
“Well, Mark and Lara, if neither of you are on your deathbed, Aimee and I have a lunch to get to,” I told them. “See you later.”
27
Aimee
I sent Lucy down from the administrative offices to get Mark discharged as fast as possible, and then went to meet Brandon at the Lone Star Lounge. It was a place I’d been meaning to eat at for a while but had never found the time. An additional small bonus about committing to lunch with Brandon three days a week meant that I would at least eat lunch three times a week. It was a small victory. Oftentimes I just got so busy at work that I forgot to eat at all. I’d get to the end of my day and have to consume a whole day’s worth of calories in one sitting just to feel normal again. It’s sad when only blackmail can be guaranteed to ensure you eat lunch.
The Lone Star Lounge was technically a bar and coffee house, and they didn’t serve lunch, but there happened to be an impressive selection of food trailers out on its patio. I settled on an interesting-sounding Vietnamese and Tex Mex fusion. Bahn Mi tacos? Sign me up. Brandon had already selected some sort of vegetable wrap from the vegan trailer across the way.
He smiled politely at me as I settled in across from him at a picnic table, suddenly unsure. This felt like a date. Was this a date? No, I reminded myself. It was blackmail. But it felt… not horrible? I didn’t know what was going on. I resolved just to roll with it as best I could.
“Okay, here I am,” I told him as confidently as I could manage. “Eating lunch with you as agreed.” I shrugged and looked around myself uncomfortably. “This is already weird.”
“You look concerned, Aimee,” Brandon remarked. He could read me too well. “I don’t bite.”
A sudden visceral memory of him grazing the sensitive skin on my neck with his teeth while fucking me silly shot through me like lightning. He did bite. And I loved it.
“I’m not worried,” I stuttered, feeling strangely foolish. I was probably flushing like a weirdo. I always blush when I’m uncomfortable. “I’m just concerned we won’t have anything to talk about for as long as it takes me to eat a Bahn Mi taco.”
He cocked an eyebrow at me. “We have plenty to talk about,” he said encouragingly when I squirmed in my seat. “I know you used to think I didn’t have any friends, but as you’ve now seen, I’m secretly a very regular person. Shockingly normal, even. I can have normal conversations, too. Try me.”
I doubted very much that Brandon was remotely normal. No one that looked like Brandon could ever be normal. Whatever else he was, Brandon was pretty damn extraordinary.
“Your friends seemed nice,” I heard myself saying. I had to say something.
“You seem almost insultingly shocked about that.” His smile was self-deprecating.
“I guess I am.” I admitted. “They seemed a bit intense, but still, perfectly lovely people.”
Brandon frowned at me. “Considering that my old buddy Hunter ended up in jail for murder, I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised that you’d be skeptical of my friends.” He shook his head. “I looked him up while you were ordering your food, and man… Hunter really screwed up.”
“Hunter is a fundamentally bad, dangerous person. He always was. It was only a matter of time for him.” I was, unfortunately, not surprised about him. He was a ticking time bomb in high school.
“I wasn’t much better, but I didn’t go out and murder anybody.” He looked mystified. “It’s really messed up that we had such similar starts, but I’m saving lives and he’s taking them.”
I felt myself frowning. “You were always better than him.” Brandon’s eyebrows crawled up his forehead.
“I was?” Now he was the one looking surprised. “I’m surprised to hear you say that.”
I nodded. “Yeah, you were,” I confirmed. “You definitely were.”
“I never should have let Hunter anywhere near you.”
“It wasn’t your fault.”
“Yes, it was. I was a bad person back then.”
“You were never a bad person, Brandon.”
Brandon, despite his behavior toward me, and his rebel-without-a-cause attitude, volunteered at the animal shelter in high school. He spent a huge amount of his free time helping his sick mom live a relatively normal life. He wasn’t a total dickhead. Except to me. Still, he sounded disbelieving that I might defend him.
“I can’t believe that you, of all people, would think that. I appreciate it, don’t get me wrong, but I’m shocked.” His utter confidence seemed momentarily shaken. Somehow, that made me feel a bit better.
“But you were only a jerk to me, Brandon. I saw how you treated other people. You might have been a risk taker and a rebel, but you weren’t cruel for shits and giggles. Hunter was a bully to everyone. He was just plain mean.” I remembered with disgust the way Hunter used to snap girls’ bra straps in the hallways and shove male “nerds” into lockers. More importantly, I remembered his sneer as he advanced on me while I cried, terrified, on the ground. I’d never forget that feeling.
Brandon smiled at me in a way that made my heart pound violently against my ribs. The feeling of same vanished into nothingness. “I don’t know, I was pretty unpleasant to you, Aimee.” His dark eyes stared deeply into mine. “I went out of my way to make you miserable.”
“Why?”
I’d always wondered why Brandon chose me to torment. This seemed like as good an opportunity as any to find out the answer. I heard the vulnerability in my own voice, but I couldn’t resist asking. I felt suddenly exposed and weak just for asking it.
Brandon’s expression was carefully neutral. “Is this really what you want to talk about over lunch? Why I was a bully?”
I blinked. “Why not? I’m being blackmailed into attending these little sessions with you. I might as well satisfy my curiosity.” I put on a confident face.
“I’ll be happy to satisfy you in any other way you like,” he said suggestively.
I wasn’t having any of it at the moment. “Don’t flirt with me. Just answer my question, Brandon.”
He laughed lightly but it didn’t last long. “Fair enough. I hated you because you were there.” His voice was sincere. “That was it.”
“Where? Austin?”
“At my house.” He said it like I shou
ld have already known.
“I didn’t live in your house. I lived in the garage apartment. And I didn’t ask to live there. My mom chose to work for your mom. Nobody gave me the option.”
In fact, I got uprooted from Tulsa to move down to Austin for my mom’s job. I had to leave all my friends. It sucked.
“That’s a technicality.” He frowned at his food like it had just offended him somehow. “Your showing up in my life was the last straw for me. First my mom got sick, then my dad became even more neglectful and absent than he’d been before, and finally, when I thought I was going to be completely alone, you turned up with your mom. My dad, who had always just ignored the hell out of me, decided to take an interest in you. This random girl who was smarter and younger than me. My mom was dying upstairs, and he was helping you with your algebra homework. It was just too much.”
“You were jealous of me?” I asked. I could hear the incredulity in my voice. “Me? The awkward, chubby girl who had no money and ate ramen noodles for dinner every night? The one with no friends who was three years younger than all her classmates and that everyone thought was some kind of smart weirdo?”
“Yeah.” He shrugged. “At least, that’s what my therapist says and he’s usually right.”
It made a strange sort of sense. It actually made me feel sort of bad for Brandon. However…
“Your therapist?” I questioned.
He shook his head at me. “That’s enough questions for one day,” he said. “We should get back to work.”
I glanced down at my watch. He was right. But somehow, I wasn’t ready to go.
“Just one more,” I told him. “Why did you blackmail me into going to lunch with you?”
“I’ll answer that at our next lunch. On Wednesday.” I rolled my eyes and he grinned at me. “That way I know you’ll actually show up.”
Bad For You: An Enemies to Lovers Romance Page 12
