Spiral

by Mila Ferrera

  “I think we’ve already established that cruelty is not a problem for me.” A bunch of the residents are throwing a Halloween party tonight, and Aron and I are going. Together. It’s our first time doing something like this, and after weeks of his slow brand of teasing, I’m going to push him a little. Or at least, I’m going to try.

  Mark rolls his eyes. “Well, I’m going as the Invisible Man, so you probably won’t see me there.” He looks over my shoulder and waves. “I think his ears were burning.”

  My heart leaps as I look behind me and see Aron weaving his way toward us. It doesn’t matter that I saw him only a few hours ago. Every time I catch sight of him, my whole body reacts, fizzing with this happy mix of nervousness, excitement, and delight. Somehow, over the past eight weeks, he’s become essential to me, and for a second the fear pulls at me like an undertow. He has my heart firmly in his grip now. What if … “Hey,” I say as he approaches, pushing the anxiety away.

  Aron is beaming, which makes it easy. “How did it go with Ursula’s family?”

  I spin in my seat and stand. “Really well, all things considered. Dr. Feldman said you had talked to her about me.”

  He shrugs. “I merely reported the facts. And the fact is, you’ve done an amazing job with Finn and his family. Which is why I needed to find you immediately.”

  “What’s up?”

  “He’s in remission,” he whispers. “I got the biopsy results. It’s official.”

  I take a sharp breath and put my hand over my heart, as if I could hold in the feeling. “Does Greg know?”

  “I just talked to him.”

  We stare at each other for a minute, stupid grins stretching our faces, and then I forget myself completely and throw myself into his arms. He catches me, holding me tight and laughing. “I knew this would mean a lot to you,” he says against my neck, sending tingling chills along my skin. “I had to see your face when you got the news.”

  “Thank you,” I say, blinking fast. I’m trying not to cry.

  “And that’s my cue to leave,” says Mark from behind me. “Nice talking to you, Nessa.”

  “See you tonight,” says Aron, who lowers me to my feet but keeps hold of my hand.

  “You can try,” Mark says in a mock-mysterious voice.

  “Invisible man,” I say to Aron as his friend walks away.

  “So … now that we’re only a few hours from the party, will you give me a hint about your costume?” asks Aron with an arched eyebrow.

  I mimic his facial expression. “Only if you give me one about yours.”

  Aron purses his lips. “I think I’d prefer to surprise you.” Then he pulls me close and whispers in my ear. “And you’re killing me.”

  I squeeze his hand, tilting my head up so my nose skims along that scar, the only smooth patch on his rough jaw. “Right back at you, Doctor.”

  Chapter Ten

  I get home by six and start my preparations. I’ve never been that into Halloween, especially the dressing up part, but tonight I’m going to do the thing that scares me. I’m going to wear a sexy costume and I’m going to look awesome. I’m going to make my gorgeous date drool. I’m going to make him ache as much as I do for him.

  Assuming I can get this corset on by myself.

  After at least half an hour of struggling, I manage to do it, though I’m not sure I’ll be able to get out of this thing without the aid of a pair of scissors and possibly a crowbar. I take in the effect in the mirror. Not bad. I might not be tall, but I’m fit, and I have curves in the right places. And with the aid of this leather corset, those curves are on full display. The gauzy skirt that flutters in strips over my hips and thighs provides the illusion of risqué without actually threatening to reveal my lacy panties to the world. Those are meant for Aron’s eyes only, but only if he asks nicely. And by nicely, I mean I’m fantasizing about him begging. While on his knees. And maybe naked. We’ll see how this goes.

  I have leather boots, a cloak, and oh yes, I have a sword. I also have a headband with pointed wings on each side that look a little like bunny ears to me, but the lady at the costume store swore up and down that it looked okay. I’m a Valkyrie, one of the women who decided which Viking warriors would die on the field of battle and escorted them to the feasting halls of Valhalla. I hope Aron gets the joke.

  At eight on the dot, there’s a knock at my door. I scoot to the entryway and peek out the peephole. And gasp.

  There’s a Viking in my hallway.

  It’s readily apparent that my foot-in-mouth comment on our first date was on his mind, too, because he’s decked out in a tunic that laces up the front and a fur-lined cape. His hair is messy and his golden stubble glints, and I realize he probably didn’t shave today for this reason. He’s got a black leather helmet tucked beneath his arm. There’s a belt slung low around his narrow hips. He’s got a sword, too. A big one.

  He must hear me squeak from behind the door, because he addresses the peephole. “I got some frightened looks in the elevator,” he says. “You should probably let me in now.”

  My heart is beating so fast I can barely breathe. “Okay, but don’t laugh.”

  “Why, are you dressed as an amoeba or something? I confess I would find that disappointing.”

  I squeeze my eyes shut and pull the door open. I don’t know what I expect, but silence isn’t it. I open my eyes to find Aron staring at me with a slightly pained expression. “Oh, no. Is it that bad?” I ask, looking down at myself.

  That’s when he starts to laugh. “Yes,” he replies, walking into my tiny apartment. “It’s very bad.” His eyes linger on my body, kindling a fire low in my belly. “For my self-control.”

  The thrill of victory is even sweeter as I look him up and down. “Seems like we were on the same wavelength.”

  He tilts his head, still examining me, his gaze tracing the curve of my hip. “Yes, we were.”

  Holy wow. I am tempted to ask him to pillage me. Or … plunder? Both sound appealing at the moment.

  He pulls me to him and places my palm on his chest. His kiss is hungrier than the usual, but not out of control, which, I admit, is what I was hoping for. So when he releases me with a wry smile on his face, a swoop of disappointment douses the happy little fire I had going. “Ready to go?”

  I take his hand. “As I’ll ever be.”

  The party is at a house a few blocks off Rittenhouse Square, so we walk. It’s Halloween night, and it also happens to be Friday, so the sidewalks are crowded with people in costume. Even so, Aron turns heads, and I turn a few myself, which boosts my confidence.

  “Finn’s going to be discharged in a few days,” Aron says. “You’ll want to make sure you get a chance to say goodbye.”

  “Really? I thought he had to go through consolidation chemo first.”

  “He does, but as long as his health holds, he’ll be able to come to the outpatient clinic instead of staying in the hospital.” He squeezes my hand. “Greg is so grateful to you. He told me this afternoon that you’d helped him hold his family together. I think you had a lot to do with Finn getting better.”

  “You had more to do with it than I did,” I murmur. Aron is such an attentive physician, and I love to watch him with his patients. He always makes time to listen, even to the little ones, and especially to the parents. It leads to long hours as he balances his bedside manner with his technical duties, but it’s obvious that this is what he was made to do.

  He puts his arm around my shoulders as we stroll, folding his cloak over my back for extra warmth. “I think we did pretty well for our first shared case,” he says. “You are one of the best interns I’ve worked with, Nessa.”

  “You’re biased because I’m wearing a corset,” I reply, unable to hide my smile.

  He kisses the top of my head. “This time I’ll plead the fifth.”

  Our destination is a brownstone that contains four different apartments, each of them occupied by residents at CHOP. They’ve opened the whole building u
p, and judging by the crowd, they invited every trainee at the hospital who didn’t have the bad luck of being on overnight call. Aron keeps hold of my hand as we tromp up the stone steps. We make our way into a darkened foyer lit only by electric candles on little tables in each corner, over which hang cottony cobwebs bedecked with dozens of plastic spiders. It’s your basic cheesy Halloween party, complete with sexy angels wearing wire halos and devils with plastic horns sprinkled amongst mostly clever or thoroughly nerdy costumes, including one guy dressed up as Scrabble, and yes, at least two amoebas. These are, after all, physicians and other medical professionals, so it’s not exactly a Greek party, but it’s clear people are loose and happy for a break from the intense, competitive environment at the hospital.

  The music thumps at a different speed in each apartment, and Aron leads me into the first one, where he introduces me to one of the medical residents who lives there, a guy who looks normal except for one of his fingers, which has been painted gold. “Subtle,” I say, accepting a beer that he’s pulled from the enormous cauldron next to his couch.

  He looks me over. “Not subtle at all. But thoroughly awesome.”

  Aron is in a fabulous mood as he ushers me around, making small talk. He seems to know everyone, and so we move slowly, and mostly I listen while he chats. People are smooshed up against each other, and I hear at least one woman complain that her butterfly wings got crumpled. I stick close to my Viking, which is where I want to be anyway. Even as he’s laughing with his colleagues and friends, Aron finds a way to be touching me at all times. And as it always does, even the slightest brush of his fingers turns me on.

  By the time someone brings out the Jell-O shots, I’m wishing we were alone. I’d thought of this evening as a step forward, seeing as we’re at a party with our peers and we’re obviously together. But now that we’re here, I don’t care. In fact, it feels a little uncomfortable, in part because—although Aron seems to have a lot of friends—I’ve gotten death glares from at least one of the sexy angels, a bejeweled flapper, a beauty queen, and Little Red Riding Hood. Possibly one of the amoebas, too, but it was hard to tell. Some of it might be because I’m with the best looking guy here, but I’m willing to bet at least a few of these women have been with Aron, and the thought makes my stomach hurt. I don’t know why I didn’t think of this. But once I do, I notice the way they look at him, the way they edge closer and smile, the soft, liquid look in their eyes as they stare at him.

  We wander into one of the apartments where someone’s hung a disco ball. The room is dark except for a strobe and orange Christmas lights strung along the walls. People are dancing, and that’s why we came in here, but I’m less and less in a party mood. The strobe is giving me a headache. I tug on Aron’s hand. “I’m going to find the bathroom.”

  He looks down at me, but I can’t really make out his expression between flashes. “Do you want me to get you another drink?”

  “Water?”

  “Sure. Meet you back here.”

  I push my way through the center of the room toward the lit hallway, which I have to assume is the location of the bathroom. There’s a line, so I join it, standing behind a cat burglar who’s tapping on her cell phone, her loot bag, complete with rhinestone studded dollar sign, hanging from her shoulder. As we move forward, I accidentally step on her long, furry tail. When she turns around and sees my winged headband, her mouth twists into an ugly smile. “You’re the girl with Aron,” she said. “I’d heard he was back on the prowl.”

  I stare at her, wondering if there’s a single socially appropriate response to a comment like that. “Hi,” I say, holding out my hand and looking her hard in the eye. “I’m Nessa Cavenaugh. And yes, Aron and I are here together. Because we are together.” It comes out as more of a snarl by the end.

  The cat burglar rolls her eyes and doesn’t shake my hand. “Go ahead and tell yourself that, sweetie. I get it. I said the same thing to myself for the whole eight hours I was with him.” She makes a nauseatingly seductive sound. “Has he done that thing with his tongue? Isn’t it amazing? I’ve never come so hard in my life.”

  My mouth drops open. “I … um.” I turn in place and stalk back toward the darkened living room, my chest tingling and my head aching. I’ve forced thoughts of Aron with other women away, but now I can’t stop thinking of him, and his tongue, and what he’s done with it.

  I finally spot his blond head near the apartment door, and when I do, something inside me loosens a bit. He’s here with me, and we accidentally wore matching costumes, and we’re on the same wavelength. That’s how it is, and the cat burglar can go hang herself with her damn fuzzy tail.

  Aron’s back is to me, and a smile slides onto my face as I wind through the partygoers in the living room, intending to sneak up on him. But I don’t make it halfway before he shifts to the side a bit and I see her, the statuesque fairy with long blond hair whose hand is on Aron’s arm. His head is bowed over hers, and they’re deep in conversation.

  Something inside me cracks, like a fissure along a fault line. Someone bumps into me from behind, but I don’t have the headspace to move or apologize. I just stand there, rooted in place, watching Aron with another woman. Who is touching him. And he’s not stopping her.

  Chapter Eleven

  My fists clench. Suddenly, I realize I’ve made a fatal mistake. Like I often do when we play chess, I haven’t seen the trap until it’s already sprung. Aron’s suggestion that we take it slow has left me frustrated and half-crazed with wanting, but it’s also given me the chance to get to know him, and in doing so, I’ve fallen hard. Harder than I ever could have if he’d slept with me once and let that be that, not that he ever offered … not even close, actually. Now I crave the one thing I didn’t think I wanted: a serious relationship. And as I watch him reach for the fairy girl’s hand as it rests on his arm, when his fingers close around hers, I understand that a serious relationship is the last thing I’m going to get with him.

  A cold bottle slides along my bare arm beneath my cloak, and I jump, tearing my eyes from Aron. A guy dressed head to toe in white spandex—including his head—is offering me a beer. He doesn’t say a word, and then I remember how Mark said he was going to be the Invisible Man. I give him a weak smile. “Hey. Very clever. I can’t see you at all.”

  He nods, and I accept the bottle and take a long pull. What the hell. I live within walking distance. Mark throws an arm around my shoulders, and we stand there for a few seconds, watching Aron and the fairygirl. I’m glad the lights are low and flashing. I don’t want to see the way he looks at her. I take another drink, misery and rage crackling and sparking inside of me. Mark must sense it, because he turns me away from the apartment door. A new track starts, and it’s some K-pop song that everybody thinks they know how to dance to. Mark starts to gyrate along with everybody else, and he tries to pull me into the knot of people hopping up and down in the living room, but I’m having none of it.

  I hold up the beer. “Thanks for the drink, but I’m going home.” I finish it off, feeling it slosh unhappily in my stomach.

  Mark pulls the white spandex hood off his face, and I see it’s not Mark at all—it’s Nick. “Come on, Ness,” he says. “Stay. Dance with me. You need someone to pay attention to you.”

  Ugh. He and I haven’t spoken more than five words in the last few months. I’ve been deliberately ignoring him. I’m certain he’s the one who spread those rumors about me, the ones that reached Dr. Feldman and God knows who else. I can tell by the way he looks at me, like he knows something secret and awful about me. The way he’s looking at me now is worse, though. His gaze slides over my corseted chest and stomach, over my hips, down my legs, and then he smirks as his eyes meet mine. “This is a good look for you.”

  “Don’t make me stab you, Nick.” I put my hand on my cheap plastic sword and try to step around him, but he blocks my way.

  “Don’t go,” he says, leaning close enough for me to smell the tequila on his breath. “You
’ve never given me a chance, Ness, and you should, especially now that you’re done with—”

  “With this conversation,” I snap. I move to shove by him, but he stumbles back, arms pinwheeling. Aron has Nick by the scruff of the neck, a handful of Nick’s costume clenched tightly in his fist. He’s holding a bottle of water in his other hand. His expression is stone as he releases Nick with a shove hard enough to make Nick stagger.

  I hear Nick say something that sounds suspiciously like asshole, but Aron ignores him. His green eyes are on me. I grit my teeth. He’s done with the other girl for now, I guess. But I know, all around me, stand the other women he’s been with, and who knows how many of them have firsthand experience with Aron’s magical tongue? “Can we go?” I say to him, and he nods like he was about to suggest the same thing.

  Holding tightly to his hand, I wind through the crowd, cramming my now-empty beer bottle into a potted plant by the stairs. Aron finds a similar stashing place for the water bottle, retrieves his helmet from a pile of discarded costume accessories on the landing, and leads the way once we hit the stairs, carving a path for me. We’re on the sidewalk a few seconds later.

  “Did he touch you?” asks Aron once we’re free of the mob and the noise. “Are you okay?”

  “Fine,” I say, keeping my voice light while the anger and pain simmers within my heart. “I could have handled him.”

  “I know. But he had you cornered, and I didn’t like the look on your face.”

  I press my lips together. I probably looked that way because I was thinking about Aron entwined with the cat burglar.

  “Do you want to go get a drink somewhere?” he asks.

  I shake my head. “Come back to my apartment.” Because I’ve decided what I want, and there’s no time like the present. Especially when the future has been shot to hell.

  “Okay,” says Aron, “but that’s not exactly slow—”

  “Please?” I say, ducking under his arm and putting mine around his waist.