Caught in the Middle

by Kira Barker

  “Things between us aren’t going to turn weird now, right?” I asked, less because I was afraid they would, but mostly because I wanted to hear him say it.

  “Just because I fucked you in the ass hard enough to come?”

  He leaned close, as if I could have missed his leer otherwise. I pursed my lips and glared back at him, and after a second he looked away and started laughing, hard enough to almost fall off his chair.

  “You’re really not much fun when you get pissed off over nothing!”

  “Jack, I’m serious.”

  Sighing, he straightened, although he didn’t manage to wipe that stupid grin off his face.

  “Will I make inappropriate comments when it’s just the two of us? Hell, yeah. But apart from that, why should anything change? It’s just sex.”

  From anyone else—well, maybe except for Simon—I wouldn’t have believed that, but he sounded sincere.

  “It’s really that easy for you, isn’t it?”

  “Mostly,” he agreed. “Besides, I’m not stupid enough to fuck up my chance of a repeat performance just because I have a little more ammo against you now.”

  “And you think that’s going to happen?”

  “I certainly hope so,” he replied, then turned unfamiliarly serious. “Look, it’s none of my business what you and Simon get up to, and I promise that I will never talk shit about what you do with him. I respect you too much, and, quite frankly, he’d give me so much shit if I said anything that would make you feel self-conscious or weird, so it’s not worth trying to get under your skin. Besides, you know me and my fucked up sense of humor better than anyone else on this world. Sex is great, but not great enough to get between you and me.”

  Grinning, I reached over to hug him, which also put me in the perfect position to poke his ribs hard enough to make him wince.

  “Argh! What did I do to deserve that?”

  “Nothing. Yet. It’s only a matter of time until you will.”

  “That’s unfair!” he complained, but kept grinning amicably.

  “What’s unfair?” Simon asked from where he just entered the kitchen, wet hair dripping onto the shoulders of his T-shirt.

  “She’s poking me!” Jack complained, using his best whiny voice.

  Simon sent us both a look that spoke plainly that we shouldn’t involve him in our goofing around.

  “So what, it’s not like you didn’t do anything to deserve it, I’m sure.”

  “Hey, what happened to ‘bros before hoes’?”

  Simon’s smile was almost sweet, turning it creepy as hell.

  “You two always side against me, so don’t even try to play that card now.”

  “Ah, I see. So this has nothing to do with her now becoming your shiny new toy?”

  That earned Jack a withering stare from Simon, so much so that it cracked me up.

  “Sweet! All it takes for you to turn into my faithful watchdog now is for me to bend over and let you spank me?”

  I could admit that I deserved the equally hostile glare directed at me now, making Jack share my grin.

  “You two are so damn funny, you know that?” Simon retorted as he angled for the fridge.

  “Of course we do. Do you think this comes effortlessly? We spend days plotting and planning each well-phrased joke to maximize the impact,” Jack helpfully supplied.

  “I hope neither of you ever lose your job, because if you decide to become comedians, you’ll be broke for life.”

  “Oh, this reminds me of something,” I said, using the worst segue ever. When I waited, the guys both turned to look at me. “Can you maybe not tell Kara about this? Not that I feel like being super stealthy about our thing here, but there are some things she really doesn’t need to know.”

  Simon gave me a look that conveyed clearly that I needn’t have asked, and Jack’s shrug was rather nonchalant.

  “Unless you tell anyone, I’m not going to. It’s no one’s business what we do or don’t do when you’re over.”

  I was surprised that none of them called me out on being a hypocrite, but then Kara and Jack had never made a secret of their random hookups. For a while I’d expected them to start dating and go steady, but the longer we were all out of college, the less that seemed likely.

  “Don’t worry—what happens in this house stays in this house,” Jack remarked cryptically, then reached for his phone. “So who wants pizza? That stays in this house, too, just saying.”

  And, just like that, we fell back into old, well-established patterns, and all was right with the world.

  Chapter 6

  It turned out, vigorous sex with two guys at the same time canceled out some of the benefits eight consecutive hours of sleep raked in. By the time I made it to the hospital, I felt mentally alert but physically drained, and working the usual rut took a worse toll on me than most days. I still couldn’t bring myself to feel like it hadn’t been worth it, even when I got up the following afternoon and felt a million years old.

  Maybe there was a reason why most people went through their phase of sexual exploration in their twenties, but I had to admit that ten years ago I wouldn’t have dared to just take the guys up on their offer, much less enter into an arrangement such as what Simon and I now had going.

  That first night shift I was too out of it to care, but the following evening I dutifully trooped to the nurses’ station to sign up for a routine blood test. It was just my luck that Nurse Dana was in evidence, but she’d already seen me approach, so it was too late to turn tail and run now.

  “Dr. Slater, anything I can do for you?” she asked sweetly, baring her teeth in something that no one could mistake for a smile. Only the dumbest of interns would ever dare to approach her with work they could do themselves if they saw that smile.

  Resigning myself to my fate, I put down the half-full urine cup in front of her.

  “I’m here for my routine check. Blood panel and standard STIs.”

  She blinked in irritation, but as soon as she brought up my file on the computer, her eyes lit up with glee. I wondered how long it would take for half the hospital to know that I’d recently become some Colombian drug lord’s mistress and carried his cocaine crack baby.

  “You’re not scheduled for another three weeks.”

  “I need the test now,” I told her, trying to keep it as simple as possible not to give her any more munition for her gossip mongery.

  “Would you like me to schedule an appointment with the OB/Gyn, too? Pregnancy tests are all the rage this week.”

  Her bright, fake smile made it hard to keep a similar one plastered onto my face, but I told myself that if I made it through this, I’d deserve some extra ice cream the second I got home.

  “No, thank you, that won’t be necessary. Just the blood panel and urine test.”

  “Of course,” she simpered, then got up and reached for the gloves to get a syringe ready.

  “When you leave, feel free to grab a couple of condoms from the bowl. Or will you require dental dams instead?”

  “That’s too sweet of you to ask, but no, I got that covered.”

  And some people were actually afraid of getting stuck with a needle when they needed their blood drawn. Who needed needles when they had Nurse Dana?

  As usual at the beginning of a night float month, my circadian rhythm was fucked up enough that the moment I got home and felt ready to crash into my pillow, my body was wide awake. The sun was shining, the birds were singing, and just because I felt like a zombie didn’t mean that I could actually catch some shut-eye. For a minute I considered calling Simon, mostly to talk but also because, well, I got terribly horny whenever I thought about Saturday, which happened a lot more than it should, yet then disbanded the idea. No one had ever died from sexual frustration, but lack of sleep could quickly become a problem, and with just a few weeks left to my rotation, I didn’t want to endanger my performance by having to rely on chemicals to keep me up and functioning.

  I gave up tossin
g and turning an hour later when I heard Marcy return home from a grocery run. Leaving my bed didn’t sound very appealing, but it had been days since I’d seen my roommate, and since sleep was eluding me anyway, I might as well engage in some social interaction.

  Marcy was her usual energetic self as I walked into the cubbyhole of a kitchen, busy unpacking what looked like half of the fresh produce aisle. She must have been on one of her clean eating binges again.

  “Hey, girl, didn’t think you’d be awake,” she greeted me with a smile, her perfect white teeth shining brightly. She was the only one allowed to talk to me like that. Well, Marcy and Kara, but Kara was a different flavor altogether.

  Maybe there was something to that nutrition thing. Her dark skin was practically glowing today, and she seemed to have energy in abundance. Or maybe she’d recently gotten laid. That just left the question why I was zombified, and she not.

  “Can’t sleep. Just started on night float.”

  She nodded sagely as she continued to unload a small country’s needs for canned coconut milk onto the counter.

  “Nancy from Pediatrics told me she’d heard that you’ve been bumping uglies with, who is that guy who’s battling Tyne for Head of Trauma Surgery?”

  “You mean Rigler? Ew! Besides, Zoe would skin me alive if I went behind her back. How do people even come up with shit like this?”

  Marcy shrugged.

  “Even under workaholics you’re a zealot. I think the concept that you would spend enough time outside of the hospital to find someone else to do the horizontal tango with is beyond their comprehension.” She stopped, then shot me a meaningful look. “Which reminds me—how was that party on Friday?”

  My first impulse was to act like a deer caught in the headlights, but I forced myself to relax.

  “The usual. I drank too much and some weirdo hit on me. The moment he found out I don’t spend my days prancing around in a sexy nurse’s outfit, he lost interest.”

  “You know, some people find scrubs sexy,” she pointed out, grinning.

  “Easily accessible maybe, but sexy? I’m not sure I would want to screw someone with a fetish like that.”

  “And that’s why you’ll never have a sex life worth bragging about.”

  Oh, if only she knew. For a moment, I considered dropping a few hints, but then kept my mouth firmly shut. Marcy and I were friends—good friends, but not “best, share your every secret with” kind of friends. We’d met in college, suffered through pre-med together, but while I’d gone off to Columbia then, she’d landed a spot at Johns Hopkins. It was a weird coincidence that had made us end up doing our respective residencies in the same hospital right across the country again, and moving in together had seemed like the natural next step. Our apartment was barely more than two tiny cupboards with beds and a bathroom only suitable for people who didn’t suffer from claustrophobia, but it suited our hundred plus hours a week work schedules. She didn’t really get along with Jack because she thought that he was a pig—not quite unfounded—and Simon was dead to her because he was an arrogant prick—definitely justified. Somehow, telling her about the recent change in our friendship status seemed less like a good idea than a recipe for disaster.

  “So why did you need an early check-up? Anything happen in the ER?”

  I shrugged, trying to come up with a good excuse.

  “Just got paranoid. You can tell sixteen-year-old girls only so many times that the clap isn’t the worst they can catch from unprotected sex before you’re sure that panty rash is genital herpes.”

  “You got a rash? Want me to check it for you?”

  What I did have were light abrasions likely caused by the stubble on Jack’s face, and just thinking about how I’d got them made me want to squirm in the best kind of way.

  “No, thanks. Unless it involves broken bones, I don’t need your expert opinion.”

  “Tease,” Marcy accused, but let it slide. “Have you seen the duty roster for next week? I swear McGilles is trying to work us into the ground.”

  “No, haven’t looked it over yet. Zoe roped me into signing up for the day shift on Saturday, though.”

  “Not just Saturday, but Friday and Sunday, too. You really need to stay ahead of your game if you want to survive in this jungle.”

  Doing a quick calculation, I realized that my plan to call Simon about me coming over next weekend had just gotten shot to hell.

  “Are you even listening to me? I just told you that you’ll be spending the entire weekend working, and still you grin like a fool? Should have scheduled an EEG with that blood panel,” Marcy pointed out.

  “What? No, I was just thinking about something else.”

  “Obviously,” she snorted, but didn’t say anything else. Some things are better left unquestioned, and the reason why Marcy and I were working out so well was that she always knew when ignorance was bliss.

  I actually made it until Tuesday before I couldn’t hold my curiosity in check any longer.

  The deciding factor wasn’t the horror weekend ahead of me, but the fact that I found myself horny at almost all times of the day—and nothing my own hands were capable of would do to relieve the tension. The solution was so simple, and just one phone call away.

  I still stalled through the evening, until the ER hit the usual 11:00 p.m. lull. The accidents of the evening had all been taken care of, those of the night were only just occurring, all in-patients were looked after, and I found myself with a couple of minutes at my disposal. Habit had me hit the coffee machine on the way to the staircase, and I savored a few bitter sips as I made my way up onto the roof.

  As the city lay in a sprawling sea of lights before me, I hit the second number on speed dial and waited for the call to connect. The phone rang a full nine times before Simon picked up; others might have been concerned about calling so late, but I knew that whenever he was working on a manuscript, he turned into a veritable night owl.

  “Erin, so good of you to call,” he greeted me, smugness heavy in his voice.

  I took another sip of coffee, savoring it should it be the last. I wasn’t known for hurling precious beverages away in a fit, but I was all about new experiences of late—who knew?

  “So good of you to pick up, Simon,” I replied, not even trying to hold back my light irritation.

  He laughed, but it was a nice, warm laugh that somehow managed to appease me a little.

  “I kept my phone on.”

  “Really?”

  Simon was a great believer in shutting himself off from all forms of distraction when he was working, sometimes even going as far as unplugging their router. That routinely made Jack ballistic, particularly if it happened when he was in the middle of a raid, but you had to expect something like that when you were bunking with an egomaniacal artist.

  “Let’s just say I was expecting your call.”

  “You were?”

  Wasn’t I Miss Eloquence tonight?

  “Actually, I was expecting it yesterday already, but as you called today, I still won the bet.”

  “What bet?”

  “Jack bet me that you’d either call within twenty-four hours, or not at all. Of course, I could be sorely mistaken and this is just a social call, but considering that you seldom do that and haven’t bitten my head off yet, I think you want something from me, and we can both guess what that is.”

  Taking a cautious look around, I made sure that I was alone on the rooftop. It was bad enough that the rumors about my, ah, promotional work hadn’t died down yet. I really didn’t want to give them even a hint of credibility.

  “We can?”

  “Can’t we?” he turned my stupid parroting around on me. I couldn’t help a brief grin.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever been very good at guessing what goes on in your head.”

  I did feel like I should give myself a little more credit than that. At least I’d gotten their general sexual disposition somewhat right in my wank fantasies, but I wasn’t about to
admit that unless forced to do so under torture or a tickle attack.

  Now his laugh was deliciously wry.

  “Come on. I’m a guy—it’s not that hard to guess what’s going through my mind when the woman I had sex with three days ago calls.”

  “That easy, huh?” I teased, but felt things low in my body tighten in anticipation.

  “Most things worth thinking about aren’t that hard. Except if you’re talking about my cock, but in all fairness I should disclose that that has only somewhat to do with the subject at hand.”

  I needed a moment to decipher that, and when I did, I felt my cheeks heat up a little.

  “Why do you pick up the phone when you’re in the middle of masturbating?”

  “Closer to the end than the middle, I’d say. And it was your name on the display, so I figured I should pick up.”

  I wondered for a moment if he suffered from a similar problem as I did, but doubted it.

  “I guess I should feel honored now?”

  “Kind of,” he admitted, then chuckled. “I wouldn’t have picked up if it had been my mother.”

  “Well, good for you!” I laughed, then forced myself to quit joking around. “How are your deadlines shaping up this week?”

  “Looming, but not threatening to kill me yet. Why?”

  There was a clear note of teasing in that last word, but I couldn’t hold that against him.

  “Do you think you could make room for me, for maybe an hour or two?”

  I really had no idea how long whatever he had in store for me would take, but I didn’t expect that right afterward he would just throw me out and get straight back to work.

  “I can definitely make room for you on Thursday,” he offered. “You’re on night shifts this week?”

  “Until the end of the month,” I confirmed. How he guessed I didn’t ask; Simon had his ways of figuring things like that out. Or maybe he’d asked Jack. The idea that he kept track of my work hours was both endearing and disconcerting.

  “My schedule is clear until mid-afternoon, so if you come over sometime after normal people eat breakfast, that should work for me.”