Helen could not meet Petra’s eyes.
Sarah pulled into a gas station. Silence enveloped them all as she turned the engine off.
It seemed there would be no show tunes today.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“Trivia night,” Ian said.
When Petra didn’t answer—how could she?—he added, “It’s to benefit the restoration of the Morgan factory building. I’m a local businessperson. You’re a local doctor. Between your knowledge of medicine and Serbian inventors, mine of wine and rocks, we’d probably kick ass. Plus, you can network.”
“You’re hanging around outside my office again,” Petra said, buttoning up her coat tightly.
She pretended that she was looking in her bag for something. But her insides were quivering. Ian Zamora was standing in the rain, waiting for her. And he looked very good wet.
“Well, I don’t actually want to go into your office, because someone might think I’m a patient and we can’t have that. And I don’t have your home phone number, so I’ve resorted to haunting the block. I’m thinking of opening a sidewalk café here this summer. Coffee, pastries, maybe a violinist.”
“It rains 364 days of the year here. In case you haven’t noticed, you’re getting soaked.”
Petra started to walk. Ian fell in step beside her. He wore a hooded navy fleece that fit his shoulders nicely. In the rain, his jeans had molded to his thighs. She was so fascinated by his quadriceps that she almost tripped. She shook her head.
“I shouldn’t have socialized with you and Kevin that night,” Petra said.
“I invited Kevin. You just happened to be there.”
Petra sighed. “I don’t think we should date, Ian.”
“It’s not a date. It’s a fundraiser. Plus, you’ll find out all the good neighborhood gossip.”
“You could pass that on to me when you see me.”
“Does that mean you want to see me outside of these completely serendipitous meetings we keep having?”
Petra stopped. She had planned to go home, but she didn’t want Ian following her there, because she might invite him upstairs. God knows where that would lead. Well, she knew where it would lead, because she had already started trying to remember what underwear she had on.
She wondered what kind of underwear he wore.
She shivered. He noticed and made a gesture like he was going to put his arm around her and she jumped away. He noticed that, too.
“Let me at least get you a cup of coffee or something.”
He steered her to a café and she asked for a chamomile tea. He got the espresso.
“I had a horrible weekend,” she said, cupping the mug. “Because of you and this situation, my friends had a terrible fight. Physicians are opinionated buggers. We make our living by telling people what they should do with their lives. It got very personal and now Sarah, the one you met at the restaurant, is holding something my friend Helen did against her. Helen isn’t talking. Sarah thinks we ganged up against her. It’s ugly.”
“I don’t know if I got everything, but it sounds like they already had something going on before I showed up.”
“I guess,” Petra said dully.
She was too tired to argue. It had been hard to relax in the hotel room she shared with Helen and Sarah that weekend. Instead of helping each other with their hair and makeup and playing silly synth-pop on their iPods, they had all retreated to corners of the room and struggled quietly with zippers and brushes and mascara wands. Of course, she hadn’t slept that night, and last night hadn’t been much better. Now, the thought of fighting Ian—or fighting her own desire for him—held little appeal.
“I know you feel terrible, but maybe that’s why you should come out with me. It’s a Monday. What could possibly happen on a Monday?”
That is how Petra found herself in Maloney’s, still wearing her sensible office shoes and her ugly, tweedy office pants, sharing a basket of fries with her former patient and screaming out answers at the top of her lungs.
The three dollar cover, which Ian paid, got them cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon and a two-top near the emcee. The highlight of the game was when Petra knew the slang for vagina popularized by Grey’s Anatomy. Actually, the highlight was when Ian kissed her after she screamed, “Vajayjay,” and she let him. She felt that familiar thrum of recklessness, fueled by alcohol, sex, and intellectual arrogance. He tasted beery and greasy and sweet and sour from the fries and ketchup. He tasted like all the best kinds of bad things that could happen in life.
Plus, Sarah was an asshole, sometimes. Helen, too.
Who could blame her for kissing Ian? Ian, who hovered over her, looking a little mussed, a little sweaty, staring at her as if she were the most amazing person in the universe.
It was hard to stay focused after that.
They didn’t win. They didn’t even come close.
• • •
Maybe he was taking advantage of the fact that the beer had put a flush in her cheeks. Or that she was laughing so hard at him that she could hardly stand up. She was adorable, with her hair wet and her face shiny from the rain. He had been telling her about the time he had driven across country with a college friend. They had a bet to see who could eat McDonald’s the longest. For every breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snack, the only thing they could have was McDonald’s. And water.
“It was a pretty easy bet for both of us,” Ian was saying. “We got to Boston, our destination, and neither of us had given in. We finally decided to call it a draw. We stopped in a rest area, both of us allowed to get whatever we wanted. Mateo came back with a giant bag of Taco Bell and I had a bucket of KFC. Just to spite each other. Each year, we send each other McDonald’s gift cards on our birthdays. At Christmas, we send each other the used ones. Proof that we’ve been exercising our cards. He’s a cardiologist, by the way.”
“And you own a muckity-muck restaurant. I wonder if I could hold this over you,” Petra mused.
“You’ll have to do a lot better than that. I think our kitchen staff has a direct line to Domino’s,” Ian said.
“I guess a Bat Signal-type light would not be discreet.”
“It wouldn’t work well on rainy evenings like this.”
It had gotten colder. It seemed a terrible night to be alone. As they approached her building, they became quiet.
He followed her inside her building. Even though they hadn’t touched, it was as if his nerves were tethered to hers. Every time she moved, every time she looked at him, or stretched her neck, or wet her lips, he felt it. He could hear her breath coming, fast and deep.
She opened her door and stood aside to let him in.
Slowly, she unbuttoned her coat. He unzipped his jacket and held his breath. Still not a word from her.
He took the wet outerwear and hung it on the rack. He still hadn’t put his hands on her. They hadn’t moved from beyond the hallway. She had not even turned on a light.
She reached a tentative hand toward him and put one, two, three fingers on his chest.
It was enough. He wrapped his arm around her waist and lifted her to him. His heart pounding in his veins, he pushed her down the hall until they almost fell over the arm of a couch.
He tugged her down on him.
He had wondered about the inside of her apartment, but now he was in it, he paid it no attention. He was mostly focused on her wild mouth, her tongue, her waist, and her bottom, which flexed against his palms as he pulled her closer and closer to him.
She had unbuttoned his shirt and was sliding her hands through the coarse hair of his chest. She dragged her nails along his ribs and he hissed against her mouth. They drew back and looked at each other, both breathing hard by now.
She unbuttoned her shirt. Her skin flashed in the darkness and she wore a soft cotton bra. He licked his way down her neck and into the shallows of her cleavage. She bent and nipped him, tooth against collarbone. Urgency and pleasure stabbed at him. He couldn’t form words. Something had changed for her,
and he didn’t want to think of what it might be, because if he defined it, they might stop, and he didn’t want to, not now.
Her fingers started on his zipper. His cock jerked high, higher in response and he heard himself whimper. Her hand wrapped around him and he thought he would go mad. He was fumbling with her bra now and kissing her sloppily. Too many arms were in the way, trying to accomplish too many things. His pants were halfway down, his shirt hanging from his shoulders. His glasses were smudged. Her blouse rustled to the floor, and she tilted her hips to let him work on the button of her pants and ran her hands up his chest again, sliding his shirt off, and…she stopped.
She touched the burning bumps on his arms.
“What’s this?” she said, even though she already knew.
He licked his lips. His tongue felt swollen and thick.
“I decided that since you’d always consider me under your care, I found someone else to be my doctor so you could do this with a clear conscience.”
“You’ve started getting shots again.”
She got out of his lap and sat at the far end of the couch. She crossed her arms over her chest.
This was not a good sign.
“Who is it?” she asked shakily.
He swallowed and tried very hard to think. He couldn’t remember his own name right now. “It’s Jatinder Singh. I take it he hasn’t contacted you for my records yet.”
“Jatinder Singh.”
Her voice sounded flat. “Did you say anything about why you weren’t seeing me anymore?” she asked.
He shook his head. He shifted uncomfortably. He was still half dressed and fully cocked. Words and thoughts were very difficult. “I wanted you to have a clear conscience because I know that’s important to you,” he said slowly. “Even though, for the record, I don’t feel exploited and I never did.”
She was so far away and he was starting to get cold. But if he pulled his pants up now, then they would stay up for the rest of the night, and he didn’t want that.
“What are you thinking?” he asked.
“Why are you even getting shots again? You don’t have a cat. Okay, so there’s dust all around us. It’s just I’m muddled. At the beginning of the evening, I wasn’t even going to go out with you. Now, I’m not even wearing a shirt and you’re seeing another allergist. I mean, officially I’m pro shots, but I feel like I’ve lost a patient.”
He pulled up his pants.
“You did lose one—or rather, you terminated the relationship with a letter,” he said, with more than a touch of frustration. “We can’t have it both ways. If we want to do this, and believe me, I want to do this, you can’t be my allergist, you can’t think of yourself as my allergist.”
She covered her face now, which left her breasts clear. He didn’t let himself stare at them—much. His voice turned pleading. “I thought I’d make it easy and clear. I hit on a way to make sure that you understand, and everyone else understands, that you are most definitely not my doctor, that someone else is. I am in another physician’s care. Nothing spells it out better than getting shots from someone else.”
She shook her head. “I know you did this for me. But I still kind of hate it.”
She hated it. She wanted to be his doctor more than she wanted to have a relationship with him.
He zipped his pants, rebuttoned his shirt, and adjusted his glasses. He put on his jacket and stood still for a moment to let his dick calm down, to let her change her mind. She was still frowning, not at him, but at some spot beyond him.
He left without a word.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Kevin found him at Stream.
“I should be asking you for advice,” Ian said, unloading crates of wine from a dolly. “First time around, and you find Penny. She’s a great girl.”
“She wasn’t my first choice,” Kevin said, sitting on a pile of boxes. “Talk to me man to man about ladies.”
“Make yourself useful. Start opening these,” Ian said, handing Kevin a box-cutter. “Kevin, if I help you with this, you’re going to have to promise not to be an asshole.”
“Ass-hole,” Kevin repeated gleefully.
He flicked the blade up and down.
“Oh, please. You’re not two years old. You’ve heard the word asshole before and you’ve used it.” He looked down. “Don’t tell me you’re allergic to cardboard.”
“It’s just that no one’s ever given me a box-cutter before.”
Ian didn’t know whether he felt scornful or alarmed. By the time he was twelve, he had used a Swiss Army knife to cut apart the wire fence of a chicken coop and he had gouged his initials in all the trees in Brazil. Maybe he had just been poorly supervised.
“Penny’s a cute girl. But she’s not a challenge, you know. She likes me and I like her. Easy pickin’s.”
“First of all, Kevin, don’t be disrespectful of Penny—or of women, or people, period. Plus, do you really want to go out with someone who hates your guts? I thought the point was that no one would date you. Or did you actually mean to say that no one you were interested in would consider you?”
“She’s using me, too, you know. She doesn’t like me in that way at all, I think. She just wants to say she got with a guy.”
Kevin opened a box and peered inside. “Nothing here but wine,” he said.
“Start putting them in these racks,” Ian said.
Kevin slid them in slowly, as if every bottle were too heavy for him to handle.
Hanging out with Kevin made Ian think of Petra. Hell, everything made Ian think of Petra. Rain, odd facts, zippered pants, itchy arms, couches, tables—everything made a separate image flash in his mind. He should not think of her, but he was apparently like Kevin. He was fascinated with what was difficult and prickly and distant. He hadn’t been interested in anyone else since he met Petra. Worse, now he knew how she looked when she was overjoyed and flushed and triumphant. She’d nipped him and licked him and he’d caught a glimpse of her small, perfect chest. Now, he knew how her eyes glowed in a darkened room and how her sweat tasted. She was salty and delicious.
But he couldn’t go out with the woman again.
“I need to be suave. I need to figure out how to do romantic gestures,” Kevin said. “How do you do that?”
Don’t get allergy shots from another doctor and assume things will go your way. Don’t be a presumptuous douche.
“Not everyone can get away with gestures. Try being quirky. It’s probably your best bet.”
“No one ever said, I quirked her panties off.”
Ian shuddered. He was out of his depth. He wished once more that he could talk to Petra and he knew it was the wrong thought to have.
“Then at the very least, try to be kind,” Ian said.
Kevin looked disgusted with him. Ian felt a little disgusted with himself.
• • •
There was no one, Petra thought, scrolling through the contacts in her phone. Sarah and Helen were out of the question. Her mother was definitely not a candidate, and she was probably hanging out with Jim Morrison, anyway. As for her sister, Ellie, well, their age difference meant that they had never giggled or confided in one another that way. Although, if it came down to it, Petra suspected that Ellie knew far more than her older sister did about men.
When it came down to it, Petra had screwed up. Again.
If she were standing strong on her principles, she should never have gone out with Ian, kissed him, invited him back to her apartment, and straddled him shirtless. If, however, she were intent on seducing him, she should never have leapt off of him and practically accused him of cheating on her with another allergist. That was just confusing.
She felt bad for him. He had been trying: the man had gotten shots for her even though he didn’t necessarily need them. But for some reason, feeling those bumps on his arms had made her angry and scared, even while her lust raged on. She felt out of control and she hated it. She remembered how hurt and frustrated he looked as he pulled
his shirt back over his beautiful chest. He had done something for her that he thought would please her, or at least make her more at peace with herself. She had no such serenity. So many ambivalent and oddly defined responses coursed through her. Her mind was going in circles.
Regret. That was the only coherent feeling, punching through all others. She wanted a second chance. Things would have turned out different. But now, there was nothing she could do about it.
She decided to go for a run to clear her mind. It was late, but she wouldn’t go for long.
The course took her through the streets of her neighborhood, past the small park she loved, past people strolling and laughing in the cold, clear night.
He had done something for her because he respected her feelings. But did he want too much in return? He was getting shots so that she’d feel okay about their relationship. Was it too much too soon?
It didn’t feel like too much too soon.
Either way, he probably didn’t care now.
She jogged slowly and carefully and tried to clear her mind. On the sidewalk, a group of people stood outside a restaurant after dinner saying their goodbyes. She avoided Ian’s businesses. She cruised past the weathered brick warehouse buildings, past the new towers, and past glass and steel apartments, jerking her head enviously at the lighted windows, imagining people inside, laughing, talking side by side. And of course, while she was sightseeing through her own neighborhood, she nearly ran into him.
• • •
He watched her warily as she slowed down. Not that she had been running all that quickly. If he were a sensible person, he should have stepped back and let her keep going. As usual, whenever he came within three feet of her, he wanted to close the space between them until their bodies were merged.
He stayed where he was and jammed his hands in his pockets.
“Nice night,” she said, after a pause.
“Yes. Not a cloud in the sky.”
Another pause. “You’re not at work.”
“No, I just came back.”
He reminded himself that she was the one who was supposed to explain things to him. But she looked messy and lustrous-eyed and all he could think about was the fact that he’d seen her half-naked. The streetlights picked up the sheen of her running tights and he tried not to look at her legs, the crescent of her bottom.
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