by Jewel Ann
Are you originally from Portland?
What is your favorite color and why?
If you weren’t a doctor, what would you be?
All solid choices from a conversation starter article I found online.
I manage to not see him all day, but I heard he was working in his lab earlier this morning. At eight, I change into my red and white striped dress and wedge, close-toed shoes. By ten after eight, my stomach starts to feel uneasy. Is he at the restaurant? Does he think I’m late? Hailey, a nurse in the ICU, went home midday because she had a bad stomach ache.
Fever.
Vomiting.
Diarrhea.
I probably have what she had. I know that’s it.
Dr. Hawkins doesn’t want to get what Hailey and I have.
I shoot off a text to him.
Me: I’m sick. You don’t want what I have. Maybe we try this another time.
My phone rings. It’s him. Why does he insist on calling me? A simple “okay, feel better” text is the appropriate response. Not calling me. For all he knows, I could be in the middle of vomiting or on the toilet with the squirts.
“Yes?” I answer with a bit of annoyance.
“What are your symptoms?”
I sigh. “Fever. Vomiting. Diarrhea.”
“What’s your temperature?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t taken it yet.”
“Then how do you know you have a fever?”
“Because I feel warm.”
“When did you last vomit?”
“I haven’t vomited yet. But my stomach feels uneasy, so I know everything will come up soon.”
“And the last time you had diarrhea?”
“Again, it’s on its way. My stomach is very uneasy.”
He chuckles. “You’re just nervous.”
“You don’t know shit.”
“True. I only have a medical degree. What do I know?”
“Just go home. If you get sick, then Romeo will get sick. And I refuse to be responsible for the spread of infection.”
“Roman is with Julie this week.”
“And you? What happens when you get sick and can’t see patients? Lives are at stake, Dr. Hawkins.”
“Eli.”
“What?” I wrinkle my nose.
“When we’re not working, you should call me Eli.”
“Well, I’m still at work. So, Dr. Hawkins, I suggest you go home.”
“Call me Eli. And I’m already at the restaurant you suggested.”
“Jesus … Fine! Eli, go home!”
“That was better than I imagined.” He chuckles.
“You’re crazy.” I slide my bag over my shoulder and grab a mask from the empty room by the exit. “I’m on my way home.”
“Come to the restaurant,” he says like a command, like he’s in charge. I like knowing who’s in charge; I’m just not sure if I want it to be him at the moment.
“This is stupid. I’ll stop by the restaurant—just so you can get a quick glimpse of my deteriorating health. I’m not actually going to get out of my vehicle. Then I’m heading straight home before the vomiting and diarrhea start.” I press End and slip on the mask.
As expected, he’s standing outside of his car in the parking lot of the pizza place, wearing a stupid grin.
“Go. Home. Dr. Hawkins. This could be something big. If the CDC gets notified tomorrow, and I’m quarantined, you’re going to regret this cocky stubbornness,” I yell out my window that’s cracked half an inch.
“Unlock the door, Dorothy.” He tries to open it.
“It’s bad. I could start bleeding from my eyes,” I shake my head.
“I’ll jump onto the hood of your car and wait for you to open the door, so why don’t you save your paint from a few scratches and just open the door?”
“You’re stupid and reckless.” I shut off my car and get out, adjusting my mask to tighten it a bit.
“Damn, Dorothy … just … damn …”
“Damn what?” I mumble beneath my mask.
“That dress looks incredible on you.”
“I know. It’s my go-to dress.”
Dr. Hawkins laughs. “Go-to for what?”
“Everything. I have it in two other colors, but the red gets the most compliments.”
He slides his hand along the back of my neck, cupping it and pressing his lips to my forehead.
“What are you doing?”
“Checking your temperature,” he murmurs with his lips firmly pressed to my head.
“Did they teach you this in medical school?”
He chuckles as his other hand removes my mask. “No fever.”
“You don’t know that,” I whisper, feeling oddly breathy and incredibly anxious. His touch is definitely intrusive and out of line for a doctor’s examination, but it isn’t completely awful. He smells good. Those herbs I like. A miracle because there are very few scents that don’t make me legitimately want to vomit.
“I’ll take my chances.” His lips move to my cheek. “Dorothy …” he whispers.
“Huh?” I close my eyes so we don’t have to look at each other so closely. It weirds me out a bit.
“I’m going to kiss you now.” And he does. He attaches his mouth to mine. We are a good fit. I keep my jaw set to a position that won’t allow his tongue access into my mouth. Of course, I assume he tastes as good as he smells, but after the corpse kiss catastrophe, I don’t want to risk another bad kiss if the way he tastes makes me gag.
His hand ghosts down my arm, and his thumb grazes over my breast—I think by accident. It overstimulates my nipple, just that simple graze, because my strapless dress doesn’t accommodate a bra. And while I don’t want him to touch my breast again, accidental or not, I feel an urgency to orgasm.
No more foreplay.
No more teasing.
Just the orgasm, please!
He releases my lips. “You seem to be feeling better. I think we can still have our date.”
I can’t stop thinking about his thumb grazing my nipple area. Was it an accident? My body reacts oddly to different touches. That tiny thumb graze sends my hypersensitivity into overdrive. It’s all I can think about. I need to get my body back in balance, but it’s like he pushed a button, and he can’t reverse what needs to happen to balance my body at this exact moment.
Dr. Hawkins takes a step back, rubbing his lips together before turning up his signature grin. “So, what do you want to do first? I was thinking—”
“I want you to go down on me.”
He freezes for several seconds. Not a single blink. Then his jaw unhinges so slowly I expect to hear it creak.
“I-I was going to say drinks at the bar and then dinner.”
“Then why did you kiss me and run your thumb over my nipple?”
He covers his mouth with his fist and coughs a laugh. “I uh …” He shakes his head. “I’m sorry. I …”
I sigh. Clearly, I misread a cue. Sexual cues are the hardest for me to read. Either I completely miss blatant attempts men make to get me into bed, or I misread something as simple as a misplaced thumb during a first kiss. “Dinner is fine. I’m not drinking alcohol tonight.”
Dr. Hawkins continues to inspect me with what I think is confusion, based on his wrinkled brow, but I’m not sure what’s confused him so much. I’m not the one who made a confusing sexual advance.
“What?” I tear my gaze away from him because my inability to read his expression feeds my already out of control anxiety.
“Did you really just ask me to go down on you?”
“Asked? No. Suggested? Yes. But if you don’t do that sort of thing, it’s okay. Let’s just get pizza? They have an amazing Caesar salad too.”
“I … we …” He closes his eyes for a few seconds and shakes his head.
“What? I can’t keep up with your stuttering and head shaking. I’m not good with that kind of communication. In fact, it drives me crazy. So use your words. What are you thinking? Have I
done something wrong? Offended you? What?”
“You’re unexpected.”
“I’m weird.”
“Refreshingly honest.” He smiles. It’s the good one again, not the grimace he had on his face just seconds ago. “I’m trying to be a gentleman.”
“Okay.”
He breathes the essence of a small laugh from his nose. “Okay.”
“So pizza?” I ask.
“Uh, yeah … option two is fine.”
“Option two?” My head cocks to the side.
He smirks.
“Oh …” I laugh. “The moment for option one passed. I’d rather have pizza now.”
“Should I be offended?”
I narrow my eyes. “Well, I don’t think so. Why would you be offended?”
Someone walks out and climbs into the car next to mine. Dr. Hawkins gives them a nod and a polite smile. I mimic his reaction to them.
“Why would you be offended?”
“Dorothy, I was joking. I’m not offended.”
“Huh …” I grunt. “I missed the funny part of that joke.”
“It was poorly delivered. Just forget it. Let’s get pizza.”
I follow him into the restaurant, and we wait for someone to take our name before waiting at the bar. He doesn’t try to fill the wait time with small talk. And I keep my conversation starters to myself, knowing I’ll need them during dinner. No sense in wasting them on a ten-minute wait while they get our table ready.
“Can I get you something to drink?” he asks.
“Water. And a Dr. Pepper.”
He relays my order to the bartender.
“They’re out of Dr. Pepper,” he says, glancing back at me.
“Figures.” I frown. “Just water then.”
We take our two special order bar waters with us to our table.
“What do you want to eat?” He opens his menu.
I don’t have to open my menu. In fact, menus drive me crazy. Too many choices and too much pressure. That’s why I like frequenting the same places or scoping out online menus in advance for new restaurants.
“Pineapple with extra cheese.”
“Great. And a Caesar salad?”
“Yes,” I reply slowly. I can’t explain how this makes me feel. I mean … he doesn’t even blink when I suggest a pineapple pizza. He doesn’t suggest we each get our own pizza or do half and half.
The waitress stops at our table.
“A large pineapple pizza with extra cheese and two Caesar salads,” he says, handing her our menus.
He ordered a large! Nothing chaps me more than people who want to split small and medium pizzas.
Leftovers are life. Not that I can’t easily take down half a large pizza.
My affection for Dr. Hawkins triples in that moment. He makes a huge leap toward catching up with Boss Bitch.
“So are you originally from Portland?” he asks, crossing his arms on the edge of the table.
That’s my question. He stole my question, leaving me with two original questions.
“Yes.” I try to grin past my slight irritation.
“Me too.”
Gah!
He doesn’t give me a chance to ask it.
“My dad owns his own auto repair shop. He’s had it for over fifty years. We keep thinking he should retire, but he loves it. He’ll go to his grave covered in grease. All of my family live in the area. I have two older sisters, three nephews, and two nieces. My oldest niece is getting married in a few months. Roman is the ring bearer. He has an electric blue suit he’s wearing. About the same color as my car—my favorite color.”
“If you weren’t a doctor, what would you be?” I cut him off before he finishes the word color.
He pulls his head back as his eyebrows lift into peaks. I may have blurted out the question in a rush, but I knew his next words would be “Before I decided to be a doctor, I wanted to be …”
“Sorry.” I laugh. “But you’re stealing my questions. I planned three questions to ask you tonight, and you’ve already taken two. I don’t want to sound uninterested in you, but you already ruined two of my questions. I wanted a chance to ask at least one.”
“Is that code for I’m talking too much?” He chuckles.
“No. It’s not code for anything. Talk all you want, just don’t tell me everything I was going to ask you before I get a chance to ask it.”
“Dorothy …” He scratches his chin. “You are … unexpected. Like balloons, flowers, and winning lottery tickets.”
I have no response to that. It seems like a weird compliment, and I majored in weird, but it’s a different kind of weird.
“If I weren’t a doctor, I would have been a kayaking or white-water rafting tour guide. I love both equally. I grew up coasting down rivers, hiking trails, skiing the slopes.” He holds up his watch. “That’s why I get my rings closed every day.”
“Let’s share our activity progress.” I go into my activity app and invite Dr. Hawkins to share his activity with me.
Several seconds later he glances at his watch and grins. Tapping it once, he accepts my invite.
I have an activity buddy!
“It’s on, Mayhem. Watch out. I’m a fierce competitor.”
“You mosey from one patient room to another all day, sit at your desk, or stand hunched over a microscope. I move all day long. You don’t stand a chance of outdoing me.”
We fall into an easy conversation, something I only do with my parents because they know me better than anyone else. And even then, some days they wear a zombie look when I go off on things they don’t understand.
Just as our pizza arrives, Dr. Hawkins holds up his phone.
“Did you just take a picture of me?” I ask after the waitress delivers our salads and pizza.
“I did. For my contacts. I wanted you in that dress.”
I lift my phone and take a picture too.
He laughs. “Did you just take a photo of the pizza? Are you one of those foodies who photographs your meals?”
“Me? No. I just eat the food. The pizza photo is going to be your contact photo. When I think of you, I always want to remember that you ordered my kind of pizza—a large at that—without saying anything that made me feel guilty and weird.”
Dr. Hawkins nods in small increments, eyes slightly narrowed, lips turned into a tiny smile. He dishes up a slice for me and one for him. Then he folds it … JUST LIKE ME! And he eats it. I follow suit, easily shoving half of it into my mouth. We grin at each other over our full mouths.
Pizza.
Salads.
Fun.
Yes! I’m having fun with Dr. Hawkins. Not awkward-date-fake fun. Not crowded party, overstimulation fun.
Legit. Easy. Fun.
“I’d suggest ice cream if you didn’t have to work in the morning,” he says as we exit the restaurant.
The crisp evening air captures my breath, or maybe it’s his hand on my back. Dr. Hawkins possesses a touch that I can’t put into a particular category. It sparks anxiety, confusion, and maybe something else. The grazing my nipple kind of something else.
“Yeah. If I’m going to kick your activity ass in the morning, I need to get some sleep.”
“Well, in that case, let’s grab some ice cream since you won’t need a good night’s sleep because you have no chance of kicking my activity ass in the morning.”
He beats me to my car, opening my door. “Dinner was amazing.”
For someone who has issues sorting emotions, I feel that … the giddiness over good food with really good company.
He continues, “I can’t believe I’ve lived here my whole life and never eaten here. I mean … I’ve driven by it hundreds of times. It makes me wonder what other hidden treasures around Portland that I’m probably missing. I really need to stop being such a creature of habit. Get out more and try new things.”
“If you can do that, then you probably should.” I shrug. “Not me. I need my habits, familiarity, predictability
.”
“And friendly exercise competition.” He shoots me a sexy grin.
“Yeah.” I nod, wearing my own grin as I start to slide past him to get into my car.
He rests his hand on the top of my car to stop me. “So … the pizza and salad were the best I’ve had. But…” he leans in, reducing the distance between us to approximately twelve inches “…so was the company. Roman excluded.” He winks.
“Okay.”
“Okay,” he repeats on a whisper. “Is okay good?”
I force myself to hold his gaze since he’s so close to my face. “It’s perfectly adequate.”
His firm, pink gums and nice teeth steal the show as he grins.
Yep, total flosser.
“I’m going to kiss you goodnight.”
“I figured. I wore the dress for it. And that’s why I ate that mint after dinner and offered one to you.” I rub my lips together. They’re still lubed from my post-dinner lip balm application.
He sure does smile a lot at me. It beats the usual snickering and eye rolls. When our mouths connect, he tastes like mint. I like mint. Peppermint, not spearmint. Cinnamon is okay in a pinch, but too much cinnamon irritates my tongue. Hot Tamales at the movies leaves my taste buds fried for days. But totally worth it.
Dr. Hawkins presses his hand to my neck and slides it up to cup my jaw, taking the kiss to the next level with a little tongue. French kissing isn’t usually my thing. Too much saliva. But he’s not salivating like a dog, or suffering from a painful case of dry mouth, so the kiss is acceptable. Such a Goldilocks moment. Dr. Elijah Hawkins is my just right.
When the kiss ends, he lets me slide into the driver’s seat. Then he ducks inside and kisses me again. A hungrier kiss. Instead of wondering how long the kiss will last or planning what I will say when the kiss ends, I cup his face and fully participate.
I let myself revel in the fact that the sexiest doctor at the hospital is kissing me. He smells good. Tastes even better. And makes me want sex, not something I want on a regular basis. Yet, it’s all I can think about right now.
Breaking the kiss and breathing heavily, I keep ahold of his face. “I vacuumed the crumbs from Gemma’s dog treats out of the backseat.”
His eyebrows pull together.
