by Kaylin Evans
“Hey,” I call, “you gonna charge for that show or what?”
The giggling cuts short and all movement stops. A guilty beat passes—busted—and then Ryder calls down, “Sawyer, that you?”
“Who else?”
I get up and go to the railing, lean out a little so I can look up. My buddy’s looking down at me.
“Hey man, sorry about the noise,” he says. I just laugh and shake my head.
“It’s fine. Erin’s not too embarrassed, is she?”
“I’m not ashamed,” she calls back, and I smile, thinking my best friend did well for himself. That’ll probably never be me—the coupled-up dude banging his girl on the balcony after work—but I’m happy for them.
“Do you wanna come up?” Ryder asks. “We got cannoli from this little bakery in town.”
Normally I’m not one for inserting myself into other people’s romantic evenings, but I can’t get that kiss with Alyssa out of my head and I know if I stay here by myself, I’m just going to spend the whole night thinking about her. Besides, cannoli…
“You don’t mind?” I call up to him. “I don’t want to intrude.”
“Get up here, Sawyer,” Erin calls, though I still can’t see her. “It’s about time I properly get to know Ryder’s best friend anyway.”
So I go inside and swallow down the rest of my beer in a couple long swigs—waste not, want not, as my mom used to say. I grab the rest of the six-pack out of the fridge just in case Ryder and Erin want some, although I’m not sure anyone’s ever paired beer and cannoli before. Then I jog up the stairwell to the next floor.
The door’s already open a crack when I get there, but I knock anyway to be polite—and to avoid interrupting any more of what I heard out on the balcony. Ryder calls, “Come on in, man.”
I push the door open and find him sitting with Erin on the couch. She’s got her legs thrown over his lap and they’re sharing a bottle of red wine. God damn, they’re the picture of partnered bliss, and something deep, deep down in the farthest recesses of my mind awakens, thinking it must be nice.
“Cabernet?” Erin asks, already jumping up to pour me a glass.
I shrug and hold out the six-pack. “I brought Sam Adams, but I guess I could try to be a little classier. Do I have to drink it with my pinkie out?”
“You can drink it straight out of the bottle if you really want to,” Ryder says. “We’re not here to cramp your style.”
I chuckle and accept the wine glass Erin holds out to me. My beers are quickly forgotten on the corner of the coffee table, and I take a seat. “So, you two seem nauseatingly happy.”
This time, Erin laughs. “Sorry to be sickening, but we are.”
“I’m happy for you,” I tell them, and we clink our glasses together.
For the next twenty minutes or so, we just shoot the shit and catch up with each other. It feels a little like college, when Ryder and I would roll out of our beds the morning after a party, chug water until the hangovers went away, and recap how great the night was.
Except now, it’s quickly becoming clear to me that Ryder has moved on to the next phase of his life, and I’m still in my bars, beers and broads phase.
The longer I sit here listening to these two, the less sure I am that I want to stay in that phase.
“So, how’s your mom doing, Erin?” I ask after a while.
I know she’s got early onset Alzheimer’s, and that Ryder and his dad pulled some strings to get her into a clinical trial in Seattle. It’s not something Erin talks about a lot, though, and I understand why.
“She’s doing well right now,” she says with a smile. “We’re going to keep the twenty-four-hour nurse just to be safe, but she’s having much longer periods of lucidity lately.”
“That’s great.”
“Yeah, her neurologist in Cranden is convinced she must have gotten the trial drug and not a placebo,” Ryder says.
“We still won’t know for sure until the findings are all published,” Erin adds. “But enough about that… Ryder tells me you and Alyssa Grant have been working together on a special project for Xander. How’s that going?”
From the glimmer in her eyes, I can tell she’s asking about more than hiring a personal assistant. I look from Erin to Ryder, wondering how much they know and whether it was a mistake to come up here after all.
“It’s going fine,” I say, then try to change the subject. “Hey, didn’t somebody mention cannoli?”
Ryder laughs and gets up, going over to the fridge to retrieve them as he calls over his shoulder, “Just fine?”
Damn it. The guy is persistent when he wants to be—probably how he managed to build a whole damn hospital out here despite being just a few years out of medical school.
“Maybe we should just skip the fishing expedition and you two tell me what you already know,” I suggest, snagging a cannoli from the bakery box that Ryder sets on the coffee table. I’m considering this payment for the fact that I feel as if I was invited up here for an ambush.
Erin just shrugs and says, “I heard from my friend Caitlin that things have been getting… cozy.”
I scoff. Alyssa and I have been at each other’s throats more than anything, and these two can’t possibly know about tonight’s kiss. I decide to play it cool. I shrug back and say, “I wouldn’t say cozy—cramped, maybe. The sooner I can get her out of Hemlock Hills and away from my chief job, the better.”
Ryder just lifts his wine glass to his lips and says into the glass, “Sure, buddy.”
This son of a bitch… when did he get so grown up?
A couple days later, I’m finishing up a heart stent placement when my phone buzzes from an instrument outside the sterile field.
“I can get that for you, Dr. Stone,” Trish says, batting her eyes a bit too eagerly. The last thing I need is to owe her a favor.
“No, it’s fine,” I say. “I’ve got about ten more stitches and this guy’s closed up.”
“It’s really no big deal,” Trish says, already stepping away from the table and taking off one glove with a snap. I’m annoyed, not because she disobeyed my order so much as because she’s been getting way too clingy lately.
I haven’t actually been encouraging this—at least I don’t think so—but she’s been acting like we’re dating or something. With anyone else just doing me a favor and checking my phone while my hands are occupied, I wouldn’t mind giving out my passcode. Trish, on the other hand, is a good argument for facial recognition.
She’s standing there expectantly, though, and everyone else in the OR will think it’s strange if I refuse. So I grit my teeth and say, “Oh-one, oh-six.”
It’s my mom’s birthday—so I never forget it and so I don’t forget how fractured my family is, because of me.
But Trish will never pry that detail from my head.
“Got it,” she says, thumbing through my messages like she’s got every right to. And because we’re being observed by a half-dozen other surg techs and nurses, I pretend I don’t mind.
“Well?” I prompt.
“Hmm?”
“What’s the message?” I ask, getting testy despite my best efforts. She’s practically reading through my whole phone! God help me if she finds any dick pics...
“Oh. Dr. Cane wants to know if you’re free for dinner Friday night.”
I frown, but no one can see it beneath my surgical mask. “Younger or elder Cane?”
“Oh, right,” Trish says, taking off her own mask purely to flash me a cutesy smile that’s totally wasted on me. I used to go after anything with tits and a pulse, but I’m more discerning lately, and crazy is most definitely off the table.
Sorry, Trish.
“Younger Cane,” she says. “Oh wait, another text is coming in… he says he has reservations for six at the Wilde Tavern at eight p.m.”
I finish my last stitch while Trish asks me whether I want her to respond. I snap off my gloves and tell the anesthesiologist to begin bringing the patient back up, then I
snatch my phone out of Trish’s greedy little hands and mutter an insincere “Thanks.”
I read the messages again—for myself—on my way to my office. The Wilde Tavern is a recently opened restaurant right here in Hemlock Hills, and I’ve been hearing rave reviews from a lot of the docs. Finn took his kids there for dinner and they loved it, and Ryder’s been hearing the place grills incredible steaks.
Seems like a no-brainer. I tap out a quick response: Sure, count me in. Who else is coming?
I go into my office and close the door, lock it too because I’m tired of playing Penelope to Trish’s Pepe Le Pew. I have to admit it was flattering at first, and I even flirted back a little bit, but now every time I turn around, there she is.
My phone chimes just as I’m sitting down at my desk to write up notes on the surgery I just completed.
Bunch of hospital people, Ryder wrote back. Finn Carter, Holly who’s also in pediatrics, Alyssa, Erin, you and me.
I grunt. For being my best friend, he sure seems to be setting me up to fail. First he says come work with me in the sticks, it’ll be great! Then he says oh, by the way, you can’t bang any of the staff. Now he’s saying join us for a night out with the hottest damn woman in the place, who you just made out with yesterday.
Granted, he doesn’t know that last detail.
Still… it’s gonna be a helluva night.
13
Alyssa
The Wilde Tavern is crowded when I get there. Sort of like The Summit, it’s a trendy, upscale version of the types of dives and hole-in-the-wall restaurants you’d expect to find in a small town like this.
Overall, I gotta say I’m really impressed with this town and everything it’s got to offer… everything except that damn internet café that Sawyer had to rescue me from.
I wander through the bar area of the restaurant for a minute, looking for familiar faces. There’s country music playing and a dance floor that’s still somewhat empty at this hour of the night. I see Erin sitting at a booth in the dining area, and as soon as our eyes meet, she smiles and waves.
This is really nice, getting to know my coworkers for once instead of always being so wrapped up in what’s going wrong in my own family. Not to mention the fact out here in Hemlock Hills, I don’t have to worry about my dad taking advantage of my friends—it’s happened before, and it’s not a fun thing to explain. I’m even starting to think–
My thoughts cut off right in the middle of a sentence when I walk deeper into the dining room and see who’s sitting with Erin and Ryder.
Sawyer… and not a single other soul.
Part of me wants to turn on my heels and run the hell out of there. I know we said we were going to give the whole ‘friends’ thing a try, but we haven’t talked about anything non-work-related since that kiss. Now I’m supposed to have dinner with him in a cozy little booth, as if we’re on a double date? Awk-ward!
But I’ve already waved to Erin. It’s too late to run. So I go over and paste on a nervous smile as I slide into the booth next to Sawyer. “Hey guys… are Finn and Holly coming?”
Smooth, Alyssa… real casual.
“One of Finn’s kids came home from school today with chicken pox,” Ryder explains, “so he had to stay home and take care of him.”
“Poor kid,” I say, still holding out hope for Holly, the peds nurse. I don’t know her all that well, but we had fun at The Summit a few weeks ago, and we could definitely use another person in this booth to quash the double date vibe I’m picking up.
“Yeah, and Holly has a migraine, I guess,” Sawyer says, clearly thinking the same thing I am.
Damn you, Holly.
“So I guess it’s just the four of us,” Erin says, lifting her beer bottle off the table. “Kinda like a double date.”
F. M. L. I wonder if she’d be grinning even wider if she knew about our kiss.
I hope she never finds out about that. Erin is totally one of those happily ever after women, especially since she got her second chance with Ryder and it turned into a magical fairytale romance. Now she thinks it’s bound to happen to everyone sooner or later, but it sure as hell can’t happen with me and Sawyer.
What kind of happily ever after ends when one of us gets their dream job and the other is sent packing? The sucky, dissatisfying kind.
“Beer, friend?” Sawyer asks, and I readily agree.
“Thanks, pal,” I say, playing along. Nothing like a little friendship trial by fire.
We order our drinks and some food, sticking to the appetizer portion of the menu so we can sample each other’s dishes and try a little of everything. The conversation starts out with the obvious—work—then drifts into our backgrounds, our families (I pretend to need the ladies’ room at that point), and eventually, our futures.
Ryder and Erin have been busy planning to build a house. Erin’s mom will live with them and they’ll have plenty of bedrooms to start a family of their own. It’s sort of amazing that four people who are all roughly the same age can be at such drastically different stages in their lives, because I can’t even imagine having kids, and Sawyer looks like he’s getting a rash just thinking about being a homeowner.
“What about you, Alyssa?” Ryder asks after a while. “You’ve been quiet tonight. What’s your five-year plan?”
Umm, getting my sister away from our opportunistic father and trying to dig myself out from under all the debt he put me in is about as far into my future as I’ve gotten. But I barely know these people, and they’re my coworkers—I can’t unburden my soul like that.
Fortunately, Sawyer knows a little of that tragic tale, and he tries to lighten the mood with a well-placed snort of derision. “Five-year plan? Dude, when did you turn into your dad?”
Ryder gives him an unamused look. “What? It’s a reasonable question.”
“Yeah, for a job interview, not dinner conversation.”
Ryder raises his hands. “Fine, fair enough. I retract my inquiry.”
Sawyer snorts again. “Inquiry. Yeah, you’ve definitely turned into your dad. Tilt your head forward—is your hairline receding?”
“My dad’s not balding,” Ryder points out. It’s true—Chief Cane has gone salt-and-pepper, but he’s got a thick head of hair.
“They say it skips a generation,” Sawyer warns. “Well, my beer’s empty—gonna go over to the bar. Anybody want anything?”
“I could use another,” I tell him. “Thanks.”
“Me too,” Alyssa says. “But I think I wanna switch to wine. Whatever looks good.”
“I am not a wine connoisseur,” Sawyer says, and Ryder slides out of the booth.
“I’ll come with you.”
The two guys head to the bar, Sawyer still teasing Ryder about turning into his dad, and I even see him picking through Ryder’s hair, looking for bald spots, before Ryder slaps his hand away.
“They’re really close friends, huh?” I say.
“Ever since med school,” Erin answers. “A bromance for the ages.”
I laugh. “Do you ever feel like a third wheel?”
Erin smiles, twirling her auburn hair around one finger. “Occasionally, but it’s not Sawyer I’m competing with—it’s the hospital.”
I raise my beer to drink to that, then remember the bottle is empty, so instead I just say, “I hear that. I’ve been killing myself to earn the chief of surgery job and sometimes I feel like I’m married to the hospital too.”
“How’s that going?”
I let out a little grunt, and Erin laughs.
“That well?”
“I just wish I wasn’t competing against Dr. Groundbreaking 3D Printing Technique and also the hospital founder’s best friend… and God’s gift to women,” I say. Christ, after saying it out loud I wonder why I ever thought I had a shot at that job.
Erin ignores all that, though, and asks, “That Sawyer charm doesn’t work on you, huh?”
I laugh. If only she knew the problem is it works a little too well.
“Façade?” Okay, now she’s got my interest, at least a little bit. I’m thinking back to Trish in Sawyer’s office, and his claim that it was all one-sided. “You don’t think it’s real?”
“Nah. I don’t know Sawyer super well, but I do know Ryder, and he wouldn’t call a real womanizer his best friend,” she says. “He wouldn’t beg and plead for a guy like that to move halfway across the country to work with him. If you want my opinion, it’s all just a front Sawyer puts on to keep people at arm’s length.”
I smile and fidget with my beer bottle. I do know a thing or two about keeping people at a distance—for their own good as well as mine. As I watch the guys weave their way back to the booth with drinks in hand, my eyes lock on Sawyer’s and I wonder what he’s hiding under that confident smile, that cocky attitude.
Is Erin right about him?
“Here’s your beer, buddy,” he says when he slides into the booth next to me, setting the bottle down in front of me with a cheeky grin. “And guess what we found while we were at the bar?”
“A sweet white wine for me?” Erin asks, and Ryder delivers.
“Of course,” he says, sitting down and sliding one arm around her shoulder.
“That, and a pool table,” Sawyer says. “There’s a whole game room off to the left of the bar—billiards, darts, air hockey. What do you say, Dr. Grant? Rematch?”
I’m feeling just tipsy enough to kick his ass. I take a swig of my beer, then shove him towards the edge of the booth. “You’re on.”
14
Sawyer
I’m in a scratchy button-up and a tie, sitting behind Alyssa’s desk the following Monday afternoon, and I’m so close to her I can smell the vanilla mixed with a hint of citrus scent that she always smells like.
I’ve narrowed it down to a hand cream, and today I actually watched her pull the bottle out of her desk and put it on. She’d just gotten out of surgery, and those latex gloves can be hell on your skin, especially in the winter. She’s intoxicating, and that smell just makes me want to crowd even closer to her.
