Perfect Distraction

by Allison Ashley

  Andrew: I’m just trying to ketchup

  Lauren: Berry good work

  Lauren: Wait, I want to take that one back. I can do better.

  Andrew: No take-backs

  Andrew: I win

  Lauren: You win?

  Andrew: The first ever Andrew-Lauren Pun War.

  Lauren: You should know I took it easy on you. You’re a newbie.

  Andrew: We’ll call this round one, then.

  Lauren: To be continued…

  …

  “What are you doing for Thanksgiving next week?” Emma swiveled in a half circle and twirled a strand of dark hair around one finger. It was Friday afternoon and the clinic was quiet. Lauren and Dr. Stanford had just seen their last patient of the day, and Emma had one left to see. Kiara had taken the week off to travel home to California, her brand-new fiancé in tow.

  “Nothing.”

  Emma made a face. “Nothing?”

  “I don’t mind spending it alone. It’s not worth it to travel home for just the day,” Lauren said. She didn’t mention that she didn’t particularly want to go home. When she’d finally called her dad back, she’d caved and agreed to work as a fill-in pharmacist for two days at his store around Christmas. One trip to Oklahoma was enough. “I’m expected at Children’s Hospital that Saturday, and I ended up picking up a pharmacy shift Thanksgiving morning at the adult hospital. It’s not like I’m just going to sit at home all day.” She leaned forward and took a bite of the pumpkin pie Mr. Jones, a long-time patient, had brought that morning. It was sweet, moist, and had the perfect amount of spice. Lauren sighed with appreciation.

  A frown lingered on Emma’s face. “Why don’t you come to my parents’ house when you get off? My mom loves you. We don’t have traditional Thanksgiving food for dinner, but she’s making a killer banh xeo. And bun rieu.”

  “That’s really nice of you.” Lauren smiled, flattered at the invitation when she’d spent countless holidays alone. “Can I see how I feel after my shift? I might be in the mood to just crash and watch this new documentary in my queue.”

  Emma rolled her eyes. “You’re such a nerd.”

  Lauren had no argument.

  One of the medical assistants walked into the room with a chart and handed it to Emma.

  “Hey, could you do me a favor while I see this last patient?” Emma asked.

  “Sure.”

  Emma held out several sheets of paper. “Andrew Bishop called and requested a copy of his original PET scan report. He didn’t have an appointment, but I told him I’d run it down to infusion when he was here for chemo. Since you know him, could you take it for me?”

  Lauren’s muscles tensed. “What do you mean, I know him?”

  “You know who he is, right? You did his chemo counseling. I can’t imagine any red-blooded female would forget that face,” Emma said with a laugh. “If you’re busy, don’t worry about it. I just thought maybe we could both get out of here a little early.”

  Lauren kept her face carefully disinterested and took the pages. “I can do that.”

  “Thanks.” Emma stood up and walked out, chart in hand.

  Lauren headed toward the stairwell, her heart doing a strange thump in her chest when she saw Andrew’s name at the top of the page.

  Andrew and Jeni were in the front of Mandi’s section today, and both were looking at their phones when Lauren approached.

  “Hi.”

  “Hey, Lauren,” Jeni said.

  Andrew jerked his gaze up, and a wide smile spread across his face. “Hey.”

  “How’s it going?” Lauren’s return smile was tentative. It was the first time they’d seen each other in person since the non-kiss, and she felt a little awkward.

  This wasn’t the first time they’d spoken though…far from it. It had been nearly two weeks since that night, and they’d texted almost every day since. Lauren never texted Andrew first, but he always seemed to find a reason to send her a message. She wasn’t going to be rude and ignore him.

  If she didn’t initiate the communication, it wasn’t as bad…right? Her entire life, Lauren had walked the straight and narrow. She’d be the first to admit she was completely out of her element with this…whatever this was.

  Andrew wore a beanie on his head, and there wasn’t a hint of hair near the bottom edge. He must have shaved his head.

  Lucky for him and unlucky for her, he looked good in the hat. Really good. It was one of those oversized, slouched-types that David Beckham wore through every airport around the world.

  She remembered his insecure comment about losing his hair, and she focused her eyes on his.

  “We were just talking about Thanksgiving,” Jeni said. She dropped her feet to the floor and sat up straight. “I prevented a mass exodus of Bishops from Nebraska to Missouri, which would have included no less than eight minivans and pickup trucks full of extended family. I used Andrew here as an excuse, and it worked like a charm.”

  “Who knew there would be a silver lining to having cancer?” Andrew said with a grin.

  “You’d be surprised,” Lauren said. “For such a terrible thing, I’ve heard countless stories of positive things that come from it.”

  “What are your holiday plans?” Jeni asked.

  “I picked up a morning shift in the hospital pharmacy,” Lauren replied. “I don’t normally work over there, but I don’t have any other plans, and I figured I could give someone else the morning off.”

  “And after that?”

  Lauren shrugged. “I’ve got too much going on to travel to Oklahoma, so I’m hanging around here. I’ll enjoy having an afternoon and evening off.”

  “You should come to my house,” Jeni said.

  Andrew raised an eyebrow at his sister.

  “That’s…very nice of you,” Lauren said slowly.

  “It’s just going to be Andrew and me. We were going to order pizza and watch Parks and Recreation reruns all night.”

  Seriously? She loved Parks and Rec.

  “Doesn’t that sound wonderful?” Jeni continued.

  “It does, actually,” Lauren said. “But I don’t think I shou—”

  “Just think about it, okay?” Jeni interrupted. “If you want to enjoy some time alone, I totally get it. But if you decide you want company, you’re welcome to come hang out.”

  Lauren shifted on her feet and rubbed one forearm with the opposite hand as she considered how to politely decline.

  “Don’t decide right now,” Andrew added. He rubbed the back of his neck, the muscles in his forearm rippling. “See how you feel after you get off work on Thursday and let me know. No big deal either way.”

  It would be a lot easier to say no via text message. “Okay. I’ll let you know.” She realized she still held his scan report in her hand. “Here’s the PET scan report you asked for. Emma told me to bring it by.”

  Andrew took the papers. “Thanks. My mom insisted I get copies of everything.”

  “It’s not a bad idea,” Lauren agreed. “It makes things easier if you ever decide you want a second opinion about something.”

  “I’m not going anywhere else.”

  The infusion pump beeped, and Mandi promptly walked over, allowing Lauren to excuse herself.

  She wove through the infusion center toward the back stairway that would take her back to clinic. Fridays were the slowest day of the week for the infusion center, and the section of chairs near the corner was empty.

  Thinking she was alone as she walked through, she jumped when a voice came from behind her.

  “Hey, Lauren.”

  Her hand flew to her chest and she spun around to find Gavin standing near the window. He unhooked an empty saline bag from an IV pole and stuffed it into one of the bright yellow disposal buckets placed throughout the room.

  “
Gavin. You startled me,” she said on a long exhale.

  “Sorry.” Finished with his task, he took three steps in her direction. “We missed you the other night. On the Plaza.”

  His expression was calm, but his voice held an edge. He was cocky, sure…but usually not intimidating, A tingle of unease spread down Lauren’s spine at the look in his eye as he watched her.

  “Oh, yeah. Did you have fun?”

  “It was a blast.” He paused for a beat. “What were you up to? Studying, you said?”

  Lauren sensed something hinged on her response to this question, but she didn’t know what else to say. “Yeah.” That is what she’d planned on doing, before Logan/Andrew had asked her to dinner.

  “Huh. That’s weird, because I could have sworn I saw you that night.”

  Bob Barker.

  “You were by the fountain with someone. He looked an awful lot like that big guy with Hodgkin’s we’ve been treating.”

  Lauren’s mind kicked into overdrive. How should she respond? Did it matter that she and Andrew were there together? Should she lie and say it hadn’t been her? Or it hadn’t been Andrew? She’d been so focused on Andrew, Gavin could have passed right by them and she wouldn’t have noticed. If she tried to play it off like she hadn’t been there with Andrew, and Gavin had been nearby and saw them—especially right at the almost kiss—things would look even worse.

  She wasn’t convinced she had anything to hide. The whole thing with Andrew felt like such a gray area. Plus, she was a terrible liar.

  “Look, I don’t see how this is any of your business, but I ended up going to the Plaza that night. It was a last-minute decision, and I was meeting someone. I ran into Andrew and we walked around. It was nothing.”

  Gavin made a humming noise between his lips. “Didn’t look like nothing.” His accusatory tone coupled with a lift of his eyebrow caused a spark of anger inside her.

  Squaring her shoulders, she asked, “Is there something you want to say, Gavin? What are you after?”

  A slight smile formed on his lips. “I just think it’s interesting. You’ve played hard to get with me from the start, and then this guy snags you within a few weeks of showing up to your clinic. Is it because he has cancer? You feel bad for him, or something?”

  “You’re an asshole.” The words spilled out before she could stop them. “First of all, no one has ‘snagged’ me. Nothing happened. Like I said, we ran into each other that night. Second, I haven’t played hard to get with you, I’m just not interested. Not before, and definitely not now.”

  Her hands shook and her face was on fire, and she pushed past him, ducking into the stairwell. She ascended one flight and paused at the landing, attempting to calm her racing heart.

  Even if she hadn’t stepped over, she was walking a very fine line. On one side was a man who, against her better judgment, she wanted to get to know. On the other, her dream job. Was she playing with fire?

  She wasn’t sure how far she could take a friendship with Andrew without risking her career, but she did know one thing.

  She had to be more careful.

  Chapter Eight

  “You gonna kill me for inviting Lauren over?” Jeni asked after Lauren left.

  Andrew regarded his sister, tilting his head. “Actually, no. You’ve proven quite useful. I think I’ll keep you around. Though, I have to ask—what are you trying to do?”

  “If you don’t know, you’re an even bigger idiot than I thought.”

  Andrew ignored that. “Parks and Rec and pizza, though? Where the hell did you come up with that?”

  Jeni shrugged. “Sounds like an awesome holiday to me. And I think Lauren agreed.”

  “We’ll see,” Andrew said. He figured his chances of her actually coming were low.

  Even so, seeing Lauren today was the highlight of what had otherwise been a shitty couple of weeks.

  Last Monday, three days after his last chemo treatment and two days after his non-date with Lauren, Andrew had felt so awful he’d skipped his Ethics class. Even though Dan had brought him notes the next day, he still felt like it was a bad sign. That had been only the second of eight planned treatments.

  Where would it go from here?

  To make matters worse, last Thursday he’d woken up to find a disturbing amount of his hair still on the pillow and had immediately called Jeni. Good twin sister that she was, she’d maintained a perfectly businesslike demeanor as she’d shaved his head. She hadn’t laughed, she hadn’t wept all over him, she hadn’t cracked jokes. She’d strode in, gotten the job done, and left for work. They both knew it sucked, but it was part of the deal.

  Supposedly, it would grow back.

  He’d had eight days to get used to his new look before today’s chemo appointment, when he’d assumed he might see Lauren. She was probably used to seeing bald men and women…but that didn’t ease his self-consciousness. He’d experimented with baseball caps and hipster-style beanies, but typically went with the latter, even indoors. November in Kansas City boasted temperatures in the forties, and Andrew wasn’t prepared for how cold he would be without hair blanketing his head.

  The hat he chose for today was dark gray, and as he sat in a similar-colored leather-encased chair in the chemo infusion center, he blended in quite well.

  “Have you talked to Mom today?” Jeni asked from beside him. Her chair was perpendicular to his, her feet propped up on his armrest. She tapped at her phone and didn’t look up when she spoke.

  “No, why?” Andrew’s eyes were on his phone as well as he scrolled through Instagram.

  “I really did talk her out of bringing the extended family down for Thanksgiving. But she still wants to come. With Rhonda and Valerie’s family…and Dad.”

  “I hope you told her no.”

  “Of course I did. But you know Mom, she’s devastated we won’t be together as a family. I told her there’s a first for everything, and that you didn’t need the commotion and stress of being around that many people. Especially on your week off, when your immune system is the weakest.”

  “Where did you get that idea?”

  “Lauren said so.”

  He tried to remember anything about that…but the only thing that came to mind from that first day was an image of her red hair and the blue shirt she’d worn underneath that long white coat.

  And his mother’s question about sex. He’d never forget that.

  “What do you need me to do?”

  “Tell her you don’t feel up to celebrating the holiday.”

  “I don’t.”

  “I know. But she doesn’t believe me.”

  Andrew opened his text messages. “I’m on it.”

  But before he could send off a message to his mother, an incoming call came through.

  Andrew stared at the screen. What the hell? “Dad’s calling me.”

  Jeni looked up. “So?”

  “I haven’t talked to him since the diagnosis.”

  “At all?” Her pitch rose a notch.

  “Nope.”

  Jeni shook her head and pursed her lips. “You two are ridiculous.”

  Andrew didn’t argue. The phone continued to vibrate in his hand.

  “Aren’t you going to answer it?”

  “I…” Andrew paused. “I don’t know.”

  Jeni, moving like lightning, snatched his phone and swiped the screen to answer the call, then put it back in Andrew’s hand.

  He shot his sister a death glare and put the phone to his ear.

  “Hello?”

  “Andrew?”

  “Hey, Dad.”

  “Are you busy?”

  Andrew glanced at the IV pole attached to him. “Not at the moment.”

  Pause. “I uh, just wanted to call and…”

  Andrew’s patience with his dad was about as
thin as a piece of paper. “And?”

  His dad cleared his throat. “I wanted to see how you were doing.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “How’s your…thing going?”

  “Chemo?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay.”

  “Good.”

  Andrew waited.

  His dad sighed audibly. “Do you need anything?”

  “No.”

  “Okay. Well, call if you do.”

  “Okay. Bye, Dad.”

  Andrew dropped the phone and his hands into his lap.

  “That’s it?” came Jeni’s voice.

  Andrew leaned his head against the chair and closed his eyes.

  “How long are you two going to do this?” she asked.

  “Do what?”

  “Avoid each other. It’s been years, Andrew. You and Dad used to be close.”

  “I know exactly how long it’s been. Do you think I like the way things are between us?” He cracked his knuckles. “But he refuses to support me in my decision to become an attorney. You know I tried coming home a few times after I moved away, but all he did was bitch at me the whole time, telling me I was avoiding the responsibility I had to the family business. He told me more than once how disappointed he was in me. He won’t let it go, and I’m tired of being hounded, so I stopped calling. What else is there to say?”

  Jeni sighed. “I don’t know. I just hate seeing you two at each other’s throats.”

  “We’re not at each other’s throats. We’ve moved on to complete avoidance.”

  “That’s worse.”

  “It is what it is, Jeni. If I’ve come to terms with it, you can, too.”

  …

  Despite a heaviness in his limbs, a sign of fatigue he was starting to get used to the week after chemo, Andrew spent Monday afternoon at the DA’s office. He put in twelve to fifteen hours per week, and with the Thanksgiving holiday the office would be closed the latter half of the week.

  Todd Griffin, a seasoned prosecutor who had been with the Kansas City DA for fifteen years, took Andrew on to help with a domestic violence case. Though Andrew was disturbed by the information in the case file, he needed to be prepared to handle cases like this one.