Checked (29 page)

I don’t need to run to a mirror to know that I’m blushing.

Reply.

Rather nicely, huh? Is that what you say to all of your patients?

Phone back in pocket. New gloves on. Time for bathroom cleaning.

My phone buzzes twice while I’m sterilizing my bathroom, but I again force myself to wait until I finish my task to check his messages.

Message one.

No, Callie, not at all.

Message two. Sent only seconds after the first.

I hope you don’t think that I would do something like that.

Fabulous.
Now I’ve not only upset him yet again, but I’ve also made him wait for my bathroom to be cleaned before giving him a response.
Considerate as always, Calista.

Count. Reply.

Of course I don’t think that.

Count. Send.

I stand for quite some time in the middle of my bathroom waiting for a response. One doesn’t come.

Eventually, feeling too disgusting to spend any more time not getting clean, I put my phone on the sink counter and start my shower. While scrubbing and shaving and conditioning, I strain to hear any noises from my phone. It’s obviously hard to hear with all of the water running over me, but I’m pretty sure I don’t miss a buzz. I’m pretty sure there hasn’t been one.
He’s not going to write back.

As I shampoo my hair for the second time, I decide that I will send him another message if he hasn’t written by the time I’ve finished drying my hair. Yes, my decision makes me feel like a twelve-year old.
{Cue Justin Bieber with some song that I’m pretty sure is by him but I don’t know the name of it.}
I spend the rest of my shower trying to come up with something to say, some magical words that will make him feel better. He can be so freaking serious. How could he think that I would actually accuse him of making middle of the night visits to all of his patients?
Disgusting.

But he did say he wanted to get tested for me. Guess that means he has made some middle of the night visits to someone. Or someones. How many, I wonder. Probably not a question I should ask in my upcoming text…

By the time I’ve finished drying my hair, he hasn’t sent me a message, and I still have no idea what to write. I guess I could ask about our plans for tomorrow…but what if he’s changed his mind?

To buy myself more thinking time and, well, because it’s the responsible thing to do, I check my closet one more time for the murderers before applying my body lotion. Then I get dressed for bed. For the first time that I can remember, I put on old pajamas. The same pajamas I wore last night—I couldn’t make myself wash them today. Maybe his lingering scent on them will help me get some sleep during my last night without Mandy.

Mandy. She hasn’t called or texted since she arrived in Pittsburgh. She’s probably busy going—

Stop, Callie. Focus.

After flipping on my television, I grab my phone and get into bed.

Okay…a text…

Still no ideas. I start to type him a good night, and then I hear the TV chef announce tonight’s dish.

Baked lobster macaroni and cheese.
Unbelievable. Perfect.

Erasing the start of my message, I begin again.

It looks like I’ll be falling asleep to another cook’s take on baked macaroni. This one has lobster in it though. And I hate lobster. Guess your dish wins.

Count. Send.

Please write back. Please write back. Please wr—

Buzz.

Count. Open.

Thanks, I think.

He’s still so distant.

I have to fix this—before I go to sleep. Not that I’ll be able to sleep anyway…

{Rod Stewart’s raspy voice sings most of
“So Far Away.”
}

Got it. It’s gonna take, as Jared would say, at least one pair of balls.

Count. Reply.

Maybe you should come over to cook me something better
.

One. Two. Three. One. Two. Three. One. Two. Three.

Onetwothree. Onetwothree. Onetwothree.

Onetwothreeonetwothreeonetwothree.

Send.

Squeezing my eyes shut and trying to block out the swarm of questions and potential outcomes knocking at my brain, I lie completely still in my bed.
{The song begins again.}

Stupid, stupid, stupid, Callie.
He’s probably trying to think of a clinical way to say no. Or he’s already fallen asleep and will get my message in the morning and think it’s ridic—

Buzz.

Ooonnneee. Tttwwwooo. Ttthhhrrreeeeee. Open.

Under one condition: You’ll have to be wearing more clothes than you were yesterday, or I’ll never make it through the night…

He’s back. And already making me flushed.

Reply.

I’ll see what I can do.

Send.

Time to change clothes, I guess. I change into a slightly longer pair of shorts and a somewhat more fitted t-shirt before folding up my other pajamas and putting them on top of my hamper—just in case I want to wear them tomorrow night. Then I sit down on my bed to wait, not wanting to start something and risk triggering the need to restart my night preparations.

After all ten of my nails are scraped off plus about ten minutes, the doorbell rings.

When I get downstairs (with the help of lights this time), I take only a second at the peephole before opening the front door.

He’s smiling.

Thank God.

I smile back and step aside to let him in. He wordlessly takes off his shoes and puts them on the towel before shutting the door and twisting the handle one, two, three times. He then takes my hand and lets me lead him back up to my room.

When we again stand in front of my bed, this time illuminated by the glow of the television, he speaks.

“You aren’t really wearing much more than you were last night.” He smiles.

“I trust you,” I whisper as I stretch my arms around his neck.

“You probably shouldn’t.” His voice is husky, and the smile has faded from his face. His eyes start sucking me in.

As I move in closer, our lips all but touching, he murmurs, “Callie, you are going to kill me.” His lips brush mine as he says the words, making any attempts at resistance entirely worthless.

He covers my lips with his and wraps his arms around my waist. I allow my hands to roam—through his hair, on his chest, down his back…whatever I can get away with. When I reach the bottom of his back, right where his sweats begin, I don’t stop, pushing further into him and moving both hands down, down, do—

“Callie—oh my God, you really are killing me.”

He pulls back, leaving my hands empty and the rest of me completely breathless.

“Soon,” he whispers. And then his eyes search mine anxiously. “And then only if you want to.”

“I don’t think you have to worry about that,” I manage to get out while trying to restore a normal breathing pattern.

“Good.” He looks pretty relieved as he kisses my forehead and leads me to my bed.

“I’m planning to take that test early this week,” he continues as he gets under the covers.

In an obscenely bold move (I’m definitely going to check tomorrow morning to see if I’ve grown testicles), I ask exactly what I want to know.

“Have there, um, been that many others?”

“No.” He shakes his head and motions for me to get in beside him.

His eyes glaze over, and he’s somewhere else again so I get into the bed, pull up the covers, and wait for more.

{Brandi Carlile starts wailing
“The Story.”
}

He takes my hand and then positions himself so he is on his side facing me. His mouth opens and closes a few times before he actually begins to speak.

“There has only been one other person, I mean, other than you when we, if we…”

Oh.

I think he’s looking for some sort of reaction from me. I also think he is trying to work his way up to saying more so I squeeze his hand, lie down on my stomach, and nod in the hopes that he’ll continue.

It works.
Nice strategy, Callie
. Looks like I’m a degree away from being a psychologist myself–a psychologist with balls, apparently.

Focus, Dr. Royce.

“She was a girl I met in a graduate class. We were, um, engaged.”

Wow
. I can’t say I expected that, but I do my best to keep a game face.

“We dated for a few years before I, ah, proposed. Things didn’t get really bad until after I put that ring on her finger.”

Where is she now? Who ended it? Do you still love her?

Those are the questions you want to ask, Callie?

Upon further thought, I should probably never study any type of counseling.

He moves to his back and looks up before continuing.

{Brandi’s song continues but fades into the background, thank goodness, so I can hear his words.}

“I guess there were signs before we got engaged. She spent a lot of money and always wanted to go out for expensive meals and extravagant activities. But we were dating, and this was my first adult relationship so I really had nothing to judge it against.

“That stuff didn’t really bother me anyway. I had money, especially after I finished school and started my job. I guess I was just happy to have someone to spend it on.”

He pauses and peeks over at me. To see if he should go on? To see if I have questions?

None that I’d like to voice right now, thank you. 

A teeny tiny nod and a brief smile from me, and he goes on.

“She never had much patience for my mom though. That always bothered me. I tried to move my plans around to suit what my mom would or couldn’t do. If a restaurant was so crowded that it freaked her out, I would leave with her. If she called and wanted to talk, I would spend long periods of time on the phone with her. And whenever Dad would call to tell me she was in panic mode, I would drop my plans to go over and try to help.

“You know, stuff a son should do for his mom. Just decent human being stuff, really.” Pause. “That’s how I saw it, but my fiancée didn’t agree. I think she was embarrassed by Mom. She seemed much more irritated than concerned when Mom had freak-outs in public. I never really understood why it all irritated her so much. Sure, we might have had to leave a restaurant or two, but it’s not like Mom was screaming or making a scene or anything. No one else probably had any idea what was going on so there really was no need for embarrassment. 

“But my fiancée, um, Elizabeth, was like that. So concerned about things like whether the shade of her eye makeup was exactly right and whether the buckles on her purse matched her jewelry. It was exhausting.”

Maybe he’s somehow missed how exhausting I am.

He hasn’t. “Not that Mom’s issues weren’t exhausting. But she couldn’t help it.”

He is still looking straight up at the ceiling, basically creating a verbal free write. Almost as though he’s forgotten I’m here. It’s kind of nice though. It seems like his thoughts are less censored this way.

“Anyway, we got engaged. Even though the Mom stuff bothered me, I figured that all relationships had to come with some problems. I proposed, and she started moving ahead with wedding plans right away. Mom even got excited about hearing the plans. I think she really liked it when we’d show her pictures of the dresses or the flowers, or, well, that other wedding stuff.

“I would try to get Elizabeth to take pictures over to Mom, and really, she did go to see her quite a few times. She even took copies of reception menus to her when she was in the hospital. I guess that was probably the last time she saw her.”

He stops talking. From my side view, I can easily see the big, labored swallow he takes. He then does this thing where he rubs his upper teeth along his lower lip.

Do I say something? Or move closer? Or—

He shakes his head, appearing to shake off the direction where his mind was heading. When he starts talking again, he sounds all doctory, clinical.

“Mom died shortly after that, a couple of months before the wedding, and I, obviously, was in no frame of mind to be talking tuxes, or program covers, or honeymoon packages. 

“That was okay for about a week, and then I guess it was unacceptable. We had some pretty major fights where she yelled at me as I sat and listened. I tried to tell her to just keep making plans, that I would trust her judgment. But that wasn’t good enough for her.”  Pause. Another big gulp. “She called it all off about a month before the wedding, a month after Mom died.”

He rolls back over to his side to face me. “All right, now you know a case history of the only person I’ve ever slept with. I don’t anticipate having positive results for any diseases since we were each other’s firsts, we always used condoms, and, well, because no symptoms or anything have shown up over the past few years.”

He smiles…ish. “Sorry—that’s gross to say.” Real smile now. “You still want to sleep with me?”