He looked me up and down. “You don’t believe me.”
“People come up with weirder lies. Usually, to cover up weirder wounds or emergencies, but still…”
“Like what?”
I took a closer look at his wound. “You are going to need stitches.”
“Great. Do you know how much that’s going to cost me?”
I looked up at him. “Your insurance should cover it.”
He scoffed. “You think I have insurance?”
“The hospital has a very good financial program. Give them a call, and they might waive all of your fees.”
“It is barbaric that I have to pay for hospital care.”
I nodded. “Don’t get me started on the American healthcare system. You’ll never be able to leave.”
He smiled. “At least we still have something in common.”
I looked into his eyes. “Our deep dislike of hospitals?”
He smiled. “Of injustice. Our deep dislike of injustice.”
I swallowed, turning away from him. I didn’t want him to see me rolling my eyes.
“I just need to get some things.”
“I didn’t fall on the knife. I got in a fight.”
“I figured. Where?”
“Right in the arm.”
I looked at him over my shoulder. I smiled, despite myself. “Was it at a bar or something?”
“Or something. Do you really need to know the specifics?”
“You know someone has already called the police, right?” I asked. “Whether you want to hide it or not, the truth is going to come out eventually.”
“And painfully. Just like the knife.”
That time, I did laugh. “I don’t know,” I said. “But it would help me ascertain where it was, which might help me know what your chances of getting an infection are.”
“I was at a friend’s house. There was a dispute and before I knew it, he grabbed a knife, and stuck it into my arm. Are you happy now?”
I turned around to look at him. “Not even a little bit.”
“Join the ranks of women who aren’t happy with me.”
“Great. I don’t know how I should react to that.”
He smiled at me. “At least you’re a doctor, so I care about your opinion.”
“But not the rest of them?”
He laughed. “Why would I care about the rest of them, when I can care about what you think?”
I felt my cheeks reddening, the blood rushing to them. I cleared my throat before I turned around, trying, once more, to keep a semblance of professionalism as I made my hands fists at my sides. “Stay put,” I said. “I’ll be right back, and we’ll find you a bed upstairs so you can stay for the next day or so until we know you definitely don’t have an infection.”
He said something else, but I was walking so quickly away from him that I didn’t hear him.
CHAPTER FOUR
2009
I didn’t want to deal with him.
I knew exactly what was going to happen, because it wasn’t as if he hadn’t done it before. He was sweet, full of apologies the next day, telling me he was going to make it up to me stat. I knew that he was, but the hurt could have been avoided in the first place, if he hadn’t just frozen and then given into his friends demands of acting like he didn’t really even know me.
Like I was even just his tutor, and we weren’t more than friends.
Because we were certainly more than friends.
He had asked me, one afternoon, after I had helped him with his homework, if I wanted to be more than that.
And I had, repeatedly and decidedly, said no.
Because he never said hello to me in the hallways, and because he practically ignored me in every single class that we had together. I didn’t want to think that he was just going to pretend not to know me if we were together, but he chipped away at me, slowly winning me over, even though he had absolutely no right to win me over, even though I didn’t want him to win me over.
He made me laugh at all the right times. Every day that we spent together, I smiled a little more, and I could feel myself falling for him, slowly but surely. He was good at tearing down my walls, at making me feel safe, even when I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to be feeling safe around him. He wasn’t a safe person—no, he was dangerous, and he had that smile that made me melt inside. I didn’t want him to, but his eyes would shine when he spoke, and I felt a little like an idiot when I looked away from him.
He was so gorgeous—all of him. I could have kept looking at him for the entirety of the afternoons we spent together, which was kind of a problem when I was trying to teach him how to calculate important things. None of our classes seemed that important when we were hanging out next to each other. He was the only person in the world who could make me forget how laser focused I was, to the point where I almost didn’t want to see him. It always felt like he was derailing me and making me think less about my goals, which I couldn’t afford.
My parents weren’t rich and I was going to have to pay my own way through college. My friends felt sorry for me, because their parents were going to pay their way, and that was what made sense for them. My mom worked as a security guard for a shitty little hotel in the northside of town, and my dad was more interested in his new family, though none of the children were biologically his.
I
