Page 9 of When it Sizzles

By the time we reached the gym, I’d realized why.

I wanted what the host and his wife had. I wanted to talk to someone like that, specifically, a girl someone. I wanted to delve into deep conversation with someone capable of keeping up with me, someone who wouldn’t trust that I knew what I was talking about simply because I’d always been the smartest kid in school. I wanted to dance the intellectual tango with a girl who liked getting into the scientific and philosophical weeds as much as I did, then take her out for ice cream and kiss her.

Even at fourteen, I understood there was an erotic element to my longing. By sixteen, I was frustratingly aware that I needed that mental connection to feel anything more than friendship for my date. It didn’t matter how beautiful she was, if she didn’t share my curiosity about the world, or needed me to define too many vocabulary words, I was out.

My friends were dumbfounded when I gently broke things off with Ginger, captain of the pom squad and a dead ringer for a young Britney Spears. When I tried to explain, they clearly didn’t get it.

Then someone—I suspect, Brian, an idiot we allowed to hang with our friend group because he had a hot tub—spread a rumor that I was gay. I found out about it when Ginger approached me after wrestling practice to sweetly tell me that she was an ally and that her feelings were much less hurt now that she knew I wasn’t “really into girls” after all.

Conflict avoider that I was back then, I weakly thanked her for being a good person and fled without denying or confirming her assertion.

From then on, most of the girls at school assumed I was batting for the other team.

Participating in a sport that involved rolling around on a mat half naked with other guys didn’t help “straighten” my reputation out any, either, but I wasn’t about to quit. I was on track to landing a wrestling scholarship, and there wasn’t anyone at Bad Dog High I wanted to date anyway. There were a few really intelligent girls in my AP classes, but they either weren’t my type or were already hooked up with someone else.

In college, I dated my fair share of women—even had a few serious relationships—but I never found the spark I was looking for. There was always something missing. Intelligence was key, but I was also a man who appreciated a sense of humor and a pretty face. It was a shallow aspect I was a little ashamed of, but human beings are hardwired to be attracted to symmetrical features.

It was science that beauty drew me in the way it did.

It wasn’t until after my senior year of college, when I was working part time at a lab in Minneapolis for the summer, that I finally had the chance to experience that electric volley of words and ideas for myself.

Coralee, a stunning redhead, worked at the station next to mine. One morning, she made a joke about the respiration of mealworms that destroyed me, and we launched into a twenty-minute discussion on evolving cultural perspectives on animal experimentation and whether a mealworm is capable of self-awareness or free will.

We fell hard and fast and spent the summer immersed in bacterial slides and each other. Luckily, we’d both been accepted into the same pre-med program in Iowa, so come August there was no need to say goodbye.

For the next four years, we were inseparable. We lived together, studied together, went to the gym together—she even changed her specialty so that we’d both be on track to being pediatricians. After school, our residencies took us to cities six hours apart, but we made it work.

We survived the trials of maintaining a long-distance relationship and were happily reunited in Minneapolis three years later, right back where we started. We worked at different private practices, but we were able to get our schedules synced so we had more time to spend together than ever before. The next three years passed in copacetic bliss.

Then, thanks to an inheritance from my grandmother, I had the chance to purchase a private practice in Bad Dog, my hometown. I was still young and relatively inexperienced, but felt confident that I could pull it off. Coralee supported me completely, thrilled that our dream was coming true a little earlier than we expected. We’d talked about opening a practice together someday dozens of times. The fact that we were making that happen in our early thirties was more evidence that we were meant for each other.

Together, we were unstoppable.

Almost two years into our successful transition to owning our own business, I proposed, and she said yes. (After teasing me about what had taken me so long.) We set about planning our wedding for the following spring and life was even better than ever. I was so happy, so smugly certain that I’d found my partner that I didn’t see trouble coming until it was too late.

By the time I realized Coralee was more than friends with the sculptor across the street from our office, she was pregnant with his child. She told me about the pregnancy over our twelfth anniversary dinner. She calmly explained that, for her, our connection had run its course, and promised she’d have her things moved out of the house and office by the end of the weekend.

She didn’t cry. Neither did I.

We didn’t shout or argue or fling insults at each other. I simply asked her why she wasn’t honest with me from the beginning, when she first started having feelings for someone else, and she said, “I don’t know, Connor. I guess sometimes even logical people do illogical things when it comes to love.”

Love…

Hearing her say the word in reference to someone else cut through me with a surgeon’s precision. She carved out my heart and left me sitting at the table alone with a happy anniversary dessert for two. I gave the cake to a teen couple sneaking cigarettes in the town square and went to stay with my parents until Coralee was finished moving out.

That was when the idea of Petey joining my practice was born. My mother insisted it would be perfect—Petey was only one year away from finishing his residency in pediatrics. I could hire a physician’s assistant to help me manage my patient load until then, and then he would step in to fill Coralee’s shoes.

But Petey could never fill Coralee’s shoes. Not in any way. Not as a business partner and sure as hell not as a physician.

My brother barely passed his courses in pre-med, slipped through med school by the skin of his teeth, and has already received two written warnings for negligence during his residency. He’s a nightmare with zero empathy for others, and I love my patients far too much to expose them to Dr. Petey Sinclair.

I told myself that’s why I sold the practice—without my help, my brother won’t be able to practice in our hometown, and the kids I care about will be safe—but that’s not the complete truth.

A part of me is desperate to get out of Bad Dog, away from my overbearing parents and the ghost of Coralee haunting our condo.

Getting away from the very alive Coralee currently wandering around town, hugely pregnant and glowing with love for her artist husband is also pretty high on my list.

Until tonight, I couldn’t wait to leave. The hours were dragging by with torturous lethargy.

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