Page 15 of Doctor Enemy

“No, you hesitated. So, who is it? Who’s caught Mister Playboy’s eye?”

“No one. Well, wrong. A lot of people.”

“You know, now that I’m thinking about it… Have you actually gone home with anyone lately?”

“Yes,” I tell him, and then stop to think about it myself. My lips purse, and my brows crinkle down, just slightly. Actually, now that it’s been pointed out to me, I haven’t had much interest in picking up women from the bars.

I’ve been going on my drives, going out to drink. But at the end of the day, I’ve chosen to go home alone.

“I’ve just been tired lately,” I tell him.

Nate shakes his head. “You didn’t even realize that you’d been doing it. Someone’s definitely got your eye.”

“Why are we talking about this?” I counter. “You should be drinking, and we should be talking about something that’s actually fucking enjoyable.”

“Get a couple beers in you and you normally like sharing stories about your exploits,” chaffs Nate. “So, where’s my raunchy story? Give me the details?”

I don’t have any stories to share with him. It turns out, he’s right. I haven’t been sleeping around. And it’s not that I’ve been working a lot of extra hours lately, either. Not any more so than usual. There’s just been… a lack of interest.

So I change the subject, flipping it around on him, and say, “You know that getting a divorce means you stop sleeping with each other, right?”

It’s just back and forth ribbing. Nate and I have known each other since med school, and there aren’t too many topics that are off-limits for cracking jokes. He rolls his eyes at me, but the tips of his ears are just slightly flushed.

“We aren’t sleeping with each other,” says Nate. “Don’t make it out to be something bigger than it is.”

“You didn’t sleep with each other two months ago?” I ask.

“The divorce papers weren’t finalized then!” Nate protests.

“They’re finalized now, and she sent you nudes,” I point out. “And from the way you were talking, it sounds like she sent you way more than just a few shirtless pictures.”

His lips purse. “You’re right. There’s no reason for us to be talking about women. We’ve got other things going on in our lives.”

I tap the top of the bar with one finger. “Uh-uh. I’m sticking to my no-work at The Crow’s Nest policy.”

Nate goes silent, trying to think of something else. He can’t talk about his daughter because the conversation will inevitably circle back to his ex-wife, and his parents and brother are all doctors, with doctor-related issues, making them an unsuitable topic for tonight.

The problem with being a doctor is that it takes up, well, pretty much all of your time. And when you aren’t at the hospital, you’re on call. If something goes wrong, snap, you have to stop what you’re doing and go in.

Nate’s marriage didn’t fail because of this but perhaps things would be different if he had spent more time engaging with Emma’s lavish interests.

Honestly, that’s part of what sunk the last relationship that I was in. She said that I put more time into my work and my patients than I did into her. She told me that if I was going to leave in the middle of date night to answer a call, she would just leave me.

The thought of trying to get into another relationship, when I still have the same job and the same stipulations for date nights, is exhausting. But… That wouldn’t be an issue if I was dating someone that was already working under those same stipulations. Right?

Fuck. Soon as that thought crosses my mind, I bat it away.

Still, the whole night seems to have developed an awkward air to it. Nate’s got his ex-wife on his mind, and now I’m trying to figure out why I’m suddenly more interested in going for drives than picking up lonely women for a not-so-lonely night.

More specifically, I’m trying to figure out why it all seems to wrap back around to Lori, considering the two of us get along about as well as a wet cat and a rabid dog. When one of us bites, the other scratches right back.

Whatever she has against me, I can’t picture it going away any time soon–and I don’t like that it makes meunhappyto realize that.

Maybe tonight shouldn’t be about thinking at all. Maybe it should just be about drinking.

“Seth, bring us some of the good stuff,” I say, gesturing at him with two fingers.

He nods to show that he heard me, finishes dropping off Long Island Iced Teas and beer on tap to some college kids, and then serves us each up a whiskey on the rocks.

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