Page 7 of French Kiss

I knew exactly why not, and I never wanted to have to articulate the hurtful reason to Josh: I didn’t, I couldn’t, I never would… find him attractive.

* * *

And then there was Maddox.The blue-eyed train wreck.

“Hey darlin’” he’d say, winking at any female in his path, and no one ever considered it harassment. He was in equal parts charming and arrestingly handsome, and he always used both to his advantage.

Attending physicians were swayed by his opinions because he said them with a genuine smile and a desire to relate on a personal level. People wanted to be around him because he was pretty. He packaged himself as a joyful being who gave off positive vibes, all within the context of a workout-chiseled body and natural good looks.

If it seemed karmically unjust that someone with a personality, face and body like his could also be smart, it was. He’d clearly managed to get into med school, graduate from it without melting down, and handle the intense pressures of residency. But I could never quite figure him out. There was something under the surface he kept hidden and the longer I knew him, the more I needed to understand what it was.

Before I could do that, however, he needed to remember my name.

After he shoved his elbow into my head at the bar, it took him seven weeks to acknowledge me in the hospital corridors. It took three weeks after that before he recognized that we were in the same program, even though we’d met at orientation and several times again after that. Though to hear him tell it, he remembered me from the moment we met.

He just couldn’t remember that he remembered me.

“You know, the spunky brunette with the long hair and cat eyes,” I heard him say, standing in the hospital hallway, describing me to Josh. “What’s her name?”

“Hannah. And she doesn’t have cat eyes. She has human eyes.”

Josh was a stickler for accuracy. And green vegetables. Which made him especially happy in the Bay Area, where every other restaurant seemed to tout a superfoods, plant-based menu.

“You know what I mean. They’re shaped like almonds,” Maddox said, insistent that my eyes couldn’t just look like eyes.

“Quit objectifying her,” Josh said.

“Actually, quit talking about me like I’m not standing here,” I said finally. About halfway through their conversation, I’d walked up to wait for our grand rounds to begin, and they hadn’t even noticed I was there. They both looked momentarily chastened, then the conversation shifted to baseball without missing a beat.

“The A’s have nothing on the Giants, for the stadium alone,” Josh said.

“That’s irrelevant on the road. Chapman’s a genius.”

“He’s got his work cut out.”

“True. Gonna be a long summer.”

As they walked down the corridor, Josh turned to give me an apologetic smile and Maddox prattled on, oblivious to my almond-shaped eyes glaring at him.

Over the ensuing months, we all settled into a rhythm, knowing each other’s strengths and weaknesses and supporting each other through the challenging on-call shifts, which could last eighteen hours sometimes and left us emotionally spent. Maddox became an amusing sideshow for me, as I watched him date a string of women and marveled at how easy it was for him to meet them, date them, and break up with them the same way I cycled through fad diets—try them, hate them, quit them.

He was an enormous flirt, and he didn’t let my long-distance relationship stop him from laying it on thick with me. “Hannah, in a perfect world, you’d be single and we’d be dating,” he said one night after a long shift. It made me blush, and I knew that was the reaction he wanted.

I tried to maintain composure, even though I could feel my heart beating faster and an unwelcome twinge between my legs. “Probably for the best. I doubt you could handle me,” I said, trying to match wits with him and let him know it could never happen. Even if I didn’t have a boyfriend.

“Handling you is definitely tempting,” he said, with a wicked grin. “Too bad.”

“We’ll both have to learn to survive.”

He winked and went on with his night, while I tried to figure out what had just happened. Was he flirting? Did he really want to date me?

I talked myself down and reminded myself that guys like Maddox had been my downfall in the past. I had a boyfriend. And he was just being Maddox. My need to analyze and understand him made me think there was something deep and twisted to find if I searched hard enough. Eventually, I stopped trying to see if there was more beneath the surface. I decided I didn’t care.

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