Page 35 of Parallel

NICK

Itold the nursing staff I was staying late because Quinn was an old friend from college. This would probably have aroused less suspicion if she was a slightly lessattractiveold friend fromcollege.

I order in dinner from an Italian place down on MacArthur. As I pull the containers from the bag, I realize this feels a bit like a first date, and a bit like a night with someone I’ve known all my life. Her eyes are smokier than normal, her face flushed. If this was even a first date I wouldn’t be able to keep my hands offher.

I place the first container on her bedside table and she raises her surprised face to mine. “Penne alla vodka is myfavorite.”

I’m swept by an unsettling feeling I might have already known this. So many things with her seem to be automatic, so ingrained they’ve become a part of me—the same way I can drive home without paying attention to where I am or type without looking at the keys. “Sorry I couldn’t get us any wine to go with it, but I’m already getting enough of a side-eye from the front desk staff without providing alcohol to apatient.”

She takes her first bite of pasta and groans, a sound that has me reacting in completely inappropriate ways. Before I can stop myself, I’m imagining hearing that noise with her beneath me, on top of me, with my head between her thighs. Thank Christ the bed rail blocks her view of my crotch. I shut my eyes for a moment, scrambling to think of a topic that doesn’t involve her mouth or my dick. Ideally, a topic that references no body parts whatsoever. Nothing comes tomind.

“I guess this is the point where I’m going to have to tell Jeff and my mother about thetumor.”

I set my fork down. At least the erection is gone. “You didn’t tell them about the tumor yet atall?”

Quinn exhales heavily, staring at her plate. “My mom would have worried, and…with Jeff, I was just being bratty, Iguess.”

“Brattyhow?”

She shrugs. “After that last test I did, he kind of forgot to ask how it had gone. It wasn’t a big deal but it made me feel…like anafterthought.”

My hand flexes. She’s got to be fucking kidding me. “How,” I say, “could he not haveasked?”

“I’m sure he just assumed things werefine.”

Bullshit.If she were mine, I’d have been at the hospital when she was being discharged. I’d have tried to make her go home and rest. I’d have had a thousand fucking questions for her doctor about next steps. I’d have persuaded her to leave the job she hates. There are a million things I’d have done, and he hasn’t done a goddamn one of them. “Do you want me to callthem?”

She laughs. “Oh my God. If you called my mother, she’d go off the deepend.”

“Why’s that? My bedside manner isn’t that terrible, isit?”

Her smoky-green eyes grow a little hazier. “Your bedside manner is justfine.”

I find myself watching Quinn’s mouth as she speaks, which was a really bad idea. My dick has a mind of its own and now strains hard against whatwasa roomy pair of pants. “Then what’s theproblem?”

“The problem is if she learns I’ve got a doctor named Nick after I spent my early childhooddreamingabout a doctor named Nick, she’s going to lose her mind. I think it was pretty unnerving to have your toddler talking about her husband from a past life.” Her jaw tenses. “And my mother is easilyspooked.”

There’s tension there, whenever she refers to her mother. I wish I knew why. “Those dreams…what made themstop?”

Her teeth pull at her lip. “I went to therapy but I don’t think that had much to do with it. We had this…incident on the farm. And they became a lot less frequent afterthat.”

I go on alert the moment she saysincident. She’s trying to minimize something I doubt was minimal. I’m guessing she does that a lot. “Whatincident?”

She stares at her lap, avoiding my eye. “A murder-suicide. My parents had these tenants on the property, this little two-bedroom house… They think the wife wanted to leave, so the husband killed her and their daughter while they wereasleep.”

“Their daughter? She was achild?”

She swallows. “Yeah. Jilly. She was nine, just two years older than me. She would tell me all aboutMelrose Placeafter school since I wasn’t allowed to watch it. I still don’t know if Michael and Jane ever got back together,” Quinn says, with a raspy noise that is meant to be a laugh but comes out as something like a sob. She brushes at her face. “God, I haven’t talked about this in ages. Anyway, it kind of messed me up alittle.”

I reach between the railings to squeeze her hand. “That would mess up anyone. But I can’t imagine how something like that would have made your nightmaresstop.”

Her eyes flicker to me and dart away again. “I guess I finally realized caring too much for any one thing…it just creates problems. I was better off letting itgo.”

Something about her answer doesn’t add up. It’s obvious she cares about things. She dropped out of school for her parents’ sake, and she’s getting married. Not the behaviors of someone who fears intimacy. “You don’t mean that,” I say. “If you really didn’t want to be attached, you wouldn’t be engaged rightnow.”

“I didn’t say I wantnoattachment. I said I don’t want to gettooattached. If Jeff cheats on me or leaves, he does. I’ll be hurt, sure, but I won’t bedestroyed.”

It seems like a fucked-up way to go through life. I’ve spent years waiting to feelmorefor another person, while she intentionally chose someone with whom that would never bepossible.

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