Page 89 of Near Miss

But I widen my eyes. They sink back in their seats, and they look a bit like children again—but it’s not this nefarious thing keeping us stuck somewhere in time.

It’s like we’re just us—an older brother telling his two younger siblings to knock it off. No expectations and nothing weighing anybody down.

It goes like that for the rest of brunch. Nathaniel spends too much time deciding what he wants, before he asks for endless substitutions. His disappointment when they don’t have hispreferred mushroom sends Sarah into a fit of laughter she can’t quite escape, wiping wildly at the corners of her eyes.

But she manages to spend too much time talking about knitting patterns, and Nathaniel asks for one of her needles to stab his eardrums.

They both laugh at me when I go on and on, fingers pointing, hands waving, and I grab a napkin and try to illustrate this specific military formation Napoleon tried that I read about in a book Greer gave me.

And when the server brings the cheque, Nathaniel does this big show of asking for one bill, putting a heavy emphasis on how they want to take their big brother out for brunch.

I give them a dry grin. “It’s the least you can do. Neither of you have paid a bill your entire lives.”

Sarah tips her nose in the air. “I had cancer, you know.”

Eyes go wide, and the server looks back and forth between us like he doesn’t know what to do and he’s contemplating ripping the bill up and taking the loss, but we’re laughing.

It’s nice.

Real.

Maybe I can’t have her. But she did give me this.

Greer

It happens on a Tuesday.

I’m finishing up forty-eight hours of call and he picks me up. I can barely see—between the bleary eyes and the sun rising against the crisp fall morning—everything’s impossibly bright.

But he’s impossible to miss.

Foot kicked up against the bed of his truck, waiting for me while it idles there with frost still inching over the windows somehow. Hair askew, waves sticking out every which way from under his hat—turned backwards—and I can see the number nineteen stitched along the hem.

It’s a good day then, if he doesn’t want to disappear.

I wish they were all good days. He’s beautiful and bright and the world would be lucky to know him.

Sweater pushed up his forearms, he holds out a coffee. Not the hospital coffee. One from my favourite shop near my house.

He grins, our fingers touching when I take it. My heart does that thing it does when he touches me—it beats and stretches outside the lines I’ve erected around it.

But there’s a phantom twinge under my right rib cage, and my heart shrinks back behind its bars.

He leans in, and he whispers good morning when he tugs on my ponytail.

“Good night, actually.” I blink behind the lid of my coffee cup.

“Noted.” He smiles at me again, one hand reaching behind him to open up the door and the other opening for me.

I snort. I shake my head like he’s being absurd, but I take his hand anyway. “I’m not that tired.”

He makes a tsking noise. His other hand plants firmly on my low back and I find myself leaning in, like I might very well topple over without the steady support of him, when I step up into the truck. His words are warm against the back of my neck. “How many surgeries? How long were you on your feet?”

“No longer than you during a game.” I tip my chin up and put my seat belt on.

It’s a lie. It’s been a long forty-eight hours and I don’t think I’ve been this tired since my first year of residency.

Beckett shakes his head and shuts the door behind me.

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