Page 9 of The Doctor's Surprise Family

FIVE MONTHS LATER

Iglowered over at Sam. “Stir my sauce, would you?”

Sam made a show of stirring the pot, swirling the spoon in slow figure-eights. When I didn’t smile, he grabbed it two-handed. “Oh, no, it’s sticking. No, wait, it's stuck! I can’t get it out of here! What do I do?”

I ignored him and went back to frosting my cake. He pulled out the spoon and dropped it on its plate.

“How does sauce even stick? It’s liquid, not solid. When liquid heats up, it evaporates. It doesn’t glom onto whatever it’s poured in.”

“Mushrooms are solids. So is ground beef. Just keep it stirred, would you? Claire’ll be back.”

Sam grumbled, but he went back to stirring. I’d known him since undergrad, when we’d been roommates. Now, we were study buds and pretty good friends, though I was regretting enlisting him for Claire’s birthday dinner. He’d dripped sauce on my counter and on my floor, nibbled Claire’s chocolates, and spilledmy salt, and now I could feel him watching me work. Watching me, judging me, getting ready to meddle.

“I don’t get why you’d wait,” he said. “Why you just wouldn’t tell her.”

“Iamgoing to tell her, like I said. Tonight.”

He sampled my sauce, frowned, and pinched in more salt.

“It doesn’t need salt,” I said.

“You’re going to ruin her birthday.”

I lost my grip on my frosting pipe and blobbed buttercream on the counter. “Can’t you just help? Look what you made me do.”

“Ididn’t make you lie to Claire for a month.”

“I didn’t lie.” I wiped up the mess. “She assumed and I let her. That’s not a lie.”

I didn’t need to look at Sam to gauge his reaction. His shadow on the counter shook its dark head.

“She was stressed out,” I said, without looking up. “I couldn’t add to that. She’ll understand.”

Sam didn’t say anything. He pinched the bridge of his nose. But no way had I fucked up as bad as he thought. Claire had asked me a month ago, had I got my match. She’d meant the one stateside we’d both hoped I’d get — a posting right here in Tennessee — and I’d told her yes, becauseyes, I had matched. And because she hadn’t yet, and she was stressed. Military match day came ahead of civilians’, so it’d be weeks till Claire knew where her residency would take her, or if she’d matched at all. Some people didn’t.

“She’ll understand,” I said again.

“I’m not sure I would.” Sam stirred my sauce. “If it was Joelle, and she’d kept this from me — something this big, something life-changing…”

“You don’t get it,” I snapped. “She’d barely been sleeping. And I’m telling her now, so what’s the difference?”

Sam surveyed the kitchen, the feast I was cooking. His brows drew together and his lips went tight. “If I saw all this, I’d think you were proposing. You get that, right? How this all looks?”

I scowled. “She won’t think that.”

“I’m just saying, what else would she think? As far as she knows?—”

“SheknowsI’m a soldier. I told her that from the start. Even if Ihadmatched here, she knows what comes after. I’d get shipped out some day.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I don’t know I won’t, and neither does she. She signed on for that.”

“Yeah? She enlisted?”

I rolled my eyes. Sam was trying to goad me. And maybe he wasn’t wrong, or not entirely, but Claire knew I’d never set out to hurt her. She might get mad, but she’d understand.

“All I’m saying is, maybe ask yourself this: did you lie for her sake, or for yourself?”

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