Page 48 of The Doctor's Surprise Family

“Over here.” Someone waved, and I saw it was Jesse, a friend going back to our first days of med school. He’d lost weight since then, and shaved off his facial hair, but I still felt the years peel back, just as he’d said.

“Seeing you two together, I’m suddenly sweating.” He waved his beer at me, and then at Claire. “Feels like that dream where you’re back in school, and you’ve got an exam you haven’t studied for.”

“Oh,God.” Joelle cringed. “Don’t mention exams. I’ve got boards coming up, and my whole brain is fried.”

“No exam talk,” said Shelley — another blast from the past. She’d been in my study group for cell structure and function, and I still had nightmares involving her flashcards. “You guys gonna sit, or just stand there looming?”

I sat, and Sam came up and passed me a beer. He was smiling, I saw, but at Claire, not at me. He hadn’t looked once at me since I walked in the door.

“Hey, Sam.” Jesse grinned. “Remember the spider?”

Everyone groaned. “Ugh, not the spider.”

Claire glanced at me. “Spider? What spider?”

I gulped my beer. “Uh-uh. No spider.”

“Tell her,” said Shelley. I shook my head.

“Come on, now. No in-jokes. That’s not fair on Claire.”

Sam snorted at that. Claire smacked my arm.

“It’s only an in-joke if you don’t tell me. What, did you scream? Did you jump on a table?”

Jesse muffled laughter. “You could say that.”

“What? I did not. It was honestly nothing. This bunch of idiots?—”

“Who’re you calling idiots?” Shelley took a swipe at me. Claire shook her head.

“If you’re not going to tell me?—”

“I’ll tell you,” Sam said. He locked eyes with me for the first time that night, and he didn’t so much smile as he showed me his teeth. “This was way back when I first met Joelle, when she still had that place above the shoe store. We were all in her study nook, crammed in like sardines, when Joelle saw this spider.”

“This huge, hairy spider.” Joelle shuddered. I rolled my eyes.

“It wasn’t that big.”

“Shut up. It washuge. And it webbed down right in my face.”

“So she smashed it,” said Sam. “Likeanyonewould. Except for this guy.” He pointed at me. “Thisguy went off on this long tirade, how spiders are helpful. How they eat all your flies. How it’s not fair to smash them for living their lives. It was so,soannoying.”

“The worst,” agreed Jesse. “Did he do that with you, Claire? Get off on those rants?”

I opened my mouth to insist that I didn’t, but Claire cut me off.

“Oh, yeah. All the time. Our first date, he schooled me oneating spaghetti, like my way of eating it wassodéclassé.”

Everyone laughed. I fell back, defeated.

Sam smirked and leaned forward. “So, back to the spider. We all got to talking once Blake had gone home. Making fun of his, what was it? Catch and release.” He picked up a plastic cup and mimed catching a spider. “It just takes two seconds to catch and release. But it means a whole lifetime for our friend, the spider.”

I shot Sam a scowl. “Is that supposed to be me?”

“Thatisyou,” said Shelley. “That’s exactly you.”

I looked to Claire for help, but she was laughing, one hand raised up to cover her mouth. Sam caught me looking and went in for the kill.

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