Page 14 of Just (Fake) Married
“What is the worst case scenario?” I asked him.
“Worst case scenario is Matthews has you fired.”
“Jesus Christ,” I breathed. “What’s the best case scenario?”
“That the committee suspends you. A month, maybe as many as six.”
“But that’s not-”
“I’ll call you,” Dr. Xio said, cutting me off. “Trust me. Go be with your family. You’ll see you’ll need them now more than ever.”
He hung up and I gaped at the snow-covered world outside my car. Being fired would be problematic. My reputation was strong enough that I would get hired someplace else, but if you wanted to work in thoracic surgery, doing the kind of surgeries that Matthews attracted, Sinai West was the place to be. It was the best. The most cutting edge.
It was where I belonged.
Damnit.
“I’m sorry,” the voice of my car said, in a lilting Irish brogue that sounded like Cillian Murphy for some unknown reason. “I didn’t catch that. Here is what I found on the internet….”
“Stop! Stop! Please, Cillian. Stop.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t quite catch that. Here’s what I found on the…”
I yanked the cable out of the phone.
“I’m sorry-”
I turned the volume off. Enough. This day was already surreal. I crested the top of a small hill and the road in front of me was full of animals. I braked so hard, the car shuddered to a stop inches in front of a wide-eyed, cheerful looking camel?
What the hell was I looking at? A llama? No, what were the smaller ones? An alpaca.
When the fuck had Carter gotten alpacas?
Coming up behind the cluster of animals was a woman in a dark blue coat and a bright yellow knit cap. I didn’t have to see her face to know who it was. The wild red curls blowing around her face were all I needed to see.
A Calloway.
My spidey senses told me it was Harmony.
The pantry puncher.
That single event made the rest of my time in high school a shit show. Not just because everyone made fun of me. They did. But becauseshewent from being rather forgettable, to being an absolute menace. She stuffed my locker with ping pong balls one time. I was also pretty sure she took the spark plugs out of my truck, ruining my prom night.
She was diabolical. And very…very interesting. There was something about her animosity that made the air crackle around her.
She never told me what I’d done to deserve the punch and all her anger, but it must have been bad, because after that night Harmony Calloway made it clear:
I was the enemy.
And it wasn’t just the bullshit feud. Or the blanket way all the Calloways and McGraws hated each other. It was personal.
She hated me for me.
Which, in our fucked up family dynamics, was kind of special. It killed me that I didn’t know why she’d punched me. Why we were even in that pantry. I’d had a lot to drink, trying to erase a giant fight I’d had with my father earlier in the night. I’d done everything I could think of to get her to tell me what happened, but her lips were sealed.
Maybe she’d been the asshole and just punched me. Just pulled my drunk self into that pantry and let me have it. It seemed unlikely, but stranger things had happened between the Calloways and McGraws.
I put the rental car in park and pulled my hat on my head before opening the door. The bitter wind blew right through my not-thick-enough jacket and found all the sensitive places on my body. My nipples and armpits. The back of my neck. The tops of my thighs.
