I nod. The word choice “hanging out” makes me feel slightly ill—as if we’re just acquaintances.
“Landon, of course not. Don’t you know me?” She brings my hand to her mouth and kisses it. “I’m proud of this hand.” She smiles broadly. “I hear people talk about you sometimes, saying that you’re really great.”
“I’m only kind of great.” I smirk, and Evie leans to rest her forehead on my shoulder.
“Can we see each other again?” she asks me softly.
For a long moment, I can’t even answer her. I nod, then find my voice. “Of course we can.”
Eight
Evie
Even against the frenzied backdrop of a neurosurgery residency, what I have with Landon feels intense. We leave work in separate cars the next four nights, then go to Landon’s place and fall into his bed.
The first three nights, I go home after, under the guise of needing to get clothes for the next day. All three times, I would have stayed if not for my awful lie.
While I’m in his personal space, I learn things that make me love Landon even more…like he was a Big Brother with Big Brothers Big Sisters of America throughout both undergrad and med school. His brother, a cute kid named Reece, is scheduled to visit over Thanksgiving.
I learn things I could have guessed, like he subscribes to three different newspapers and has a huge bookshelf. His place is bare bones, not much frill, but tasteful in a basic sort of way. In the years he’s lived alone, he’s learned how to cook. He makes omelets one night before I go, and smoothies the next. I find a cabinet stocked with vitamins—it screams doctor—and in his bathroom, a stack of magazines, including one about triathlons, one about paragliding, and several trade journals and research mags. He keeps his TV on the science or history channel, programmed AFarewellToLeisureTime as his WiFi password, uses his second bedroom as an at-home gym, and, in contrast to the “typical” doctor, doesn’t have a wall devoted to his scholarships and awards—of which I know there are many.
I ask him one night if he feels different than he did when we were younger. “More secure, you know?”
“Because of this job?” he asks, his eyebrows narrowed.
I nod.
He stretches out with his arms behind his head and gives a shake of his head. “No. Of course not. Think of all the debt.”
“Yeah, okay, but I’m saying like…do you feel…more?”
“More what? Important?”
I shrug. “Accomplished? Proud?”
“Because of how I started out?”
I’m starting to feel like an ass for asking the question when he smiles slightly and pulls my body up against his. “No, Evie. I barely made it here, and a lot of it was luck. I didn’t earn my brain, or my mentors, or the fact that I was born here and not Aleppo. I’m never going to feel important because I’m a surgeon. It’s an interesting job, maybe even an important one, but that’s it.”
I shimmy closer to him, shut my eyes.
“What about you? Does it make you feel important?” he asks, running his hand along my bare back. “Do you feel like you’ve arrived or something?”
“Kind of,” I admit. I kiss his pec as I struggle to explain it. “I guess I feel like it gives me credibility. Like, okay, I can’t parallel park to save your life or your cat’s, but I’m a brain surgeon.” I giggle.
He chuckles and kisses my hair. “You should learn to park, Evie. You live in Denver.”
The third night, as we cuddle on the couch, I tell him everything I’ve learned of Colorado in the years I’ve been here: all about the funky weather, my favorite aspens-season mountain train, my favorite ski spots, the national parks, and all the hacks that go along with being single, unattached, and in med school in Denver.
When I finish, he grins.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“What?” I swat him.
He grins, which turns into a laugh. “You’re grown up, Evie.”
“What?” I shove him. “That sounds patronizing.”
“No—I love it. I love seeing you in your element. How’d you end up out in Denver anyway? Did you always like the mountains? I think you did…”
I would have stayed that night, had he not asked that question. Had I not lied again. I wonder what is wrong with me, but I know, don’t I? I need Landon. I can’t bear to end this yet. Every day, I tell myself just one more day.
The fourth night, I’m back at his place, and in the darkness, I hear Landon murmur awful things, and when he wakes up and I ask him, he tells me without reserve. I find out why he left the group home, and it makes me so damn sad. I feel helpless as I stroke his spine and he falls back asleep. So helpless, I have to wander out onto his balcony and just be mad a bit before I join him back in bed.
When I wake up, at 3:30 a.m., for work, it’s with his tongue between my legs. I come, but I want him, so we make love—in missionary position, with Landon’s cheek against mine—before I shower. I emerge to fresh coffee and orange cinnamon rolls—a favorite of mine, which he must have bought between the first night we came back here and last night.
He helps me with my bracelet clasp and holds the door for me as we both step into the hallway with our briefcases. On the elevator down, my chest feels tight. In the car, as Landon tells me all about his plans to learn to paraglide, I develop Landon’s old problem: feeling like I can’t breathe. Every moment I’m with him, my secret strangles me.
Still, I stay with him a fifth night, going home the sixth because it’s my night off but not his, and then returning to his apartment for a seventh night. Despite my growing guilt, I can’t get enough of him: his smile, his jokes, his thoughts, and of course, the way our bodies come together.
The next morning, as I get out of my car at work and walk toward Landon, who parked a row away, I try to tell myself to calm down. Whoever said I have to tell him right away? When things are meant to be, they work themselves out, I think as we walk into the hospital lobby.
In the stairwell, Landon throws me over his shoulder at floor two, poking his head into the hall to check for bystanders before he spirits me into our favorite storage room. He makes me come, and then, as I go at his pants, he bends me over the stretcher, pulls my pants back down, and pushes the tip of his cock between my legs. I spread my thighs, and he drags his long cock in between my slick lips.
I swallow back a groan, and Landon chuckles. Then he grabs my hips, aligns the two of us, and thrust. I grunt as he fills me, and I can feel him shudder.
“Ev… fuck…you feel so fucking good.” His words are low—emotional.
I love nothing more than Landon in my pussy, his hard, fast thrusts making my legs quiver, his arm reaching around my hip so that his fingers stroke my swollen clit. I come so hard I cry out. Landon clamps his hand over my mouth, and when we finish, we’re both laughing.