Chapter 23: Monday

Monday, 9:58 a.m.

I am standing in the parking lot of the Silverlake Clinic, holding a small paper cup of coffee, looking at the building, doing the small kind of math that a person does when they are about to walk into a place that is, technically, not a place they should be walking into.

PT with Carlos. 10:00 a.m. Monday. My new official physical therapist. The man whose name is on the form that says patient transferred from Cedars-Sinai, A. Black, MD, recused. The man who does not know that I kissed my old surgeon on Friday night in the hallway of my Koreatown apartment. The man who is going to be entirely professional and entirely kind and entirely the kind of man Aiden Black is not in public, which is to say, normal about me.

I go inside.

The fountain is doing its fountain thing. The front desk woman, whose name I do not remember, smiles at me. Carlos is already in the PT room. He is a man in his late thirties, with a kind face, with strong hands, with the kind of calm that makes you want to tell him your entire life story. He has a resistance band around his own wrist. He is doing some kind of stretch I do not understand. He stops when I come in.

"Emma. Good morning. How are we feeling?"

"We are feeling good. Shoulder is good. The knee is good. Everything is good. I am a person who is good."

"Sounds good." He is not sure if I am joking. I am not sure if I am joking. We both decide to move on.

We do the assessment. He is good at his job. He is the kind of good that is annoying, because I am used to Aiden, and Aiden is a different kind of good, the kind of good that involves a man kneeling in front of me and pressing his thumb on a scar for one second too long. Carlos does not press anything for one second too long. Carlos is a professional. Carlos is the man Aiden hired to replace himself, which is a sentence I am going to think about for the rest of my life.

"Your shoulder's getting stronger," he says, fifteen minutes in. He is doing some kind of stretch I do not understand. "Range of motion is way better. Whoever was working with you before did a good job."

"Yep."

"You've been in a good mood lately," he says, conversationally, like he is talking about the weather. "Who has been making you smile?"

I turn red. I turn the kind of red a person turns when they are a thirty-year-old woman with a one-month-old patient file and a brand-new boyfriend who texts her at 11:14 p.m. when he gets home safe. I turn the kind of red a person turns when they have been seen, in a small way, by a man who notices things.

"I don't know what you mean," I say.

He smiles at me. He is being kind. He is not pushing. He is being the kind of professional Aiden could not be, in a small PT room, in jeans, with his thumb on my knee.

We finished the session. I do all of the exercises. I do them perfectly. I leave at 11:30 a.m. and I drive home, and I do not text Aiden. I am a person who does not text her boyfriend at 11:30 a.m. on a Monday. I am a person who is normal about this.

By 11:32 a.m. I have texted him.

How's your day?

His reply is two minutes later.

Long. Two surgeries. One of them took longer than it should have.

How was Carlos?

Brutal but fair.

Good. He's the best.

I told him my shoulder's getting stronger.

It is.

He said whoever was working with me before did a good job.

Three dots. Disappear. Appear. Disappear.

I did.

I read it four times. I read it five. I read it six.

Dinner? My place. 7:00 pm. Nothing fancy.

-A

I read it. I read it again.

Aiden Black is asking me to dinner. At his place. He is cooking. He is going to cook for me. I do not know how to react to a man who is a surgeon, who has been awake for six weeks, who is bad at normal, who is now going to cook for me on a Monday night.

Yes.

Monday, 7:14 p.m.

I am in jeans. I am in a sweater. I am standing in the parking lot of a small apartment building in Silverlake, looking at a small door, doing the small kind of math that a person does when they are about to meet the inside of a man's apartment for the first time.

He has not described his apartment to me. I do not know what colour his walls are. I do not know if he has plants. I do not know if his books are alphabetized or if his kitchen is clean or if he has ever had a single person over to this apartment for a non-medical reason. I do not know any of this, and I am about to find out, and I am standing in a parking lot at 7:14 p.m. on a Monday, holding a bottle of wine I bought at the place on Sunset, and I am very calm.

I am not very calm.

I knock.

The door opens.

Aiden is in a black t-shirt. Jeans. Bare feet. He is holding a wooden spoon. There is a small, gray, very excited dog already making a sound behind him, the kind of small, high-pitched sound a small dog makes when the door opens and the door is opening and the door is opening because the person the dog likes best is at the door.

Lincoln barrels past Aiden's legs. Lincoln jumps. Lincoln is on me. Lincoln is on my chest. Lincoln is licking my face. Lincoln is doing the small, happy, very committed thing that small dogs do when they have decided that a person is a person and that person is theirs.

"Lincoln. Lincoln, no." Aiden is trying to pull Lincoln off me. Lincoln is not coming off. Lincoln is committed. "Sorry. He likes you. He has been waiting by the door for an hour."

"He has been waiting for an hour?"

"He has been pacing. He does this when he knows someone is coming."

"He knew I was coming?"

"He is a dog. He is not psychic. He just knows the word 'Emma', apparently. I have said it too many times."

I am a person who is standing in a doorway with a small grey dog licking her face and a man who is a surgeon holding a wooden spoon. I am a person who is going to be fine. I am going to be more than fine.

I go inside.

The apartment is small. Smaller than mine, which is saying something, because mine is a studio in Koreatown that was designed for a person who is smaller than me. His is a one-bedroom in a building that looks like it was built in the seventies and has not been updated since. The walls are white. There is a couch. There is a small kitchen with a stove that is currently smoking slightly. There is a bookshelf with actual books on it, hardcovers, paperbacks, and a small stack of medical journals on the bottom shelf. There is a coffee table. There is a single plant on the windowsill that is, somehow, alive. There are no photos. There is no wedding photo. There is no Lena. There is just Aiden, a small dog, a smoking stove, and a bottle of wine I have not opened.

"I am bad at this," he says, looking at the stove. "Dating. Cooking. Everything."

The kitchen is a small disaster. There is pasta on the stove. There is sauce on the counter. There is a piece of garlic bread in the oven that is, based on the smell, on fire.

"Let me see." I walk to the oven. I open it. The garlic bread is, in fact, on fire. Not a lot. Just a small, contained, very sad fire. I close the oven. I open it. I pull the bread out. I put it on the counter. I look at it. It is black.

"I burned the garlic bread," he says, in a voice that is half statement, half apology, and a quarter. I am a thirty-two-year-old surgeon, and I can not cook garlic bread.

"It is very black."

"It is supposed to be golden."

"It is the opposite of golden."

We stare at the bread. We stare at each other. We both start laughing. The kind of laughing that is not funny, that is the kind of laughing that happens when two people have been through six weeks of not laughing and are finally, finally laughing about something.

We order takeout. The pad thai place on Sunset. He calls. I open the wine. We sit on his kitchen floor, on the small rug, with the takeout containers between us, and the burned garlic bread in the trash, and Lincoln on his lap, and the small lamp on the counter making the small kitchen feel like a small, warm, very private room.

We are eating. We are drinking wine. We are talking about nothing. We are talking about the Dodgers. We are talking about his dog. We are talking about the way the cello neighbour plays at three a.m.

His phone rings.

It is on the counter. It lights up. The name on the screen is Sophie.

I look at it. I look at him. He looks at me. He looks at the phone. He looks at me again. There is a small, very specific panic in his eyes.

"It is your friend," he says, like he is not sure how this has happened.

"Put me on speaker," Sophie yells, from the phone, because Sophie does not wait to be answered, Sophie just yells, and also Sophie is not on speaker, Sophie is just yelling at the phone, because Sophie is Sophie. "I need to meet the man who kissed my best friend."

Aiden looks at me. I nod.

He answers. He puts it on speaker.

"So," Sophie says. Her voice is loud. Her voice is the loudest thing in the room. Her voice is the loudest thing in the entire apartment building. "You are the surgeon."

"I am," Aiden says.

"Are you good to her."

Aiden goes very still. The kind of still that is the opposite of his surgeon's still, that is the kind of still that is a man being asked a question he is going to answer truthfully.

"Yes," he says.

"Good," Sophie says. "Because I will find you if you hurt her."

"Noted," Aiden says.

They stare at each other through the phone. Sophie is across the city, sitting in her apartment, holding her own phone, being the most terrifying person in Los Angeles. Aiden is on his kitchen floor, in jeans, in a black t-shirt, with a small grey dog in his lap, being entirely honest with a woman he has never met.

"I like him," Sophie says, to me, through the phone. "He is calm. He is going to need to be calm because I am going to be a lot. But he is calm. I can tell."

"Okay," I say.

"Okay," Sophie says. "Love you. Be safe. Use protection. I am joking. Or am I. Good night."

She hangs up.

The kitchen is very quiet. Lincoln yawns. The takeout containers are between us. Aiden is looking at the phone. Then at me. Then at the phone.

"Your friend is terrifying," he says.

"She loves me."

"I know." He is looking at me. He is looking at me in a way that is not the way a man looks at a person he is dating. He is looking at me in a way that is the way a man looks at a person he is going to be with. "I want people to know I am with you too."

I look at him. He looks at me. He reaches across the takeout containers. He takes my hand. His thumb is on my knuckles, the way it was on the couch on Saturday, the way it has been every time he has held my hand, which is a small, careful, very specific way of holding a hand that I am going to think about for the rest of my life.

Meeting the friends is officially happening.

I am going to be fine.

I am going to be more than fine.

To be continued...