Chapter Text
Friday evening, and the bar is disappointingly lonely; not at all what you’d set out in search of after a twenty-six-hour double-call.
There’s a white haired older gentleman at the far end of the scuffed mahogany, slumped over in his seat. The barkeep rounds on him intermittently, routine familiarity in how he approaches the old man. You watch them with detached interest, something in the way they acknowledge each other as strangers who see each other often, is reminiscent of the dynamic between a patient being cared for by a physician. Familiarity with their history and why they’ve come, what drug will make the ache go away, but not who they are. What they need, but maybe not what they want.
At the opposite corner of the little establishment, there’s another group obviously come from the hospital like you; a mix of APPs, nurses and support staff. Some still in scrubs, others changed into street clothes, flocking to the nearby watering hole to celebrate together. Eight PM and the day staff has been set free into a night swollen with the faintest trace of lingering warmth and everything the freedom the end of a shift brings. The group is loud and foul-mouthed, well on their way to drunkenness; your smile is paired with a sort of sad, bland envy.
Turning your attention back to the glow of your iPad, you try to re-focus your eyes on the description of a primary repair for gastroschisis in premature newborns you’ve been attempting to read. There’s a c-section scheduled for next Thursday, with a repair immediately post delivery which you’ll be scrubbing in on. You want to be ready and confident. You want to feel like you could perform the surgery with your eyes closed if you needed to.
Someone at the hospital table is going into explicit detail about what a fucking jackass—their words, not yours—one of the trauma fellows is, something you can’t help but agree with on occasion. If there’s one thing Jesse hasn’t mastered in his five plus years of training, it’s how to win over the nurses. Or how not to come off as a raging control freak psychopath. Again, their words, not yours. Listening to them rip him a new one, you feel grateful you’ve changed into jeans and a soft red t-shirt before your last minute decision—born, honestly, out of desperation—to walk over here before heading home after finishing one of the most brutal double shifts you’ve ever suffered through in your entire career. It hadn’t just been that it was long, which it was. And which you’d been prepared for. And it hadn’t been that you were still feeling slightly fragile and under the weather after your Covid booster a couple days ago. But more so, that every small thing that could go wrong, had. A couple big things, too.
Cringing at the prickling itch of heat sliming up your spine from the pure anxiety thinking about work brings, you try and push it from your mind. It’s been like this for the past couple weeks. You don’t want to think about it. You can’t think about the step by step minutiae of work anymore. You’re tired. Your brain is tired. You came here to see people, to surround yourself with normal humans who don’t work eighty hours plus a week, and who’ve been to a bar more than once in the past three years because they actually have normal lives with friends or lovers or families they’re close to and enjoy seeing regularly.
Letting your eyes glaze away from the text you aren’t as committed to taking in as you’d like to be, you let your gaze wander over the paraphernalia strewn walls of the bar while Jesse’s entire personality is picked apart and left to splatter against the alcohol soaked floor. You can’t wait to tell Dina about this, you think, as you snicker into your glass. But the following burst of raucous laughter melts your humor away, leaving you to feel uncomfortably lonely under the red lights of the quaint little bar. A regularly frequented spot by hospital staff, you’d heard people talk about this place often, but hadn’t ever been yourself. You know Dina brings dates here sometimes, after long shifts when she wants to get some and doesn't necessarily care to impress. The little place is a funny, hole-in-the-wall sort that only sees regulars, run by people who’ve been here a long time and can probably recall most patrons by order alone.
Over the row of beer coolers, a sign hangs reading, Betty, in all caps, Helping ugly people have great sex since 1862! A cardboard cutout with the letters TTY added on beside the start of her name has you thinking hard on what could possibly be hidden beneath the haphazard ammendment—beer, you think it might say beer under there—when someone sits on the stool right next to the one you’ve been peacefully occupying since you got here.
Out of the corner of your eye, you make out a ball cap pulled low over dark hair and beard, a big body. Well, this is annoying. Avoiding looking directly at him, you lean forward, dramatically swinging your head left and right at the otherwise empty bartop. Besides the old man at the end, now face down and snoring loudly against the woodgrain, there’s no one else. You roll your eyes; the audacity of this guy, seriously.
You mimic the old man, slumping low in your stool, too; a hot wash of annoyance flushing over the bridge of your nose at the obnoxious man who just had to choose the seat right next to yours.
“Hi’ya, Joel. What’ll it be?”
The overlarge bartender, literal giant with a long ginger beard down to the center of his chest and a big, round belly to match, comes over to the two of you. His voice, funnily enough, is a high pitched squeak and charmingly incongruous with his burly, intimidating aspect. The man must be well over six-foot-five. Two ham sized fists pound gently on the bar top, rattling the ice in your glass. You slump lower, sucking deeply on your drink and angling your knees to face away from the two of them, grumbling beneath your breath and trying with all your might to focus on the same sentence you’ve been trying to read for the last fifteen minutes:
“In a primary repair, the bowel is reduced, ideally in its anatomic location, followed by placement of the remaining umbilical cord over the defect and the application of an occlusive dressing such as Tegaderm.”
Blah blah and fuck my boring life and shit concentration, you grumble again, huffing and puffing and cursing everything and everyone. Who even comes to a bar to study anyways?
“Tiny, my man. Lemme get an IPA, whatever you got on tap,” the intruder says affably.
Beneath the sweating glass of your cocktail, the paper coaster is emblazoned in red lettering that reads, The Tiny Bar. Your black cloud of annoyance lifts for a brief second. Funny. Tiny of The Tiny Bar.
The place’s namesake and likely owner turns and chats as he pours, “How ya been, Joel? Haven’t seen you in a hot minute. Betty misses you when you disappear for too long, ya know. Tommy joining tonight?”
“Nah, man, it’s just me. We’ve been busy as all hell lately, he snuck off to spend some time with Maria. I’m solo.”
“Business is good?” Tiny comes back, sliding the man’s beer in front of him, a little paper coaster to match yours padding the way.
“Could be worse.” His reply comes with a rueful laugh, and a long pause as he takes a deep pull of his beer.
“Don’t I know it. At least we’re never bored, huh? You like that? It’s new.”
“It’s great. Thanks, brother. It’s good to see you.” The man’s voice is deep and smooth, polar opposite of Tiny’s squeak and jolly chuckle. And he looms large out of the corner of your eye, too. Probably not as big as the overgrown bartender, but you can make out the impressive width of his forearms resting against the bar’s edge while he sits several heads above your slouched form.
Curiosity chews at you. You want to turn, you want to look at him.
“Betty's in the back, she’ll be out soon. You’ll find her mighty glad to see your sorry ass after all this time. Don’t like it when you disappear like that on us, Joel.”
“It’s been too long,” the man, Joel, agrees, subdued. There’s something reserved in his responses, sincere but short, like he’s naturally serious or tired. You shift in your seat, taking another long gulp of your drink, chewing on your straw. Your knees shift side to side, antsy to take a peek at him.
“You work too hard, can’t forget to take some time for yourself every now and then. S’what Betty always tells me. Old gal’s a well o’ wisdom, you and I both know that. Tiny, she says, you work too hard—life can’t be all work, no play. It’s all, your blood pressure this, your stress levels that. I tell ‘er I’m healthy as a horse, I mean look at me,” he pats his big belly, “but the woman’s got more to say than I’ve got answers for. Granted this usually comes before she’s askin’ me for a drive down to the beach for the weekend, right. You been out fishin’ lately, by the way? Water’s been great this year. We were in Maine just last week, caught me a trout the size of Betty if ya can believe it. Ah,” he chuckles before the quiet man has a chance to answer, assuming his response, “Who’m I kiddin’, ‘course you haven’t. Gotta get yourself down there, Joel. Tommy too. It’ll be a good time for ya.”
Joel agrees with thanks for his consideration, humming and nodding at the right times, but contributing little to Tiny’s easy ramble until the big man finally turns his attention to you again. “Get you another, doll?”
“Please, thanks,” you agree, sucking the ice dry at the bottom of the glass.
On the other side of the bar, your fellow hospital staff are boisterously calling for more booze, hooting and hollering for Tiny’s attention. Someone calls for a cheers and screams fuck Jesse! at the top of their lungs. “Crown Apple and Sprite,” Tiny announces as he moves towards their calls for his attention, sliding your fresh glass before you without stopping and leaving you essentially alone beside your stool partner.
“Crown Apple and Sprite? Really?” The deep voice comes from beside you after a long, pregnant pause.
You turn your head slowly, still slumped over like the drunk in the corner, taking him in inch by inch. And well, suddenly, now faced with him, you can see he’s…very attractive…
“Excuse me?” you mumble, straw in your mouth, slowly straightening your spine lest he confuse your normal person manners for those of a gremlin; protectively clutching your insulted drink closer while eyeing him spitefully.
“Is that really any good? Can’t imagine it would be.”
“Yes,” you say haughtily, turning your nose up in the air at him. “It actually is very good. If not I wouldn’t be drinking it,” you harrumph.
He crooks a dubious brow at you, smiling, but then—as if not wanting you to think he’s laughing at you—he bites the corner of his lip and clears his throat, nodding, picking up his own glass. “Suppose I’ll have to take your word for it.”
You scrunch your nose at this man who first invaded your space and is now doubting your special drink that makes you feel like a happy and tropical pirate. “It’s better than your wheat juice, I’ll tell you that much.” Your tone is snooty, and you turn your face and body away from him, hunching over your tablet again, scrolling furiously through your text, going much too fast for anyone to believe you’re actually reading anything.
He coughs once, though, and then laughs, big and loud at first, but then mellows to a low and rumbly chuckle, and you can’t help but take a peep over your shoulder, wrapping your palm over the back of your neck to cover the sudden heat you feel bubble there at the sound of his laugh. Hot. Hot hot hot.
“There actually isn’t any wheat in an IPA; barley, hops, yeast. No wheat.”
“Whatever.” Mansplainer, stool-usurper, asshole.
When your eyes meet, you see his are a complicated hazel, and they’re laughing as much as his mouth is. You can’t help but straighten and turn towards him again, intrigued.
“Wheat juice, that’s funny,” he says, taking another sip. You want to tell him that it really, really isn’t, but his neck is thick and his throat bobs with his swallow, the muscles there shifting enticingly beneath sun pebbled skin. Distracting.
Unable to help yourself, you join his laughter with your own, smiling along with him and shocking yourself when you hold out your own glass to him, “Here, try it. Promise it’s better than yours.”
Slowly he shifts towards you, a slow grin tugging up the corner of his mouth as he considers your proffered glass. He takes it slowly, gripping the bottom of the glass between pinched fingers, careful not to touch you when he takes it and brings it to his mouth. He hooks your straw at the side of the glass, sipping from the edge, a big, brave sip that takes half of the drink with it.
Swallowing, he sets it in front of you again. “You’re right. Not bad,” he tells you as he licks his wet mouth. You haven’t engaged with an attractive man in a long time, too long, and your stomach erupts into butterflies at the sight of his tongue against his full bottom lip. “Not bad,” he says again, turning back to face the bar.
You nod once, turning to face forward, as well. Suddenly shy and jittery.
“What’re you reading?” He nods his chin at your iPad.
“Oh—nothing very interesting,” you tell him, half honest, half embarrassed. Surely nothing as interesting as whatever it is that’s happening here with him. Clicking off the bright glow of the tablet for the first time since you’d gotten here; you’d brought it as a crutch, unwilling to admit you were here because you were desperate to talk to someone but too socially awkward to forgo it.
It’s easier to see this excursion for what it is, faced with the prospect of an actual person to talk to now.
“No?” He asks, tipping his head quizzically. You flush brighter at the look, laughter again in his eyes, and if you knew any better, you’d say his tone was flirting.
“Not really,” you laugh too, eyes shifting away nervously towards the snoring old man and then helplessly back to his face, embarrassed to tell him you’re studying for a case, at a bar of all places, instead of being normal and sociable. Pausing to take a good look at him now, he definitely seems older than you by several years, but he’s so attractive. Bright hazel eyes and long lashes, a strong nose and a full mouth all framed by a thick, dark beard, the insinuation of silver threads at his temples. The shadow cast by the brim of his cap deepens his features into something incredibly masculine and commanding.
“You work around here?” He asks, “Haven’t seen you in before.”
“You know everyone that comes to this bar?” You tease, crooking a brow doubtfully at him.
“It’s a pretty tiny bar,” he says stone-faced.
The two of you pause for a second, and he watches your reaction alertly, his eyes serious. Assessing. You can’t help your burst of laughter when he cracks first.
“That was terrible,” you say between giggles.
“I know, I’m sorry. Promise that was my best shot, though.”
“Valiant effort and a star for trying,” you say, taking two fingers in a salute to your brow and then miming a tap over both of his shoulders. The both of you laugh together again—it feels very natural. “But yeah, I’m over at Mass General,” you tell him, responding to his earlier question.
“What do you do?”
“I’m a resident,” you tell him, but for some inexplicable reason, reluctantly. Hesitant to talk about your work. Or completely uninterested. You came here to not talk about work, to not think about how tired and stressed you’ve been the past weeks. Worse than your norm.
But at his puzzled tone, “Of where?” You can’t help the giggle you let out, again, and God, if that isn’t something. Giggling in a bar with a man you don't know. How loserish is it if you admit, even just to yourself, that you can't remember the last time you’d laughed this much?
“Like a resident doctor, I mean.” You snort at his widening eyes.
He whistles long and loud, leaning back in his chair to take a good look at you. “You’re a doctor? What kind?”
“Well,” you hum, swinging your knees side to side in your stool, “Trying to be a surgeon, actually. General surgery.”
He whistles again, head tipped back, and you can’t help the shiver that moves down your back, another nervous, ridiculous giggle. “That’s mighty impressive.”
“What do you do?” You ask quickly, eager to steer him away from the topic of your work.
“Own a construction company. My brother and I, we started up on our own not too long ago. It’s small still, but we’ve got a couple good, reliable clients contracted to us, and the books’re startin’ to even out. It was looking pretty dicey there for a second, but we’re doing alright now.”
“Interesting. Do you guys specialize in anything?”
He side eyes you like he doesn’t believe you really find it interesting. “Whatever it is that’s needed. What do you specialize in? Don’t think I know what general surgery actually means, to be honest.”
You turn away from him, taking another sip of your whiskey and soda, the smokey appled tang is starting to fizz pleasantly in your brain so that you can’t really help it when you let out a half groan, half sigh.
He pauses on a long, hesitant breath, “Sorry…don’t mean to bug you or pry or anything,” he says.
Quickly, you turn to face him again. “No, no, it isn’t that. I’m sorry, that was rude,” you let out a breath of embarrassed laughter. Suddenly aware that you don’t want to seem standoffish or drive him away, you opt for honesty. “I’m sorry,” you say again, “I just got off a really long shift, I don’t…I didn’t want to think about work or the hospital or anything to do with it. But if I’m honest, I don’t have a lot else to talk about which annoys me even worse than the thought of just work.” You laugh again, rambling now, even more embarrassed, but when you glance back at him the look he’s giving you is patient and sympathetic. You turn away, cringing and blushing at yourself at the same time.
“General surgery kind of entails a wide range of systems,” you say, answering his question. “The abdomen, vascular stuff, most soft tissue trauma. But I’m planning on a pediatric surgery fellowship after I’m done with residency. Not home free yet.” Not even close.
He nods along attentively. His gaze on you is direct, focused. You can’t remember the last time a man looked at you so piercingly and made you feel like he was genuinely interested in what you were saying. This bare minimum politeness sends butterflies thrumming in your belly and annoyance piercing through you all at once.
“So what I’m getting is that you’re smart as hell.” He says it flatteringly, but not in a way that lays it on too thick so as not to come off unbelievable. His sincerity smooths away your previous annoyance, but you can still only manage a flat smile, shrugging it off uncomfortably. It might be, you suddenly realize, that you’re having some sort of quarter life crisis or something. Completely unsatisfied any way you look at it all, your life, career, the whole thing. It seems both ungrateful as fuck and yet inevitable in the midst of so long and arduous a journey.
“Or incredibly stupid for getting myself trapped in this career,” you try and play your bitter words off with a laugh, but it falls short and false.
There has been within you recently, this pervasive question: whether you should even be doing this? The whole career. Seemingly nonsensical this far into your training, but what was there to be done about these intrusive thoughts? Am I even happy? No. Do I even enjoy it? Sometimes. Had you started this for all the wrong reasons? Propelled by grief in your youth and a lack of identity. What if you’d wasted your best years on something you should’ve never started in the first place.
It was hard to near the end of your twenties and realize you felt stuck in the life you’d chosen, even worse, that it was vastly empty of anything besides work.
He cocks his head, turning again to face you and lean against the bar, “But you like what you do?”
You shrug halfheartedly, unable to look back at him despite his heavy gaze on your face. “Yeah, sure I do.”
“Don’t sound too sure, now,” he teases, trying his hardest to draw you out.
Shifting back to look at him again, you rest your chin on your shoulder, taking in his earnest look. He really does want to know, it seems.
“This is my first night to myself in… I don’t even know how long. I was getting changed after standing in the OR all day, finishing up more than twenty four hours on call and I just… could not even stand the idea of being alone with my own thoughts, wasting my first full day off in months sleeping or sitting on the couch again. I just wanted to—” You stop abruptly, hesitant to share too much of yourself with this man who you realize hasn’t even actually introduced himself to you properly.
“What? Don’t stop.” And his face is so… convincing. Genuinely interested.
“It’s stupid,” you tell him.
“Can’t be. Tell me.”
“I don’t know. To feel like a real person.”
“How do you mean?” He asks, wanting further insight, like he really, really wants to understand you.
“When was the last time you watched Alice in Wonderland?”
“The cartoon?”
“Yeah.”
He looks up at the ceiling, thinking. “Two weeks ago.”
“Two weeks ago?”
“Yeah.” He’s completely serious, too.
You drop your head back, laughing loudly, just like the happy, drunken people in the other corner.
See, you can be happy and normal and laughing, too. Ha!
“Never mind, I don’t want to tell you anymore. It really is stupid.”
“What? No! Come on, you gotta tell me now.”
Charging through your humiliation, you say, “There’s a part where The Mad Hatter tells Alice, ‘You’ve lost your muchness. You used to be much muchier’...God, this is stupid,” you laugh, covering your face with a damp palm. “Sorry, I’ve been on pedi rotation for the past four weeks and haphazardly watching way too many cartoons. But that’s kind of how I feel now—I’ve lost my muchness.”
“That’s not stupid at all, honey,” he tells you seriously, without a lick of falseness or condescension despite the epithet. Lifting his glass, he salutes you, “To your big night out… and getting your muchness back.”
You don’t think anyone has ever called you that before and not made it out to make you seem small, so you can’t help the pleased, shy grin you receive his cheers and complete understanding with. Glancing down, you realize both of you have turned to face one another on your respective stools, your knees, not touching, but slotted between each other.
“Honey,” you laugh softly, “That’s sweet. Lemme guess, you’re Southern?” You assume going off the softly rolling accent.
“Texan,” he confirms.
“Long way from home.”
“We like it well enough. Moved out here to be closer to my brother. What about your family?” He asks, and it’d seem he’s just as keen to keep the topic of conversation away from himself as you are, and yet more aptly versed in the art of deviating
“All over the place,” you supply vaguely.
“Must be hard, doing such a difficult job without family support nearby.” You shrug, eyes shifting away uncomfortably again, but he seems to take note of your ever present shyness and gives you a beat to collect yourself. “What I don’t understand,” he continues, “Is why you’re all alone celebrating your big night out instead of spendin’ it with someone special?”
The rueful laugh is inevitable, “My friends are all either working or sleeping. And, to be honest, I didn’t really want to come here with a bunch of surgeons just to listen to them bitch about all the crap we deal with all day long. I think I just need a break. I’m more tired than I’ve been in a long time, and working eighty hours a week isn’t exactly conducive to making friendships outside the hospital. Besides the fact that none of us really have real lives, no matter if we’ve got someone waiting at home for us or not.”
“Makes for a difficult sort of being, sounds like to me.”
“I suppose so.”
“Someone’s gotta do it though,” he says, tipping his beer at you before taking a sip. Simple and irrefutable. Someone does have to do it, he’s right.
You watch the way he leans back, stretching his long legs to bracket your stool while leaning back with an arm propped against his seat back. His arms are thick and well formed, and to your discerning eye, knowing human anatomy the way you do, it’s obvious this is not the sort of body one obtains in a gym but from long days of hard manual labor. The breadth of his frame and burliness of his arms and chest tells you that much. When he swivels to lean forward against the bar, calling for another round and two glasses of water, his t-shirt pulls tight over the muscles in his back, accentuating the obscene jut of his thick lats.
You hum an agreement, distracted by the sight of his body while at the same time, glancing suddenly at Betty’s sign above the cooler doors again, chugging gratefully at the cold water to soothe your flaming face. Wondering, embarrassingly, if he might find you attractive in turn. If this elusive Betty might finally show up and lend you some of her luck in helping you into bed with this man the way her sign promises, and then jolting at the salaciousness of your own thoughts.
“What’s your least favorite part of the job, then?” He asks.
“Being tired all the time,” you reply immediately and without thought.
He laughs, chin tipped back and his neck shifts again in that supremely attractive way. You cross your legs. “Yeah, that’ll do it.”
Leaning toward him, you rest your chin against your palm, can’t take your eyes off the man sort of look. “Don’t know…it makes you strange.” Honest. “The monotony of doing nothing but work and sleep, robotic in the way you live your life and feel stuff. Seeing certain things, people dying and sick all the time—it’s easy to let yourself become closed off or cold in order to protect yourself from the complexity of what you’re doing. It’s intimate work, and it’s hard not to take it home and let it rule your whole life, but you have to work even harder not to let yourself fall into that easy…coping mechanism—becoming desensitized, I guess you’d call it. It’s a horrible job when it comes down to it. I think you have to—I can’t even say love it, but you have to know that there’s absolutely nothing else in the world you could ever do. Else it’ll really turn you rotten.” You let your rambling trail off, voice going warbly and weak, but he’s still looking at you like you’re the most interesting thing in the room. “You don’t really want to hear this, do you?” You ask, testing him.
“Of course I do,” he leans forward, suddenly close enough you can smell the hops on his breath mixed with sweet mint from something else. The laundry detergent in his clothes and the sweaty musk of what must surely have been a long, laborious day. The two of you are maybe closer than appropriate, gravitating towards one another, and yet you don’t shy away this time. You can feel your heartbeat in your eyelids, the flush of comforting familiarity suddenly coming over you, spurred by the look in his eyes.
“You didn’t introduce yourself,” you finally remind him before he can get his next question out.
“Joel,” he answers immediately, “What’s yours?”
You offer him your hand and your name, and his palm is broad and rough when he grips you, strong in the way he cradles your slender surgeon’s hand. The disparity is dizzying and exciting and alien all at the same time.
“Now tell me your favorite,” he insists.
“What?”
“Your favorite part of your job.”
The ebb and flow of the conversation, your nearness, the focus he’s staring at you with, it leaves you off kilter, only a moment's hesitation to stop yourself from oversharing to the point of heartbreaking humiliation.
“I know the basic answer is helping people, which is part of it, of course. But really it’s how capable it’s made me feel. The training—it’s so rigorous, and I’m coming up on the end of my fourth year; I’ve been at it long enough. Eventually you end up in situations where you just know what to do, how to fix the problem. It’s muscle memory and the solution to something that seems catastrophic is within your power because you’re so prepared. And I like that. I like how it makes me feel about myself. Nothing else in my entire life has ever made me as confident as this has taught me how to be. It just makes you want to get better and better at it all.”
He watches you for a long quiet moment, your face feels warm, and you can’t be sure under the dim lights of the bar, but it seems like the bridge of his nose might be a little red while his throat works through a swallow. Shaking his head slightly, he laughs, kind of like he’s impressed, maybe even in awe, swiping a big hand over his mouth.
“Fuck, that’s hot.”
You smolder from head to toe. “Stop,” you laugh.
The two of you settle into a stilted breath then, his mouth opens about to say something again, his knee shifting forward like it might touch yours—
“Finally decided to show your face again, huh, sugar?” A voice interrupts.
Joel’s eyes move reluctantly away from your face, turning towards the woman behind the bar who must be Betty. She’s older and really tan like she spends hours baking under the sun, with shiny silver bangles on both of her slender, toned arms that she leans forward to wrap around Joel’s neck, dragging him into a hug across the bar. “Missed you, baby. You’re looking mighty fine.”
You avert your eyes while he greets her quietly, he’s obviously very familiar with both of the bartenders. The old man at the end is awake again, starting in on a fresh pint, and the group from the hospital in the back has doubled in size and liveliness together with the volume of the music.
“Can I getcha anything else?” He asks, pulling your attention back to him.
George Harrison’s Beware of Darkness croons overhead and the red light wash from above, mixed with the blue-globe-glow of the kitschy little disco balls spinning from the hanging rack amalgamates into shades of pink that dance across his face, and it’s really like you’re looking at him through rose colored glasses. He seems a little perfect in this moment, deposited here for you to find on this specific night.
You agree to another because if he doesn't want to stop talking to you, then you don’t want to stop talking to him either. This was what you’d come here for tonight anyways, wasn’t it? To talk to someone, to meet someone. A hook up hadn’t strictly been part of that plan, but it hadn’t necessarily not been either. If that’s even where this is going. But for now, the man is here and he’s interested and he’s gorgeous and buying you another drink.
He asks about your schooling next, where you went and how long it all takes and what you like to do (not counting sleep!) on your days off. You tell him you play tennis and love to ride the horses that your grandmother keeps stabled in upstate New York, even though it’s been a while since you’ve had the luxury of time to get yourself up there. You tell him about your friend Dina, your co-resident turned best friend for life, who you bonded with over the torturous suffering of intern year. He tells you about his brother Tommy and his girlfriend Maria and about how when they decided they wanted to start their own construction company, they set themselves the task of building a house just the two brothers themselves. The whole thing, shared between them from start to finish, and that if they were able to successfully pull off the build, and make it good, that they’d take the plunge and embark on their own venture. They’d finished the house two years ago, and he tells you it’s beautiful, his dream home, and it’s where he lives with Sarah now, his only daughter.
That throws you for a moment, the idea of a kid that belongs to him out there somewhere. But you overcome it quickly, listening while he tells you that her mother isn’t in the picture and hasn’t been since shortly after she was born. That his daughter is lovely and perfect and the best girl he knows. That, somehow, seems to settle the rose colored glasses even more firmly across your eyes, truth be told. And you tell yourself that he seems to be, for all intents and purposes, a really good guy.
Hot and jacked, as an added bonus, too.
His spread thighs around your crossed knees pull his jeans tight over thick muscles, and you really can’t help it when you look. He’s just too tempting.
When he asks if you know any local stables that offer lessons for Sarah, you pull a pen from your bag to write the name of one you’re familiar with on one of The Tiny Bar printed napkins, and it’s easy, natural, almost necessary, when he asks for your phone number, too. You scribble your cell across the soft paper, a pointy little heart slashed right below because you’re feeling fizzy and brave and can’t stop giggling at the way he teases your messy doctor handwriting. He looks at the napkin for a second before folding it and tucking it away in his wallet.
Sometimes, cliches are fun and exciting, like meeting a sexy older guy at the bar and giving him your number. Like doing something completely out of your ordinary on a night you’d promised yourself would be special.
When Islands In The Stream by Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers comes on the speakers and the now twenty strong group from the hospital start to dance on the little makeshift dance floor in the back corner of Tiny’s tiny bar, Joel pulling you up into his arms to dance doesn’t feel like a cliche—it just feels like something you’ve always wanted to do, the night’s perfect finale.
He pulls your chair out, calling Betty over (watch this for us will ya?) taking care of your things before you can even think of it, making sure you have one last sip of water and ignoring the admiring looks Betty casts his way while he spins you onto the dance floor between the drunk, boisterous nurses and radiology techs and the pharmacist that yelled at you three weeks ago because of a misunderstood order. And you don’t even care that none of them recognize you amongst them even though you’ve worked with them for years. Nothing else really matters right now besides the feel of his hand on your hip.
You’re a little stiff at first, uncoordinated and bumbling. But he bids you to just relax, rocking your hips from side to side between his palms. “That’s a girl,” he says again in that soft voice, and his smile is so handsome and his hands are so strong, holding your fingers between his and at the small of your back, pulling you in close so you feel his warm breath at the sensitive spot beneath your ear, soothing your shiver with a gentle caress. He spins you, pivoting his body between the drunken revelers, gripping the forearm of the scolding pharmacist who is now particularly unsteady before he can bowl into the two of you. “Careful,” he says calmly. When you feel both of his palms smooth down your back, pressing you close, your movements slow together, and you wrap your arms around his neck, your chest against the top of his stomach, you sigh into his neck with what can only be described as pure and unadulterated longing.
“You said you’re off tomorrow?” He asks at your ear, sending the hair escaped from your pony tail to flutter.
“I’m not back until Sunday at ten AM. This level of freedom is unprecedented,” you joke. The shake of his laughter against your chest is a little victory. You pull back to look at him, and all you can think as you watch him laugh is that you wish you were kissing right now.
“Dunno if you’re too tired, but could we get a coffee or maybe I can buy you a late dinner? I don’t want this to end here.” And God, but his eyes are so damn earnest and almost honey colored. You can’t help your fingertips, with a mind of their own, when you pet softly at the edge of his jaw, just because you need to feel for yourself that the look on his face is real.
You’re already nodding your head before he’s got all the words out. And most of all, it’s absolutely not a cliche when you tell him, more brazen than you’ve probably ever been with any man before, “Or you could come home with me?”
God, you think, that smile could really convince a girl of anything.