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  “Pickle-jar-opening show-off.”

  I tapped her nose. “Bingo.”

  “You’re insulted now?” She pumped a fist. “Excellent.”

  I frowned. “You’re trying to insult me. I’m so sad,” I said, then I reached into the jar and ate a pickle.

  She patted my belly. “Pregnant?”

  I shuddered. “Horrors.”

  “Oh, please. Like that’s the worst thing in the world.”

  I gave her a sharp stare. “It kind of would be.”

  I’d rather be firing the trigger on the baby, not carrying it.

  Like I said, I prefer manly tasks.

  * * *

  Four

  * * *

  After a long day at the hospital, which pretty much describes every day at Mercy, it’s nice to have someone to come home to. And I’m not just saying that because Josie makes absolutely killer air-popped popcorn.

  But she does. This popcorn is delicious, and we munch on it all the way through a binge fest of Ballers, Vice Principals, and Veep on HBO. When we reach the end, I rattle the bowl then pretend to hunt for more, sniffing the inside of it.

  “You’re like a dog,” she says. “The dog who licks his food dish when he finishes just in case there’s a nugget he missed.”

  I drop my face into the red bowl and lick.

  She grabs it from me and sets it on the coffee table. “I’m cutting you off.” She puts her feet on the coffee table. Then she shifts a little and moves them onto me.

  I stare at her feet. Her toenails are painted sapphire blue. Her feet are little and slender. My eyes land on the top of her foot, and they nearly pop out of my head when I spy the bounty. “You have really beautiful veins in your feet.”

  She gives me the biggest side-eye glare in the world. “What?”

  I stretch forward, grab her foot, and hold it up. “Look at this. It’s fucking beautiful,” I say, running my finger along the top. The vein there is thick and blue. “I could draw so much blood from here.”

  She blinks. “Are you a vampire?”

  “No. I’m just an aficionado of all the systems in the body. You could give blood from your fucking foot.” I yank it toward my mouth.

  She squeals, wriggling as I pretend to gnaw on her arch. “You’re crazy.”

  I let go, dropping it across my thigh. “What other glorious life-giving veins are you hiding? Let me see your arms.”

  “Is this some kind of doctor porn?”

  I nod, and my eyes are surely sparkling. “You have the cupcake tin and icing smoother. Hell, I saw the way you eyed that rolling pin, too. You had your fun. Let me have mine.”

  “Fine.” She shrugs off a little flimsy sweater and sticks out her arm.

  I wrap my hand around her wrist and roam my eyes up and down her arm. “This,” I say, tapping a vein in her forearm. “You could save countries with this limb.”

  “Are you really serious?”

  “Yes. This is a world-class vein, Josie. This is like a diamond mine. Man, if I didn’t already think you were the cat’s meow, just seeing your veins would seal the deal. Please tell me you’re a blood donor.”

  She nods. “Of course. Want to take mine some time?”

  I draw a sharp breath and close my eyes. “Don’t get me excited.”

  When I open my eyes, she kicks me in the belly. “You’re the worst.”

  “I know.”

  She sits up and asks, “What was the hardest part about being in Africa?”

  “Besides missing pizza?”

  She smiles. “Besides pizza, though I do understand that kind of empty ache.”

  “Especially for a cheese pie with mushrooms.”

  “Your favorite,” she says.

  Absently, I rub my hand over her arm as I cycle back to the days in the Central African Republic. “Obviously, the suffering that we witnessed.”

  “Of course,” she says, her tone serious. “That must have been so hard.”

  “It was. But on a more personal level, since I think that’s what you’re asking, I would say it was missing friends,” I say with a sigh. “I missed Max, even though he’s a pain, and Wyatt, too. I missed talking to friends who aren’t in medicine. Just chatting about something other than work or doctor stuff.”

  “You’re a social person,” she says, her voice soft.

  I nod. “Always have been. I loved your emails, though,” I say, remembering how Josie kept in touch with me. She consistently sent me updates, more than anyone else. “I’d get excited just seeing your name in my Gmail inbox.”

  She smiles widely. “Really?”

  I nod. “Yeah. It was an amazing experience being there, but I did miss home, and getting your notes was like receiving a little piece of New York every time you wrote. Like the time you told me about the woman who ordered a cake for herself from her dogs. How when she picked it up, she said, ‘My dogs ordered me a cake.’”

  Josie laughs. “She was adorable. She was a writer. She’d just hit a bestseller list, and she said her dogs wanted to congratulate her with a cake.”

  “What a lovable nut. And you totally went along with it.”

  Josie juts up a shoulder. “Of course. I said, ‘Satchel and Lulu are so very proud of you. Here’s the chocolate layer cake they ordered just for you.’”

  “You probably made her day. Hell, that story alone made mine. What didn’t help was the picture you sent along of the cake, you temptress,” I say, narrowing my eyes.

  “You missed my cake. So sweet.”

  A smile tugs at my lips. A wistful one. “I missed you, too.”

  “You did?” she asks, her voice softer than usual, less teasing.

  “Of course. You’re one of my best friends.”

  “Right. Totally. Same here.” She clears her throat. “Did you make new friends in Africa?”

  “Definitely. I became friends with some of the other doctors and nurses.”

  “Nurses?” A tightness threads through her voice. I haven’t heard that tone before. For a flicker of a second it sounds almost like jealousy. But that’s ridiculous. We’ve been friends for too long for things to change between us.

  “A group of us became close. Camila, this hip nurse from Spain with crazy tattoos down her arms, was awesome.”

  “A Spanish nurse? Covered in ink?” she asks, like this is the most difficult concept, or the most annoying.

  “Yes. She was a riot. Always telling funny stories about the guys back home. And a doctor from England, George. And another doc from New Zealand. His name was Dominic, and he had the perfect deadpan sense of humor. That was our crew.”

  “Did anyone have a vein fetish like you?”

  I wiggle my eyebrows. “They would have if a specimen such as yourself had been around to provide doctor porn,” I say, and grab her arm again, running my finger along her vein as if I’m mesmerized.

  For a brief second, her breath catches. The soft, barely-there hair on her arm stands on end. A strange sensation runs down my spine, as if I’m floating.

  Which makes no sense, so I shove the idea away.

  I look away from her arm and meet her green eyes. There’s something different in them. Something I haven’t seen before. I don’t know what it is. I can’t name it.

  “I’ve been using your hairbrush,” I blurt out. I’m not entirely sure why I’m confessing right now, but here, with those wide eyes staring into mine, I can’t help myself.

  Her mouth lifts. “I know.”

  “You don’t mind?”

  She leans forward and runs a hand through my hair. That strange feeling? It doubles. It triples. It multiples exponentially. “No. But I think you’d look nice with pink hair someday.”

  * * *

  Five

  * * *

  The smells.

  The other thing about living with a woman is that everything smells good. The bathroom is like an opium den of feminine delights. Most days, Josie wakes up before me and leaves right when I rise. When I
enter the bathroom, it’s like wandering into a lair of womanhood.

  I stand and inhale.

  Cherry scents and swirling aromas of vanilla sugar lotion and honeysuckle body wash linger in the air, like a fucking delicious dirty dream. Every morning, I’m enrobed in the scent of woman. It’s sweet and seductive and intoxicating, and it smells like her.

  In short, it’s the fucking perfect environment for a shower jerk.

  What? Do you blame me? I wake up with wood, and I’m alone under a hot stream. Of course I do some morning handiwork.

  * * *

  Six

  * * *

  That’s the other thing about living with a woman that a man just has to battle. Something he can’t avoid.

  Morning wood.

  Waking up with a hard-on is a fact of having a Y chromosome. Most of the time Josie’s gone before I even leave for work, so who cares? But, every now and then she’s not. Like on Saturday morning. Clad only in black boxer briefs, I pad out of my room, rubbing my eyes and yawning. There she is in the hallway wearing the most adorable little pair of pink boy shorts that do nothing to reduce the tent in my pants. In fact, the view of her soft thighs and the swell of her tits under that flimsy T-shirt material enhances the outline in my shorts to completely fucking obvious levels.

  Because . . .

  She’s. Not. Wearing. A. Bra.

  I’m not a religious man, but I’m seriously considering taking up praying. To her chest. I think this is what heaven looks like. Those globes. God help me, I’m seeing an angel in front of me.

  “Morning, Chase.”

  “Morning, Josie,” I say, my voice gravelly from the hour and the view.

  Her eyes drift down, and she blinks. My gaze follows hers, and my dick is pointing at her, like a happy billboard.

  She doesn’t seem fazed.

  I shrug. “I meant, it’s a very good morning indeed.”

  Josie smirks, and I can’t help but notice she stares a little longer than one would expect. Can’t say that bothers me.

  But that night isn’t so good at all when I learn the thing that sucks most about having a female roommate like Josie.

  She’s going on a date.

  9

  I try to leave before she does.

  I don’t want to know what she’s wearing. I don’t want to know how she does her hair. I don’t even want to know where she’s going.

  Until she tells me. My hand is on the doorknob, ready to hightail it out of the apartment, since I can’t be the pathetic ass who’s home when his fuck-hot roommate heads out on a date.

  Josie calls out to me from the hallway. “Hey!”

  “Yeah?”

  She walks into the living room. “I’m going to Bar Boisterous in the Fifties.”

  I narrow my eyes. “Okay. Why are you telling me?”

  “So you’ll know where my last-known location is.”

  Annoyance threads through me. “Please don’t tell me you’re going out with someone you think is going to dismember you.”

  She shudders and wags spooky fingers. “Yes. I’ll have him send my head to you in a box.”

  “Not funny.”

  “What if he puts a bow on top? Like a gift?” She steps closer and adopts a Vincent Price narrator style. “He’s going to cut me up in tiny pieces and feed me to the wolverines.”

  “Seriously. Not funny. Are you really worried about this guy?” I ask, not giving in to her attempt at humor. Though, in all other circumstances, Josie wins major points for being not just a humor consumer, but a humor producer. And that’s rare. Humor producers are diamonds.

  Just not this second.

  She parks her hands on her hips. She wears a white top with a scoop neck and a pair of slim jeans. Her date doesn’t deserve her. I don’t know who he is, what he does, or a thing about him, but I don’t need to. He doesn’t fucking deserve this amazing humor-producing, big-hearted, glorious-chested, kitchen-talented woman. “You asked a ridiculous question, Chase.”

  Sternly, I say, “You’re the one who wanted to tell me your last-known location.”

  “I’m just being cautious. Not paranoid.”

  I relent. “Sorry.”

  “But, seriously. I have a favor to ask.” There’s no toying in her tone.

  “Of course. Ask me anything.” And I’ll do it.

  Her voice is innocent, hopeful even as she asks, “Can I call you if anything comes up?”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know,” she says, fidgeting with a heart charm on her silver bracelet. “Just anything, I guess. I saw Henry once over the summer, and we had a nice time, then he had to leave town for an assignment. I don’t know much about him, and usually my friend Lily, who runs the flower shop down the street from me, is my backup. But she’s out with her boyfriend Rob tonight, so if anything happens, can you be my Bat-Signal?”

  When she puts it like that, how can I harbor a ball of frustration over her dating? I might think she’s a babe, but first and foremost she’s my friend. One of my best friends. I stride across the hardwood floor, drape an arm around her, and pull her in close to reassure her.

  Except . . . tactical error.

  I draw a deep inhale of her hair. That ball of frustration doesn’t unwind. It coils, because . . . he’ll smell her tonight. He’ll know her cherry scent.

  My fists clench. My chest pinches. My jaw tightens.

  But then, I’m just being territorial, I tell myself. I’m a lion protecting my pride.

  This isn’t personal. This isn’t a man looking out for his woman. This is just elemental. It’s basic male/female pack mentality, king-of-the-jungle shit. It’s a guy looking out for a girl he cares about. My job is to be her wingman on alert. To keep her safe. “You know I will, Josie, baby,” I say in her ear.

  Baby?

  What the fuck? I don’t use terms of endearment. I don’t utter sweet little nothings.

  “Thank you,” she says as we separate. “It’s just this whole online dating thing is . . .” She draws a deep breath. “It’s fraught with challenges. I went out with someone a few months ago, and, well, let’s just say it didn’t work out.”

  “Relationships have a way of doing that.”

  She nods and quirks up her lips. “But I’m glad to have you to lean on.”

  I tilt like the Tower of Pisa. “Lean on me.”

  She nudges her shoulder against mine, and my heart beats faster. Like, way speedier than the normal resting heart rate. That’s odd. But I tell myself the quickened pace comes from a simpler place—from the human desire to be needed. The best gal I know needs me to be her reliable, steady guy. That’s what I’ll be for her. I won’t be the dude who thinks about her chest, or her legs, or her intoxicating hair. Hell, I already know that kicking a friendship up a notch can fuck up all sorts of shit.

  It can ruin everything.

  Including the heart.

  When Josie steps away from me, the beating in my chest returns to normal. I point at her. “For you, I make house calls. The doctor is always in.”

  She thanks me again, and I leave to meet my buddies at Joe’s Sticks, a pool hall in the east Fifties. Max, Spencer, Nick, and Wyatt are at a table, racking up. Max claps me on the back when I arrive. “How’s life on a sitcom working out for you?”

  “Har, har, har.”

  He thrusts a beer at me. “Three’s company yet?”

  I take the bottle. “Except there’s only two of us.”

  His dark eyes stare me down. “I can count. I can also speculate. And that little number—two—tells me it’ll be even harder for you,” he says, shaking his head as he hands me a pool cue. “You’re on my team. And I can’t wait to say I told you so.”

  “That’s what I love about you. The endless well of support.”

  “Always,” he says with a wink. He nods at the table. “You go first. I need my ringer.”

  I say hello to the other guys and then line up my shot. I’m good at pool. It’s the foc
us. The concentration. The same skill set as sewing up a forehead. Yes, I have excellent hand-eye coordination, and it helps me kill it at the pool table. Max is a beast, too, so we’re like the one-two Summers brothers’ punch.

  I line up and aim. I send the white ball straight into the purple ball, which races over the felt and rattles neatly into the corner pocket.

  “Nice one,” Wyatt says from the corner of the table. Earlier, he texted me that his wife, Natalie, would be busy tonight doing wedding prep with Spencer’s wife, Charlotte. Yes, wedding prep. Wyatt and Natalie are already married, but they’re getting married again. They tied the knot in Vegas a little while ago, but they’re having a ceremony here in a few weeks for friends and family.

  As I walk around the table, looking for the next shot, Wyatt says, “How’s life with my little sister?”

  “Great,” I say. Because it is.

  “What’s she up to tonight?”

  I pause for a second, unsure if I should say what she’s doing. “She’s out.”

  Spencer parks his hands around his mouth like a megaphone. “Code word for date.”

  Nick straightens his spine and arches a brow at Spencer. “Seriously? My sister does not date.”

  Spencer smacks his back. “Yup. Just like my sister didn’t date,” he says, giving him a sharp I-caught-you stare since Nick’s engaged to Spencer’s sister Harper.

  Nick holds up his hands. “Fine, fine.”

  Spencer pokes Nick with the cue. “Get used to it, buddy. Get used to your sister dating. I had to get used to it with you, of all people.”

  I sink my shot, then miss the next one. When Nick takes his turn, Wyatt calls out to me, “Who’s the lucky guy tonight, and when do we need to beat him up?”

  I shrug. “Don’t know.”

  He stares sharply at me. “You don’t know?”

  “Dude, I’m not her keeper.”

  “I know, shithead. But you need to look out for her.” Wyatt points his beer bottle at me.

  “Yeah, because men are pigs,” Max says, weighing in.

  We all hold up our beers at that statement.