Dr. NEUROtic Page 5

  Me: I had you on my list today for follow-up. So, have you rethought your decision on relocation to LA?

  Nick: It's still a no, Ms. Hollis.

  Me: Hmm… Are you sure?

  Nick: Hmm… Yes. I’m 100% positive. :)

  Me: Hmm… okay.

  Nick: LOL. Are you always this persistent with your clients?

  Me: Probably not.

  Nick: Well, I guess I feel special, then.

  Me: You should. Well, not as special as Fleetwood Mac’s Sex Pants, but still. ;)

  Nick: I’m in the middle of a meeting, and I actually laughed out loud at that one. My peers are looking at me like I’m nuts right now.

  Me: You're texting me in the middle of a meeting? That seems unprofessional, Dr. Raines.

  Nick: It's nothing too important. Just the usual shit. Brain surgery and stuff like that.

  Me: Hahaha I'm sure your patients would love to know the doc performing surgery on their heads refers to it as “the usual shit.”

  Nick: LOL.

  Me: Enjoy your meeting, Dr. Raines

  Nick: Enjoy your day, Ms. Hollis.

  Sigh. Yeah. It was official. I had a big old crush on a brain surgeon.

  The red-and-white checkered tablecloth grabbed at the back of my hand as I slid it out from under my paper plate. It’d been freshly wiped, and a little of the moisture from the rag still clung to the rubberlike material.

  But it wasn’t something that you grumbled about at Vinito’s, and if you were smart, it wasn’t even something you thought about complaining about on a Friday night.

  The line had been out the door when we’d gotten here thirty minutes ago, and that was just to order at the counter and wait patiently for a slice of heaven. With their combination of melted cheese and perfectly seasoned sauce, Vinito’s had some of the best pizza in Manhattan, and if you were a New Yorker, you’d know that was really saying something.

  It’d taken another ten minutes to actually procure a slice and another two to hunt and peck out a table. But Lexi was the best at stalking people, studying their weaknesses, and waiting to make them break. It was in her nature to be analytical, but she’d also been practicing every other Friday night for the last year and a half.

  The first year and a half after I moved back, I’d spent all my time convincing Winnie Winslow that I could be a real father to our daughter. I showed up at all of Lexi’s football games, remembered all of the important dates, and called her every night before bed. I was in her life, for good, and I had to prove that to Winnie, Lexi, and truthfully, myself.

  I could do it. I could be the father she wanted and needed, and I could give up anything that stood in the way.

  It’d actually been surprisingly easy. Lexi was a brilliant force of nature. She liked you or she didn’t, and despite my mistakes, she’d sniffed out something in me she believed in.

  I clung to that on the days I doubted myself.

  After a long road of building trust, Winnie had finally admitted to the change she saw in me. And so, she’d given in. Selflessly, and without past repercussion, Winnie had put her daughter first, at the very front of the line, and given her alone time with me on a regular basis.

  Every other weekend, Lexi came to me on Friday evening and went home Sunday. And every Friday, we came to Vinito’s.

  It might seem like a cop-out to take her to the exact same restaurant every Friday, but Lexi, diagnosed as high-functioning on the autism spectrum, lived for routine and planning. Vinito’s was known, it was comfortable, and honest to God, the pizza really was heaven.

  “My slice has forty-two crumbles of sausage, but yours has fifty-three. Peculiar,” Lexi observed keenly, and if I wasn’t mistaken, with a little ire. Her spatial reasoning was superhuman, and her love for sausage pizza was a close second.

  “Would you like to switch?” I offered.

  Instead of answering, she reached forward, grabbed the edge of my plate, and slid it toward herself. She compared the two pieces closely while they were side by side, and I chuckled when she didn’t slide one back.

  “Lex.”

  “Mine has approximately two percent more cheese than yours, and the sauce ratio is nearly one to one.”

  “Lex, please just pick a slice and give me the other.”

  She huffed. “It’s not that simple.”

  “Lexi.” I tried to be patient, I really did, because it was amusing as all hell and seriously special to watch her mind work, but if I let it, this could go on forever.

  “Give me a minute,” she shushed me, waving a hand and diving closer to smell each slice. I could only assume she was assessing the herbs.

  I was just about to reach out and grab one before they both got cold when my phone rang in my pocket.

  Lexi, knowing that meant she’d have a little more time for her appraisal, smiled gleefully.

  I narrowed my eyes, and then without looking at the screen of my phone, swiped my finger across it to answer it and put it to my ear.

  “Hello?”

  “Well, hello, trivia letdown.”

  I rolled my eyes and sank back into my chair with a smile. Charlotte. “I never claimed to be good at trivia.”

  “You’re a neurosurgeon!”

  “Yeah, that means I know about the brain. It also means I have very little time for anything else.”

  “Jesus Christ, I’m coming over later to give you a DVR tutorial.”

  “Most of the time, if I’m home, I’m sleeping or spending time with my daughter. Not watching TV.”

  “Couldn’t some of that time with your daughter be spent at a sporting event?” she argued cleverly.

  I laughed. “Charlotte.”

  “All right, all right. Jesus. I just expected a better performance out of you, Dr. Raines.”

  “Sorry. I guess you’ll have to find a new partner for…” I glanced at Lexi and decided to abbreviate. “FMSP.”

  “No way!” she nearly yelled. “You’ll just have to brush up for next time.”

  “Next time?”

  “Trivia night is every Wednesday.”

  My eyebrows drew together. Lexi, meanwhile, finally slid a slice of pizza back over to me. It was the one I’d started with.

  “You know I said no to the job, right?” I asked suddenly. I knew she knew, but she was still trying to make me her new best friend. I didn’t want to let myself succumb to the pull, only to find out it was all a powerful professional ruse.

  “Yeah,” she said easily. “Of course.”

  “All right.”

  “Why?”

  “You’re just contacting me a lot. I wanted to make sure you knew it was a dead end.”

  For the first time since I’d met her, she actually sounded a little bashful. “I’m contacting you a lot because you’re cute.” She laughed, but it was completely devoid of its normal magnificence. “And dense, apparently.”

  Jesus, I’m an idiot.

  “Charlotte—”

  “Dad!” Lexi interrupted. “I chose the better slice. Eat your inferior one.”

  “You sound busy,” Charlotte said in my ear. “I’ll talk to you later, okay?”

  “Charlotte.”

  “Bye!”

  Ah, fuck. I sighed and pulled the phone away from my ear to stare at the blank screen and grind my jaw. That didn’t go well.

  “Who was that?” Lexi asked frankly and without pause.

  Internally, I groaned. I couldn’t lie to Lexi. She’d sniff that out faster than a police K-9 looking for weed, but I really didn’t feel like going down this road right now. I already felt like a Grade A jackass for embarrassing Charlotte unnecessarily.

  I thought she was cute too, for shit’s sake. I was just…slow.

  “Her name is Charlotte,” I said, hoping a vague answer would satisfy her curiosity enough to move this conversation along.

  Of course, if anything was true about Lexi, it was that her curiosity was never, ever satisfied.

  “How old is she?”r />
  “Uh,” I mumbled, swallowing a surprised half laugh. “I honestly have no idea.”

  “Are you having sex?”

  “What?” I yelled. Everyone in the pizzeria turned to look at me at once. Averting my eyes to the table, I picked at the crust of my rapidly cooling slice and forced my voice back to normal. “What? No. Why would you think that?”

  “According to Brice and Romlan’s latest study, male-on-female interaction, without familial relation, is seventy-two percent more likely to be sexual in nature than platonic. It’s biology. The male brain—”

  Jesus Christ.

  “Okay, yeah, I get it. But no, Charlotte and I are not sleeping together.”

  She shrugged. “You don’t have to sleep together to be sexually active.”

  I shook my head and looked to the ceiling, asking God why he made me have these conversations with my almost ten-year-old daughter. Part of me thought it might be penance for missing so much of her magnificent mind when she was younger, but the other suspected it was strictly for His entertainment.

  “Sleeping together is an expression for sex,” I explained, rubbing roughly at my eyebrow as I tried to fight a blush.

  “Oh.” She shrugged. “You should really find out her age. If she’s not eighteen, you could have a legal problem.”

  I laughed, just one sharp bark, before biting into the flesh of my bottom lip. “She’s older than eighteen, and we’re not having sex.”

  “I’m just saying.”

  “Well, stop. I know Charlotte from work.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Your smile didn’t say work.”

  I pulled my face into a frown almost on reflex. “I wasn’t smiling.”

  “Okay, Dad,” she allowed with a small scoff.

  Dad. Every time she called me that, I swear, my heart contracted in my chest.

  “She got off the phone fast,” she criticized.

  “Lex,” I chastised.

  She didn’t even bat an eyelash before delivering the real blow.

  “Well, you’ll be jail-free for at least another day. After your performance just now, tomorrow should be sex-free for sure.”

  Monday morning.

  Ugh, hairy ball sac.

  I was sitting inside of my actual office at CMI’s home base in Midtown, and my email box was filled with new potential prospects of companies searching for their next great leaders and executives. Business was fucking great. Fate was smiling on me, and I was a happy, healthy woman living in the best city in the world.

  I truly had nothing to complain about.

  But I kind of felt like complaining and Mondays were a package deal. I mean, holidays aside, could anyone really remember the last time they had a fantastic Monday? Celebrated it? Told somebody, Oh, fuck yes, I’m happy to be back at work instead of napping by my pool and reading?

  I thought not.

  After a quick scroll through page two of my emails, I organized my shit into color-coordinated folders, flagged the most important items, and moved on to page three.

  First rules of headhunting: Keep yo’ ass organized and your clients happy.

  So really that was two rules, but whatever.

  My eyes barely made it halfway down the page before my attention was pulled to my cell phone as it lost its shit from its cozy spot next to my laptop. Ring, bling, vibrate, I had that fucker set on every available notification setting possible.

  It’s possible I’ve missed phone calls in the past.

  Nick: I owe you an apology.

  My heart fluttered at both the name and the content, but I squared my shoulders.

  Me: It’s fine, Nick. I’ve finally come to terms with the fact that you’re a horrible trivia partner.

  Okay, so obviously, I was deflecting, but a girl could only take so many blows to her ego, and I wasn’t all jazzed up to dive right back into the land of rejection.

  I silently prayed his need for apology had everything to do with our last, and extremely awkward at the end, phone conversation. And I hoped if it did, my redirection would force him to vocalize his exact trespasses as a means for further avoiding confusion.

  Nick: LOL. That’s not what I’m talking about.

  Boom. Perfect lead-in.

  Me: Oh… then what exactly are you apologizing for?

  Nick: For being a slow, dense idiot.

  I stared at his text for a good thirty seconds, trying to find some kind of response to his words, but it was fruitless. I’d gotten just what I wanted—a direct admission of his obliviousness. But recognition of his failure to follow context clues was not the same as an admission of feelings on his end.

  If I got any farther out on the pirate plank, my mouth would be full of salt water in no time.

  Nick: I’m new at this whole dating thing. I mean, Lexi’s mom was literally the last woman I actually dated. And that was over ten years ago. Needless to say, I suck at it. I suck at keeping my foot out of my mouth, and I suck at saying I think you’re cute too. Because I do.

  Over ten years? Hot damn. That was a long fucking time ago. It didn’t seem possible with his body and eyes and overall fucking bachelor of the year eligibility, but I could definitely relate.

  My last serious relationship had been twelve years ago, and I’d ended it about sixteen hours before we were supposed to say “I do.” Not my finest moment, but despite being the hardest thing I’d ever done and taking years to get over it, it’d been the right thing.

  I had been young—twenty-two, to be exact, and too young for marriage. That didn’t apply to everyone, but it definitely applied to me. I had a wanderlust, a fervor for living life and building myself into a strong, independent woman. My fiancé had wanted me to settle down, and I wanted to spread out and up. I begged him to see the light, but he wanted me how he wanted me.

  I was just glad I found the strength to step away, regardless of the scrutiny. Granted, I’d hauled ass all the way across the country and stayed gone, so I hadn’t exactly had to run into these people at the fucking grocery store every day.

  Since that ended, I’d been boots—or stilettos, depending on the occasion—to the ground and running as I chased after career goals and personal bucket list items.

  I occasionally dated. And sometimes, if I’d really enjoyed the guy’s company, one date would turn into more. But for the most part, the train tracks I was following were more like a monorail.

  Prior to Nick Raines, the time of death of my last casual date was over six months ago. His name was Barry, and he owned three commercial car washes throughout LA and Malibu. We weren’t a match made in franchise heaven.

  So, I guess, really, Nick’s inexperience was a remarkable mirror image of my own. I just thought I knew how to play the game. Not to mention, it was pretty fucking adorable that he was willing to openly discuss the barren qualities of his past. Most men would be grunting about what a sex god they were as they chatted up some other woman at the bar and forgot all about me.

  Nick was humble. Grounded. Between his career and his daughter, he looked like he had his shit together. Color me impressed. And intrigued.

  Nick: I get it if you’ve blocked my number at this point. But I’m really sorry, Charlotte. I think you’re funny and fun and quite possibly have the best laugh I’ve ever heard.

  He liked my laugh? Liked it?

  Good God, if I called my mother right now, she’d tell me to marry this one.

  Me: Apology accepted and appreciated. So, besides being surprised and flattered, what else are you?

  Nick: Wondering. If you’ll have lunch with me.

  Me: I have a meeting with a client at 3, but other than that, I’m fairly flexible with my schedule.

  Nick: How about noon?

  Me: Is this, like, a date?

  A once-burned woman confirms. Remember that.

  Nick: That depends.

  Me: On what?

  Nick: Fleetwood Mac’s Sex Pants. ;) I’m kidding. This is definitely a date.

  A date wi
th Nick? Yes, please!

  I couldn’t stop myself from fist-pumping the air.

  Me: Hahahaha Okay. How about I meet you at your office at noon, and you can wine and dine me at the cute little deli up the street from your office?

  Nick: Please tell me you’re talking about Mitch’s…

  Me: Of course. It’s only the best goddamn deli in the city.

  Nick: Okay. Mitch’s, “the best goddamn deli in the city”? Now you’re speaking my love language. It’s a date.

  My heart fluttered.

  Me: Perfect. See you then.

  One tap of my index finger to the screen and I hit send. Unfortunately, as the message disappeared and the screen cleared to home, time glared in my direction. Shit. It was half past nine, and I hadn’t even put a dent into today’s to-do list.

  You better work, bitch.

  After barreling through half of Monday’s work responsibilities, and micromanaging the other half to my assistant, Laura, I managed to slip out of the office a little later than I’d planned, but still in enough time to arrive at Nick’s office only ten minutes after twelve.

  When I stepped through the doors of his waiting room, two things stood out. Though, to be fair, one was decidedly more of a sore thumb than the other. Nick’s perky receptionist, Jenna, was very familiar and showed no signs of sore thumbs at all.

  But the two men holding cameras and filming footage of reception…well, they were all swollen up.

  What the fuck? Was there some kind of emergency?

  I checked in with Jenna, a crooked eyebrow refusing to go down on my face. She looked like she wanted to laugh, but she didn’t open her mouth to do so—or otherwise explain the dog and pony show. She stepped forward, and I followed, all the way into Nick’s office, where I realized suddenly one of the cameras from reception had come along for the ride.