Mark

Traffic in Boston is always a bitch, but Friday nights are immensely worse, especially making my way from Cambridge to South Boston.

After finishing my notes and charts at the hospital, and recovering from that brief exchange with Eli, I had to head home to shower and change, then turn right back around to get on the road.

When I finally arrive, it’s nearing nine p.m. and the party is well underway. I need a drink.

My college friend, Sasha Lee, is the first to greet me as she sees me walking through the door, her expression discerning and surly.

“It’s about time you graced us with your presence,” she grouses, throwing her arms around my neck and pecking my cheek with a kiss. When she steps back, she glances behind me, her brows furrowed.

“I thought you were bringing a date?”

I shrug off my outer coat and place it on the back of a barstool, straightening the bottom of my grey V-neck cashmere sweater over my dark-washed jeans. Smirking just a little, I turn back to face her.

I shrug non-committedly. “I may have lied and told you that just to get you off my ass.”

Sasha swats me across the chest with a huff. Sasha’s always trying to fix me up with women. It’s even worse now that she’s in a monogamous relationship with Jackson Koda, the man who finally got her to settle down. Over the last several months she’s been working extra vigilantly to find me someone to fix me up with. In her words, to “fix my broken heart.”

Sasha knows all about my troubles in Ghana and what went on with Elise.

“You fucking asshole,” she sputters, rolling her dark eyes at me. “You’re a liar and I believed you.”

I tap her nose with the tip of my finger in a condescending manner. “I guess that just means you’re a gullible brat.”

She’s about ready to throw another swing at me when Jax steps behind her, gently folding her hand in his. I give him a chin nod and thankful greeting.

“Thanks for the save, Jax. Your woman here was just ready to get her claws in me.”

Jax lifts a brow. “What did you do this time?”

I scoff, running a hand over my clean-shaven jaw. “Figures you two would gang up on me. I’m totally innocent. It’s your fiancée who started this war.”

“That’s because you lied!” Sasha practically screeches with indignation.

Jax looks between me and Sasha and then guides her hand to his mouth, placing a kiss atop her knuckles.

“Darling, I thought we talked about keeping your hands to yourself and not assaulting the guests,” he chastises sweetly, as she snorts. “Now, let’s all try to get along tonight for the sake of our hosts.”

I give Sasha a haughty smirk and wink and she returns it with an evil glare, gesturing with the ‘watch your back’ finger point, lighting into me with her snarky tone.

“I’ll get you later. You best not pass out tonight or you might find DICKHEAD written across that pretty forehead of yours. Just like old times.”

We all laugh, hers more of a calculating cackle, at her unsuccessful attempt to scare me. Sasha is all big talk and bluster. She and I have been best friends since our first year in college and then went through medical school together. She’s the closest thing I’ve had to a sister. Although we were both very sexually active in those years, we’d never once tried it with each other.

It just wasn’t for us. Our connection is too deep and founded on the notion of strictly friendship not lovers. Not even friends-with-benefits. She knows almost all of my secrets. All but one.

“Where’s our honorees this evening? And why is my hand empty and without a martini? What kind of hostess are you?”

I give a pointed look at Sasha because I know it’ll get her riled up. Three...two...one...

“Get your own motherfucking drink, asswipe,” she snarls, flipping me off as she does. “I’m not your hired help. And since you didn’t bring a date, you can also serve as host. Now go over and help Sloane with the drink trays before I kick your ass.”

I stand for a moment and watch them retreat toward a group of her colleagues. A tender feeling vines through my chest, the direct effect of being back home and in the company of my good friends once again, who I missed terribly the last three years.

While everything changed while I was away, and nothing will ever be the way it used to be now that Sasha has Jax and our other good friend, Rylie, just married Mitch and is ready to have their first child together. I rub my knuckles over the phantom ache in my chest, caused by the weirdness of how life changes as we grow older and the progress of time.

When I was twenty, I thought I’d have my own family by the time I was thirty-two. Instead, I don’t even have a partner in life yet. I have the busy rotational schedule of a trauma doctor keeping me busy, a beautiful, yet lonely condo overlooking the Charles River, and friends who I rarely see any more.

A small pang of regret arrows through my heart as I think back over the path I chose to navigate. The decisions I made along the way and how I allowed my relationship to disintegrate with Elise before I returned home.

Elise Davies was the beautiful and brilliant British doctor I’d met while on assignment in Ghana. We spent two years together, working side-by-side, operating together and providing medical care to an indigenous people who had no other options. And then we fell into bed together – as two people would – when the adrenaline of life-saving efforts became so intense it required a way to extricate our lust through sex.

I fell in love with Elise. Why wouldn’t I? She was tall and willowy with a short, cropped blonde hairstyle that made her look like Kate Hudson (with the short hair). She radiated natural beauty, a zest for life and a bright spirit. The sexy, British accent didn’t hurt, either.

For two years everything seemed perfect. I was in love with a woman who shared my ideals and interests and wanted the same things I did in life. It seemed only natural to do what any man would do in that situation. A way to ensure his love didn’t walk away. I proposed.

Without even knowing what Elise might want or considering the realities and complications of living on different continents would have on our future relationship. I asked her to marry me under a star-filled night out in the wilderness of Ghana.

And she turned me down flat.

In fact, she laughed in my face.

She apologized immediately afterward but admitted that I caught her off guard. It was humiliating and devastating. My man-card was shot to hell, as was my ego. She gave me her reasons for declining my proposal – which was, she never planned on marrying and couldn’t stand the idea of settling down – and she said she still cared deeply for me.

Like that was supposed to ease the blow of rejection.

A month later, I left Ghana broken hearted and wounded by a woman I thought I would spend the rest of my life with.

Looking back, I realize now that I’d never really known Elise. If I had, it would have been clear to me that she wasn’t the One.

Scrubbing a hand through my windblown hair, I saunter up to the bar where I find Sloane and Dylan laughing together conspiratorially. Judging from the way he’s smiling at her, there’s an intimacy in their laughter and part of me hates to disturb the moment.

But the other part of me needs a drink. And well, they are the bartenders.

“Hey D. Hey Sloane. I hate to interrupt you two,” I say with a smirk and a head nod. “But I’m in need of a drink.”

Dylan slaps his hand down on the bar. “What’ll it be, old man?”

I scoff at the word old. “If memory serves me correctly, we’re the same age, old friend. And I think I’ll start things off with a nice dry martini, three olives.”

Dylan is Rylie’s older brother and they couldn’t look different if they tried. She’s relatively tall and thin by female standards and has dark, auburn hair. While Dylan shares the height trait, he’s broad with a mop of sandy-blond head of hair. When Rylie and I first met in school, Dylan was over in Afghanistan doing a tour with the Marines.

The way I see it, Dylan and Sloane, a bright, sunny transplant from California, couldn’t be more different if they tried. Then again, I guess that holds true for most couples. Opposites attract and it’s the differences that pull them together. Like magnets, the connection is a strange, invisible force that brings two people together.

Dylan nods and begins working on my drink. “Sounds good, Mark. Bet you couldn’t get those over in the jungles of Africa.”

I laugh. “You mean Sahara. Not jungle. I was over in Ghana, which is in the Northern part of the country. But to answer your question, no, I certainly couldn’t. I’d be lucky if I could get a bottle of Smirnoff on ice.”

There were many creature comforts I went without while over in Africa and it was nothing like the area I grew up in here in the wealthy, prestigious Boston neighborhood of Beacon Hill.

Precisely the reason why I signed up for Doctors-Without-Borders. I was so sickened by the lifestyle my parents raised me in. The distain that grew within me of those with money and what they have and the diminished lifestyles of those have-nots. And the healthcare reform only made it worse. It made me sick to my stomach and I wanted to do something to counteract all the shit.

Yet here I am, right back where I started from.

Dylan sets the fancy martini glass in front of me and gives me a nod.

“Glad you made it back safe and sound, though. I know Ry and Sash missed the hell out of you. And pretty soon we’ll both be uncles. How trippy is that, bro?”

“Yeah,” I lamely agree. I hadn’t even considered myself as potential uncle material. I may have taken care of children out in the field, I knew nothing about rearing them or being a role model to one.

I run a finger around the rim of the glass, the idea now growing in its appeal. “Can’t wait for a little one to play around with.”

We talk for a few more moments until Sloane calls for his help in the back storeroom. The lascivious grin that accompanies his agreement is a pretty good indicator that it is just a ploy to get him back there for some privacy. I smile at his departure, wondering what it would be like to be in that kind of relationship, with all the secret glances and touches that come with the package deal.

I’m so lost in my thoughts that I barely notice the movement to my left.

“Out of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world.” I recognize the voice immediately from the liquid smoke sound it emits.

My head snaps to my left and sure enough, it’s Elijah. Eli. I’m surprised, shocked and a little out of breath by his presence. What the hell is he doing here? Did he follow me here somehow? Is he stalking me? I thought this was a private party.

I don’t know why, but I’m irritated and a little pissed off that I can’t get away from work or this man who has been on my mind all evening. Like somehow my thoughts conjured him up and now here he is.

My reply is flat as I glare at him. “This ain’t no Casablanca.”

His blue eyes light up, eyebrows lifted as his effortless male sexuality hits me with a force that nearly knocks me off my chair.

BOOM

TKO

And when the corners of his mouth turn up into a lazy smile, I honestly think Boston just experienced an earthquake because my entire body quakes. Did lightning just strike, too?

Perhaps the irritation I’m feeling really stems from my pent up sexual frustration and somehow this man has found my on button.

My head feels a little dizzy as I watch him prop an elbow on the bar and casually lean into it, allowing his chest to open up in my direction. His t-shirt is stretched tight across his pecs, showing off the tantalizing ripples and valleys of his torso.

“Well hello there, doc. Fancy meeting you here.”

I try to ignore the strange feeling emerging, centered low in my gut. I give him a casual tip of my chin before returning my gaze to my drink, my fingertips skimming the rim of the glass. Casual being the operative word, since I feel anything but right now.

Confusion grips me as a boulder-sized attraction rips through my chest. Unfurls and curls under my skin and into my blood like a drug.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see his arm stretch across the counter, the edge of his tightly fitted t-shirt banding across his muscular bicep, and his slender, tapered fingers slip around the stem of my martini glass, as he slides it out of my grip.

My mouth drops open, and I stare with strange fascination as he boldly, and dare I say, brazenly, takes a sip of my martini. Without so much as a “may I, please?”

“Just go ahead and help yourself, why don’t you,” I snip, although it doesn’t come out with much bluster. Or even as a question. It’s more of a simmering, begging plea.

Eli sets the glass back down and I notice a sheen over his lip; drops of the stolen liquor. It beckons something inside me to wipe it away with my thumb and then taste it on my tongue. But I stop myself from certain humiliation as he whisks it away on his own.

Picking the glass back up, I plant my lips in the same place his just touched. It feels intimate. Erotic. Hotly exciting.

I finish it off with one quick gulp, drawing the courage to finally turn and examine the exquisite man sitting next to me. The man that has meandered into my professional life and has now found capacity to rock me off solid ground on my personal time.

It’s not all that surprising to me that I’m attracted to Eli. This isn’t the first time I’ve been drawn to a man. I realized I was bisexual when I was fifteen and popped a boner after Mike Collins scored a goal and whipped off his t-shirt out on the soccer field.

I watched in lustful awe as the sweat dripped down his sleek chest, seeping into his shorts, and the glory of his exposed torso. I was so hard, I had to whip off my own shirt (which they thought was in solidarity of our goal) to cover my erection, and then feigned illness to the coach so I could leave the field and go straight into the locker room to whack off.

And since then it’s been hit or miss. I haven’t gone out of my way to seek out male companionship. While I find masculinity to be sexy, I’ve only had one sexual experience with a guy named Brant, from med school. Otherwise, I’ve just naturally gravitated toward relationships with women. With all that was required to finish my doctorate, get into my residency and fellowship, it was always just an easier prospect to hook-up with women.

And forgive me for saying this, but I wasn’t about to pimp myself out on a gay dating app.

It was also less complicated. Coming out to my family and friends would have created a lifetime supply of questions, and honestly, I just didn’t want it.  

But now, I’m being pulled toward Eli like I’m stuck in a tractor beam. Sucked into his sexual vortex where I’ve lost all semblance of what I should want versus what I want right now.

Based upon Eli’s sexy smirk, he seems to know it, too.

Fuck me.

This wasn’t what I expected to happen when I returned to Boston.

I wanted to get settled in, get into an easy groove. Eli, however, feels like a big risk. A snag in my carefully ironed out modus operandi that will only cause complications in my life.

Eli’s magnetism, though, might be too much to resist.