I think saying that I was walking on sunshine would be a bit of an exaggeration, but I couldn’t deny that being with Asher was putting a new bounce into my step. Even Mary commented on it.

“You seem so much more relaxed lately,” she noted Sunday morning over post-yoga coffee. “Finally had that orgasm?”

“None of your business,” I replied, and went right back to whistling while I added cream to my coffee.

Asher had been so much fun to be with, spontaneous and naughty. I could still feel the telltale shivers up my spine whenever I thought about the golf course, and he hadn’t once complained or made a big deal out of my inability to have an orgasm.

That made me feel bad, actually, because out of all the people in the world that could have been giving me an orgasm, none of them deserved it more than Asher. I wanted to see the joy and triumph on his face when he made me climax. I wanted to give that to him. And I wanted to experience it myself, since he seemed genuinely sad for me that I had never experienced it.

And the way he had handled my parents—thank God he’d kept his head on his shoulders, because I hadn’t been exaggerating when I’d told him that I’d been ready to cry.

Asher and I had only been together for a couple of weeks—if you could even call it being together when we’d never talked about our relationship or defined it—and to suddenly have parents asking how official you are, and how did you meet, and so on? If I were Asher, I would have run for the hills, but he didn’t. He stayed and he charmed the pants off of them.

Even if Asher and I ended up breaking up in a couple of months, he’d manage to reassure my parents that I was doing okay; I was sure of it. He’d explain that I had good taste in men and could attract a really great guy, and that would hold them off for another year at least before the talk of marriage and grandchildren started up again.

Not that I wanted to break up. I didn’t. I wanted to keep seeing him. He was sexy as hell, funny, entertaining, and I never got tired of talking to him. He was super considerate and helped me out with wedding stuff or work that I had to bring home. I sensed that I had a real prize on my hands, and I didn’t want to let that go.

So why couldn’t I orgasm with him? It felt like such a silly thing to be hung up on when everything else was going so well. And it wasn’t like Asher was losing out on any orgasms. I’d made sure of that. One time, I’d surprised him in the shower and blown him until his knees almost gave out.

Maybe it was that he seemed too good to be true. There was this nagging little voice in the back of my head—one that sounded annoyingly like Amanita—that kept telling me that something about him just wasn’t believable.

All right, so maybe it was just the cynical, self-loathing part of me. That part of me thought that I didn’t deserve a guy like Asher. I was broken, something in me just not working right, so why should I be with anybody, let alone someone as great as him?

But whether it was that part of me or something else, something was whispering in my ear to not believe all of this. And it was ridiculous, but it was there, and I couldn’t ignore it no matter how much I wanted to.

All through weeks of great sex, smiles across the breakfast table, his fingers laced with mine, serious, deep conversations, and everything in between, that voice kept telling me something wasn’t right.

Regardless, I wasn’t going to stop seeing Asher just because a part of my brain had decided that it hated me. Instead, when Mary reminded me that I could bring a plus-one to the wedding, I called Asher up.

“Hey, sorry to bother you,” I said, cradling the phone between my cheek and shoulder while I looked at some paperwork in my office. “You’re not with a patient or anything?”

“Nope, free as a bird, why?” Asher replied.

I heard something that sounded like water running and figured he was probably washing dishes or something.

“I was hoping that you would be my date to Mary’s wedding—the friend I told you about—in a couple of weeks?” I asked.

There was a pause on the other end of the phone—so long, that for a moment I thought the call had been dropped, and I had to double check to make sure Asher was still on the line.

“Hello? Everything okay?”

“Yeah, sorry, I’m in the middle of cooking lunch. I’ll say yes, but you have to understand, there’s always the chance I might get called into the hospital.”

“I understand completely,” I replied. A patient’s safety was far more important than Asher staying at the reception with me, if it came to that. “No pressure.”

“I appreciate it. Sure, then. I would love to be your date and finally meet the famous Mary and the almost as famous Amanita and the notorious Jane and Lanie.”

I laughed.

“If you can finally convince Lanie to get her head out of her ass and realize Jane’s been pining after her all this time, I will seriously do whatever you want.”

“Whatever I want?” Asher’s voice became teasing. “What if what I want is to take you bowling and show you up?”

“Then bowling we will go,” I said firmly, even though I was a sore loser, and both Asher and I knew it.

He chuckled. “All right then, I’ll do my best with those gals. Is it white tie?”

“Black tie.”

“Phew. I don’t own a tux, and renting is always a pain. But I have some nice suits.”

“Look at you, all fancy.”

“I have to fit the classy doctor image, didn’t you know? They make us take a course on it and everything.”

I grinned, loving how lighthearted and fun Asher was, how willing to tease. I was always so serious, and he brought out this side of me that I hadn’t ever seen before. I really enjoyed it.

Take that, stupid nagging doubts.

“So, see you tomorrow?” he asked.

We were going to go see a movie, so that we could—to quote Asher—‘fill in that square on our cliché dates bingo card.’

“See you tomorrow.”

When I hung up the phone, I felt almost completely content. I had a hot date to Mary’s wedding—a hot date for all things, actually—and tomorrow, I was going to see a movie with him.

We were going to cuddle and kiss like teenagers, and then we were going to go back to my place, where Asher was going to cook something amazing, and then we were going to have fantastic sex. I was going to fall asleep with him curled up behind me, his arm heavy and slung over my waist in that way that made me feel safe and protected. I had a job that I loved, my best friend was getting married, and I finally had a guy worth talking about.

If only that stupid niggling doubt would shut up.