Friends Without Benefits

I barely withheld a snort at her question. I fully admitted, when I scoffed I snorted. I felt strongly that scoffing should be accompanied by a sound that was scoff-worthy and, for me, snorting was that sound.

Her request for information—after openly admitting to me that she’d switched the clinic rooms—was very Meg-like. She didn’t seem to comprehend the obvious, that her evil-doer admission would color my response.

“Ah-ah-ah. That would be a breach of patient confidentiality.” I knew saying these words made me a hypocrite in light of my Dr. Ken Miles HIPAA violation, but I couldn’t help it. She brought out the worst in me.

No way in hell or heck was I going to tell Meg about Nico. She would probably ask for an autograph or request a picture or propose a three-way. The way she spoke about celebrities was just strange. She called them by their first name, talked about what they did as though she knew them personally. It was weird.

“Oh, please.” She rolled her blue eyes, crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m just going to find out next week. Why not just tell me now?”

I pushed away from the wall and faced her, my shoulders squared. “Aw, gee, Meg. I just can’t pass up a chance to make your life uncomfortable.”

My pager chose just that moment to buzz at my hip. It was one of those perfect-timing moments, where I’d just said something witty and lasting. With a smirk on my face I glanced at my pager and immediately frowned.

CRU rm 410 asap; VIP peds cg1605 cf iv

I stared at the message.

Roughly translated, the message meant: please come to the Clinical Research Unit, room number 410 as soon as possible. A VIP pediatric patient has arrived for protocol number 1605, cystic fibrosis infusion study.

It was exactly the same message I’d been paged with earlier in the day, just before I walked in on Nico, Rose, and Angelica. My heart skipped two beats.

“What?” Meg’s eyes moved between me and pager. “What is it?”

I didn’t bother responding. Instead I turned away and walked in the direction of the staff elevators. I could feel her shooting daggers at my back.

~*~

Nico was the sole occupant in the room; Rose and Angelica were gone. He turned as I entered, and I stalled just inside the entrance. If being in a room with Nico—with his mother and niece as witnesses—was terrifying, then being in a room alone with Nico was alert level red.

Automatically I took a half step back, my wide eyes met his.

He spoke first. “Hi.”

“Hi.” I held my breath, pointed over my shoulder with my thumb. “Do you want me to get one of the nurses?”

Confusion flickered over his features. “What for?”

“I . . .” I held my breath again, searched my mind for an excuse to call in one of the research staff. “I thought that—I mean, it might be helpful, for your decision about the study, if you talked to one of the nurses who administer the infusions.”

He shook his head, stuffed his hands in his pockets. “No. I want to talk to you.”

My eyebrows shot upward. I’m sure I looked as dumb as I felt. “Me?”

“Yeah.” He nodded slowly. “Come in. Shut the door.”

Shut the door? Is he out of his mind?

I didn’t move. I stood paralyzed with a Vulcan death grip on the door knob. We stared at each other.

Him—waiting for me to behave like a normal human being.

Me—waiting for him to evaporate and this nightmare to disappear.

“Elizabeth . . .” His mouth quirked to the side, his brow furrowing at my immobility; “Are you going to come in?”

“Yes.” I didn’t move.

Nico’s smile widened, just a teasing of teeth behind divine lips, and he crossed the room until he stood directly in front of me. He reached for the door knob; his hand closed over mine. It was warm and sent a shock wave of awareness coursing up my arm. Through his movements, our hands together pushed the door closed.

“Come in.” His voice was barely above a whisper. He was standing so close I could see the flecks of black and silver in his green eyes.

“Okay,” I said. Panic caused by his proximity was enough to spur me into action. I averted my gaze from his and pulled my hand from the knob and his grip. I walked around him, gingerly choosing my steps so that I wouldn’t accidentally make contact with his body.

Once I arrived in the middle of the small space I felt lost. Should I sit? Stand? Lean? Cross my arms? Some combination? I turned and found him advancing slowly. I backed up. My thighs met the arm of the sofa. I sat on it, endeavored to make the near-trip appear intentional.

“So . . .” I crossed my arms, uncrossed my arms, feigned nonchalance, and winced a little at the tight unnaturalness of my voice. “You must have questions.”

He nodded. “I do. I have a lot of questions.”

“Well, that’s to be expected.” I patted my lab coat, looking for a brochure. “I have a pamphlet on side effects associated with the study drug that might help.”

He halted some four feet from my position and, once again, stuffed his hands in his pockets. “I don’t have questions about that, not about the study.”

“Oh?” My voice cracked.

The oh shit heartbeat was back. I held perfectly still and forced myself to meet his gaze. Eleven years of avoiding him—avoiding thinking about him, his show, that summer, that night, our history—caught up with me all at once.

He openly surveyed me, his eyes appraising, from my feet to the top of my head then back to my face. “You look the same.”

“I do?” I glanced dumbly at the front of my scrubs then back to him. I didn’t think I looked the same. In fact, I was pretty sure I looked completely different. I narrowed my eyes at him. For the first time since entering the room my panic-fog began to clear, and, if he didn’t want to discuss the study, I wondered what he wanted.

“Except . . .” He motioned to my hair. “Except your hair. You used to have shorter hair.”

Automatically my hand lifted to the braid. “Yeah, well, I don’t have anyone trying to cut my hair during nap time so it finally grew out.”

The corner of Nico’s mouth lifted just slightly at my small barb. “I’d forgotten about that.”

“I hadn’t.” I responded flatly.

“How old were we?”

“When you cut my hair? You were five.”

His face warmed with a smile. “You were four. I remember now.”

The fact that he was smiling at the memory of cutting my hair awakened an old, long buried injury. I did not return his smile. In fact, as I watched him silently reminisce, other memories from our teenage years turned my blood abruptly cold. I no longer felt flustered by his presence. I felt annoyed by his arrogance.

Furthermore, I realized that—notwithstanding his perplexing kindness the summer after Garrett’s death, my resulting guilt, and all these years of separation—part of me still simply saw him as the boy who bullied me in school. Disliking, distrusting Nico was an instinctual response.

“What do you want, Nico?”

His eyes flickered to mine, and I witnessed a shadow of surprise pass over his gaze, likely caused by the sudden somberness of my tone. He studied me for a moment. Then, he said something entirely unexpected.

“I wanted to apologize.”

I stared at him. Really, we stared at each other. I inclined my head slightly forward, sure I’d misheard him. “You what?”

“I want to apologize. I’m sorry for my rudeness earlier. Seeing you was . . . unexpected. I was caught off guard. I reacted badly.”

I endeavored to shrug. “It’s okay. I know you must be under a great deal of stress with your niece.”

“Yes, but no more than usual. I shouldn’t have snapped at you, and I definitely shouldn’t have yelled. I’m sorry. Do you forgive me?”

I frowned, felt abruptly hot, uncomfortable. I couldn’t swallow. “Of course,” I croaked.

We stared at each other again. His eyes darted over my face as though committing me to memory. The attention, the focus of his gaze made me feel like protozoa under a microscope.

I stood. It was an abrupt movement. I cleared my throat. “Well, if that’s everything.”

“No. I also . . .” Nico’s eyes moved between mine. He rocked forward on his feet. “I have a proposition for you.”

At his words my stomach tensed; instead of running from the room screaming, I stood my ground and responded with a much more refined: “What’s that?”

“I’d like to know you again. I think we should be friends.”

My eyebrows met my hairline. “You want to be friends? With me?”

“Yes.”

“Uh . . .” I looked at the door behind him, the wall above his head, the linoleum floor. It all looked real, and I was pretty sure I was awake. “I don’t—I don’t understand.”

Nico pulled his hands from his pockets and held them out between us. “If we decide to do this study, for Angelica, I’ll be in town quite a lot.” He watched me expectantly. When I didn’t respond, his hands dropped. “I’d like to see you. Maybe . . .” He cleared his throat. “Maybe we could go out?”