Chapter Twenty-One
KYLE
Callie and I sat in the waiting room of the doctor’s office. I had finished my last radiation treatment two weeks ago and today I’d had my scan. The radiologist was here, so he and Dr. Grant were behind closed doors looking at it while we waited. Callie gripped onto my hand like she was expecting the worst. It was really sweet of her to be here. We’ve only been dating for less than a month, so it wasn’t like I expected her to come, but she insisted. The only problem was that she was so nervous it was actually worse than being here listening to Sarah complain about how long they’re taking or how badly the office needs to be repainted.
“Kyle?” The nurse came out of the back. “Dr. Grant is ready to see you now.” I stood up and brought Callie to her feet with me.
“You want me to go back with you?”
“Of course. You sat here with me all day. You get to hear the good news with me.”
She smiled. “Thank you,” she said, like I was inviting her to lunch instead of the inner sanctum of my oncologist’s office.
Dr. Grant and Dr. Bromfield, the radiologist, were both waiting for us. I introduced Callie as we sat down. Dr. Grant had the MRI in front of him, and he handed it to me. I stared at it for a minute and then said, “I really don’t know what I’m looking at.”
“Well, son, you are looking at a clean bill of health right there. The radiation didn’t just shrink it. Can you see the difference in this one?” He lay the picture of my last MRI down next to this one. The only difference I could see was a spot that looked lit up, like a little nightlight in my head.
“The light is gone,” I said as I pointed to it.
He smiled. “The light, as you call it, was the tumor. The contrast picks it up on the MRI as light. When the tissue is dead or gone, there’s no light. After your surgery, the part we left because of the blood vessels still lit up on the scans. Once it began growing, the light got bigger. No light now means all dead tissue.”
I smiled as I processed what he was saying. There wasn’t any left like last time. It was all gone. “Really?” I finally asked. I felt Callie clamp down on my hand.
He chuckled. “Really. I wouldn’t lie.”
I remembered all of the times he told me bad news and knew he didn’t have a big problem with that, so he had to be telling it to me straight. “That’s awesome. Thank you both.”
“You did the hard work,” Dr. Grant said after they both shook my hand. “I still want to follow up with you every three months for the next year, though, okay? Don’t go MIA on me with your newfound tumor-less brain.”
I laughed. “You give me the appointment Doc, and I’ll be here.” I thanked them again and as we were leaving the office he said,
“Kyle?”
“Yeah?”
“Are you still going to therapy?”
“Um, no, I finished that right before my radiation.”
He raised an eyebrow. “You look great, don’t get me wrong, but you’re still dragging that foot a little.”
I looked down at it to keep from looking him in the eyes and said, “I get lazy sometimes when I’m tired, but most of the time, it’s okay. Thanks, Doc.” I pulled Callie out behind me before he could say anything else. When we got into the lobby she hugged me.
“I’m so happy for you!” she said. “But what he said about therapy…”
“The therapist signed off on it,” I said, letting it go at that. “I’m happy for me, too. How about we go out somewhere really nice tonight and celebrate?”
“I’m always up for somewhere really nice,” she said with a grin. “What did you have in mind?”
“What about The French Room?”
Her pretty eyes went wide. “Really?” she looked at the time on her phone. “Could you get a reservation this late?”
The French Room was a high end restaurant that’s actually been on almost every show about food on television and every magazine, as well. It’s not a place I go often, but I actually helped with designs on some of the renovations a few years back. The place was built in 1912 and they wanted the renovations to fit with the old style architecture. I love old buildings and it’s kind of my specialty. The manager and I are tight and I happen to know he sets aside a couple of tables on Friday and Saturday nights for what he calls his “special” guests.
“I think I can swing it,” I told her as we got into her car. Driving was going to be my next step. I still worried a little about how heavy my foot got sometimes.
“I’ve never been there! I’m so excited,” she squealed. Before she started up the car, she leaned over and covered my mouth with hers. I let my tongue slide up against hers and brought my hand up and cupped one of her breasts. I ran my thumb back and forth across the hard nipple as we kissed. When she pulled back, she was panting. “If you don’t stop that, I’ll never make it home in time to get ready for tonight.”
I grinned. “We could always do The French Room tomorrow…”
“No way, mister! We’ll do THAT afterwards.” I rolled my eyes, but smiled. She very enthusiastically participated in sex and although I’d never felt as overwhelmingly attracted to her in bed as I did Amber, it was still good…and Callie didn’t have an ex-boyfriend she wanted instead of me.
*******
Callie picked me back up at eight that evening. I’d gotten us a reservation for eight-thirty. I opened the door and nearly choked, she looked so damned fine. “Wow!”
“You like?” She twirled around. She was wearing a dress that came to just above her ankles. It was made out of sheer black lace and slit all the way up the front to her waist. Underneath it was some kind of black body suit that covered all of the important things, but shit, it had my imagination working overtime. She had on a pair of black cowboy boots with it and her long hair was twisted into a braid on the side of her head. It was lying against her right breast and I couldn’t help but think how lucky it was to be there.
“Like doesn’t quite cover it. I’m not really hungry…”
She giggled. “Get your coat handsome. Later, remember.”
I sighed and slipped on my jacket. “Speaking of coats, it’s the middle of November and you’re walking around in a…very nice handkerchief…”
She laughed. “I have a coat in the car. I wanted to show off.”
“That you did,” I said as I switched off the light. My mouth was dry and I was probably going to have to ask her to leave the coat on all night or I wouldn’t be able to walk for the wood in the way.
She let me rest my hand on the upper part of her silky thigh on the way. I tried moving it up a few times, but got smacked for my troubles. I couldn’t wait for this dinner to be over. She pulled up in front of the hotel, and I saw the valet checking her out as she slipped into her coat. I grinned at him and slipped him a twenty as I slid my arm around her and walked her away. Poor guy.
The manager Jean Paul greeted us warmly, and I introduced Callie to him. “So, what are we celebrating?” he asked.
Jean Paul didn’t know about my illness, I worked with him before it happened. I just said, “A clean bill of health after a really big scare.”
He looked from me to Callie trying to decide which one of us it was and then as he decided it didn’t matter, he showed us to our table and brought over a bottle of wine. “This is one of my personal favorites,” he said. “Please make a toast to the continued good health of two beautiful young people…for me.”
“Thank you.”
After he left, the waiter opened and poured our wine, and when he was gone Callie said, “This place is so beautiful!”
“Yeah, it is.” The tables were pretty close together, but something about the way they are arranged and the soft music playing overhead made it seem like we were the only ones there. I couldn’t imagine wanting to look at anyone else anyway, with Callie sitting across from me and looking as hot as she did tonight.
The waiter came back and Callie ordered the Salmon and I got the roasted duck. My dad used to hunt a lot when I was a kid and I loved duck season. Sarah was always a good cook, although I’m sure it’ll taste a little different made by an award-winning chef.
“So what did you help them design?” Callie asked me.
“They had some problems with the structure of the roof. I helped them re-design it so they could keep the authenticity of the look and make it sound at the same time.”
She smiled. “You’re so smart.”
“Right and you’re the one in law school.”
“Not quite, but soon. I can’t wait to be a lawyer. I was looking at some literature for the Innocence Project the other day. I’m thinking about volunteering some of my time.”
“That’s the organization that helps people who were convicted wrongly, right?”
“Yep. My dad worked with them Pro-Bono for a while. He said it was really satisfying.”
“Isn’t everyone in prison innocent, though?” I asked her with a smile.
“Some of them really are smarty pants.”
“So, how do they decide which cases to take?”
“They get letters or calls from thousands of people. They screen them and find out if there’s any new evidence, like DNA or something. They go talk to the inmate and each one of the attorneys brings the ones they want to take on to the table. They decide from there depending on manpower and urgency of the case, which ones to take.”
“So when school is all said and done, I’m guessing you want to be a defense attorney?”
“Yeah, for sure. Prosecutors are politicians, in my opinion. They work for the government and with the police and their goal is to incarcerate. I think we incarcerate too much in this country.” I didn’t exactly agree with her, but it was too soon in our relationship to get political, so I just nodded.
The waiter came then with our soup and as he sat it down in front of me I leaned back – and nearly fell out of my fucking seat. Amber had just walked in on the arm of a cowboy I could only guess was Dylan. My chest suddenly felt tight and I was having a hard time catching my breath. I thought Callie looked hot tonight, but there was that thing again – that electricity that reached out and grabbed me by the throat each time Amber and I were in the same room.
“Do you know them?” I looked at Callie and she’d turned to look in their direction.
“Um…yeah, kind of. She used to be my therapist.”
“Oh, she’s really pretty. Is that her husband?” The hostess led them to a table kind of across and diagonal from us. Amber didn’t seem to notice me and she was sitting facing away from us. That was a good thing, except that I had to see the moony-eyed look that Dylan was giving her.
“Her boyfriend, I think. How’s your soup?” Callie gave me a funny look and I wondered what my face looked like. Sarah used to tell me when we were kids I shouldn’t ever try to lie because the truth always showed on my face. I wondered if the truth that even after all of these months I’d cut off my right arm to touch her again showed on my face.
“Kyle?”
“Mm hmm?” I took a sip of my soup. It was hot, and I didn’t even taste it going down.
“Why did you stop going to therapy? I mean, I heard the doctor ask you about it today and I was just wondering…”
“Just like I told him, I was doing so much better I didn’t think I needed it anymore. Like I said, she signed off on it anyways.”
“Oh…did you want to go say hello to her?”
I want to go do more than say hello. I smiled at Callie. “No, I want to stay right here and enjoy my evening with you.” Her face brightened. I took a deep breath and a drink of my wine. It was going to be a long night.