A week later, Eli reclined in a little beach chair and screwed his thermos of coffee into the sand next to him. The grass on the dune behind him shivered in the morning breeze. The sun was just rising over the water in front of him and a mist clung to the ocean. Part of him was jealous of his two best friends in wet suits, bobbing up and down on the rolling water. But the other part of him had to admit that even the walk on the beach had him winded. He was a long way from surfing.

He did miss it though. It was something that he, Marcus and Jay had done together since childhood. Jay was the best of the three of them. He’d even considered going pro before he’d been caught in the hurricane a few years ago. His leg had been deeply injured and though he was fully recovered, something had changed in his spirit. He had a different respect for Mother Nature, he said. He didn’t want to commodify his connection to it. Surfing was personal. Not professional.

Damn shame though, Eli thought as he watched Jay catch a wave. The man was like a dolphin on the water, streamlined and sharp, yet somehow graceful and playful at the same time. Marcus caught the next wave in the set and Eli grinned as he almost immediately bit it, plunging face first into the water and bobbing up for air a few seconds later.

Built like a tank and dense as hell, Marcus didn’t have the ideal body shape for surfing. But he was determined and a skilled athlete. So he often did pretty well out on the water. He was just overambitious.

The waves crashed against the rocks at the shoreline and something in the noise had Eli wincing. The horrible, cacophonous volume had him thinking of the sound the car had made when it had run over him. The helmet had protected him, but it had also made a hell of a racket when he’d been dragged against the street. At first, Eli hadn’t been sure of whether or not he’d been conscious during the accident. But he was remembering more and more about the accident. And he didn’t like it that way.

Eli shook his head free of those heavy thoughts and laughed as Marcus came tromping out of the water a few minutes later, his board under one arm and shaking water out of his ear as he unzipped his wetsuit.

“Damn,” Marcus grumbled, grabbing a towel out of the bag next to Eli and scraping water off of himself. “Waves are bigger than they look out there.”

“Really? Because they look pretty fucking big. That last set almost shook Jay loose.”

“In that case I don’t feel quite so bad.” Marcus skinned out of the wetsuit and yanked on some sweats and a sweatshirt. It was chilly out. Steam rose off his body in the cool air and Eli was insanely jealous.

“God, I’m so fucking sick of being laid up. I just wanna be out there,” he grumbled, nodding toward the water. “Or on the field. Fuck. I’d settle for a treadmill.”

Marcus unfolded another beach chair and sat down next to Eli to watch Jay for a little while. “You’re getting there, man. It’s what, four weeks out from surgery? Only two more weeks until you get the go ahead to start back in on physical stuff, right?”

“Yeah.” But it felt like an eternity. “I just feel like I’m going out of my skin.”

“The lovely Dr. Camellia can’t help you out with that? Use her feminine wiles to tame the beast?”

“We’re not sleeping together.”

Marcus paused, his own thermos of coffee halfway to his lips. “I’m sorry? I must have misheard you.”

“Don’t be a dick. You heard me.” Eli glared out at the gorgeous ocean, peachy in the early morning light. The sun was burning off some of the mist and soon the golden surfing hour would be over, Jay would pack it up and swim in.

“But I thought you said she agreed to date you.”

Eli squinted. “I did. She did. Said I could take her out sometimes. We made out, snuggled up while we watched a movie, but we aren’t sleeping together.”

Marcus eyed him. “Oh.”

“Oh, come on, man. Don’t say oh in that tone.”

“What tone?”

“Your skeptical, FBI agent, gathering information tone. I’m telling you the truth. We haven’t slept together. I like this girl. We’re taking things slow. Seeing where it goes.”

“Okay.” Marcus turned his attention back to the ocean as well, knowing he’d annoy Eli if he kept staring at him. But he couldn’t hide his surprise. “I guess I’m just a little thrown because I can’t remember the last time you liked a girl and waited to sleep with her.”

Eli opened his mouth, looking like he was about to argue, but he snapped it closed. “Am I really that bad?”

Marcus extended his feet out in front of him, leaned his head back and checked out the clouds racing across the sky, all shades of orange in the rising sun. As an FBI agent, he didn’t get a lot of moments like this, maybe one or two a month. And he deeply treasured them. Just like he deeply treasured his friendships. His was a lonely career, one that had him working all hours, on call at any given moment, and seeing the worst in humanity. He was deeply grateful for Jay and Eli. For their place in his life. They were his best friends, they were his family. And he would never do anything to jeopardize his relationships with them. Which was why he told the truth now.

“Yeah man. You’ve been kind of a dog these last few years. Since your knee injury.” And since the doctors found what they did because of the knee injury. He didn’t add the last part. They both knew what he was talking about without bringing those words into their cool, spring morning. “Different girl every week, the old ones still hanging around, hoping to score whatever scraps you’ll throw their way.”

Eli traced a hand over his face. “That makes it sound so gross. It didn’t feel that way. I’ve just been looking for… I don’t know. Relief from reality. Moments of happiness.”

“Yeah, but you’ve been looking for that shit at NFL parties. Don’t be surprised if you catch a fish when you go fishing.”

“What?”

“I mean,” Marcus started as he took a sip of his coffee. “What you’re describing, happiness, relief, that’s a deer. You’re looking for a deer. But you’ve been fishing.”

“You’re saying that Tia’s a deer in this metaphor?”

“I don’t know. She could be. She’s cool. And smart. And isn’t after your money or your fame. So points, you know? Whatever she is, I’m just glad you’re not fishing anymore. That shit was depressing.”

It didn’t necessarily feel good to hear that kind of truth from his friend, but Eli was smart enough to appreciate the perspective. “You could stand a little fishing yourself, you know. What’s it been, six months since you’ve been with somebody?”

“Fuck you.” Marcus reclined his head back and closed his eyes. “I’m a man of discerning tastes.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Jay asked as he tromped up the beach, stuck his board in the sand.

“Marcus is trying to justify why he doesn’t get tail.”

“I get tail,” Marcus said, his eyes still closed. “One: Unlike you two, I have a real job with real demands. And two: It’s not every woman who can handle this.”

“Handle what?” Jay asked, roughly toweling his dark blond hair and unzipping his wetsuit. “Your prodigious belly flopping skills?” He pointed back to the sets of rolling waves behind them.

Marcus’s eyes popped open as Eli snorted into his coffee. Marcus waved two middle fingers at both of them and sipped his coffee.

Eli knew that he and Jay were just teasing. But he also wondered if there was some kind of truth in Marcus’s silly words. Did Marcus think that he was really too much for a woman to handle? He’d definitely been pulling back from girls recently. What was that all about?

Marcus was a complicated guy. His parents were complete dicks. His dad was an abusive hard ass who’d done everything he could to turn Marcus into a mini version of himself. And his mother was like a glass of water. Just absolutely nothing. No substance. No flavor. Nothing. She stood by for years while Marcus’s dad pounded away at him.

It was one of the reasons that Marcus and Jay and Eli were all so close. Growing up, Marcus had taken every chance he could to get the hell out of his house and to stay with one of the two of them. After Eli’s mom had died and Jay’s dad had split, the three of them along with Ryan and Kat had become a kind of cobbled together family.

And as family, Eli was close enough to Marcus to know that he didn’t always have the most accurate image of himself. He often viewed himself as damaged or hardened because of what he’d gone through growing up. But Eli knew that wasn’t true.

Eli eyed his friends for a second. All three of them had their shit. Reasons why they were 34 and yet to settle down with anybody.

“God,” Jay said, flopping down on a towel and propping his head up to watch the reflection of the rising sun on the water. “Would you look at that?”

The fog continued to burn off in wispy, romantic strips. The three men looked out across the beach. Each happy to be together, and each chewing through their own sets of issues.

***

“Forceps, please,” Tia said as she held her hand out to the surgical tech beside her. “Lancet, too.”

She pulled back the thin layer of tissue on the patient’s arm and made a small, exacting cut with the lancet. She handed back the forceps. “How are you hanging in there, Carissa?” Tia asked the surgical tech.

This surgery had gone on for two hours already and they were looking at several hours more. She didn’t envy the surgical techs at all. Sure, Tia’s job was higher pressure and required more skill, but the surgical techs had to be on their feet and perfectly still for the entire surgery. Their arms had to be raised in the exact, perfect way or else they had to leave and scrub back in. At least Tia was allowed to move.

She knew that many surgical techs had arm and shoulder problems because of it, and many of them had UTIs or kidney stones from the length of time they had to hold their bladders. Surgeons were responsible for subbing out when they were physically exhausted during a long surgery. But surgical techs just stayed and stayed.

“I’m alright, Dr. Camellia, thanks for asking.”

Tia nodded and cracked her neck. “Todd? Robert? Everybody alright?”

The other two people in the room nodded. The hospital was spread thin today. It was always like that on the first few warm days of spring. People got restless and wild. Had barbecues and drove fast and rode bikes. Let’s just say there were always more than the usual number of trauma cases in the ER around this time of year.

When Tia finally sutured the wound in the woman’s arm and stepped back from the table, her back ached, her feet were screaming, and her eyes felt like they were filled with sand. She felt like a million bucks. She knew that most people in the world would rather chew glass than do what she just did in that emergency room OR. But damn. Tia loved her job. There was nothing like it.

She scrubbed out, changed her scrubs, and headed to the waiting room to speak with the patient’s family.

She’d just saved that woman’s arm. It wasn’t bragging to acknowledge to herself that a lesser surgeon may have been forced to amputate. Of course, the patient wasn’t out of the woods yet. The recovery was up to her, her doctor, and her physical therapist. But Tia had set her up for success. She’d done her royal best and set her up for success.

Tia stepped into the waiting room and her stomach dropped. Crap. Owen was across the way talking to another family. She’d known they were busy today, but she and Owen usually worked opposite schedules and she generally didn’t worry about running into him at the hospital. She turned away from him, but got the skittery feeling that he’d seen her anyways.

“Mr. Grant?” Tia asked an older, white-haired gentleman sitting with his head in his hands on the other side of the room.

“Yes?” The man’s head popped up and he jolted to his feet, unsteady.

Tia reached out her hand to steady him and quickly assessed him for signs of intoxication. Yes, his eyes were red, but that seemed to be from crying.

“I’m sorry,” he said, leaning on her for a second. “I’m dizzy. I’ve been so scared. Karen. Please tell me about Karen.”

Tia eased Mr. Grant back into the chair and sat next to him to make sure that he stayed there. “Karen came through the surgery well. Smoothly. But as you know, the damage was very extreme, much more so than we realized when we first started the surgery. And it took much longer than we thought it would have to.”

Tia took a deep breath. “She’ll be able to keep the arm.”

Mr. Grant went white. “I didn’t know she might be in danger of losing it.”

“She was,” Tia said, gentle but firm. “For most of the surgery. But my team and I were able to save it. There were bits of metal lodged and parts of her bone and muscle were severed, almost completely in some cases.”

Mr. Grant nodded, one hand over his mouth.

“It’s going to be a long way toward recovery. She may need follow-up surgeries from a specialist. And it’s possible she may never regain full control of her hand.”

He nodded again, his face white as milk. “Can I see her?”

“They’re taking her to recovery now. A nurse will come out and get you when it’s alright for you to go back.”

“Thank you, Doctor. I never thought—I didn’t think this could happen. I—”

His voice cracked and Tia automatically gathered him toward her. He went willingly to her shoulder and rested his forehead there. She patted his back.

“Dr. Camellia.” Owen’s voice came from in front of them and Tia looked up at him.

“Yes?” He was interrupting her with a patient? What the hell was that?

“You’re needed back in triage.”

Yeah, that wasn’t real. But she didn’t want to cause a scene in front of Mr. Grant.

“Of course,” Mr. Grant said, sniffing and rubbing a hand over his eyes. “Please, don’t let me keep you, Dr. Camellia.”

Tia rose. “I’ll come by to check on you and your wife in the morning, Mr. Grant. If you have any additional questions, I’ll be happy to discuss them then.”

She shook his hand and followed Owen out of the waiting room. As soon as they were back through the sliding doors and walking toward their offices, Owen turned to her.

“You’re welcome.”

She recoiled from him. “For what?”

He smiled. “For rescuing you from the clinger. I hate the families that fall all over me.”

Tia frowned. “I didn’t mind that at all. He needed me. Neither of them have much family, and his wife is going to be out for hours. I can provide a little comfort.”

“Always with the bleeding heart, Dr. Camellia.” He grinned again, but this time there was a little something sharp in it.

Tia studied his face. The bland handsomeness. Hair somewhere between blonde and brown, the innocuous blue eyes. She’d found him breathtakingly handsome when they’d first started dating all those years ago. But now when she looked at him, she saw emptiness. A face devoid of any strong anything. No strong emotions. There weren’t even any interesting facial features to make him more distinctive. The man was practically a white square painted on a white wall.

“You haven’t returned any of my calls or texts.” A frustrated tic appeared in his left cheek. Something that he’d developed near the end of their relationship. Or maybe he’d always had it; she just hadn’t annoyed him enough at the beginning to bring it out of him.

Tia sidestepped a group of nurses coming down the hall, laughing and chatting. Two of them goggled at Owen and turned back to one another whispering and giggling.  She didn’t really want to have this conversation out in the open hallway, but she also really didn’t want to go into her office or his.

“I thought it was ultimately kinder that way, Owen,” she said, opting for honesty.

“You thought it was kind to completely cut me out of your life?” His eyes were the muddy blue of a lake after a storm. And as much as there was annoyance and frustration and hurt pride in there, there was also sadness and genuine pain as well. Tia softened.

“Of course I don’t want to cut you out of my life completely, or forever. But the way you talk to me when you call and when you text, it’s like you’re waiting for us to get back together. And I don’t want to lead you on.”

His eyes iced over and the genuine sadness and pain dissolved in the heat of his anger. “Because we’re not, according to you, ever getting back together.”

Tia paused, pursed her lips. “I think I’ve been very clear about that, Owen.”

“All because I made a mistake.”

Tia’s mind went blank for a moment. He had the gall to reclassify an entire six months of treating her like shit as a single mistake. She cleared her throat and counted backwards from ten. “No. Because the last months of our relationship taught me that we’re not meant for one another. Not compatible. Not in the way that really counts.”

“Because I wasn’t more involved when your parents were going to the home?”

And because you acted like my sister was a burden, an impediment to our lives together. And because you were threatened by my success as a surgeon. And because you never once kissed me the way Eli did. “That was a big part of it.”

Tia’s phone buzzed in the pocket of her scrubs. She pulled it out of her pocket and couldn’t stop the effervescent rising of joy inside of her. Like the bubbles in a glass of champagne. Eli was calling her.

It had been a week since that night at his house. When she’d curled into his side while they’d watched some movie or another, she’d barely been able to pay attention. Because his cheek had rested on the top of her head, his large hand had drawn circles on her shoulder.

The next day she’d spent with her parents and with Laura. And since then she’d been working like an absolute dog. There hadn’t been time to see one another again. Nothing more than a few texts here and there. Which, of course, had thrilled her almost as much as kissing him had.

But now, here she was, the shift from hell almost over, and Eli’s voice about to speak in her ear. She couldn’t have been happier. Except for the grumpy ex-boyfriend currently staring daggers at her phone.

“Who’s that?” he asked, squinting at the emojis that danced across her screen.

Tia couldn’t help the smile that bloomed as she followed Owen’s eyeline. Football, biceps, flame. Her hot, buff, football player was calling her.

“I’ve got to take this. Have a good night, Owen.”

Tia stepped into her office and closed the door gently behind her, well aware that she was basically closing it in Owen’s face. She didn’t want to be a jerk to him, but she also wouldn’t mind if he started steering clear of her.

“Hello?” she answered the phone, her stomach in knots.

“Well, well, well. Fancy meeting you here.” Eli’s voice had Tia grinning into the dim twilight of her unlit office, and she sank into the chair under the window.

“Fancy meeting me on this phone call? The one which you placed to me?”

“Yeah. Ain’t life grand?”

Tia laughed and she could hear the smile in his voice. “I wasn’t sure if you were gonna call me,” she said.

He paused for a second. “I wasn’t sure if you were gonna call me.”

“I didn’t.”

“Yeah, I know. Which is why I had to wait a few days so I didn’t seem too desperate. How am I doing?”

“You definitely don’t sound desperate.” He could never sound desperate. He always sounded so effortlessly cool. Happy and free. She envied that.

“What are you up to?”

“I’m sitting in my dark office about to go home from the shift from hell.”

“Perfect!”

“Perfect for what?”

“Well, I was hoping you weren’t working tonight. Because I called so that you could ask me on a date.”

Tia laughed again. “I’m sorry?”

“Yeah, I already asked you on the grilled cheese and movie date. So now it’s your turn.”

“Oh, are we taking turns?”

“Yeah, isn’t that how it works in high school? To be honest, I can’t really remember.”

Tia smiled even more. “So we’re officially doing this the high school way, huh?”

“Seems like our style, you know?’

“Yeah, it kind of does.” Inwardly, Tia thrilled over the word our, but she batted her bubbly feelings down. It was totally fine to flirt with Eli, to make date plans with him, to maybe make out some more. But there was no our. They weren’t together. And they weren’t going to be. She needed to keep a lid on those feelings. It couldn’t move much past where they already were. Which meant that all she could really do was appreciate where they were. “Alright, then. You wanna come over and help me with my homework?”

“Hell yeah.” His voice was gruff and humored at the same time. How did he do that? She marveled again at that potent mix of friendly and sexy that he had going on. She didn’t know any other person who could be so yummy while being so disarming at the same time.

“Well,” she reconsidered. “Maybe I should come over to your house. How are you feeling?”

“Good enough to drive. That’s for sure.”

“Are you sure? No fevers, minimal aches, you’re able to stand for periods lasting up to ten minutes, and you can walk around the house without getting lightheaded or dizzy?”

“I went to the beach this morning.”

“Eli, you didn’t!” she gasped. “Do you know how much bacteria is in the water?! If your incision isn’t completely healed yet, you could have a terrible infection from that. And you’ve had your spleen removed! A main organ in the immune system. Okay, I’m gonna stay here and the new plan is for you to take a cab to the hospital, I want to make sure you’re alright.”

She could hear the grin in his voice. “As much as I wouldn’t mind a physical exam from you, I think I should tell you that I didn’t get in the water. I wore a sweatsuit and kicked back in a beach chair while Jay and Marcus surfed. I didn’t even drive. I just laid there like a lump and watched the sunrise.”

“Oh. Well. That actually sounds really relaxing.”

“It was,” he sighed. “And I’m bored as hell of relaxing. So come on, let’s make a plan and you can help me get my heart rate up.”

She smiled again. “Okay, well, if you’re sure you can drive then why don’t you come over to my house. We can eat some take-out.”

“Perfect. When?”

“Gimme an hour to get home and get showered. I’ll text my address.”

“Tia.” His voice was doing that gruff thing again.

“Yeah?”

“Thanks.”

“For what?”

“For waking my heart up. Damn thing is about to beat out of my chest right now.”

Tia was still smiling when she hung up the phone. If he was playing her, if this was all just part of the way he bagged a woman, then Tia decided that maybe she wouldn’t mind playing the game.