Part of Your World(66)

“I got this in the middle of dinner with my parents.”

“Oh, shit—”

“No, so far it’s been the highlight of the whole night,” she whispered.

I laughed. “Where are you?”

“In the bathroom.”

I leaned back in my seat and stretched. “You should bring them down.”

“Who?”

“Your parents.”

She went silent on the other end.

“You wouldn’t want to meet my parents,” she said. “Trust me.”

There was something “end of discussion” about her tone. I let it go.

“So when do I get to see you?” I asked.

“I can come down tomorrow after work.”

I grinned. “Okay. Do you mind if we go out to eat?”

“You want to take me out?”

“There’s a thing at the VFW. It’s not anything fancy. Just a spaghetti dinner. Liz and everyone will be there. If you’re not comfortable with that we can skip it.”

“I like spaghetti,” she said. “Sounds like fun.”

I moved the phone away from my mouth like she could hear my grin. “Okay, it’s a date,” I said. “Hey, didn’t you say once you were a picky eater?”

“Yeah. I am.”

“You eat everything I give you.”

She laughed a little. “I like everything you give me. I don’t like bar food. Fried stuff.”

“So if I’d tried to make you some hot wings or something, you wouldn’t have come home with me that night? It was nothing but the thin promise of a grilled cheese that tipped the scales?”

“I would have gone home with you that night, no matter what you were making.”

“Because of the baby goat?”

“No. Because of you.” I could hear the smile in her voice. “Gotta go.”

I couldn’t get the grin off my face. I hung up with her, beaming.

She didn’t tell me it wasn’t a date—which meant it was. She was coming out with me in public tomorrow, hanging out with my friends. She also told me she missed me earlier.

I’d been afraid to hope that this might not be one-sided. It felt impossible that I could interest a woman like Alexis in any way that was more than just sex. But now I dared to hope.

The progress was slow, but it was there. Tiny victories on my part. She was letting me in.

I didn’t think she’d actually let me meet her parents, but I threw these things at her to see what would stick anyway. The worst she could say was no—and sometimes she said yes.

She’d said yes to being exclusive. She’d said yes to spaghetti with my friends—which I’d sandbagged a bit. It was a little more than just a casual dinner. But everyone wanted it to be a surprise, and I wasn’t going to ruin it.

I felt like if I could keep getting closer, maybe a miracle could happen.

Maybe one day there would only be yes.





Chapter 26

Alexis



I hung up with Daniel, touched up my lipstick, and went back out to dinner with my parents.

We’d just ordered, and our drinks had arrived while I was gone. We were at Sycamore in Minneapolis. It was a high-end steak place that looked like the inside of first class on the Titanic. It was dimly lit, with crisp linen tablecloths and stately paintings of important white men on the walls.

That always annoyed me, that the white men got the stately paintings. Even at Royaume, the hallways were lined with them. All the men throughout the history of the hospital who’d made significant contributions. Mostly from the Montgomery family, but still.

I was going to request stately paintings of all the marginalized people who had contributed to the hospital’s success over the last hundred and twenty-five years.

I’d been thinking a lot about what I wanted my contribution to Royaume to be. Maybe I’d start a weekly free clinic for low-income patients, get some donors to contribute to new programs for financial aid.

These last things had never felt as important to me as they did now.

Every time a patient came to the ER in their own car because they couldn’t afford the ambulance ride or they put off care until they were in such bad shape it was an emergency room visit, I thought about Daniel.

Most people in Wakan were barely making it as it was, and a hospital stay would ruin them.

I always tried to help my patients when they couldn’t afford care.

Last week a man came in with a simple perforated eardrum, and I saw him in the waiting room and wrote him a prescription without checking him in so he wouldn’t be billed for an ER trip. When I could, I coded procedures so they fell under a wellness visit or I sent a patient to their primary care physician where it would be cheaper instead of giving them a treatment that could wait. But I was starting to feel like it wasn’t enough. I was starting to feel like I could be doing more. And now I was in a position to.

There were definitely perks to being a Montgomery. Maybe I should start to use them.

Mom and Dad stopped talking as I slid into my seat and put my napkin in my lap. Dad leveled his eyes on me. “So what was this announcement you wanted to make?”

Mom waited patiently.

I’d been the one who’d made this dinner date. They’d been wanting to talk to me about the quasquicentennial, and I’d been turning down all their invitations to do it, mostly because they all included Neil. So I’d booked the reservation myself and told them we could talk about the event over dinner, and I added that I had something I wanted to tell them.