“Pineapple with extra cheese.”
“Great. And a Caesar salad?”
“Yes,” I reply slowly. I can’t explain how this makes me feel. I mean … he doesn’t even blink when I suggest a pineapple pizza. He doesn’t suggest we each get our own pizza or do half and half.
The waitress stops at our table.
“A large pineapple pizza with extra cheese and two Caesar salads,” he says, handing her our menus.
He ordered a large! Nothing chaps me more than people who want to split small and medium pizzas.
Leftovers are life. Not that I can’t easily take down half a large pizza.
My affection for Dr. Hawkins triples in that moment. He makes a huge leap toward catching up with Boss Bitch.
“So are you originally from Portland?” he asks, crossing his arms on the edge of the table.
That’s my question. He stole my question, leaving me with two original questions.
“Yes.” I try to grin past my slight irritation.
“Me too.”
Gah!
He doesn’t give me a chance to ask it.
“My dad owns his own auto repair shop. He’s had it for over fifty years. We keep thinking he should retire, but he loves it. He’ll go to his grave covered in grease. All of my family live in the area. I have two older sisters, three nephews, and two nieces. My oldest niece is getting married in a few months. Roman is the ring bearer. He has an electric blue suit he’s wearing. About the same color as my car—my favorite color.”
“If you weren’t a doctor, what would you be?” I cut him off before he finishes the word color.
He pulls his head back as his eyebrows lift into peaks. I may have blurted out the question in a rush, but I knew his next words would be “Before I decided to be a doctor, I wanted to be …”
“Sorry.” I laugh. “But you’re stealing my questions. I planned three questions to ask you tonight, and you’ve already taken two. I don’t want to sound uninterested in you, but you already ruined two of my questions. I wanted a chance to ask at least one.”
“Is that code for I’m talking too much?” He chuckles.
“No. It’s not code for anything. Talk all you want, just don’t tell me everything I was going to ask you before I get a chance to ask it.”
“Dorothy …” He scratches his chin. “You are … unexpected. Like balloons, flowers, and winning lottery tickets.”
I have no response to that. It seems like a weird compliment, and I majored in weird, but it’s a different kind of weird.
“If I weren’t a doctor, I would have been a kayaking or white-water rafting tour guide. I love both equally. I grew up coasting down rivers, hiking trails, skiing the slopes.” He holds up his watch. “That’s why I get my rings closed every day.”
“Let’s share our activity progress.” I go into my activity app and invite Dr. Hawkins to share his activity with me.
Several seconds later he glances at his watch and grins. Tapping it once, he accepts my invite.
I have an activity buddy!
“It’s on, Mayhem. Watch out. I’m a fierce competitor.”
“You mosey from one patient room to another all day, sit at your desk, or stand hunched over a microscope. I move all day long. You don’t stand a chance of outdoing me.”
We fall into an easy conversation, something I only do with my parents because they know me better than anyone else. And even then, some days they wear a zombie look when I go off on things they don’t understand.
Just as our pizza arrives, Dr. Hawkins holds up his phone.
“Did you just take a picture of me?” I ask after the waitress delivers our salads and pizza.
“I did. For my contacts. I wanted you in that dress.”
I lift my phone and take a picture too.
He laughs. “Did you just take a photo of the pizza? Are you one of those foodies who photographs your meals?”
“Me? No. I just eat the food. The pizza photo is going to be your contact photo. When I think of you, I always want to remember that you ordered my kind of pizza—a large at that—without saying anything that made me feel guilty and weird.”
Dr. Hawkins nods in small increments, eyes slightly narrowed, lips turned into a tiny smile. He dishes up a slice for me and one for him. Then he folds it … JUST LIKE ME! And he eats it. I follow suit, easily shoving half of it into my mouth. We grin at each other over our full mouths.
Pizza.
Salads.
Fun.
Yes! I’m having fun with Dr. Hawkins. Not awkward-date-fake fun. Not crowded party, overstimulation fun.
Legit. Easy. Fun.
“I’d suggest ice cream if you didn’t have to work in the morning,” he says as we exit the restaurant.
The crisp evening air captures my breath, or maybe it’s his hand on my back. Dr. Hawkins possesses a touch that I can’t put into a particular category. It sparks anxiety, confusion, and maybe something else. The grazing my nipple kind of something else.