“You seem the sorority girl type, Doc.”
“I don’t know if I should be insulted by that statement or not.”
“No insult intended,” he assured me.
“My mother wanted me to pledge,” I admitted. “I didn’t have time. I was already taking extra classes and focusing on premed. Even if I’d had the time, I wouldn’t have gone that route.”
“Why?”
“Because they want an obscene amount of control over your life. They want you to look a certain way, act a certain way, date certain people. I already grew up in that kind of life. I wasn’t about to subject myself to that again just as I had my first taste of freedom.”
“What was it like? How you grew up?” he asked.
“For someone who’s not a morning person, you’re pretty chatty,” I joked.
“Who said I wasn’t a morning person?”
“You.”
“No. I said I don’t like mornings. I’m pretty chipper in the mornings.”
“Semantics.”
“Linden.”
“Boxer.”
He fell silent for a moment and looked out the window. “My old man was a jazz musician. I told you that.” Boxer looked at me for confirmation.
I nodded, remembering our first date.
“He spent most of his time on the road. When he was home, he’d be fine for a few days. Happy. Excited. A regular family man. And then he’d start to get short tempered. Bickering with Mom. Picking fights. He blamed us for why he had to come home at all.” Boxer smiled, but it was bitter. “He resented us as much as he loved us. Resentment always won, and he showed us just how much he resented us with his fists.”
“Boxer,” I whispered, my heart breaking for him.
He shrugged. “It is what it is. When he was home, I learned to spend a lot of time out of the house. I spent a lot of time at the arcade. Learned how to make my time there last.”
“Pinball,” I said in realization. “That’s why you’re so good.”
“Yup.”
I thought for a moment. “Our childhoods shape us, more than we care to admit. It’s not so easy to let our pasts go, is it?”
“What parts of your past are you still holding onto, Doc?”
My hands clenched the wheel. “My mom, mostly.”
“Yeah?”
“She was always challenging. I mean, she’s not an easy woman to love. Hypercritical. Controlling.” I swallowed. “It got worse after my dad left. She couldn’t stop him from leaving so she became even more rigid and focused all her energy on me. Nothing I did was ever good enough for her. I realized I could never live up to her expectations, so I stopped trying.”
“But you’re a surgeon.”
“Yeah? So?”
“No, I just mean—you’re asurgeon, who’s spent years in school, studying, probably not having a life just so you could excel. Isn’t she proud of you for that?”
“My father’s a surgeon,” I reminded him. “To my mother, it felt like a slap in the face when I chose a similar career path.”