Chapter Thirteen
Josie
When Andy promised to take care of me, he meant it. He peeled my wet clothes off and ushered me into a hot shower, and when I came back downstairs, warm and a bit more composed after taking a few minutes to sob in the privacy of the bathroom, a bag of hot takeout already waited in the living room, along with a dusty bottle of wine that he must have dug out of a cabinet somewhere and two glasses.
“Okay,” he began as he picked up the bottle of wine and grabbed the corkscrew to wrench the ancient bottle open. “First, I am very sorry I missed your messages. I fell asleep early on the couch last night and then broke my phone this morning and had to get it fixed before it would work again.” His hands stilled on the bottle and he looked at me intently. “I would never ignore you, okay? I know this is not the primary issue we’re talking about tonight, but it’s really important to me that you know that.”
When I nodded slightly in response, he bent down and brushed his lips across mine before straightening to attack the wine again. “Okay, so tell me what happened. We left off with you throwing up before going in for your exam.”
I winced at the memory. I’d brushed my teeth before I showered, but that hot sourness still haunted me. “I called you, barfed in the parking lot, then I went into the building. And when it was test time—I don’t know, at first I was running on adrenaline and then all that adrenaline crashed and I felt like I was just guessing on everything. Like all the studying and practice questions that I’d done—my brain built a vault around it and said, ‘Not today, Josie.’” I reached out to accept a glass of freshly-poured dark red wine from Andy and took a brief sip. My eyebrows lifted with surprise. “This is decent wine. I’m surprised.”
Andy rolled his eyes. “You expected ouzo? I’m Greek. Welovewine.” He raised his own glass to his lips. “Anyway, go on.”
In spite of myself, I smiled a little. Andy knew me. No hovering or fussing from him, but he took care of me exactly how I needed. He listened and knew how to rib me a little bit to lighten the mood. I liked that about him. Loved it, even. And it had always been that way with him—the way he knew me and understood me was almost an instinct with him. I wondered if Annie felt the same way with George. God, these guys, that family—I could understand why Sam and Annie were both so happy with Andy’s older brothers.
“So that wall? I hit it around hour two, and the test is more than seven hours long so it was just—it was exhausting, and the longer it went on, the worse I felt, and nothing made sense and I sat there just consumed with this lightning bolt of certainty that I am never—” Andy’s brow lifted, but I continued, “—never going to be a doctor because I was choking so badly on this test.”
Andy sipped his wine calmly. “When do you get your results back?”
I fiddled with the stem of my wine glass. “Two weeks.”
He set his glass down and reached inside the bag to retrieve a take-out cartoon. I sniffed cautiously. My favorite spicy noodles, and my belly didn’t churn as the smell hit my nose.
“So you don’t know for sure,” he said as he opened up a container of dumplings and reached in to pluck one out with a pair of chopsticks. “You think you messed up, but you won’t know for two weeks.”
I nodded and twirled a noodle around my own chopsticks. “That’s about it, yeah.”
He popped the dumpling into his mouth and chewed thoughtfully. “Well,” he said after swallowing, “I think you probably did fine because you’re the smartest person I’ve ever met, but since we don’t know for sure, I guess it’s fair to allow for the possibility that it didn’t go well.”
He finished chewing and cocked his head, a lopsided smile quirking one corner of his full mouth. Despite my stress and exhaustion, that little smile sent heat curling through me, and my face heated.
If Andy noticed, he didn’t say anything, just held me in that steady gaze as he continued. “I know you didn’t love this conversation when we had it before, but maybe it would help to think about what else you could do.” He shifted closer. “I know how you are, Josie—you plan and study and plan some more, and when you don’t know how something might go, it just drives you crazy. What’s the harm in having a few extra possibilities in your back pocket? You might not need them, but then you won’t feel like you’re completely flying blind.”
I swallowed a mouthful of spicy noodles and gave him a slow nod. “You…” I took a deep breath. “You might be right about that.”
He shrugged. “Maybe. It’s worth thinking about, anyway, don’t you think?”
My hands stilled and I just stared at him. My heart, my brain—around him, the whirl of information and stress just came to a standstill, and I wished that I could bottle up that perfect calm and take it with me all the time.
Andy smiled at me and grabbed his wine. “What’s that look for?”
“You,” I said plainly and reached for my own glass. I clinked it against his like we were toasting something, and smiled back as I lifted it to my lips. This wine was fantastic, actually. I swallowed and found him still looking. Still smiling.
“You’re just not like anybody I’ve ever met,” I continued. “I’ve dated guys—lots of guys, actually, who couldn’t handle, you know, this.” I gestured toward myself. “They just saw the grades and the advanced classes and the valedictorian thing—"
Andy, mid-swallow, coughed on his wine. “Of course you were valedictorian. I love that.”
“That’s exactly it, though!” I gestured wildly and my wine sloshed, a few dark droplets splashing to the floor. “Sorry.”
Andy grabbed the wine bottle and dumped a little more into my glass. “Don’t worry about it. Continue telling me how great I am.”
I felt my own smile stretch across my face, something I’d assumed I wouldn’t be able to do today. It felt good. “Yeah, you are great. You think it’s cool that I’m a science geek and want to be a doctor, and when I tell you that I got some smarty-pants good grades award in high school, you just say that you love that. I was going to tell you that I’ve dated guys who just constantly worried that I looked down on them for something, and it made me crazy. It made me feel like…like a mean person, for something I wasn’t even doing.”
He sucked in a breath through his teeth. “Oh, that sucks. Who are these dickheads? Why would anybody treat another person like that?”
I shrugged. “God, who knows? But you’re not like that. You’re smart and cool and funny, and when I pull an A on a stereochemistry test—"
“I still have no idea what that is and I’ve googled it four times,” Andy interrupted with a laugh.