“He’s such a dipshit,” Trix murmured angrily as Cam kissed the side of her head.
“Ignore him,” Will told the table, his thumb starting to slide back and forth across the side of my neck. “Moll saw me at the hospital—she knows what’s up.”
“At the hospital?” Mel asked, looking at me accusingly.
“It was nothing,” I ground out, making Will’s hand squeeze my neck gently. Why was he still touching me? My muscles were so taut that I felt almost brittle.
“I call bullshit,” she shot back.
“We’re not talking about this here,” I said, mortification setting in as the group around the table watched us argue.
“I was her patient,” Will said quietly, looking at me with a small smile.
“For one night.”
“Thank God.”
“You were?” Mel said in surprise. “She didn’t say anything.”
“Of course I didn’t say anything,” I blurted, leaning away from Will’s hand. “It’s not my business to talk about the people I take care of.”
“Oh, please,” Mel said in astonishment. “You told me all about the guy that stapled his fingers together. And the lady that got the wine bottle stuck up her hoo-hah.”
“I didn’t tell you their names,” I argued.
“Wait, a woman got a wine bottle stuck in her cunt?” Cam asked, chuckling as Trix elbowed him in the side. “I think we need to hear this story.”
“Yeah, sorry,” Trix said, her earlier look of devastation replaced by a small smirk. “I want to hear this, too.”
“You can’t stick things up there that have a, well . . . it suctioned, okay?” I could feel Will’s amusement as I tried to explain the scenario. “Like . . .” I looked at the table and picked up my glass, pressing it against my mouth and chin and inhaling until I could hold it there with just the force of the suction. I dropped my hands to my lap, the glass still hanging from my face and shrugged my shoulders, making the entire table burst into laughter.
“Okay, we get it,” Will said into my ear, gently pulling the glass from my face.
“How the hell did you get it un-suctioned?” Trix asked, leaning forward.
“The doctor drilled a small hole in the bottom,” I mumbled, wiping my face off.
“Wait, is this someone we know?” Mel asked, eyes wide.
“No,” I said automatically. “It doesn’t matter!”
“So you work the emergency room?” Cam asked as Mel said something quietly to Rocky, making him chuckle.
“No.” I shook my head. “Well, sometimes. I float around the hospital.”
“She was one of my nurses when I was on the second floor,” Will told them. “It was good to see a familiar face.”
“I bet,” Trix said softly, giving Will a small smile.
“Well, I still have no idea what the hell is going on, but I’m out of beer!” Mel announced, standing from her seat. “Anyone want one while I’m up?”
“I’ll get ’em,” Rocky intervened, rising beside her. “You can help me carry.”
They took our orders and disappeared through the crowd, leaving me with Will, Cam and Trix.
“You don’t seem old enough to be a nurse,” Cam said once they were gone.
“I hear that a lot,” I replied with a nod. “I’m actually not. I mean, I am a nurse. I just got my associate degree at the same time that I got my high school diploma, and I rushed through my bachelors.”
“Holy crap,” Trix said in surprise. “That must’ve been insane.”
“It wasn’t easy,” I said with a laugh, growing more comfortable with the people around me. “But I have a daughter, so—” I paused in my explanation as I felt Will go still. “Yeah, uh, I had my daughter when I was younger, so I needed to get that shit sorted pretty quick.”
“Aw, a daughter! We have twin boys. Holy terrors—both of them.”
I laughed, ignoring the completely stiff man sitting next to me. “My girl’s pretty easy. Busy—but sweet.”
Trix opened her mouth to reply, but Will cut her off. “Mason’s?” he asked gruffly.
“Yeah.” I nodded, looking at him briefly before glancing away.
“Molly’s boyfriend in high school was Mason Flanders,” Will told Cam and Trix.
I braced.
Whenever people heard Mason’s name, especially in Eugene, it always took them a moment to place it. But they always did. They knew who he was. The local kid who’d gotten onto the Oregon Ducks football team, only to drop dead of a heart attack during practice before he’d ever played a game. Fourteen years of playing football, fourteen years of running track and getting yearly physicals, and no one had ever found the heart defect until it had killed him.
I’d been five months pregnant.
Thankfully, he hadn’t passed his broken heart onto our daughter. She had enough medical problems to deal with that were all her own.
“Oh, my God,” Trix said quietly. “That sucks. I’m sorry.”
“Thanks,” I mumbled.
“Wait, that’s the guy who—” Cam’s words cut off. “Tough break, girl,” he said softly.