Laugh Page 18

“Hey guys.” Lacey stepped in and leaned against the doorframe. When she caught Nina’s eye, she raised her eyebrows then looked between her and Sam.

  “Hey Sam, are you being nice?” Lacey sounded suspicious, and looked back at Nina.

  “Absolutely. Was just offering Nina a ride home. You’re staying for a shift, right?”

  “Yeah, I’ll have to head downstairs in a bit, but wanted to check on our girl. How you feeling, Tay?”

  “Much better. I started getting hungry today, and Sam brought me food. I’ve got the pain button.” Tay held it up.

  “Awesome.” Lacey looked back between Nina and Sam.

  The room got quiet and Nina started feeling uncomfortable.

  She looked at Sam.

  He smiled, and it wasn’t some big grin, and he didn’t seem to be trying to charm her. He just smiled and looked down. As if he liked her. Just liked her and was willing to take her home.

  Probably take her home and keep her, if she’d let him.

  “Okay.”

  He looked back up at her, but Nina looked at Tay, willing the blush at her jaw and ears not to flood into her face. She went to Tay’s bedside and hugged her the best she could with the little tubes and wires around her, inhaled her huge topknot of dreads to catch the scent of peppermint.

  “Adam has the day off tomorrow, so he can spend the night here with you.”

  “I know,” Tay whispered back. “He’s bringing all the movies we always want to see but never do because we’re always too tired and need to get up too early. You really going to be okay bringing in the peppers? It’s going to be a dicey one. I think only about half the harvest is going to be good enough for Vadnais and it’s a lot of sorting at cold storage. It’ll be a tough day.”

  “I’ve got it.”

  “I won’t let Adam worry, then.”

  Nina kissed Tay’s forehead and wouldn’t let herself cry.

  All their faith in her. All her faith in them.

  “Can I help?” Sam asked.

  Nina looked at him. “With what?”

  “You know,” he said, “the peppers? I think I could do tomorrow, before five though, because I have a thing at Betty’s house, though maybe you’d want to go? Anyway. It’s my usual day off, if I take it. Which I could. Unless, I guess, Lacey, you might need me?”

  Nina watched Lacey look at Sam for a long beat. “No, we got a decent amount done today, that’s okay.”

  “Unless I’d be in the way?”

  It seemed like everyone was holding their breath waiting for Nina to answer.

  Dios.

  “You should drive your own car, in case it’s too much. I don’t know how much you can help.”

  “What time?”

  “We’ll … I’ll tell you what you need to know in the car. When you take me home.”

  He smiled at her again and she could feel the whole room watching him do it.

  She gave Tay another hug, to keep herself from smiling back.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “We going to go in?”

  Sam took a long pull of his iced tea. “Yeah.”

  “Anytime soon? It’s kind of hot.”

  In the parking garage of the hospital, he had asked Nina if she would please talk to him, and he would try to keep his mouth shut. She said she would, and then he found himself asking if she would talk to him at his place. He had this thought she should see him, see how he did his best to manage, so if he found himself accidentally proposing again, she had more information to work with.

  Except now that they were here, leaning against the brick half wall in front of his building, he wasn’t sure he had the balls.

  “It’s kind of a mess.”

  “You said.”

  “It’s always like that. It’s not like I’ve been busy and let things go a little. Busy or not, it’s always a big fucking mess.”

  “You said that, too.”

  “And it’s small. Some people think being a doctor means you have tons of money. I do okay, but Des and Sarah are on my health insurance and so I pay a pretty high monthly premium. I still have student loans. I went into family medicine, instead of some fancy specialty. I’ll do better, someday, but because I’m going into community health, mostly I’ll just do okay.”

  “Sam …”

  “Also, I like it here. I mean, not here in this dumpy building, but here. The neighborhood. I don’t really like to travel, so I don’t really know, I guess, if some other place would be better, and maybe it would be. I’ll never know, because I’m planning on staying here. I’m trying to save up for a place like I grew up in, one of those two-story row houses with a little yard in back. I should take you to where I grew up sometime. My buddy Mike bought it. Him and his wife, DeeDee. They have two kids. It’s a good family place.”

  “Sam …”

  “Yeah.”

  “I feel like … you’re trying to lay out your prospects.”

  Sam looked at Nina, her hair in those braids that he loved, those tiny shorts.

  “Maybe I am.”

  “Oh, Sam.” She closed her eyes.

  “I promise I won’t propose, as long as you take it easy on me with the sex. You’re too good at it. I had no choice but to propose. Biological imperative.”

  “Ay Dios mio,” Nina said, and Sam said it at the same time, pulling her braid.

  She laughed, and Sam just watched her, finishing his tea. She couldn’t be more fucking beautiful. Or perfect. It sucked that he was in almost constant danger of messing this up.

  He leaned in and turned her face toward his, rubbed through the small curls of hair behind her ear. She looked at him, and the sun was angled low, blasting them both with heat and light and he loved everything about her.

  The lines that fanned from her long eyelashes, the deeper freckles against her skin, how it was so much darker than his, the worry fold between her eyes. Her mouth. How when he watched her straddle his face, he caught her sucking in her stomach.

  She kissed and she touched him like she didn’t have any better handle on her impulses than he did, and she looked at him like he thought he was looking at her—hungry and hopeful and worse, for him, impressed.

  He impressed her, somehow. He did right around her.

  It was the most novel feeling he could imagine, and combined with how beautiful and sexy he found her, the good she did, how she took care of things, he wasn’t sure why he wasn’t proposing, all over again. Because yeah, he loved her.

  He loved Nina Paz, and probably would forever, like some poor bastard, and be miserable with it until he somehow convinced her to consider his prospects and overlook most of them.

  If he could do that, and she fell in love with him, and didn’t burst into tears the next time he proposed, then he would know what it felt like to be truly happy. He’d make her happy, too, if that was all he did, all day long.

  He could try to talk himself out of how he felt about her, but he couldn’t see how. He hadn’t known her long, sure, but he knew how long she had been living a life that made a place for others, that tried to make something good out of almost nothing.

  She’d been doing that for ten years, a long time. She had started when she was wrecked after her husband’s death.

  She made something, did it for others. So even if he hadn’t been around for long, he wasn’t sure what else he needed to know.

  They weren’t kids. Life itself wasn’t long enough.

  The way she was now, was the way she was.

  This was it.

  How they were, what they had learned. They had met each other now, when their lives were about showing off their acquired wisdom, or at least, they had worked hard and, it seemed, should be able to enjoy it.

  Like each other.

  She finally leaned in and kissed him, and he made himself let her set the pace. He wanted to yank her up close, get his hands all over her, get their kiss going deep and dirty because he was so hot with how he felt, how being with her felt, but he didn’t wan
t to spook her again, so he just closed his eyes and felt how she kissed him, which was slow and soft.

  Her hand slid up his chest and shoulder and it was so good. She let it rest alongside his neck, and even in the hot sun, it made him feel shivery. Her kisses were one soft kiss after another, all at different angles and places, then he felt her lick along his bottom lip and it was so good.

  So good.

  He did what she was asking and opened up to her, and when she stepped close, she got one of her thighs between his legs, and he gripped her hip so he could press his hard-on against her and rock but keep their kiss semi-decent enough for the street.

  He wanted to drag her upstairs, right now, but he told himself he had time, all the time, if he just let himself, for once, enjoy a moment.

  So he kissed her and she kissed him and he felt everything he could, over her clothes, from her neck to her waist, and held her close, and rocked into her, just a little, just enough to ache, and ache so much he wasn’t sure that holding her wouldn’t always hurt, at least some.

  She pulled back and he kissed down her neck to breathe her in and keep her from finding some excuse not to go up with him.

  “Okay,” she said.

  “Okay?”

  “Let’s go up now.”

  He took her hand and they went to the foyer door of his building.

  “Do you have something to eat? Or could we order dinner? I just realized I’m starving.”

  “Do you like Asian food?” Sam unlocked his door.

  “Yeah,” Nina said, “of course.”

  So he let her in, of course.

  * * *

  “This is so good, I can’t stand it.” Nina shoved another forkful of Sam’s chicken yakisoba in her mouth and closed her eyes to chew. It was savory and salty and gingery and oniony and the noodles and chicken were glossy with sesame oil.

  She had watched Sam make this, carefully, so carefully, chopping piles of cabbage, carrots, and onions, all from her farm store, and then stir-frying them with soaked ramen noodles and some sauce he mixed himself.

  It was perfect, like the best kind of comfort food, just what she needed.

  The cold beer he gave her with it was even more perfect, and then he unfolded two actual TV trays, metal with waterfalls painted on them, so they could eat on his sofa, apologizing because the dinette table had papers all over it.

  But she loved this.

  She loved feeling comfortable in his messy apartment, which was messy but not in some terminal way. His air-conditioning was full blast against the sticky evening heat, she didn’t have to worry about where to kick off her shoes, and his sofa was old-fashioned and perfectly squishy-firm and huge.

  She loved eating off the obviously-his-parents’ TV trays, eating as much as she wanted because he made so much, drinking her second beer.

  It was bliss, actually.

  Everything about it.

  She hadn’t felt this relaxed in so long; she wanted to roll around in the moment of this like a cat in a sunbeam.

  She was wallowing.

  “This dish is why I’m a family doc, actually.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. I was struggling with finding a specialty, and my grades in med school were kind of so-so. I was testing well, and there were some nibbles from the allergy group and I had rotated pretty well with emergency medicine, but nothing was clicking and everyone I met was an asshole. The thing is, I’m kind of an asshole, and I was worried about ending up a bigger one if I placed in some of these groups.

  “Then there was this guy, Marty Takaishi, who was an attending in the family physician group. I had done a couple of two-days-a-month rotations in his clinic, and he was terrific. Good teacher. Intuitive guy. He saw that I was struggling during one of my last rotations, and he invited me over to his place for dinner to talk about it.

  “He had probably thirty kids. Not really, but it felt like it. Big ol’ house north of downtown in that old Rose City suburb. His wife was, if you can believe it, like this high-up person in one of those direct seller makeup companies, won a car and everything. Really nice lady.

  “He had me come in the kitchen with him and he taught me how to make chicken yakisoba, start to finish. We made a huge amount, talking while we chopped vegetables, and he told me about all his kids, what they were doing in school, and everyone would come in the kitchen and talk to us.

  “At the end of the evening, he asked me if I had a nice time, and I told him I had the best time actually, but I was sorry I didn’t get a chance to talk to him and pick his brain about what I should do. Then he told me that he was just spending the evening showing me what I already know. That I’m good at learning new things, and being around people, and comfortable with families, didn’t care that the evening wasn’t something fancy, and that was his big pitch for me to apply to be placed with his group and do family medicine.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yep. Because of noodles.”

  “Good noodles, though. Not a bad way to make a decision.”

  “I thought so.”

  “I heard you were at the library plot this morning.”

  “You heard right.”

  “I was surprised, I guess.” She watched him lean back into the sofa, dangling his beer bottle from his hand. He was so sexy. Lean and pale, brushed over with those freckles. His hair. Those gray eyes.

  This sofa was too fucking comfortable. It was giving her ideas. With a comfortable full stomach and two beers, those ideas were getting pretty decadent.

  “Why? Because I took you out, showed you a bad time, we fucked our brains out, then I made you cry with an impulsive proposal, and so I had to spend the next two days in bed?”

  “Yes, that’s why I was surprised.”

  “I don’t know. I like you. I like the farming stuff. I’ve always been physical, I’ve always liked to be doing something, accomplishing something, and farming’s pretty good for that, you know. Hard work, then you can see what you did. Everything’s all straightforward. If your mind wanders, no big deal. I like it.”

  “You do, don’t you?” His feet were bare and his T-shirt had ridden up his side; when he brought his beer to his mouth to drink, she could see a muscle hitch, right under his ribs.

  She wanted to straddle him.

  “I do. Plus I think it’s amazing you did it all yourself. It’s impressive. I like being around cool stuff people do. Don’t tell Sarah this, but a couple times, I went by her letterpress shop, and they have this big plate window in the front. That press of hers is huge, looks like something out of a museum for old-timey machines or some shit. Metal, with big moving parts. You’ve seen Sarah around, she’s tiny and on crutches, but she can fucking work that thing. It’s cool. I’m hoping she’ll let me in there one day, but we’re still just minimally on speaking terms.”

  This man. Honestly, it wasn’t fair.

  “Tell me about your brother and sisters.” Because she wanted to hear. She loved his story about the doctor with the big family, and what he said about Sarah.

  She didn’t care about his prospects, but she liked how he talked about other people.

  He leaned back and he told her about his sister Des, who was overseas traveling with her boyfriend, and had an online computer services business Sam was obviously incredibly proud of. She could tell it was hard for him that Des was away, but then he told her about things his mom had said about Des, Des which was short for Destiny, and how his mom had always seen, even when Des was tiny, that she was a dreamer.

  He hated that she was away, but admitted that he believed his mom would have been pleased. He emailed a lot with Des, he said, and when he told Nina that his voice got slow and quiet.

  He told her about PJ playing cello with the symphony, how good he was, how he had always been that good. That he worried about PJ being so in love with Lacey that it might be delusional.

  He told her about his mom.

  He probably had no idea how much he really told her.

/>   He didn’t realize, either, that his take on his family was as single-minded and without nuance as everything else he did, but where he lacked subtlety and maybe even empathy, he made room for love.

  Love with a kind of fierceness and loyalty that he didn’t question.

  She wondered if his family understood how much they could depend on this love of their brother’s.

  Right now, so physically comfortable, so easy with his company, she didn’t want to think about how she could depend on him. On his love, if he gave it to her.

  Listening to him it felt possible, for the first time, that she could weave back in with her own family. The last time they had seen Paz Farms had been five years ago, midway through the work she’d done here, when everything was still held together with prayer.

  She was angry in the face of their worry, and it had been right before she had found her grief support group. They had seen the evidence of the choices she was making in her lifestyle—acquaintances she went out with showing up at all hours. Her fatigue. Her distance.

  She’d like them to see what she had made here. It was evidence of their love for her, and what they had taught her.

  It wasn’t, though, the stories that Sam told her or thinking of her parents that made her set down her beer on her tray, push it back. Take his beer, set that down, too, and put herself in his lap.

  Really, it was just the noodles.

  It had been a long day, and she was sick with worry about Tay, and certain she would mess up the pepper harvest, and she had no idea what she should do about this man, but she was full of good noodles and this sofa was perfect, and his arms were strong and warm, the skin on his chest hot, his mouth as ginger-flavored as his hair.

  “God, Nina,” he whispered when she reached between them and rubbed his erection, squeezed it through his shorts, because it was exciting and intimate and when she did, he bucked up like she was the hottest thing, ever.

  Maybe she was.

  He pulled her T-shirt over her head, and she reached back and unfastened her bra. His hands were already all over her breasts, his fingers tracing, his palms pressing, making her feel like her breasts were swelling, her nipples almost too sensitive.

  His mouth on them was hot and cruelly tender; he’d press a little harder, and she’d fist her hand in his hair and push him close, then he’d back off, teasing.