Page 18 of For Her Own Good

We both sit, me smoothing my tie down my chest and her dropping into her chair with a sigh. She does look harried, which may be the wetness, but still, she needn’t look that way on my account. The words are out of my mouth before I can stop them.

“Next time you’ll get your umbrella. I don’t mind if you’re late if you arrive in one dry piece.”

Her eyebrows go up and my collar feels tight. I’m going to brazen this one out, though, act as though it’s not at all odd that I’ve gone and given her instructions like she’s a schoolgirl. She’s not. She can tell me where to shove my umbrella if she feels like it, and I half wish that she will.

A smile dances around her lips, though, and every curse word I ever learned pings around my head.

“You wouldn’t be worried if I was late?”

“I would, because you’re never late and I’d assume something was wrong. But that’s what cell phones are for, aye?”

The cocktail menu in front of me has become very, very interesting all of a sudden.

“I meant that you always look faintly relieved when I show up. That could be more overactive imagination than reality, though.”

I glance up and the bottom half of her face is covered with her own menu, but her eyes say she’s smiling behind there. What a wretched little tease. Noticed that, has she? The only response I can come up with is a very eloquent grunt. Scotsmen are legend for our ability to speak an entire sentence with a single grunt.

“Whatever the case, I don’t want you making yourself sick being out in bad weather. I’ll live if you’re a bit late.”

“Okay,” she says, a lilt of mockery in her voice. “Next time I’ll go back for my umbrella.”

Next time. This seems to be an indefinite standing date. Though when she’s not sassing me, she sometimes seems like she’s off-balance. I could ask her about it, but perhaps I’ve been paternalistic enough for one evening already. Perhaps she thinks so as well because she sets her menu down and starts to fiddle with a ring she wears on her left middle finger.

We don’t speak for a minute and as I always do when something interrupts our patter, I fear the easiness between us is over, that we’ve both come to the conclusion that this is far too bizarre to continue, and make excuses about next time for long enough we forget we ever had a standing date. I’m about to dredge up something to say, ask her an inane question about her day, anything but sit in awkward silence, when Starla reaches into the enormous sack she calls a bag. “This is for you.”

The thing she shoves at me from across the table is a water bottle. “Thank you?”

I don’t mean for it to come out as a question, but I’m a bit perplexed as to why she’s given me a water bottle. I’m not a billionaire like her, certainly, but I’ve got a reusable water bottle or two knocking around my apartment.

She rolls her eyes and slumps before giving me the eye of the devil. “It’s not just a water bottle, laser brain. It’s special.”

I mean, it is, because she gave it to me—I’d treasure a worm carcass she picked off the ground and put in my hand—but I don’t think that’s what she meant. I look at the thing to puzzle out what’s special about it. It’s green; that’s nice. It’s tall, so I won’t run out quickly, also good since I don’t always have time to go to the kitchen between patients. It has lines on the sides, which, fine, most of them do, but… Ah. That’s it. It doesn’t just have the amount of water written next to the lines, it’s printed with times.

“I give these to my clients all the time. Most people are dehydrated but they don’t realize it, and it’s a pain to keep track. With some of my clients, we can set alarms, but since you’re with patients all the time, that’s not a good strategy for you. This way, when you’re in between clients, you can look at your bottle and see how much you should’ve had to drink by that point in the day.”

“That’s very clever, thank you.” I smile, not giving in to the grin that’s tugging at the corners of my mouth. If I make too big a deal out of it, she’ll be embarrassed and won’t do anything like it again. But the smile on her own face doesn’t escape my notice. She always did like to be praised and it seems that hasn’t changed.

“You’re welcome,” she sniffs, trying to cover up her pleasure at my words, but that smile doesn’t lie, nor does the pink blooming on her cheeks. “Hopefully that will help with your headaches.”

“Headaches?” I mean, yes, I do regularly get headaches, but…

“You rub your temples, pinch the bridge of your nose frequently. You keep asking me to dinner, so I’m assuming it’s not because you find my company tedious.”

Sassy britches.

“I don’t find you tedious at all. This is the best part of my week.”

The pink on her cheeks gets darker, and she gulps down some water without looking at me. “Well, you know you should drink more than that if you’re working out or if you’ve been having a lot of caffeine. I can’t do anything about that.”

“I’ll do my best to remember, but I can’t promise anything. I’m a bit of a wreck, can barely dress myself as you can see.”

She scoffs, and I watch as her gaze skims over my tie, my blazer, my shirt. I don’t want to say that I spent a lot of time selecting them with her in mind, but I absolutely did. She likes blue, so I’m wearing a blue and white checkered shirt with a blue and silver paisley tie, and then my one grey houndstooth blazer. Not bad, I don’t think. And it’s possible I texted Maeve a picture to make sure mixing those prints wouldn’t make me look like an arse. Either she was lying, or I really do look okay.

“Well, I can’t help you with that either, but it seems to me you’re doing fine.”

She looks down in her lap again and fiddles with her napkin. I need a new topic before she gets skittish or starts to wonder what the hell she’s doing here with me. Again. After she’d said no—emphatically, repeatedly—not all that long ago.

“Ah, I meant to tell you my new schedule starts Monday next.”

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