Page 90 of Doctorshipped
There’s no heat in his words or even in his gaze. He’s losing his edge. Fiona doesn’t even gasp or come to my defense, so I know I’m not imagining this toned-down version of grumpy Doctor Buttercup.
“If I want to get fired, you’ll know it.”
“Oh really?”
“Yes.
“How?”
“I’ll quit.” I wink.
Grant shakes his head with amusement.
His dad is fully beaming now. It’s like he’s thrilled to see me go toe to toe with his son, and honestly, I don’t know what’s come over me. I verbally spar with Grant on a regular basis, in the spirit of poking the bear. But outside of Fiona, I have never had an audience to our playful tête-à-têtes.
Grant smirks, and then he does this thing with his eyebrows.
You probably don’t know this about me, but I’ve always been an eyebrow girl.
I know. I know. It’s not usual.
Most women swoon over pecs and quads, or the way a great pair of jeans hug a man’s butt. Maybe it’s the length of his unfairly long lashes. Not me. Okay, yes, I’ll watch a man walking away from me, and will not complain if his Levi’s make me do a double take. But eyebrows are my jam.
I’m not talking muppet eyebrows. And I’m not one to go for the unibrow. No offense to Herman Shartz who sat next to me in fourth grade and already needed an eyebrow threading by age ten. I’m talking about brows that have character. The kind a man raises when he’s appraising someone, like Dr McGrumpypants is doing to me right now.
Grant’s got the best kind of brows. I bet he can lift the center of one brow and drop the inner corner just right. Yep. Check. He just did that. And I imagine he could lift one and drop the other. For a stoic man, his expressive eyebrows tell me everything he’s trying so hard not to show with the rest of his cranky, emotionless expression. They give his stunning eyes an extra level of intensity. It’s a shame for such beautiful eyebrows to be doomed to live out the rest of their hairy days on that particularly stoic face where they get so little use.
Grant’s face has shifted from playfully confrontational to something softer. The change was almost imperceptible, but I saw it. I wish I could get inside that brain of his to see what he’s thinking.
Fiona interrupts our nonverbal standoff. “Miss Jayme, can we start our lessons so I can be done and spend more time with Grampaloo?”
I turn away from Grant to answer Fiona, “Of course. Let’s get busy with that schoolwork.”
Even though it was Fiona’s suggestion, she groans. But she stands up and leads the way to her bedroom. We’re studying upstairs today so her grandpa has free reign of the downstairs, and Fiona can make a good attempt at keeping her mind on her work.
Fiona’s remarkably focused considering the allure of her grandpa being right downstairs waiting for her to finish. We get through all her lessons in under an hour.
“You did great today,” I tell her.
We pack her assignments into her backpack together so she has them ready to take to school Monday. Oddly, it’s the most maternal moment I’ve ever had with her. A little voice in my head pokes at me saying this is what it would be like to have children—the small sacrifices that add up over time, the seemingly mundane moments spent together, having a part in helping another person grow into all they can be.
Longing blooms in my chest—a craving to be the kind of mom I didn’t have—connected, encouraging, and present. And I don’t want to be that mom to just any child. I want to be her for Fiona.
The absence of her real mom weighs on me. I’m suddenly the other woman—another third wheel, trying to turn a bicycle into a tricycle when it balances well without me. Reality taunts me. I’ll never be Fiona’s mom.
Fiona chatters on about places she wants to take her grandpa in and around Bordeaux, oblivious to the existential crisis unexpectedly raging inside me. I search her walls and the surfaces of her dresser and bedside tables for photos or keepsakes of her life before she came here. Specifically, I have this perverted need to see Fiona’s mom.
Nothing.
I feel my forehead scrunch. Why wouldn’t Fiona have any photos of her mom, or of their whole family together? It’s obviously not a question I can ask her—or Grant.
My eyes snag on a box in the corner.
“What’s in the box?” I ask far more casually than I feel.
Fiona’s eyes follow to where I’m pointing. “Oh. That’s just my hockey trophies and stuff. We haven’t gotten a shelf up for all of it yet. Can I go see my Grampopolis now?”
“Sure. Sure. Yeah. Let’s go.”
