Page 21 of Anatomy of a Meet Cute
“Attagirl,” Duke snarked, his head in the fridge as he dug around for something to eat.
“Obviously, you are superior in every way.” Jehan nodded. “But how exactly was he wrong? We need these details in order to silently gloat through our next hell shifts.”
“Basically, Dr.Franklin tried to laugh me out of there as soon as the wordscommunity programanddoulawere uttered. He started saying all kinds of things about the budget. And when I wouldn’t give up on that, he tried to ask why nurses couldn’t just do the work—”
“Did you say,’Cause they have other jobs?” Jehan jumped in, slapping the back of the couch as she got into the story.
“I did just that,” Sam said, shaking her head. “Then, get this, he basically said that every physician is a narcissist and that no one cares about our ideas as much as us.”
“What?” Duke shouted, popping his head out of the fridge. “That is rich coming from a man who insists on introducing himself asDoctorto all the other doctors he knows.”
“I know. I know. I could understand if I was asking for them to build me a space medicine laboratory or something. But honestly, I’m not that original,” Sam cackled.
“No, your program idea is way better than that,” Jehan said, shaking her head and missing the joke.
“Yeah, but you know what I mean. This ain’t exactly brand-new stuff. Rich women have had birthing coaches for years.”
“Okay, yeah. But don’t sell yourself short,” Jehan said, tapping the couch again. “Keep going. How did it end?”
“Right, right. Well, anyway. I could tell that making it all about patient outcomes wasn’t getting me anywhere, so then I shifted. Made it about saving money and staff time.”
“I’ll bet he was into that,” Duke said.
“He tried to play it off, like, whatever. But he was listening. So then I thought,Okay, maybe we compromise.So—”
“Wait. I thought we were being petty and focusing on where Grant was wrong. Didn’t he say to compromise?” Duke asked, coming outof the kitchen with something that looked suspiciously like a protein shake with coffee in it.
“Well, yes ...,” Sam said, shifting in her divot in the couch. “But this is different.”
“Different how? I thought this was about proving Grant wrong, not taking his advice and pretending you didn’t.” Duke sipped his glass of whatever and looked smug for all of three seconds, until the taste of what he was drinking started to burn his throat and he coughed. He deserved that. With the way he was raining on her superiority parade, Sam hoped the drink tasted like the dirt on a hubcap. “What’s the deal with you and him? Why do you hate him?”
“I don’t hate him.”
“You said you loathed his smug face last week,” Jehan said, narrowing her eyes at Sam.
Avoiding the weight of her roommates’ gazes, Sam wrinkled her nose and said, “Loathing a smug face isn’t hating.”
Jehan snorted and rolled her eyes before dramatically flopping onto the side of the couch just to drive her point home in case she wasn’t clear about how affronted she was by Sam’s logic.
“It’s just ... I feel like he is too perfect. There is something untrustworthy about good-looking people who are smart.”
“So you hate him because of his face?” Jehan asked.
“You don’t hate me, and I’m basically a god,” Duke said.
Both she and Jehan stopped to stare at Duke, who started cackling like the joke was the best one he’d told all day. When no one joined him, he straightened up and said, “Anyway. Carry on. You don’t trust his extremely symmetrical face because why?”
Why didn’t she trust him? She could admit it wasn’t just the plane thing, although that didn’t help. If she was honest with herself, Grant just felt too good. People like him weren’t interested in people like her—the messy kind, with broken family relationships and something to prove. They dated people who didn’t keep their phones in airplanemode to avoid hard phone calls and emergency ice cream in the fridge to survive hard days. No. She didn’t hate him. It was more that she was afraid of him. Of what he’d see if he looked too close. All the cracks in her life on display like that ...
She didn’t even want to think about it. Looking at her friends, she pasted a smile on and said, “Because I just don’t.”
“Duke, don’t pester poor Sam. Can’t you see she is basically melting under the pressure of explaining the unexplainable?” Jehan said, cutting Duke off before he could try to reason with Sam.
“Make fun all you want. I don’t see Grant Gao running a doula-and-doctor community program.”
“Technically you aren’t either,” Duke said, wincing through another sip of his drink.
“Okay, pipe down before you catch a knuckle sandwich,” Jehan said, coming to Sam’s defense with more sincerity this time.
