Page 22 of Drown Like Heaven
“Yeah. Fuck the surgeon bootlickers.”
She laughed. “You always know exactly what’s bothering me. I love you.”
“I love you, too.” I slide my hand over the table to tap on the back of her hand with my pointer finger, three little taps. I didn’talwaysknow what was bothering Mila, but it was easy enough to guess. Med school was competitive. It was easy to start feeling like shit about your lack of publications, or your non-surgical specialty, or whatever else people were bitching about.
“How’s your first day of classes going?” Mila asked, sitting up and taking a sip of her coffee through a paper straw.
“Well, I’ve only had one class so far. And you know how that went.”
“I don’t, really. Please elaborate.”
“It was pretty typical in every sense—except the fact that my professor looks like a god. Since you’ve seen the picture, there’s really nothing you don’t know. Normal class stuff. Hot teacher.” It was close enough to the truth. For whatever reason, I’d never mentioned what happened with Mason to Mila.
It felt strangely intense and private. Maybe I didn’t want her to know what things I let myself do in the dark, or that I got wet thinking about Mason making me pass out, and still fingering me when I was unconscious. The person I’d been in the car with Mason was a person I’d been trying to outrun my whole life.
Besides, it wasn’t like I’d ever see him again.
So, Mila would have no frame of reference if I told her Dr. Killshaw was cut from the same cloth as Mason.You don’t know that,my brain reminded me, because I didn’t. I’d only met both of them one time, and my meeting with Dr. Killshaw couldn’t really be called ameetingsince I didn’t speak a word to him. I listened to him talk for an hour from across the room, and that was it. What I did with Mason was definitely classified as ameeting, though.
Either way, it was weird to link them.
“I wish I had a hot teacher.”
Some movement at the entrance caught my attention and my eyes widened. Mila didn’t even need me to say anything before she was turning to see what—who—I was staring at.
She whipped back around, mouthingis that him?
I nodded.
He seemed even taller in the library, walking among regular-sized human beings. Thankfully, he hadn’t noticed me nor Mila, seeing as he was heading straight towards a conference room on the opposite side of the building. Once he was out of sight, I dropped my face into my hands.
“That’s insane, Dakota. Actually insane.”
“Iknow.”
“No wonder I heard about him all the way from the med school.”
Part of me wanted to ask if she felt any amount of fear when looking at him, but I didn’t want to sound stupid. I mean, obviously I wouldn’t mind fucking a man who looked like that, but there was something else going on, too. Eventually, I decided against divulging my irrational anxieties, and steered the conversation back towards normal topics until it was time for my next class.
Chapter 7
Dakota
I stomped up the few steps leading up to the deck in front of my single-wide, my backpack strap digging into my shoulder, then pulled open the screen door and propped it against my hip while I got my keys out. The place used to belong to my aunt, but then she remarried and the timing was right for me to buy it from her. I really only had to pay the lot fee each month—and the electric and water. It didn’t amount to much, compared to other places.
A light came on in another trailer across from mine, and I watched an older woman sit down at her kitchen table, followed by her husband. I knew them vaguely as my neighbors, but didn’t really know much about their life.
After unlocking the door, I headed inside, flicking my own lights on and turning the deadbolt back behind myself. The curtains on all the windows were already shut, for privacy and to keep the temperature more regulated inside.
I dropped my stuff on the counter, then looked through the mostly-empty fridge for food I knew wouldn’t be there. It was almost my daily routine at this point, as if one of these times there’d actually be something new sitting on the clear shelves.
Padding over the thin carpet towards my bedroom, I rubbed the back of my neck, sore from hours of being hunched over my laptop trying to get ahead on reading. After my second and finalclass of the day, I’d spent some more time at the library, using up my start-of-semester motivation.
I unzipped my jacket and hung it on a hook on the back of my bedroom door, then grabbed some pajamas—men’s boxers and a huge t-shirt—and headed into the bathroom.
The bathroom was small, with just one dingy light above the mirror, the reflective glass spotted with darkness around the edges where it’d oxidized over time. I flicked on the switch for the light, then the one for the shitty fan, listening to it hum to life above my head while I balanced my bundle of clothes on the ceramic edge of the sink.
Tan, discolored wallpaper covered the walls—not really patterned, but there was a texture to it I could feel under my fingertips. There weren’t many decorations in here: a shelf over the toilet for my mismatched towels, and a fuzzy bathmat that’d become significantly less fuzzy since I’d bought it.
