Archive of Our Own

There was no excuse, in Brendon Park’s mind, for not knowing the answer to a question.

For being slow on the draw. For hesitating. For taking a reasonable human second to think.

He needed to be better than human. He needed to be perfect. That was the only way for a kid with nothing to claw his way up. To get a foothold. To become a man with something. And he wanted everything.

It was his first year working in a hospital and it felt like almost every surgery was the first of something. First time seeing a procedure or using a technique or needing to know something that he’d previously had no need to know. Still, newness was no excuse for ignorance.

Brendon studied. Every free second in the hospital and every free second outside the hospital. He read notes and case studies, watched OR tapes, quizzed himself endlessly, until he could visualize every item on the schedule with one hundred percent clarity. He imagined what questions the attending would ask and learned all the answers. He imagined what questions the attending wouldn’t ask and learned all those answers too.

He was the best surgical resident by a league, by almost any metric.

(Did bedside manner even really count?)

But he wasn’t perfect.

It took him fourteen seconds, with his hand on the shoulder joint of a patient, to recall possible surgical complications as the result of an early arthritis diagnosis. It didn’t matter, it wasn’t a diagnosis his patient had, and the answer came to him eventually.

Too little, too late, in his opinion.

Usually the gym was his time to relax. Not study. Work off a little of the stress that had been grinding him down since he turned fifteen and realized he might have a real shot at a scholarship to school somewhere that wasn’t nowhere. He went every day that he could manage and instead of study, for a short time he would exercise instead.

Until the irritation trapped in his body poured out of him with the sweat.

But that was before he’d slipped. So on Thursday between sets, he read case studies. While he ran he listened to a conference recording. While he was crossing the parking lot he scanned operating notes.

Which was a pretty stupid thing to do and he only realized as much when someone backed into him with their car.

On the one hand, it wasn’t as dramatic as it sounded. The car, a tiny black hatchback that he probably could have deadlifted if he felt inclined to try, backed up at a speed of .5 miles per hour. The corner of the car connected with his arm and stopped with a lurch before he slapped his palm onto the rear windshield to regain his balance. His phone clattered to the pavement, but he wasn’t hurt, he didn’t think.

On the other hand, he could have been. He was a fucking surgical resident. The worst thing that could possibly happen to him was an injury to his arm, or hand specifically. If he lost any fine motor skill in either hand, he’d never see the inside of an OR again.

Cold, boiling rage surged up and he opened his mouth to tell the driver the degree to which they had just royally fucked up.

“Oh my God are you okay? I can’t believe— Please tell me you’re okay. Do you need me to call an ambulance?” The woman scrambled from the driver’s door leaving it open behind her and met him at the back of the car. Her hands fluttered briefly in the air between them like she wanted to touch him, but she didn’t. She just stared up at him with huge, horrified, apologetic, beautiful green eyes.

Brendon stared down at her. And what came out of his mouth was, “I’m fine.”

She didn’t seem to believe him. “You are definitely not fine, I hit you with my car! I’m so, so sorry! I can’t believe I did that!” She continued to look horrified, her brow furrowed and her mouth twisted into a frown. She clasped her hands together tightly.

And what came out of his mouth was, “I’m fine. It’s fine.” Which was insane because it definitely wasn’t. He couldn’t believe the words that were coming out of his own mouth. He should’ve been threatening to sue her and instead he was telling her, “Don’t worry about it.”

“Please don’t say you’re fine again,” The woman said quietly. “Look, you’re already bruised—” She reached out then and wrapped her fingers around his elbow, her expression tight with worry.

Brendon couldn’t remember the last time someone had looked at him like that. With genuine concern. He also couldn’t remember the last time someone had touched him so casually. So gently. He could remember the average length of time it took a bruise to form. He twisted to get a look at the side of his bicep. “That’s dirt.”

The woman frowned a little deeper, pulled the hem of her sleeve over her hand, and wiped the dirt away. “Well, still. I feel so bad. I don’t know how I didn’t see you, I’m so sorry.”

He wasn’t sure how she hadn’t seen him either. But, in fairness, he hadn’t seen her. Because he’d been looking at his phone like an idiot. His phone that he’d lost to the pavement somewhere. He glanced around. “Do you see my—”

“Oh!” She let go of his arm and spun, her eyes on the ground. “Here!” She bent and scooped the device from where it was lying facedown under the bumper of her car. She straightened and turned to offer it to him. “Oh, shoot. Sorry. I will pay to fix that.”

She was referring to the spiderwebbing cracks through his screen, but his mind was elsewhere. He cleared his throat. “It’s fine.”

Again, it wasn’t. He couldn’t account for the dumb shit coming out of his mouth. He’d never been moved by a pretty face before.

But her face was especially pretty. Wide green eyes framed by long lashes, a delicate nose, soft pink lips. A smattering of freckles across her cheekbones that matched the auburn tint of her long wavy hair. The rest of her was just as pretty. A full foot shorter than he was, the curve of her waist emphasized by the tight cinch of her jeans, her long sleeved shirt tucked into the band.

“It really isn’t. Please let me pay to fix it?”

Fuck, there was something about the way she said please. It made him want to cave. “No.”

The woman seemed to shrink. Her lips twisted into what was very nearly a pout. As cute as it was, he was starting to feel bad for her. Which was ridiculous.

“Fine,” she conceded. “Can I at least buy you dinner or something?”

That, Brendon thought, was a very odd apology for hitting someone with a car. He didn’t want to go for dinner with a stranger. He wanted to go home and study. He wanted to bitch about his wrecked phone to his roommate. Maybe go to bed at a reasonable hour.

But he didn’t think he could send her home looking so upset.

And he did kind of want to have dinner with this particular stranger.

“Fine.”

The woman looked surprised. “Okay,” she said. She glanced around the parking lot at the surrounding businesses, as though anything that shared a parking lot with a gym was an appropriate place to eat.

“I get to pick where.”

Her eyes flicked back to his face. Then down his chest and back up in a slow, assessing line. “Fine,” she agreed when her eyes were back on his. “Do you want to—“ She gestured to her car.

Brendon felt like his entire body was on fire. He scowled. “No. I’d rather we walk.”

The woman laughed. The sound was high and musical and she slapped a hand over her mouth to smother it, her eyes wide.

He didn’t quite manage to fight off the upward twist to his lips.

Brendon Park was not picky. He was particular. He liked things a certain way. Routine, he found, was comfortable. The place around the block from his gym was comfortable. It was somewhere between a coffee shop and a restaurant. It had several menu options that he’d deemed calorically acceptable and which also tasted good. He didn’t feel bad about going in his gym shorts, and it wasn’t expensive.

They were halfway there when the woman he was walking with turned to him and said, “I’m Lily by the way. Liliana. Kozik-Kester.”

“Brendon Park,” he offered in return.

“It’s nice to meet you, Brendon.”

And, stupidly, he thought she might really mean that. Not the way his colleagues at the hospital did. Not the way his peers had. Not the way the women he used to flirt with at bars tended to.

When he opened the door to The Moose for her, Lily looked around and gave an interested hum. He wasn’t sure what she thought of the building, but it was nice enough. A long counter on one side of the space and a dozen wooden tables on the other. The walls were covered in local art with outrageous price tags stapled up next to them and there was some sort of indie rock song playing.

She went to the order counter and surveyed the menu that hung over it. “What’s good here?”

“The club. Greek wrap’s not bad.”

He wasn’t sure why she asked, because when the man at the counter gestured to her, she ordered a bahn mi. He gave his order after her and had to fight the urge to pull out his wallet. Instead, she pulled a card free from her phone case and tapped it on the terminal. Together and only a little awkwardly, they went to a two-top near the window and sat across from each other.

“What do you do, Brendon?” She folded her hands on top of each other and smiled at him.

He hated small talk. “I’m a surgical resident.”

“Really?” Her smile grew. “I would not have guessed that.”

He frowned. “Why not?”

“I just wouldn’t have thought someone so buff would be a doctor.”

He remembered her earlier appraisal of him and felt heat rise behind his ribs. “I plan to specialize in orthopedics. It requires breaking bones on occasion.” He recognized the statement as being fairly ominous and tried to get past it. “What about you?”

“I’m a teacher. Grade two.” She lifted her hand and dropped her chin to her palm. “I just moved to town a few months ago and it’s a miracle I got a full time position.”

“Where are you from?” Why was he asking, was a better question.

“The middle of nowhere,” she teased.

He huffed. “Me too.”

“Wow. I can’t believe we’re from the same town and haven’t met before.” She beamed. Clearly she thought her own bad joke was delightful.

He refused to be delighted. If his mouth twitched, it was only because he was low on potassium.

Lily wasn’t bothered. “Do you live around here?”

“No.” he replied shortly.

Lily wasn’t bothered by that either. “You go to a gym that’s not close to your house?”

“It’s close to the hospital.” Closeish, all things being relative. It was between the hospital and his house, and while it wasn’t great, it was semi-convenient and reasonably cheap.

Lily raised her eyebrows. “Is the hospital nearby?”

Brendon frowned. “You don’t know where the hospital is?” The location of the nearest hospital was something he always knew. It seemed like the kind of thing one should know in case of an emergency.

She considered his question briefly, then pointed toward the front window. “Well the car is that way,” she twisted in her chair, “and my place is by the river,” she looked to the roof as she thought, “and the hospitals south of the river somewhere so,” she pointed toward the counter, “it’s that way.”

Brendon shook his head in disbelief. “None of that was right.” He gestured over his shoulder. “The river’s that way.” It was interesting to him that she’d managed to get turned around in the span of a city block.

It was also interesting to him that a young woman working as a teacher should have a place by the river, in an area of town that should’ve been prohibitively expensive. It was why he didn’t live closer to work in the first place. He watched her hands as the server set a plate in front of each of them and noted that hers was empty.

“You live on the shore?” he asked after a second’s indecision.

“Ish,” Lily replied around her first biteful of food. She swallowed and continued, “That subdivision near the park with the big whale statue?”

That was, he thought, a nice neighbourhood. Outside of it being very close to the hospital.

“My grandmother passed and left me a townhouse. That’s why I moved. There’s nothing more enticing than cheap lodging when you’ve got student debt. I probably should’ve just sold the place. It needs some work and if I get killed on property taxes I won’t be able to afford to do it. I need to find a roommate but I only know about three people,” she said the last bit like a joke, as if trying to temper the seriousness of the rest.

Brendon Park didn’t believe in fate. Or signs from the universe. Or serendipity. He did believe in taking advantage of an opportunity. Any and every opportunity that presented itself to him.

His own place was acceptable. He shared a medium-sized house with three guys he knew well enough to watch a hockey game with. It was thirty minutes from the hospital if there was no traffic, and was nice enough when it was clean. There was never no traffic and it was never clean. What it was, was cheap. Yes, as a resident he made money. But he hadn’t been doing it for very long, and his student debt was, in a word, crushing. Lily wasn’t kidding about the relationship between debt and cheap lodging.

His place was acceptable because it was cheap, but he hated it.

He hated wasting hours in traffic that he could’ve been using to study. He hated that his fridge constantly looked like a science experiment had gone wrong inside of it. He hated making small talk because one of his roommates was always home. And he hated that almost every night, and almost every morning, someone woke him up and ruined his chance of feeling rested for work.

Apparently his silence was telling. Lily glanced up from the sandwich in her hands and studied him. Her eyebrows furrowed. “You aren’t—“ she paused.

He wasn’t. “I am.”

“Really?” She sat up straight.

He hesitated. He never hesitated. How excruciating would it be to live in a townhouse with a woman who had quite literally hit him with a car? She seemed like the kind of person who enjoyed small talk. But if it was cheap. And close to work. And God, what if it was clean?

“Yes.”

It wasn’t that easy.

But it was almost that easy.

He walked Lily back to her car. She had his number and agreed to send him pictures of the place. He tried not to get his hopes up as he drove himself home. What followed, were a couple weeks of back and forth logistical text messages.

The place looked from the photos to be a decent size. Nothing about it was new except the sage green paint on the walls, but it was clean. There was a little patch of grass for a backyard. When he looked up the exact address, it was within two miles of the hospital.

Lily gave him a price with a question mark attached that he thought he could probably haggle her down from and that was already cheap enough to have him shopping for different gyms.

He told her that he worked shifts and that his sleep schedule could be unpredictable.

She told him that wouldn’t be a problem because she liked to go to bed early anyway.

She said she might need help occasionally with moving furniture as she tried to renovate.

He said he didn’t mind.

It was undoubtedly one of the strangest choices he’d ever made, but he gave his roommates notice and packed his shit.

The townhouse, which he moved into on a Saturday he didn’t work, had two stories. The living room and kitchen were on the bottom. There was a small entryway that opened onto the staircase, and a full bath with a stacked washer and dryer. Upstairs had three bedrooms, one with an ensuite.

That was Lily’s. It was at the end of the hall, which meant she passed his room to get to hers. He kept his door closed for privacy. She did not.

Every time he walked up the stairs he could see directly into her room. She had a deep brown duvet cover, and a hundred pillows. There were always at least three books on her night stand. Sometimes, when she talked on the phone, she would lie on her back in the middle of her bed. He knew that, because she still didn’t close the door, and she would wave when she saw him on the landing.

She kept the house clean. The fridge never looked like something was growing in it, there was just a rotation of fresh produce and delicious looking leftovers. She didn’t touch his food, which made sense, because hers seemed better.

For the first few weeks, they didn’t see each other much. He worked a lot and she really did go to bed early. It was good. Better than his old place. He made it to work in fifteen minutes and the gym near the townhouse was way nicer than the one by The Moose had been.

Then, all of a sudden, it was like their schedules synced up. Living with Lily got weird. Because she did like small talk. And he kept finding himself drawn into it.

He made it home after work one evening, later than usual because there had been an emergency re-implantation surgery and while he didn’t get to do much he wanted to see it through. He stepped through the front door and heard the TV playing something.

“Hi Brendon!”

Briefly he considered going directly upstairs. But he had to shower. And eat. And it would be rude. He stepped into the living room instead. “Hey.”

Lily was sitting on the couch. Her whole body was turned and she had her arm curled under her chin and trapped against the back cushion. It didn’t look comfortable. Her eyes were pinned on the screen. “How was work?”

He glanced at the TV. There were zombies on it. “Fine.” That was his standard answer. “How was your day?”

“Great. We learned how to play the spoons.” He was thinking that twenty second graders with spoons sounded like his version of hell, when she added, “I made soup if you want some.”

That must’ve been what he was smelling. “I’m okay.” That was also his standard answer.

“Oh!” She slapped a hand over her eyes. One of the zombies had been impaled and was still squirming. “Oh my God.”

He raised an eyebrow that she didn’t see, and tossed his pack near the stairs. “What are you watching?”

“Walking Dead. It’s so gross.” She didn’t uncover her eyes.

“So turn it off?” he suggested mildly.

“But Sarah already thinks I’m a giant nerd,” Lily complained.

He knew of Sarah, because Lily had mentioned her. The context being, ‘my friend Sarah thinks you’re going to murder me’. He’d snorted at the statement. He had yet to meet Sarah in person. He left Lily to her show and went to shower.

He spent ten minutes longer than usual under the hot spray of the water and only got out when he tipped dangerously and realized he’d been falling asleep. He pulled on the sweats he kept in the bathroom, ran both hands through his hair roughly, and went to the kitchen to cook something.

It only took him thirty seconds of looking into the fridge to realize he wasn’t up to the task. The pot on the stove looked so fucking tempting.

But, despite moving in with a stranger that had backed into him, Brendon liked clear boundaries. They weren’t friends, they were roommates. They didn’t chat, or use each other’s stuff, or eat each other’s food.

“I can’t do it. You’re right. I’m definitely going to have nightmares.” Lily stepped into the room and swept past him to open the freezer. She pulled out a pint of ice-cream and jumped to sit on the counter, yanking a spoon from a nearby drawer wrong-sided.

He blinked at her.

Every time he thought he was getting used to her presence, she’d do something odd to put him on his heels. Like sit on the counter and eat ice-cream straight from the container. Infuriatingly, it was a downright normal thing to do. But when Lily did it, it was enticing. Her with her soft curves all wrapped up in a sweatshirt and yoga pants, her dumb fuzzy slippers on her feet. She studied him, and he tried not to watch her release the spoon from her mouth with a pop.

“You look tired.”

He made a non-commital noise. “Long surgery.”

She tilted her head. “What kind?”

“Reattached an arm.”

She dropped her hands to her lap and stared at him. “Seriously?”

He clicked his tongue and ran a hand over his hair. “It’s not that impressive. I didn’t do much. My attending doesn’t like me.” There they all were, five more details than he ever gave anybody else.

“Why not?” she asked, frowning.

Brendon shrugged. “He called me dangerously ambitious and cold. I wasn’t supposed to hear him.”

“That’s really rude.” She dug absently into the ice-cream with her spoon but didn’t take a bite. He thought she might offer some sort of platitude, but she didn’t. She said instead, “You want some soup?”

“Sure.”

That was kind of all it took to dissolve what had been, in retrospect, a pretty fragile boundary.

Lily took to offering him some of whatever she was cooking if he happened to step in the kitchen while she was doing it. Which was surprisingly often. And he would’ve declined, except for the fact that he was always tired and it always smelled delicious.

She kept asking about his day and he kept telling her, in very few words. “Good.” “Surgical reduction of a dislocated shoulder.” “Standard knee replacement.” “Keller was being a prick.”

He’d ask about her day and she told him in more words. “So when they went out for recess disaster was already brewing and then one of the girls told the others that she was in charge of four square and no boys were allowed to play on Tuesdays and it just turned into a complete mess. So many tears.”

“Whose?” he asked mildly into his bowl.

“Mostly mine,” Lily joked, grinning at him from across the table.

He snorted a laugh.

It seemed fair, because she kept cooking and offering him some, that he ask if she wanted anything when he ordered food before a night shift. So he texted her.

They didn’t text much. Usually important, shared space related items. Reminders about garbage day. A heads up that he got roped into an extra shift and would be trying to sleep early. Notice that she was going to be painting baseboards and he should open a window.

He asked if she wanted Indian food and she sent back a heart emoji. He asked what she wanted and she sent a shrug. He was pretty sure she was in a faculty meeting or she would’ve sent more. He ordered her a curry and pretended not to have thought about it too hard. When she texted him later that evening, it was to sing the chef’s praises, and thank him, and tell him how shitty her day and been, and how it wasn’t anymore.

It was just food. From the second best place he knew of because the first best was too far for delivery. It wouldn’t even have been warm by the time she made it home. Nowhere near as good as any of the things she cooked. But it made him smile a little anyway.

“Park,” Keller called from across the hall.

Brendon shoved his phone in his pocket as quickly as he could and schooled his features into a mask of professionalism. “Yes sir?”

The man studied him briefly. “Something important going on?”

“No,” Brendon answered. “It was personal. Won’t happen again.”

“Uh-huh,” Keller drawled. “Check on Mr. Jones, if you don’t mind.”

He didn’t mind. He nodded and stalked off toward recovery.

Eating with Lily, it turned out, had been a line that once crossed was impossible to turn back. She cooked almost every night and when they were home together she always made a point of asking him to join her. When they weren’t home together, she’d pack leftovers away in the fridge and leave a note inviting him to eat them. It had been easy to decline when he didn’t know how good her cooking was. It wasn’t anymore.

It was just so nice to get home from a long shift and to sit down and eat something that tasted like home. Against both his will and better judgement, he started to look forward to it.

In Brendon’s opinion it was best not to look forward to things. That was how one got disappointed. But he looked forward to the possibility of getting home from a surgery he’d barely been allowed into, and eating whatever it was that Lily had bought edamame for, before spending the rest of his night reading old surgical notes.

Her car was in the driveway when he got there and he practically jogged up the front steps. In the entryway he tossed his pack to the stairs and bent to unlace his shoes. “Hey,” he called into the house.

“Hi!” Lily called back from the kitchen, her voice muffled.

That wasn’t a good sign. Warily he set his shoes on the shelf and went to get his eyes on whatever she was doing.

Lily had been very serious about renovating. She’d painted baseboards and cabinets. She had cleaned the windows and replaced one screen. She got partway through replacing the light fixture in the hallway, and gave up. Because it turned out painting was easy, and actual reno work was hard.

That didn’t stop her from trying though. She was lying on a blanket, mostly underneath the kitchen sink. There were a couple tools laid out beside her. “How was work?” she asked when he stepped up beside her feet.

“Bad.” he replied. “What are you doing?”

“The sink was plugged and I read that you can take apart the trap and pull stuff out. So I’m doing that. I definitely dropped a ring in here once.”

Brendon huffed. “Lily.”

“Yeah?” She had a wrench in her hand but didn’t seem to be making any progress.

“I had a bad day,” he repeated.

“That sucks.” She shifted to look at him past the lip of the counter over her head. “Do you want to tell me about it?”

He never wanted to tell anyone about it, but she’d tricked him with that question a few times. “No. I need to shower and read surgical notes for tomorrow,” he said forcefully. She didn’t seem to be getting his point.

“Okay,” Lily said hesitantly. “There are sushi bowls in the fridge if you want one.”

Fuck. “Lily, I do not have time to help you with whatever this is.”

“Okay,” she repeated, and sounded confused. “I can handle it.”

Except, he knew that she couldn’t. It was possible that she knew more about plumbing than electrical, but she’d been entirely hopeless at replacing the light fixture in the hall and he didn’t think she knew any more about the state of her kitchen sink.

Brendon knew about the kitchen sink. Just like he’d known about the light. He’d finished replacing it when it became apparent she wouldn’t be, after a night shift when she was already gone to work. It was unclear if she’d noticed.

He growled. Because despite how badly he didn’t want to, he would feel badly if he didn’t help her. He wasn’t used to feeling badly about things.

For a long time he’d been on his own. Since before he’d graduated high school even, though his mother had pretended otherwise. He looked after himself and reasoned that it wasn’t his job to look after anyone else. He watched no shortage of people, personally and professionally, burn themselves out trying to make life easier for everyone else, and he wouldn’t make the same mistake.

He’d been called selfish, cold, and cruel. He didn’t see what was selfish about a lack of misplaced altruism.

“Really, Brendon, I don’t need any—“ Lily let out a high squeak as he wrapped his hands around her calves and pulled her out from under the sink. She slid easily across the floor with the blanket bunched underneath her.

“Out of the way,” he demanded. Lily didn’t say anything, but she did scramble out of his way as he took her place under the sink. He muttered a curse and picked up the wrench, already positive that the place where the edge of the cabinet was digging into his spine would be sore tomorrow.

There was a minute of quiet as he fiddled with the joint of the u-bend and Lily knelt somewhere near his shins. Then she asked, “What surgical notes do you need to read?”

“I’m supposed to assist on a spinal fusion of the C7 and 8 vertebrae,” he grumbled. “I wanted to review.” He wanted to review at a reasonable hour. He would still review, when he was done with the sink, and his sleep would suffer for it.

“Do you have the notes?” she asked gently. “I could read them to you.”

Brendon stopped what he was doing. He stared up at the bottom of the sink, then glanced past the edge of the cupboard at Lily. He couldn’t see her face, but he could see her hands where they were folded and fidgeting in her lap. It was such a strange suggestion.

It occurred to him that he might’ve made her feel badly. Which made him feel awful. His thoughts chased each other around his skull for a minute, before he came to a decision. “In my backpack. The blue folder.”

Lily gave an affirmative hum and got up, presumably to get the folder. Brendon felt like shit. He focused on the sink. When Lily returned, she spent a minute re-folding the blanket and wedging it against the counter somewhere to his left, before he heard the folder flip open and she started to read.

He was surprised.

Firstly, by her voice. He had to assume that Lily read aloud often to her students, but he didn’t think the content in her second grade classroom was likely to mirror what she was reading just then. Yet her voice was clear and even and she didn’t stumble at all over the complex medical terminology.

Secondly, he was surprised by how her reading made him feel. It was relaxing, the smooth beat of familiar words permeating the kitchen. Underneath that, was the warmth. The overwhelming, agonizing feeling that came with someone doing something kind. Of feeling cared for.

The words wormed their way into his brain and stuck, more easily than they ever did when he reviewed on his own.

“Can I ask a question?” Lily asked, as he was clearing a disgusting ball of something from the u-bend he’d removed.

“Yes,” he replied, because the inside of his chest felt unbearably soft and he couldn’t imagine saying no.

So Lily asked a question. And another. And another. Why someone might have the surgery he was assisting on, and what the complications were, and what tools they used, and was that the same kind of drill she had in the closet, and what were the screws made of that they used on people, and why that metal, and what would he do if they opened someone up and found cancer, or cracked bone, or that the entire spine was just way worse than they’d thought.

She finished reading him the notes.

By the time he was done and the sink was running again with no leaks, he felt like he could perform the surgery solo if he needed to.

“Here,” he said, offering Lily the plain gold band he’d found caught in the mess of the trap and cleaned under the spray as he washed his hands.

“Oh!” She slapped the folder on the counter and took it, slipping it onto her right ring finger. “Thanks.” She smiled up at him. “You want some food now?”

“Yes.”

Surgery the next day was almost as boring as he expected it to be. Keller really didn’t like him. He seemed to think that if Brendon was allowed to actually do anything, somebody would die. So he held instruments and watched and answered the occasional question that Keller saw fit to throw at him.

“Park. Why is it that we use nitinal here?”

“To reduce the loss of spinal alignment correction over time,” he rattled automatically.

Keller looked up from where his hands hovered over the open spine of the man between them. “You had that ready to go,” he muttered.

And maybe because Brendon was bored, he said something dumb. “Lily asked me that one last night.” Immediately he kicked himself. He didn’t share personal anecdotes at work. He didn’t talk about his hobbies, or what he watched on TV, and he definitely didn’t talk about his roommate that had hit him with her car.

Keller’s eyebrows rose. He said, “Huh.”

Brendon felt his cheek twitch under his mask.

“Here. You place the next one.” Keller gestured to the tray holding an array of metal rods and screws.

He blinked and pretended not to be surprised at all.

Because of the way his shifts worked, it wasn’t often that Brendon and Lily had days off together. She worked Monday to Friday, and in theory he worked two days then two nights, but more realistically as many days in a row as the hospital was allowed to schedule him, on whatever shift Keller wanted to put him on, which tended to be whatever the surgical staff more senior to him didn’t want to work.

The last time had been weeks before. All the way back when he’d mostly stayed in his room when he was at home, and Lily extended the occasional offer to eat whatever she’d cooked but he refused. Back when she’d still been at least a little uncomfortable with him, like she didn’t know how to approach him or what to say.

The lingering awkwardness that had persisted long past the two month mark when he’d lived with previous roommates, had all but dissolved. He’d failed to consider what that meant for a shared Saturday off.

When he woke up, early but later than usual, Lily was still asleep. He knew that instantly, because she only kept her door closed when she went to bed. He didn’t give it much thought, he just grabbed his gym bag and headed out.

His new gym was close to the townhouse and extremely nice. He tended to run to the gym before shifts, then to work, and would walk or run home depending on how fried he was when the day was done. On his days off, he still ran to the gym, and he took exactly the same amount of time to complete his workout.

When he got home, he’d have something for breakfast, usually a smoothie, and study. He’d sit at the kitchen table and enjoy the light through the patio doors and the quiet of the house.

He didn’t realize until he was untying his shoes in the entryway, that Lily had a very different day off routine.

There was music playing in the kitchen and the whole first floor smelled delicious.

He had two options. Go to his room sweaty, which he didn’t love. Or go to the kitchen, which he also didn’t love. He eyed the second floor landing. Would it make him a coward if he fled?

“Brendon?”

He took a single step to look through the living room archway toward the kitchen. He frowned.

Lily had a heavy skilled upraised in one hand and immediately upon seeing him she let out a breath and dropped it toward her side in what struck him as a dangerous arc. “Oh thank God.”

“What are you doing?” He asked.

She hitched a thumb over her shoulder. “Well I was making waffles but then I heard the door and I couldn’t remember if I locked it last night. I was scared you were a demon.”

Lily had an atrocious habit of watching scary movies that she didn’t have the fortitude for. She always turned them off twenty minutes in and then left on all the lights for several days afterward. He decided the second part of the statement didn’t bear responding to. “I locked the door last night.”

“Oh.” She twisted the skillet in her hand. “Do you want a waffle?”

Fuck. ”Yeah.” Defeated, he followed her to the kitchen.

Lily didn’t go directly to the counter where the waffle iron was steaming, she went to the coffee pot instead. “Coffee?”

“Yeah.” He sank into his usual seat at the table and ran a hand over his hair, still a little damp from his run home. With frustration he noticed that Lily already had a pair of plates beside the waffle iron, silverware next to each, like she’d known he would come home and agree to eat a waffle.

“How do you drink your coffee?” She asked, like the answer might be interesting. Then, abruptly, she steamrolled his ability to answer, “Wait! Black! Right?”

“Yeah,” he agreed.

“I knew it.” She delivered a mug to the table in front of him and went to eye the waffle maker. She didn’t appear to have set a timer. “You’re so no-nonsense.”

He twisted the mug so that he could wrap his left hand around the handle. No-nonsense. That was much more polite than how people usually chose to describe him, which tended to involve the word ‘asshole’. It was true that he wasn’t a fan of nonsense. “Less effort. Less cost. Less calories.”

“Very efficient,” Lily agreed. “I like cream and sugar. But I really like those fancy lattes with the whip cream and the caramel drizzle?” She lifted the top of the iron and completed what he could only describe as a haphazard flip to move the waffle to a plate.

“Those have the caloric input of a full meal,” he noted.

Lily shrugged. She poured more batter before moving to slide the plate in front of him. “But they taste good.”

He sipped his bitter black coffee and dragged the butter closer.

“Hey, so, Halloween is coming up.”

Brendon paused, the syrup in his hand. The statement was a dangerous non-sequitor. It reeked of an invitation, or a warning. That she was planning to go to a party somewhere and was going to ask him to come, or worse, that she wanted to have a party at the house. Which, as its owner, was absolutely her right, and which he wanted no part in. Did she think that was the kind of thing he would enjoy? What was she planning to wear for a costume?

“I think I work,” he said, not because he actually did, but because it would give him an out for whatever she was planning to say next.

“I don’t, thank God.” She seemed genuinely relieved. “But I should warn you there’s always a post-Halloween sickness that goes around, and it gets me half the time. Which means it could get you.”

That wasn’t the type of information he’d expected to get. Something sour rolled through his gut, and he took a swig of coffee to smother it. “I don’t get sick.”

Lily raised her eyebrows at him. “Ever?”

“Nope.” He took a bite of his waffle. It was delicious.

His Saturday got worse from there. Or better. It was hard to decide. They ate waffles at the table, and drank coffee, and he didn’t hate the music like he expected he would. It remained a low background to the kitchen, soft indie rock he could barely hear the lyrics to.

He did the dishes while Lily scribbled on her grocery pad. When he emerged from the shower, he found her curled in the oversized armchair in the living room reading a book. And he usually liked to read his articles at the table, but he was suddenly consumed by the urge to lie on the couch.

What he needed, he thought, was to get a fucking grip.

There was something happening to him without his consent and he didn’t care for it. His living situation was supposed to be an opportunity to stay near the hospital for cheap. He wasn’t supposed to be getting emotionally attached to the woman he lived with.

She’d hit him with her car for fuck’s sake.

He shoved the feeling down and pretended it didn’t exist.

“Alright. Get out of here, Park,” Keller said, handing off a tablet to the surgical nurse at his elbow. “Plenty of time to get ready for a Halloween party.”

Brendon wondered if Keller actually thought he was the type of man to attend a costume party or if he was just trying to be polite. “Yeah,” he said, for lack of anything better to say.

“What’s your girlfriend got you dressing up as?”

Brendon blinked. For the first time ever, it was like Keller was joking with him. And Brendon didn’t give a shit if Keller liked him and wanted to pal around, except for the fact that Keller not liking him had mostly meant he didn’t get to do anything useful. He wanted to be useful. He wanted to learn.

He thought hard. Why would Keller think he had a girlfriend? Right, he realized. He’d mentioned Lily by name and the man had assumed.

“That embarrassing?” Keller prompted.

Brendon shook his head. “She’s not. I mean, I’m not. Dressing up.”

Keller clicked his tongue, “Little advice? If she wants you to wear a stupid costume, you ought to wear the stupid costume.” He winked. “Happy wife and all.” Then he waved and was off down the corridor.

Brendon watched him go. He’d meant to convey that Lily wasn’t his girlfriend, but changed his mind partway through. If having a girlfriend made Keller think he was worth teaching something to, Brendon would take the opportunity. It wasn’t like Lily had to know.

That made it fine, right? Why did he feel badly about it?

The feeling lingered right up until he stepped through his front door and got a look into his living room. Then he forgot about it in favour of trying to figure out what was happening in his house. He couldn’t. He was, evidently, missing an important context clue.

There was a woman sitting in Lily's usual chair, her blond hair in wild curls, wearing only a set of black lingerie and a tall pair of leather boots. She stared at him. “Um. Hey. I’m Sarah.” She lifted a hand.

There was the awkwardness he was used to from roommates. He’d almost forgotten about it. “Brendon.”

Sarah was Lily's best friend. He knew that because he’d heard as much. She taught art, and liked scary movies, which was why Lily was always trying to watch them and consequently scaring the shit out of herself. He was a little surprised he hadn’t met the woman before.

She fidgeted. She looked away from him and toward the kitchen. Then stood. “Oh, great. Are you ready?”

“Yeah, I just thought— Oh! Brendon!”

Brendon was suddenly thankful for his med school specialty rotations. He’d seen all kinds of terrible and upsetting things and practiced keeping how terrible and upsetting they were off his face. As a result, he was positive his face didn’t change as his whole body turned to molten lava.

Lily had her hair done in soft waves and she was wearing makeup which she didn’t usually, blush and soft pink lipstick and a deep purple at the corner of her eyes that shimmered. It was stunning. And undercut by the fact that she was wearing a satin slip skirt that rested a few inches above her knees, and a flimsy bra, both white. The skin of her collarbone, down her sternum, under her breasts, all on display, pale and lovely. The dip of her waist and the soft line of her stomach.

Brendon had occasionally been distracted by the way she looked in yoga pants moving around the kitchen before he remembered he shouldn’t check out his roommates ass, but overall he had been doing a remarkable job of not acknowledging, even to himself, how beautiful she was.

Fuck, he thought.

“I thought you’d be stuck at work all night,” Lily said. She smiled. Like she was happy to see him.

Fuck, he thought. “Keller let me off the hook. What are you doing?” He hoped the question came out sounding ordinary and not like he was hoping she wasn’t leaving the house in lingerie. The sudden possessiveness that gripped him, illogical and unreasonable, was startling. He tried to swallow it.

“We’re going to a Rocky Horror screening at this old theatre on the east side of town. Do you want to come?”

“Uh—“ Sarah looked uncomfortable. She eyed him.

Brendon did want to go. If only to make sure no other men got within three feet of Lily. Which was not his business and also insane. “No.” He cleared his throat. “I’m good.”

“Are you sure?”

He tried really hard to read her tone. Was she disappointed? Relieved? Totally uninvested either way? He couldn’t tell. “Yes.”

“Okay.” Lily turned her attention to her friend and hefted the liquor bottle in her hand. “I thought we should do shots before Nellie gets here. For warmth.”

“Absolutely,” Sarah agreed. She took the bottle from Lily’s hand and twisted off the cap.

Under no circumstances could he watch Lily, in that outfit, take shots from a bottle of vodka. He was afraid it would awaken something in him that needed to stay asleep. “I’m gonna—“ He gestured in the direction of the bathroom and only made it two steps, far enough to pick up the scent of Lily’s perfume, before he broke. “Call me if you need a ride or something, alright?”

Lily beamed at him. “Thanks Brendon! That’s really sweet of you. We should be fine, Nellie’s extremely responsible. I bet she already looked up the parking situation.”

That wasn’t what he was concerned about, but he nodded and forced his feet to carry him on to the kitchen.

“That’s your roommate?” Sarah hissed when he was far enough away that he probably shouldn’t have been able to hear her. “That man is huge and terrifying. You just offered for him to move in here without knowing him at all?”

“What?” Lily replied. Then, “He is kind of a giant, isn’t he?”

“Lily!”

He wasn’t overly bothered that Lily’s friend found him intimidating. She wasn’t the first, and she wouldn’t be the last. He didn’t care, and he didn’t feel the need to overcome the issue. He was bothered that despite how intimidating he was, Lily had just offered up a room in her house. It hadn’t occurred to him what a problem that was, because he’d been receiving the benefit. But Lily was kind, and trusting, and naive.

He tried to stuff the thought down. He couldn’t think about how naive she was, going out on Halloween in a city wearing literal lingerie, and keep his sanity.

By the time he made it out of the shower, the two women were gone, and the problem was solved.

Or not solved. He managed to read half as much of the article he was working through as he should have, and when he gave up he found he couldn’t focus on the stupid horror movie he put on tv either. Eventually he gave up, went to bed, and stared at the ceiling until he heard the front door unlock and Lily trip her way up the staircase to the second floor.

Finally, he relaxed into his mattress.

“Fuck,” he growled to the ceiling.

Brendon had a plan. One he’d made in his junior year of high school. Earlier, maybe. He was going to get a scholarship to a good school. He was going to get a medical degree and become a surgeon. He was going to move to a city that was interesting. He was going to buy a nice house. And a nice car. And he was never going to worry about money, or if he could afford to buy gas or groceries.

He was going to have everything he didn’t have as a kid. Didn’t have as a teenager, working two jobs after school and still flat broke and desperate.

His plan did not include a romantic relationship because he’d never really had one, and never really wanted one.

That wasn’t to say he didn’t meet women, flirt, and fuck. He did. But he’d never been inclined to stay afterward and couldn’t see that changing.

Lily was almost making him question whether his plan didn’t have a hole or two.

Clearly he needed to get laid.

Avoiding his roommate on Saturday was easy. She spent the entire morning in her room, long enough that he started to develop a vague sense of something like concern, and when she emerged he fled to the gym. He spent a few hours doing errands he’d been avoiding. Realized, standing in a hardware store looking at lumber for a new patio, that he was out of his mind, and went to get a drink.

Despite the hour, the little hipster brewery he ended up at was full of people blowing off steam after a long week, all the more impressive for the fact that they’d probably done the same thing the night before. It wasn’t an ideal time to try to pick someone up, but Brendon had never had an issue before.

There was something in the women that tended to seek him out, because despite his being cold and generally unapproachable, that was how it usually went. It was pattern he’d noticed over a period of years. As if they all had something to prove. That they were pretty or smart or funny enough to get his attention. He didn’t tend to give a shit about the self esteem issues of his hookups. It wasn’t his job to fix them, and he didn’t look too closely at what it was about him that yanked their issues to the surface.

Fucking into a woman with his hand on her back and her nails digging into his thigh, he tried not to let the thought creep in that he was the one with something to prove.

And he was failing. Because the smell of her bed was all wrong. Musky and floral where it should have been caramel sweet.

He spent a long time in the shower when he got home, trying to wash away the lingering scent and drown the sour feeling in his gut that almost resembled guilt.

“Brendon?”

He offered a grunt in reply. It was the best he could do with his head in his hands at the dining table.

“Are you okay?”

He knew why she was asking. Ordinarily on days he worked, he was gone to the gym by the time Lily made it to the first floor to get ready for her own work day. But he hadn’t been able to drag himself out of bed at five that morning. He’d slept in. Or tried to, anyway. “I’m fine,” he grumbled. Because he couldn’t not be fine. It wasn’t an option.

Lily hummed. He heard the click of her mug hitting the counter, full of coffee he couldn’t smell. Good. He’d given her an answer and she believed it. He pictured her, in the bright orange sweater she’d descended the steps dressed in, wandering off to the living room.

He jumped at the soft touch to his bicep and lifted his head. “I don’t think you are,” she said softly. Her hand slid up to his shoulder, then further to press against his forehead. “I think you’ve got a fever.”

Her skin on his was cool. He sucked in a breath and let it whistle away. “I’m fine.”

“Brendon,” she chided.

“I can’t call out,” he replied. Calling out meant falling behind. It meant extra work for his coworkers, attendings included, and he’d just gotten Keller to treat him like a person.

“You can’t go in like this.” Her voice was gentle. She turned her hand to press the backs of her fingers to his skin.

She was right. Obviously. Which was why he hadn’t left yet. All the willpower he’d mustered to keep himself in check and away from her dissolved under the soft blanket of her concern. He leant into her touch. “Fine.”

She hummed again. “I’m sorry. I probably brought all kinds of germs home from school. Half my class was out this week. What do you need?”

He thought it more likely he’d picked up the flu from his hookup the weekend before. Guilt and shame churned up together in his stomach, putting him in very real danger of throwing up the water he’d forced down earlier. He tried to quell the nausea through sheer willpower. “I just need to sleep.”

“You don’t want orange juice or ginger ale or anything? I can bring some home on my lunch break.”

He wanted her hand on his forehead. He wanted her gentle words. He wanted the sweet taste of her care on his tongue. It was so close to the taste of love he hadn’t had since he was a kid and he ached for it, even if she didn’t mean it. He shook his head. “I’ll be fine.”

Lily took her hand away at the movement and regret joined the shame in his gut. She stepped away. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah,” he answered. He shoved up from the table and picked up his phone. He’d call out sick and go back to bed. He’d sleep as long as he could, and hydrate, and hopefully in twenty-four hours he’d be fit to go back to work.

“Hang on—“ Lily rounded the counter and flipped open the cupboard near the stove he never went in. She shoved aside containers of tea and retrieved a box. Then she went to the sink and filled a huge glass of water before she returned to offer them both up.

The box, when he squinted at it, was cold medicine. He took it. “Thank you.”

“Mhm.” She studied him, frowning. “Text me if you change your mind and you need anything okay?”

He closed his eyes and imagined very briefly, a world in which he did that. “Okay.”

Brendon had never been in Lily’s bedroom or her bathroom, but when he woke up a few hours later and realized he was going to vomit, he didn’t think he had a better option. He was pretty sure she would forgive the intrusion.

Sitting afterward with his back to the pink wall and his mouth tasting like acid, he let his eyes roam the space. It was reasonably tidy despite Lily’s tendency to leave things behind and not come back to them until hours later. There were a handful of little jars and bottles on the shelf beside the sink, and a collection of hair tools in a basket.

Through the open door he could see her quilt and her giant stack of pillows. The books piled on her night stand and the stack of folded clothes on top of her dresser.

He could smell it. Caramel sweet. He closed his eyes.

“Hey,” The word was as soft as the hand on his cheek. He wanted to live in that feeling. If only it was real.

“Brendon,” A little less soft. More insistent. “Come on, you can’t stay on the floor.”

He wasn’t on the floor, he was in bed. Although his bed felt an awful lot like the floor. He opened his eyes.

Pink. Soft green. A smattering of freckles.

Oh. So, he’d fallen asleep on Lily’s bathroom floor. And Lily was home now. That seemed bad. Was it embarrassment or the fever making him feel so hot? “Sorry. I shouldn’t have come in here,” The words came out rough and his throat felt raw.

“It’s fine,” she said. “Are you alright?”

He hummed the approximation of an affirmative.

“Can you make it back to bed?”

If it killed him. What was the alternative? Staying in her space forever? Well— No. He hooked his knee underneath him and stood, knocking a little awkwardly off the wall before he righted himself.

Lily set her hand on his spine as he made his way out of the bedroom and down the hall.

He honestly couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt so awful, sore, and sweating, but still chilled to the bone. And somehow, the worst part was still Lily being there to see it. He shoved his face into the pillows so he didn’t have to look. He listened to her footsteps recede across the carpet.

Maybe the flu would kill him. That wasn’t a very likely outcome and it would still ruin the entire plan he’d made for his life, but he’d be dead so what would it matter?

More footsteps. A dull thud on the nightstand. “Are you going to be okay when I go back to work?”

He grunted into the pillow and then decided that wasn’t an answer and turned so he could say properly, “I’ll be fine.”

“Alright. Make sure you drink something before you fall asleep again.” She pressed her hand to his cheek again and he flinched, at the cold or the shock, but then he went very still in the hope that she wouldn’t take it away. “How hot do you have to get before I need to take you to the hospital?”

“One-oh-three,” he answered automatically. At one-oh-four his brain would start to cook, but he doubted he’d get there. And if he did, he didn’t see how she would notice with only her hand to judge the temperature.

She hummed. She stroked her thumb once over his cheekbone leaving behind a trail of warm, campfire sparks, then her hand was gone. “I’ll be home in three hours. Call if you need me to leave early, okay?”

She wouldn’t do that for him, he thought. That was too much. He grunted in reply. He waited until her footsteps disappeared down the stairs and he heard the front door close behind her, then he lifted his head.

There was a line of things across his nightstand. A cup of water, two different glass bottles of juice, the box of cold medicine he’d left in the kitchen, and a bucket.

Embarrassing, that he needed to be taken care of.

So why did he also feel so warm?

Brendon didn’t like snow. Snow meant that he would be spending his days fielding an endless number of ED calls to assess whether borderline fractures would require surgery or not. And if they did, he would be assisting on all of those surgeries. Which was alright, but for the fact that he didn’t want to assist anything. He just wanted to do.

He eyed the layer of snow through the patio door, scowling.

“Oh my God! Did it snow?” Lily must not have disliked snow, her voice was pure joy as she bounded into the dining room and past his chair to peer through the glass.

He glanced once at the place where her pajama shorts ended high on her thigh, then averted his gaze to his coffee mug. “You like snow?”

“Yes! Snow means it’s winter and I love winter.” She flipped the latch and yanked the door open, letting in a wave of freezing air. “I’m gonna build a snowman!”

There definitely wasn’t enough snow for that, and she was in her pajamas for fuck’s sake, but Lily didn’t seem to care. She shut the door behind her and set about clumping the thin layer of white on the ground into passable spheres. Her snowman was going to be about six inches tall if the first ball was any indication.

He thought it might be best he didn’t watch. He got up instead and went to pour her a mug full of coffee and fix it with cream and sugar the way she liked. With the fridge open to put the creamer away, he was overtaken by one of the strange fits of madness that had plagued him since he’d been sick.

Maybe the fever had fried his brain.

He set the mug on the table in her usual spot and slid the door open just wide enough to stick his arm through the gap. “Here.”

Lily turned to look at him, saw the baby carrot in his hand, and laughed. But she took it and stuck it gently to the middle of her little snowman’s face. Then she patted her hands off on her sweater and returned to the warmth of the house. “Thanks!”

He couldn’t tell if she meant for the nose or the coffee but it didn’t matter. He sat and had a sip from his drink. He tried not to watch too closely while she pulled her legs up into her chair and wrapped her hands around her mug in an effort to warm them.

“You don’t like the snow?” she asked.

“No.” He thought about hip fractures.

“I guess I don’t love the cold,” she admitted.

He knew that. It was why she spent every moment on the couch wrapped in the kitted purple throw that clashed with all the furniture. Why she never set foot past the doorway without sliding on her slippers.

“Oh man, I’m going to have to figure out a different outfit for tonight.” She sounded dismayed at the prospect.

“What’s tonight?” He asked. To him, it was Saturday. He didn’t work and neither did she, which ordinarily meant Lily in her sweats on the couch watching episode after episode of police procedurals, or maybe whatever movie was newly released to Netflix. And him, in the armchair across from her, reading medical journals and pretending that he wasn’t invested in the screen because he didn’t fucking care whether Andy and Sam wound up together.

She didn’t need a different outfit for that. He liked her sweats.

There was a brief pause. Lily bit her lip. “I’ve got a date.”

Another pause. “A date?” The words came out of his mouth like something foreign he didn’t recognize. Which was ridiculous. He knew what a date was. He’d been on them before. Dinner, drinks, talking, flirting, fucking. That was the idea, summed up to base parts.

But for as long as they’d lived together, six or seven months all in, Lily had never gone on a date. Which was also fucking ridiculous, he realized, because she was lovely.

“Yeah, I met this guy at the PD thing I went to last week? He asked me for drinks.”

“Uh-huh,” Brendon grunted in reply.

“We were gonna go to Slapdash and sit on the patio but it’s definitely going to be cold. I wonder if I can get away with wearing wool tights under my dress.” She pursed her lips in thought.

Brendon said nothing. He didn’t have any opinions about her outfit. Except for all the opinions he had about her outfit, foremost that it should consist of sweat pants and that hoodie with all the holes in the sleeve she loved so much. Or, better, the Stanford hoodie that he usually wore on Saturdays and loved so much he’d never let another soul touch it.

Pure possessive jealousy surged up like an acrid tidal wave. He could taste it like blood in his mouth. She couldn’t go on a date, she was his. Sweet thing with the soft smile and the freckles across her nose. Did she realize that she’d fed something wild and now she owned it?

He hadn’t.

The whole day was ruined. He was going to relax. Read. Maybe fix the light switch that Lily always complained about. He couldn’t focus on any of those things, caught fast by the realization that he needed her like air in his lungs and she was about to belong to someone else.

When the doorbell rang and Lily was still upstairs, he took the opportunity and went to get it.

He knew how he looked. Usually he didn’t put any work into leveraging it one way or the other. Usually he wasn’t furious. He stood straight, squared himself to fill the doorway, and scowled.

The man on the other side blinked and shrank an inch. Brendon imagined he could smell the man’s fear and discomfort, sweet as caramel.

“I think I’ve got the wrong house,” the man said.

“Steve,” Lily said brightly from the top of the landing.

The man’s eyes stayed fixed on Brendon. “Oh! Hey.”

“Brendon, this is Steve.” Lily hit the bottom of the stairs and started pulling on her boots. “Brendon’s my roommate,” she said, for Steve’s benefit.

“Nice to meet you,” Steve offered.

Brendon said nothing.

“‘Scuse me.” Lily poked him in the spine.

He waited the span of a single heartbeat, then he turned his body to let her by. And he thought he’d been doing a good job all day of keeping a lid on the anger, but the last thread of his self control seemed to snap under the tension. He reached out and wrapped his hand across the back of Lily’s neck as she squeezed past him, just for a second. He scowled at Steve. “It’s icy. Be careful.”

“I will,” Lily said brightly, carrying on down the steps and out of his reach. “Brendon’s a doctor. Apparently lots of people break ankles this time of year.”

Steve shot him another look, dark with discomfort. “That’s cool.”

Brendon didn’t move until they were in the man’s car and gone from the driveway.

He growled as he slammed the door.

He paced the house. Positive that if he stopped he would succumb to the burning jealousy and lose his ability to breathe. He replaced the stupid fucking switch. He poured himself a drink.

When he heard the car in the driveway, he went to the entryway and yanked the front door open, glass dangling loosely in the fingers of his left hand.

“Oh! Thanks.” Lily quit rifling in her bag and stepped into the house. Immediately she kicked off her boots.

Brendon glanced at where the car was already halfway down the road and let the door fall shut. “You’re back early,” and by early, he meant about three hours too late.

She made a noncommittal noise, “Yeah, I don’t know. He didn’t seem that interested in getting to know me.”

“Shame,” he said, the sarcasm searing on his tongue. He inspected the stretch of thigh under the hem of her grey dress, wrapped in dark wool tights. “I like the tights.”

“Thank you!” She stopped, three steps up, and swiveled her hips. The fabric of her skirt swished against her legs. “I don’t think Steve did. You wanna watch some Rookie Blue?”

“I hate that show,” he answered. He reached out and pinched grey fabric between his fingers to straighten it.

“Okay, want to read while I watch Rookie Blue?”

“Fine.”

He felt pliant. Sated. Like he’d chewed up a smaller predator and spat it out and now it was time to enjoy his prize. Instead of sitting in his usual chair, he sat on the couch.

When Lily emerged from her room in her sweats, she looked only briefly surprised before she fell onto the cushion beside him and pulled the blanket across her knees. If she noticed when he straightened that too, she didn’t say anything.

“Park,” Keller snapped.

He deserved it. He’d been distracted. He shook himself back to the harshly lit reality of the hospital. “Yes?”

“What is wrong with you tonight?” The man slapped a tablet with a chart on the counter in front of him. “I’m not used to chasing you down.”

“Sorry.” It tasted sour. He wasn’t used to apologizing, but he wasn’t used to screwing up either. He had trouble remembering the last time he’d actually felt the need to say the word.

Keller eyed him. “Trouble in paradise?”

What was it with Keller, Brendon wondered, that he could sniff out the things Brendon didn’t want to look at with such ease? Maybe there was something to all his harping about empathy and bedside manner.

“No,” Brendon lied.

“Right,” Keller drawled. “I need you to go to the ED and decide if their hip dislocation needs a surgical reduction.” Brendon nodded and made to step away. “You know, I’ve always found flowers when your girl’s mad a little trite. Spa day’s good. Jewellery’s better.”

That was terrible advice, Brendon thought, buying someone’s forgiveness. But he nodded anyway and took off for the elevator. Lily wasn’t mad at him. That wasn’t the issue. The issue was that she wasn’t his girl and he wanted her to be. It was wreaking havoc on his mind.

He’d never wanted someone the way he wanted her. Not only physically, but emotionally. He wanted her love, the warmth it inspired in him, and he wanted to give it back, properly. He just didn’t know how.

Lily cared like it was the most natural thing in the world. She asked about his job and his hobbies. She cooked and shared it with him. She texted every other day to ask if he wanted anything from the store, or on her way home from work, or to ask if he’d seen how cold it was supposed to be and whether he’d remembered to take a proper coat to work.

Brendon hadn’t cared for anyone since he was a kid, doing his best to make sure his mom ate and drank something that wasn’t tequila every day. Even that he wasn’t sure had been done out of love.

He had grown up wanting things out of his life and determined to get them. He was willing to do whatever it took. It had made him selfish and cold. That was how everyone knew him. That was how Lily knew him. And somehow he had to fix it. He had to show her that when it came to her, he was something different.

Buying her affection wouldn’t do, but he could work for it.

He made a list in his head of the things that Lily wanted and couldn’t do herself. Or maybe could, but was sure to struggle and agonize over until she was stressed and upset. He started to do them.

She was thrilled when he replaced the rest of the strangely coloured electrical fixtures. It took a long time for her to notice the new grout in the shower tiles, and she was thrilled about that too. He texted to make sure she got home safe when it snowed in the afternoon, and started to make her coffee every morning before he left for work. He started going to the gym after his night shifts instead of before, so he could spend an hour sitting in the living room breathing the same air as her.

Sweet as she was, he couldn’t tell at all if she was moved by any of the gestures. She didn’t go on another date.

“Lily,” he greeted when he stepped into the living room. “What are you doing?” He hadn’t worked that day but she had. And while it wasn’t unheard of, it was still fairly alarming to find her lying in the middle of the living room rug.

She gave a high little whine that shot sizzling electricity through his bones. “I hurt myself in gym today.”

Concern lurched up in his chest to replace the current. “Hurt yourself how?” He strode across the floor and knelt to get a look at her. She was in a long sleeve and jeans and he couldn’t see enough skin to tell if she was bruised or broken or bleeding.

“I don’t know,” she groaned, “I tweaked my neck throwing dodgeballs somehow.”

Right, he thought, in gym with her second graders, not at the gym. It was a mild comfort when she was obviously still in pain. “Sit up.”

“I can’t,” she whined.

He clicked his tongue. “Up.”

With a grumble, she did as he asked. Immediately he set his hands on either side of her neck and tested her muscles with a soft touch. When she winced he said, “Muscular. You’re okay.”

“It hurts.”

“Mhm,” he agreed. He pressed his thumb to the angry knot and worked it in a small circle. She made another noise but she didn’t pull away. She never pulled away. It was making him crazy.

Never before had he been so consumed with the need to put his hands on another human. Every day he contrived at least one excuse to touch her, some better than others. It was always respectful. Mostly casual. Maybe unnoticeable. But it sparked in his fingertips and flooded the rest of him with warmth when he set a hand on her shoulder to steer her out of the way in the kitchen. Or when he held her coat for her before she left the house and pulled the lapels straight. Or when he pulled her ponytail free from underneath the neck of her hoodie.

He was obsessed. Frenzied. And she had no idea.

He really couldn’t tell if he was inching closer to what he wanted or standing still. At what point, he wondered, would he break?

Winter got mean as it progressed. By early December it was snowing almost every day and freezing all the time. His will was stronger than the weather and he rarely let it interfere with his routine, but minus twenty was a bridge too far. He regretted his walk to work while he was still in the middle of it, and regretted it a little more as the temperature continued to drop during his shift.

Did you walk to work?

The text came when he was in the OR and he didn’t check his phone until an hour and a half later. Lily had sent it what must have been the minute she got home from work and saw his truck in the driveway.

Yes. He replied when he was finished scrubbing out. He raked his nails through his hair before fixing it again.

It’s so cold!! Do you want me to come get you?

There it was again. Offered up like it was nothing. So easy. His heart ached every time she offered a little bit of warmth. Please. he replied. Take the truck. He’d tried to convince her to do that before and it never worked.

His truck was old. He’d bought it in high school and learned just enough mechanics to fix it up to run. It was a rusty, but he kept it clean and it traversed the snow without any issues. Unlike Lily’s car which nearly got stuck leaving the driveway most mornings and that he was half-convinced she would die in if she got in an accident. He rarely drove but she took her car to work every day and it irritated him to no end, the amount of time he spent worrying about her.

She sent him a thumbs up emoji, which he knew wasn’t an affirmative to the request so much as it was confirmation she’d received his message. He ground his teeth together.

He did post-op. He got called to the ED to assess an open dislocation. He went back into the OR to assist on the reduction. It didn’t occur to him that he needed to text Lily that he would be late leaving until it was seven-thirty and he was scrubbing out and vastly annoyed at the world in general.

It dissolved at the sight of her leaning on the nurse’s station chatting with a woman whose name he thought might be Martha. “Lily,” he called.

She turned and smiled. She had a thick toque on and a scarf, but she’d unzipped her jacket to show the soft green hoodie she had on underneath it. “Brendon! There you are. Marie said you got called into a surgery.”

“Sorry,” he replied. “I should’ve texted you. I need ten minutes.”

“Okay,” she said. “You wanna get sushi on the way home? I bet there won’t be a wait at the good place tonight,” her tone was conspiratorial.

He didn’t really want to stop anywhere that would require his going out into the cold, no matter how briefly, but he would never say no to her either. “Sure.”

“What’s this?” Keller appeared from the hall and eyed Brendon, then Lily. Brightly he said, “You must be Park’s girlfriend,” and offered a hand for her to shake.

Brendon’s mouth went dry. He cast a look at Lily that he hoped managed to say, ‘please go along with it Lily, I know I should’ve corrected him the first time he suggested we were dating but I didn’t because he seems to like me better now that he thinks I’m human and I can’t go back to holding drills and not actually doing anything useful.’

Lily took the man’s hand. “That’s me!” she said, equally bright.

His first thought was not to be grateful that she’d played along. It was just how badly he wanted the claim to be true.

“Better not make the lady wait, Park,” Keller said.

“Five minutes,” he amended, darting off to get his things. If he was fast, maybe Keller wouldn’t have the time to ask Lily too many questions.

When he made it back to the desk, Lily was alone, her phone in her hand. She glanced up at the sound of his footsteps and smiled. He reached out and set his hand on her back to steer her toward the elevator. “Sorry about that.”

“About what?” She asked as they stepped through the doors together. They slid shut and the two of them were blissfully alone.

He tugged at the strap of his backpack, frowning. “Keller.”

“Oh. He was fine.” Lily watched the floor numbers tick down. “Why does he think we’re dating?”

Why indeed? Because he’d been sent from hell to dangle Brendon’s every wish in front of his eyes and curse him to never have them? He scowled. He wasn’t usually prone to dramatics but he was beginning to feel cosmically wronged by the state of his life. “I mentioned you once.”

Lily turned to grin up at him. “Only once?”

That was all it had taken. He shrugged.

She clicked her tongue. “Well I talk about you at work all the time.”

He blinked in surprise. “Why?”

“Because you’re my best friend?” she raised her eyebrows at him.

Nobody had ever made that claim before. She was being disingenuous, which hurt because he wanted it to be true. He wanted to be everything to her. “Sarah’s your best friend.”

“I don’t know. You’ve never made me watch anything with zombies in it.” The elevator gave a ding and he steered her through the door ahead of him and toward the exit. She fumbled to do up her zipper before they stepped out into the cold of the evening. “We’re going to see some movie about a creepy doll Friday night.” The statement left her mouth with a cloud of nervous breath.

He tried to shake off the lingering disappointment of her joke and disguised it as his hunching his shoulders to block the wind. “Is she going to check that all the windows are locked when she drops you off?” Twice, she’d made him help her with that task after one of Sarah’s recommended viewings. He’d done it, not without complaint, and didn’t bother voicing that he would never let anyone make it past his room to hers.

“I’m not going to need to check the windows, because it’s not going to be that scary,” she asserted, more for her sake than his, he thought. She dug in her pocket and pulled free her key ring with its little felt bunny.

Brendon glanced around for her car and was surprised at the sight of his truck instead, poorly parked and crooked in its spot. His heart gave a pathetic little flop. “Sure, baby. Whatever you say.” He reached out and tugged the key free from her fingers.

Lily stopped.

He realized his mistake as soon as he made it, but there was no getting the word back into his mouth. It was off in open air and she’d heard it. He pretended not to know why she’d stopped and he pretended he hadn’t just coughed his heart out onto his sleeve. “Still want the good sushi?”

“Uh—“ she said, watching his back as he unlocked the passenger door. “Yeah.” He yanked it open and held it for her. After a long beat, she stepped past him, close enough to touch, and climbed into the vehicle. For once, he kept his hands to himself. He let the door fall shut behind her.

He thought that calling her ‘baby’ would be agonizing. He thought that it might lead to an awkward conversation wherein she would ask why the fuck he’d done it, and he would be forced to admit aloud that it was because he was halfway in love with her. He’d thought that conversation would lead to a second, where he was firmly rejected, and the part of his heart that wasn’t frozen would be broken off and ruined forever.

It turned out to be agonizing because Lily didn’t have anything to say about it at all. He spent several days waiting for her to bring it up, tense every second that they were in the same room. But she didn’t. She carried on like nothing had changed.

He had to concede, finally, that nothing had changed.

He wished that it had.

“Brendon.”

He grunted into his pillow.

“Brendon!”

The second time, the whisper-shout of his name pulled him from his dream properly. He rolled to squint at the half-open door, Lily’s silhouette dark against the too-bright light of the hallway. “What?”

”There’s someone outside,” she whispered.

He blew out an irritated puff of air. He turned his head back into the pillow. “No, there isn’t.” He wondered if he fell asleep, right then, if he could go back to the dream he’d been having.

“There is!” Lily insisted. “Brendon—“

“There’s nobody there,” he growled, the words half-muffled by the fabric under his cheek. “I told you not to watch that movie.” He didn’t have to work the next day, at least, but he had warned her twice and the fact that she was waking him up anyway was annoying.

The doorway was quiet. The hinges creaked and a little more light poured across his feet. “But what if—“

“Go to bed, Lily,” Already he could feel the drag of sleep. His whole body felt heavy.

Another stretch of quiet. The black behind his eyelids started to take on shape again. The sage green of the kitchen—

“—scared.”

There was more to that sentence, but he couldn’t remember it. “Fuck,” he grunted. And maybe because he was still mostly asleep, he did something stupid. He rolled onto his left, his back to the door, and yanked the covers down from the other side of the bed. “Get in.”

More quiet. Then the door clicked shut and he huffed as Lily padded around the bed and threw herself down beside him. She yanked the covers up, dragging them uncomfortably from under his arm. He lifted it above his head until she settled, then dropped his hand to his hip.

The room fell quiet. There was only the soft sound of her breathing.

“But what if someone is actually outside?” she whispered.

He wasn’t getting out of bed. Not when he’d warned her not to go to the theatre with Sarah.

“Fuck,” he snarled, shoving the covers off. He rolled to his feet and stumbled to the door. Half asleep and squinting against the harsh light of the hallway, he padded down the stairs and checked that both doors were locked. He glanced out at the driveway, then the backyard. There was, predictably, nobody there. He mounted the stairs again, scowling. He slapped the hallway light off before entering the bedroom and shutting the door behind him.

“Brendon?”

“There’s nobody there,” he replied, stretching out and yanking the covers back up over his chest. God, he was tired. It would only take thirty seconds to fall asleep, he was sure of it.

“Sorry. I guess that movie just freaked me out more than—“

He rolled onto his side again and reached to wrap an arm around her middle. In one quick move he hauled her back against his chest. “Stop talking.”

Lily gave a surprised squeak. Her hand wrapped around his forearm and stayed there. She was tense for a second, then relaxed slowly. Brendon pressed his forehead to the back of her neck. He breathed in the scent of her shampoo and melted a little further into the mattress. He was already dreaming.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

He mumbled a reply into her skin. Maybe ‘it’s fine’ or maybe ‘go to sleep’ or maybe ‘I love you’. He wasn’t awake enough to remember which one it was when he thought about it later.

Brendon was in the habit of doing everything quickly.

But he was slow to wake the next morning.

The sun filtered through his curtains, too bright to sleep in spite of, but the warmth of his bed urged him to try. The warmth of the body stretched against his side. He needed to get up. He had things to do. But the second he was up, the dream he was in would evaporate like smoke.

The dream where Lily lying with her head against his ribs, her arm draped over his stomach, was something he got to have every night and wasn’t something stolen. A gift from Sarah, who didn’t even like him but to whom he’d be grateful forever.

He was used to needing to move. To getting up and doing something because lying around doing nothing was a waste of time. A waste of potential. A waste of the life he’d been told he should be grateful for. He moved because lying still was like drowning.

But he didn’t want to move if it meant being away from Lily. And he didn’t need to. For once his heartbeat was slow and his mind was quiet. He savoured the weight on his stomach and the breath that ghosted against his side. He lost track of time.

Lily shifted. The even tenor of her breathing paused. She hummed. “Brendon?”

“Yeah,” he answered softly.

“Oh. I’m sorry,” she stumbled over the words as she shifted and pressed up on her elbow to cast a look around the room, seemingly anywhere that wasn’t at him. “I should—“

“Don’t,” left his mouth without his consent, half pleading. “Just—“ And he didn’t have the words to articulate what it was he wanted, it was entirely too huge, so he let his hand slide up the ridges of her spine to the back of her neck to rest half-buried in her auburn hair.

For a minute they were stuck. Balanced on the edge of something and Brendon was sure that any second something would shift and he’d be falling. Then Lily let out a little huff and dropped her head to his ribs. She pulled at the covers and tucked her shins against his leg.

He exhaled his relief. Slowly he pulled his hand free and stroked it through her hair again, this time on purpose. “You’re my best friend,” he said. It was the kind of statement that was better made in the dark, but she wasn’t looking at him and he needed to say it. He needed to convince himself not to do anything more stupid than invite her into his bed at night, because if he did and he lost her he would never forgive himself.

“Am I?” She asked. She sounded pleased. Her fingers curled into the fabric of his tshirt.

He scoffed. “You know you are.” How could she not? He’d never invited anyone over. Never met up with a friend at a bar. He wasn’t sure he had other friends. Not real ones, anyway. He’d lost them all when keeping his GPA up and getting into med school had become his only priorities.

”I still like hearing it.”

Brendon closed his eyes.

He was miserable. That was the only way to describe it really. He’d made a mess of his life and he hadn’t noticed until it was too late, and he was miserable.

He could see it, in retrospect, all laid out in plain sequence. He’d wanted a picture perfect life. Cut from a magazine, all clean, organized lines. He’d worked hard to get it, sacrificing everything that wouldn’t get him there. He didn’t go out. He didn’t have friends. He worked, and he was good at it. Which shouldn’t have been a problem. But it was all he had.

He wasn’t willing to let the picture go. Not after so much time spent trying to get it. But he couldn’t ask Lily to be a part of it. There was nothing in that picture for her. She wasn’t clean, organized lines. She was colour and chaos and beauty.

So he was miserable.

Except when he wasn’t.

When she cooked and he sat in the kitchen to watch. When they went to get coffee and he slung his arm around the passenger’s seat backing out of the driveway. When he went with her to the grocery store and took the bags from her hands. When she chatted to him about her class and he helped her cut an almost endless number of laminated cards.

He wasn’t miserable then. He was happy.

“Park.”

He ground his teeth together and lifted his head.

“What’s going on with you?” Keller set his hands on his hips and frowned down at Brendon.

He wasn’t about to get chewed out, that wasn’t Keller’s style, but he probably would have deserved to be. He’d lost focus. Not for long. Long enough that he’d had a mistake to correct by the time he snapped back into himself. It was the worst he’d fucked up in a long time. “I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”

Keller tilted his head. He surveyed Brendon properly, like he was waiting for more. Brendon didn’t know what more there was to give.

“Trouble at home?” Keller said finally.

Jesus Christ. How was it that Keller managed to get to the root of a problem he had misunderstood on a molecular level?

Keller took his aggrieved silence as some sort of confirmation. “Let me guess, girlfriend isn’t happy you’re working the holiday?”

Lily, who was not his girlfriend, had no idea he was working on Christmas, and he was pretty sure it would have no bearing on her mood if he was to tell her. She had sworn off watching scary movies and had been happy ever since.

“Tell you what,” Keller waved a hand and said diplomatically, “You let her know I’ll try to pull some strings and get you out early.”

Brendon blinked in stupefaction. His attending had never done him a favour before. He wasn’t that well liked. “That is—“ unnecessary— “really nice. Thank you.”

“Look, it’s easy to tell yourself that you power through this program, and take a break when you’re done. You’ve got a whole life, there’ll be time for hobbies and a wife and kids later.” Keller gave him a stern look. “But if you let this place be your whole life, then it’s going to be your whole life.” He glanced at a nurse as she passed and lowered his voice. “It seems like you’ve got a nice thing with your girl. Lily, right?”

Brendon nodded mutely.

“It would be a shame to lose it.”

He was forced to nod again. Keller smiled at him, tucked his hands in his pockets, and strolled away.

A shame. A shame. Fuck.

He made it home later than usual. Lily was half asleep on the couch when he stepped into the living room and she mumbled a greeting and a question about his day, her eyes drooping nearly closed.

He was almost to the kitchen, almost home free, when she said something about dinner and even though he didn’t quite hear it he knew what the words meant. He snapped his teeth on cozy cinnamon-scented air.

“Are you going home for the holiday?” he asked, his eyes fixed somewhere above the big window.

She hummed. “I booked a flight for the twenty-fourth. What about you? Going home to the middle of nowhere?”

He shook his head. “This is home.” It would feel less like home without her, he thought, but he hadn’t had a decent holiday in almost twenty years and he doubted one more would make much of a difference in the grand scheme of things. “I’m working anyway.”

Lily made a noise he thought might have been upset, but he didn’t stick around to hear her comments about it. He went to see if he couldn’t drown himself, or at least the pathetic yearning in his chest, in the shower.

It came to him, lying in bed the night of the twenty-third.

He was awake, staring at the ceiling despite the clock ticking closer and closer to when he’d need to be up again for work, because he couldn’t possibly sleep when Lily was still out with her coworkers at some bar he pretended not to remember the name of.

He needed to move.

Sometimes the best treatment plan was amputation and sure he would feel the missing limb at intervals for the rest of his life, but he would be okay. He would survive. He would start looking at apartments and take the first thing he found that would serve. With a little luck he could be out of the house by the new year. With less luck, he could be out by the end of January.

Until then, he would go back to avoiding Lily the best he could. He’d take overtime, and read articles in his room, and not sit at the dining table for fuck’s sake.

He didn’t sleep well even after Lily made it home and he heard her tripping her way up the stairs. He could feel the decision he’d made eating at him like necrotising fasciitis.

When he woke up, he stood in the hallway for a long time, his gaze carefully averted from Lily’s bedroom door.

He could knock. He could say goodbye.

He wanted to knock. Didn’t want to say goodbye.

Ultimately, he shook himself free of the indecision that had never gripped him before, and descended the stairs.

The twenty-fourth of December on the surgical floor was not busy. Nobody in their right minds scheduled orthopedic surgery for the middle of the holiday, so he spent his time assessing patients in recovery. Caught up on charts. Assessed one fractured hip in the ED and decided it wasn’t a surgical case.

He would’ve preferred to be busy. He would’ve preferred to scrub in on shattered bones, dislocated shoulders, traumatic amputations. Anything that would keep his mind off the decision he’d made.

“Park,” Keller called, a little after four. When he looked up the man had the decency not to tell him he looked like warmed over shit, but Brendon could tell that’s what he was thinking. He frowned deeply. “Go home.”

Brendon cleared his throat. “I’m fine to stay.” So few words but he could see the message they communicated land on the attending standing across the room. There's nothing for me at home. This is all I have. This is all I’ll ever be.

“Go home anyway.”

He would’ve argued. He would’ve insisted on staying until the end of his shift. He didn’t want to go home to an empty condo to sit with the ghost of something he might’ve had if he were someone else. But Keller walked away. So he collected his shit and went home.

There was a dusting of snow over everything outside, big fat flakes falling lazily to the ground. He took an armful off Lily’s windshield out of habit on his way past before realizing she’d be gone three days and the car would be coated again by the time she was back.

Half the lights on the first floor were on and he grumbled about the waste of electricity as he climbed the steps but failed to generate any real venom behind the words.

He unlocked the door, shouldered through it, and inhaled warm nutmeg-tasting air as he kicked his boots off.

“Shit—Oh no.” There was a clatter and the sound of glass breaking.

His heart lurched into an awful startled rhythm. He dropped his bag to the floor.

“Brendon! You’re early! I thought I had three more hours. I didn’t even make it to the lights—“

“Lily,” he barked. She stood in the middle of the living room, her hair braided into one long rope, dressed in a pair of leggings and a baggy sweater, her feet wrapped in thick socks. “I thought your flight was at three.” She had told him three, he was sure of it. He never forgot details like that. He tried to swallow the lump in his throat.

There was a complicated knot of emotion in his chest. Sadness and joy, yearning and loss in equal measures.

“It was,” she said easily. “I missed it. I decided I’d rather stay home with you.”

The knot unwound.

“It’s way too late to buy an actual turkey so I hope you’re okay with sandwiches. And since you’re home early, can you help with these? I think my grandmother tangled them on purpose.” She gestured to the pile of sting lights on the rug near her feet.

The scene filtered through his brain in bits. The lights on the floor and the pathetic fake tree half-decorated in the corner. There was a pair of nondescript stockings draped over the back of the armchair and a little ceramic village on the tv stand. There was a movie playing he didn’t recognize but knew the budget of which couldn’t have exceeded two hundred dollars, fake snow falling on a well-polished couple.

“Fuck,” he growled. He stalked into the living room but stopped when Lily threw up her hands.

“Don’t! I just broke an ornament and there are bits all over the place. You need shoes.”

He gave the floor a cursory glance, then disregarded the warning and went to meet her. He would’ve done worse than walk across broken glass to get to her, he was suddenly sure of that. He pressed her cheeks between his hands and tilted her head up.

Lily’s mouth dropped open in a startled gasp. She flushed deep pink and blinked up at him with big doe eyes.

“Why’d you stay?” he snapped.

Her shoulders inched up nervously and she gripped at his wrists, like she might try to pry his hands free and didn’t. “You’re my best friend. I wanted to—“

“Not good enough.”

“I don’t— what do you want me to say?” Lily’s eyebrows pinched together in confusion.

“Say you love me,” he demanded. That was it, wasn’t it? The reason a woman would miss a flight home for the holiday. She loved him and he’d been too busy loving her to notice.

Lily stared up at him. Her perfect pink lips opened and shut. Slowly she whispered, “I love you. Do you love me?”

He growled and closed the distance between them to press his mouth to hers.