If she gets a job, I think dismally to myself. I want her in New York like yesterday, but I recognize this could take quite a while to make the transfer. We talked well into the night about what opportunities there may be for her. She’d prefer an emergency room setting, but those options could be limited. She’d take a private practice position though, if she had to. I told her that I wanted her to wait for the perfect job, even if it killed me to be away from her a little bit longer.

“Well, it would be cool if she did,” Sam says. “Because Mommy was really happy when David moved in, and I know you’d be really happy if Holly lived with you.”

“Out of the mouths of babes,” Denise murmurs softly with a gentle gaze at Sam. We seem to say that a lot about that child of mine.

I swallow hard, because it’s amazing to me how a child’s pure soul can see through to things that we may be unwilling or unable to recognize. Sam takes a last bite of his eggs, and I nudge him on the shoulder. “Okay… how about you go get cleaned up. We need to get packed soon so Aunt Denise can take us to the airport.”

“Okay,” Sam says as he scoots away from the table.

As he trots down the hallway, I call after him, “And don’t forget to brush your teeth.”

He doesn’t respond but I hear him go into the bathroom, so I know he’s doing his dreaded duty.

“That kid is pretty amazing,” Denise says as she stands from the table to clear the plates. I pull my own back closer to me, intent on finishing my breakfast.

“Pretty close to perfect,” I agree.

Denise scrapes the remaining amount of food from the plates into the garbage can and starts to rinse them. I watch her silently, a thought bubbling in my head. We had always been close growing up—even closer when our parents died. Even though she’s only two years old than me, and we were both adults when our parents died, she couldn’t help but take on sort of a mothering role with me.

“Let me ask you something,” I say after I chew a bite of eggs.

“What’s that?” she asks without turning to look around at me, and instead opening the dishwasher.

“Do you think this is all too sudden? With Holly?”

“I don’t,” she says firmly. “You two were practically babies when you fell in love, and some would scoff that those feelings could carry over, but I disagree.”

Placing the last plate, she leaves the dishwasher open until I can finish my food but turns to face me, leaning back against the sink counter. Taking a towel, she wipes her hands. “I think young love… first love… it’s the truest form there is. It’s pure and uncorrupted by all the dark things we learn about later in life. I think it would only be perfectly natural for both of you to remember those feelings and fall to them pretty quickly. It was good stuff, right?”

Images of Holly and me together in high school flash before me. Holding hands while we walked, her laying her head in my lap while we studied on the Quad outside, long conversations on the phone late into the night, warmth and security from the way she would look at me, the sweet way we would make out, and the even sweeter way we had sex when we finally got up the mutual nerve to go all the way.

No… it wasn’t good. It was fucking amazing.

Those memories… feelings… experiences. They are all still there. They’ve been revived… bolstered by our new experiences this week.

“It feels right to you, doesn’t it?” Denise asks.

I give her a wide smile as I stand from the table, taking my plate over to the sink. “Yeah… it feels unbelievably right. I actually feel complete.”

Denise intercepts me, takes the plate from my hand. “Then I expect we will be having a wedding before too long.”

“Whoa… wait a minute,” I say quickly as I hold my hands up with a laugh. “Who said anything about marriage?”

“I did, you fool,” she says as she puts my plate in the dishwasher and closes it.

“Just because you think—”

“Tim… baby bro… you are built for marriage. You are the type of man that will love unconditionally and with his entire being once you find that one person who’s worthy of it. Bonnie, while I adore her, wasn’t the woman for you. Holly is. I know this, and you know this. I will lay money on it that you two will be married before the year is out.”

I just stare at her with my mouth hanging open, and yet… I can’t find anything within myself that wants to argue with her. The image of Holly in a wedding dress… Holly pregnant… Holly holding our baby.

Fuck, I want that.

And I want it bad.

Chapter 10

Holly

I flip off the mini-recorder and set the last medical chart beside me on my couch. When I finished my shift this afternoon, I tiredly realized I had been so busy that I had not finished dictating all of my notes for the cases I had handled in the emergency room, which meant a shit pot full of work for me this evening.

But it’s okay. It’s something that goes along with the territory of being a doctor. Your work is seemingly never done, and it’s not all adrenaline-filled cases. Some of it is just plain old, boring paperwork that I’ve come to accept is the trade-off for being able to have a career that I adore.

What would make this evening nicer, even with having to work, is if there was a certain hot firefighter who could sit on the couch with me. Maybe he would be watching sports while I quietly worked, and when I was finished, he would pounce on me. This is a nice dream, and one that I hope will be true one day.

I miss Tim badly. He’s only been gone for two weeks. I foolishly thought for a few days that the ache would subside, but it hasn’t. If anything, it’s grown worse as we bravely find ways to stay connected so that our bond continues to grow stronger. We talk on the phone every day. It depends on when he’s working and when I’m working, but we make it work. We’ve been able to Skype a few times, and I even spent the majority of one of those sessions talking to Sam about how badly he wants a dog but his mom and dad won’t let him.

“Mom and Dad are mean and won’t let me have a dog,” he’d whined to me. I could see Tim sitting behind him, and he rolled his eyes.

“Awww… they’re not being mean, Sam,” I told him empathetically. “It’s just a really hard time now with your dad living in an apartment.”

“But I could walk him every day,” he says desperately.

“But you’re not there every day,” I point out to him. “However, I bet there will come a day when you will be able to get a dog. You just have to be patient about it, buddy.”

It was a fine line to walk—commiserating with him without undermining his parents—but I think I managed well, and his big grin into the camera before he said goodbye to me told me that he really did like me. When he told me he couldn’t wait to see me again, well… that was just the best ever.

And I really enjoyed my Skype sessions with Tim on the nights that Sam stayed with his mom. We had inadvertently ventured into interesting territory.

“I miss you so much,” I whined to him one night. “My poor vibrator is on its last leg.”

Tim groaned, and his eyes were tortured. “Damn baby… you’re killing me here just imagining that.”

“Hmmm,” I mused. “I bet we can do better than just ‘imagining’ that.”

I then proceeded to show him how much I missed him. He, in turn, reciprocated, so I was well aware of how much he missed me.

I contacted a headhunter that specializes in medical placements in New York but so far, there’s been nothing available in a hospital setting. Tim has told me to take my time with my search, but it’s discouraging and I’m lonely, and I really don’t want to wait. I’ve even considered not only private practice, but also perhaps contract work or a teaching post. Anything, really, that will get me back to New York and Tim.