remembered it. Melissa, he thought, would be in to say hello any second.
Right on cue, she stuck her head through the doorway. “Hey, Kyle. How’s it going today?”
She wore her long white coat and a stethoscope looped around her neck. She always pulled her chocolate-brown hair back in a clasp at her nape; a few strands had escaped to graze her jaw. In one hand she held a clipboard; in the other, a half-eaten apple.
He smiled, knowing his face looked just as friendly and calm and unruffled as hers. “Great. Not too busy with the walk-ins. You’ve got some appointments?”
She glanced down at the clipboard. “That’s right.” She raised an eyebrow. “Mmm. I see Zita is scheduled for a visit. That should be colorful.”
Zita, a.k.a. Susan Smith, was a recovering addict with a variety of physical ailments caused by years of hard living. She had an eccentric personality and a loud voice.
“And a couple of new ones…” Melissa crunched on a bite of apple as she skimmed the notes. “Okay.” She swallowed and looked up at him.
“How’s your week going?” Kyle asked.
“Fine.” Her eyes met his and held them, but not for too long. Just long enough to show them both that everything was normal, routine, mundane, unremarkable. As it had been for the past five years. Just long enough to prove they weren’t avoiding eye contact. “My high-school chem teacher turned up in the E.R. last night.”
“Nothing serious, I hope.”
She shook her head. “Only a sprained ankle. Thought it might have been broken, but he was lucky. It was nice to talk to him—I hadn’t seen the man since graduation fifteen years ago.”
Melissa, an exceptionally bright and hardworking student, had finished high school at sixteen. She’d enrolled at Harvard med school three years later. Kyle had always found her intelligence incredibly sexy.
He took a deep breath. It’s none of your business, he told himself, whether she’s sexy or not. You’re just friends. That’s all you’ve ever been.
Except that crazy night in July.
But that had been a mistake. An aberration. They’d each had reasons for letting it happen—fine. But now they’d moved on. Put things back to normal.
A moment later Melissa tossed her apple core into the trash and went off to see to her patients. Kyle forced his attention back to his paperwork and phone calls.
He’d been running the health clinic, designed to serve the homeless and low-income population of Portland, Oregon, since he’d moved out west six years ago. Needing a change of scene. Needing to get away from all the memories of Felicity.
It had taken awhile to adjust. He’d had experience in nonprofits, but twenty-six had been young for this kind of position. Yet he’d thrown himself into the job, welcoming the challenge and the distraction. He’d barely had a personal life that first year, but he hadn’t wanted one—he’d found it almost intolerable to interact with anyone when it wasn’t part of his job.
Kyle remembered all the nights he’d gone home to his empty apartment, unable even to summon the energy to feed himself dinner before collapsing, still clothed, into bed. Welcoming the blankness of sleep.
But things had gotten better. He’d emerged from that brooding, self-pitying year and started to recapture his old self. Back in Boston, before Felicity’s suicide, he’d always been a social, fun-loving guy. He’d made new friends in Portland and begun to date again. Not seriously, of course—Felicity’s death had cured him of any impulse to get serious—but he’d learned to enjoy himself once more. And then Melissa had become a volunteer at the clinic.
Their friendship had evolved. She’d been wary at first, and had quickly made it clear she wouldn’t be one of his conquests. Relationships that involved sex or romance, he’d noticed, scared the devil out of her. She certainly didn’t want a dalliance—which was all he was prepared to offer.
So their acquaintance had taken a different route. They’d respected each other’s differences and limitations and boundaries, and gradually, without any intent, they’d developed the unlikeliest of friendships.
No, they didn’t tell each other everything. But sometimes they didn’t have to. Sometimes they just understood each other.
And sometimes, he suspected, they just kept secrets—from the world and themselves and each other.
SIX O’CLOCK ARRIVED before he could finish his work. It always did. He needed an assistant, but the clinic couldn’t afford one, so he made do with occasional volunteer help. This month they were short on volunteers.
Barbara Purcell, the large, attractive, forty-five-year-old black woman who served as the clinic’s nurse practitioner, walked into the room and snatched the papers from his hands. “That’s it. It’s closing time, boy. I’m hungry, Melissa’s hungry and that perky little college-girl receptionist is hungry.” She tapped the papers on the desktop to straighten them, then laid them down on a corner of the surface. Just out of his reach.
Kyle didn’t bother to protest. Three hungry women—especially these three hungry women, none of whom deprived themselves of daily nourishment to attain an impossible female ideal—were more than he could go up against. Not to mention he was hungry himself.
“Thi’s Pho Shop?” he said.
Barbara gave him a who-stole-your-brain look. “Where else?”
The four of them collected in the waiting area a couple of minutes later. They locked up and headed down the street, laughing and groaning, complaining and elbow-ribbing, a close-knit, animated group.
The restaurant, which served nothing but beef noodle soup, stood at the corner. It was always packed with Vietnamese Americans during the first half of the day, as traditionally pho was eaten for breakfast and lunch.
This evening the shop hummed with a mixed clientele. The proprietor’s daughter, a teenager in combat boots, jeans and a plaid flannel shirt, led them to a table by the window.
“Nice spot,” Melissa commented, taking the seat beside his. “In fact, it’s the nicest spot in the restaurant.” She winked at him. “I think that girl’s got a crush on you, Kyle.”
Whitney, the college student who worked several afternoons as the clinic’s receptionist, rolled her eyes. “Every straight female he meets gets a crush on him.” She reached for some napkins and spoons and chopsticks from the dispenser on the table.
“Hey, I’m straight,” Barbara said.
“Me, too.” Melissa looked at him, tilting her head in feigned sympathy. She patted his shoulder. “Sorry, Kyle. We can’t all join your mass of admirers.”
Everyone laughed, aware of Kyle’s undeniably sexy good looks.
The waitress brought them ice water and took their orders. After she left, Kyle steered the conversation to a different topic. He told himself it wasn’t because he minded Melissa’s teasing. But he felt edgy and a little raw tonight.
Melissa had spoken about his interactions with women the way she always had. She’d been tolerant, amused,
