I roll my eyes. “Better. I was able to help Allysa at the store for the first time today.”
He nods and then makes like he’s walking toward the door to leave. But as soon as he reaches me, he spins toward me and slaps his palms against the door on either side of my head. I gasp at both his proximity and his persistence. “Please?” he says.
I shake my head, even though my body is starting to trade sides and beg my mind to cave to him.
“I’m really good at it, Lily,” he says with a grin. “You’ll barely even have to do any work.”
I try not to laugh, but his determination is as endearing as it is annoying. “Goodnight, Ryle.”
His head drops between his shoulders and he shakes it back and forth. He pushes off the door and stands up straight. He half-turns, heading for the hallway, but then suddenly drops to his knees in front of me. He wraps his arms around my waist. “Please, Lily,” he says through self-deprecating laughter. “Please have sex with me.” He’s looking up at me with puppy dog eyes and a pathetic, hopeful grin. “I want you so, so bad and I swear, once you have sex with me you’ll never hear from me again. I promise.”
There’s something about a neurosurgeon literally on his knees begging for sex that does me in. That’s pretty pathetic.
“Get up,” I say, pushing his arms away from me. “You’re embarrassing yourself.”
He slowly stands up, dragging his hands up the door on either side of me until he has me caged in between his arms. “Is that a yes?” His chest is barely touching mine and I hate how good it feels to be wanted this much. I should be turned off by it, but I can hardly breathe when I look at him. Especially when he has this suggestive smile on his face.
“I don’t feel sexy right now, Ryle. I worked all day, I’m exhausted, I smell like sweat and probably taste like dust. If you give me a little while to shower first, I might feel sexy enough to have sex with you.”
He’s nodding feverishly before I’m even finished speaking. “Shower. Take all the time you need. I’ll wait.”
I push him away from me and close the front door. He follows me to the bedroom and I tell him to wait on the bed for me.
Luckily, I cleaned my bedroom last night. Normally I have clothes lying around everywhere, books piled up on my nightstand, shoes and bras that don’t quite make it to my closet. But tonight it’s clean. My bed is even made up, complete with the ugly, quilted throw pillows my grandmother passed down to every person in our family.
I make a quick glance around the room, just to make sure nothing embarrassing will catch his eye. He takes a seat on my bed and I watch as he scans the room. I stand in the doorway to my bathroom and try to give him one last out.
“You say this will make it stop, but I’m warning you right now, Ryle. I’m like a drug. If you have sex with me tonight, it’s only going to make things worse for you. But once is all you’re getting. I refuse to become one of the many girls you use to—how did you word it that night? Satisfy your needs?”
He leans back on his elbows. “You aren’t that kind of girl, Lily. And I’m not the kind of guy who needs someone more than once. We have nothing to worry about.”
I close the door behind me, wondering how in the hell this guy talked me into this.
It’s the scrubs. The scrubs are my weakness. It has nothing to do with him.
I wonder if there’s a way he could leave them on during the sex?
• • •
I’ve never taken more than half an hour to get ready, but it’s almost an hour before I’m finished in the bathroom. I shaved more parts of me than was probably necessary, and then spent a good twenty minutes having a freak-out, and had to talk myself out of opening the door and telling him to leave. But now that my hair is dry and I’m cleaner than I’ve ever been, I think I might be able to do this. I can totally have a one-night stand. I’m twenty-three years old.
I open the door and he’s still there on my bed. I’m a little disappointed to see that his scrub top is on the floor, but I don’t see his pants, so he must still be wearing them. He’s under the covers, though, so I can’t tell.
I close the door behind me and wait for him to roll over and look at me, but he doesn’t. I take a few steps closer, and that’s when I notice he’s snoring.
Not just a light—oh I just fell asleep—snore. It’s a middle of REM sleep kind of snore.
“Ryle?” I whisper. He doesn’t even budge when I shake him.
You’ve got to be kidding me.
I drop down onto the bed, not even caring if I wake him. I just spent an entire hour getting ready for him after busting my ass today, and this is how he treats this night?
I can’t be mad at him, though, especially seeing how peaceful he looks. I can’t imagine working a forty-eight-hour shift. Plus, my bed is really comfortable. It’s so comfortable, it could make a person fall right back to sleep after a full night of rest. I should have warned him about that.
I check the time on my phone and it’s almost 10:30 p.m. I put the phone on silent and then lie down next to him. His phone is on the pillow next to his head, so I grab it and swipe up the camera option. I hold his phone above us and make sure my cleavage looks good and pushed together. I snap a picture so he’ll at least see what he missed out on.
I turn off the light and laugh to myself, because I’m falling asleep next to a half-naked man that I’ve never even kissed.
• • •
I can feel his fingers trailing up my arm before I even open my eyes. I force back a tired smile and pretend I’m still sleeping. His fingers trail over my shoulder and stop at my collarbone, just before they reach my neck. I have a small tattoo there that I got in college. It’s a simple outline of a heart that’s slightly open at the top. I can feel his fingers circle around the tattoo, and then he leans forward and presses his lips against it. I squeeze my eyes shut even tighter.
“Lily,” he whispers, wrapping an arm around my waist. I moan a little, trying to wake up, and then roll onto my back so that I can look up at him. When I open my eyes, he’s staring down at me. I can tell by the way the sunlight shines through my windows and across his face that it’s not even seven a.m. yet.
“I am the most despicable man you’ve ever met. Am I right?”
I laugh, and nod a little. “Pretty damn close.”
He smiles and then brushes my hair off my face. He leans forward and presses his lips to my forehead, and I hate that he just did that. Now I’ll be the one plagued with sleepless nights, because I want to put this memory on repeat.
“I have to go,” he says. “I’m really late. But one—I’m sorry. Two—I’ll never do this again. This is the last you’ll hear from me, I promise. And three—I’m really sorry. You have no idea.”
I force a smile, but I want to frown because I absolutely hated his number two. I actually don’t mind if he tries this again, but then I remind myself that we want two different things from life. And it’s good that he fell asleep and we never even kissed, because if I would have had sex with him while he was wearing scrubs, I would have been the one showing up at his door on my knees, begging for more.
This is good. Rip the Band-Aid off and let him leave.
“Have a nice life, Ryle. I wish you all the success in the world.”
He doesn’t respond to my goodbye. He silently stares down at me with somewhat of a frown, and then says, “Yeah. You too, Lily.”
Then he rolls away from me and stands up. I can’t even look at him right now, so I roll onto my side so that my back is to him. I listen as he puts his shoes on and then reaches for his phone. There’s a long pause before he moves again, and I know it’s because he was staring at me. I squeeze my eyes shut until I hear the slam of the front door.
My face immediately grows warm, and I refuse to allow myself to mope. I force myself off the bed. I have work to do. I can’t be upset that I’m not enough to make a guy want to remap all of his life goals.
esides, I have my own life goals to worry about now. And I’m really excited about them. So much so, that I really don’t have time for a guy in my life, anyway.
No time.
Nope.
Busy girl, here.
I am a brave and bold businesswoman with zero fucks to give for men in scrubs.
Chapter Six
It’s been fifty-three days since Ryle walked out of my apartment that morning. Which means it’s been fifty-three days since I’ve heard from him.
But that’s okay, because for the last fifty-three days, I’ve been too busy to really give him much thought as I prepared for this moment.
“Ready?” Allysa says.
I nod, and she flips the sign to Open and we both hug and squeal like little kids.
We rush around the counter and wait for our first customer. It’s a soft opening, so I haven’t really done a marketing push yet, but we just want to make sure there aren’t any kinks before our grand opening.
“It’s really pretty in here,” Allysa says, admiring our hard work. I look around us, bursting with pride. Of course I want to succeed, but at this point I’m not even sure if that matters. I had a dream and I busted my ass to make it come true. Whatever happens after today is just icing on the cake.
“It smells so good in here,” I say. “I love this smell.”