Kissing My Dad's Friend by Penny Wylder

Author:Penny Wylder [Wylder, Penny]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-11-09T16:00:00+00:00

7

A week passes. A week of sly glances in the hallways, of whispered promises between rounds. Dad doesn’t give me back a full roster of patients yet, but he lets me have three more than before, after I apparently treated the handful of rich patients to his satisfaction. So now I’m up to six patients instead of three. Better than before. But still not the two dozen I should be handling.

Still not enough to stave off the annoyed or angry glares of my fellow nurses in the hallways.

But I have Russ to distract me from those, at least. We start to fall into a regular pattern. He’ll text me something innocuous—a winking face or a grin. Then I’ll text him the time of my next break. By the time the break rolls around, I’ll find Russ waiting for me in the handicap stall on our floor, down an out of the way passage, or maybe in the break room near the OR wing.

We’ll lock the door, and for twenty minutes, we can lose ourselves and forget about our problems in one another’s arms.

It’s not enough to make me feel satisfied with my whole life—I still wish I were doing so much more, helping more people than I am right now. But it’s enough to distract me, for the time being. Enough to make my current life survivable, at least, and maybe even lined with a little silver.

I have no idea how long it can last. I can’t see it ever working out. But for some reason the desperation that induces, the knowledge that this can only ever be a temporary wild fling, just makes it feel all the hotter whenever we are able to sneak away together. I lose myself in the heat of his arms, the intensity of his kisses, and it soothes me into forgetting, for a little while, that one day I’ll have to let him go.

At the start of our second week of… whatever it is we’re doing—whether you can just call it hooking up or it’s starting to transition into more, I’m not sure—I finally have a day off work at the same time that Russ does. Our schedules normally don’t align, and for once, I think, we can take advantage of this. Be together without having to sneak, or without risk of my parents stumbling across us.

But when I text to ask him what he’s doing that day, his reply says he has an appointment that he can’t miss. My stomach sinks. So much for my grand plans of going on a semi-normal date, somewhere downtown and far from my family’s prying eyes.

Then my phone dings a second time. If you’re free, why don’t you come with me?

What are you doing? I ask a moment later.

You’ll see.

Confused, but ready for any excuse to see Russ outside of work or my parents’ pool parties, I agree to meet him up in the Bronx in a couple of hours. I spend most of those two hours

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