I blink. “You... already have a ring?”
“No, I said I'm on it. I'll handle it. Leave the ring to me.” He waves his hand, and I notice, not for the first time, that his hands are enormous. Broad palms, thick fingers, calloused from years of hockey and currently stained with traces of blue Dermabond that he apparently cannot fully remove. They are the complete antithesis of my own hands, which are narrow, dexterous, and manicured to surgical standards.
I do not think about his hands. I think about rule five.
“Rule five. Our backstory of personal knowledge. We need to know enough about each other's lives to be convincing under scrutiny. My mother will test inconsistencies. My Auntie Sunita is essentially an intelligence operative. I've prepared a dossier.” I pull a USB drive from my coat pocket and set it on the table between us. “Comprehensive family profiles. Behavioural patterns. Known alliances and rivalries. A glossary of Hindi phrases you may need.”
Casey picks up the USB drive and turns it over in his fingers. “You profiled your own family.”
“I performed a comprehensive threat assessment.”
“You made a scouting report of your relatives.”
“The analogy is... not inaccurate.”
He laughs. It's that deep, booming laugh I can hear from three floors up, the one that echoes through the ER and makes the nurses smile and makes me grip my clipboard so hard theplastic flexes. In this small kitchen, it fills every corner. Oliver's tail starts wagging again, thumping against the table leg.
“Alright, so I'll memorize the dossier,” Casey says, tucking the USB drive into his sweatpants pocket. “But you need to know stuff about me too. Fair's fair.”
“I know the relevant professional details.”
“Professional details aren't going to cut it when my fake fiancé doesn't know my middle name.”
“What is your middle name?”
“James.”
Casey James Welling. I write it in my notebook and the pen moves of its own accord, the letters coming out with an uncharacteristic fluidity.
“Born in Huntsville, Ontario. Cottage country,” he continues, settling back in his chair with his coffee mug balanced on his knee. “My mom's Brenda. She's up there by herself now; dad passed when I was sixteen. Heart attack, real sudden. She runs a small gift shop on the main street and organizes basically every community event within a sixty-kilometre radius. She's... she's the best person I know.” He pauses, and for a moment thegolden-retriever-sunshinedims, just slightly, into something warmer and older and more private. “She's going to want to meet you, by the way. Probably already planning the trip.”
“Noted.” I write down Brenda. Huntsville. Gift shop. Then, after a hesitation: best person he knows. Father deceased.
“Played hockey from age five through the OHL. Blew my shoulder out at nineteen, which is when I pivoted to medicine. Did my undergrad at McMaster, med school at U of T, residency right here at Lakeshore. I have a Goldendoodle who thinks he’s a person.” He gestures at Oliver, who has now fully draped himself across both my feet and appears to be asleep. “I eat terribly and I can't cook anything for one person that requires more than a microwave or a barbecue. I'm a Leafs fan, which means I have a high tolerance for pain and disappointment. And I...” He pauses. Looks at me with those warm blue eyes, steady and open andunguarded. “I've been at Lakeshore for three years, and the first time I saw you, you were helping the short-staffed ER by stitching a lacerated ear back onto a screaming toddler with hands that were so steady they looked mechanical, and I thought, who on earth is that.”
The kitchen goes silent.
I should say something. Something appropriate and proportional, something that acknowledges the information without inviting further disclosure of this nature, because we are establishing parameters, not... not whatever this is becoming, in this cluttered, warm, dog-hair-covered apartment that smells like coffee and peanut butter and something underneath all of it that is just Casey, and I cannot find the courage within me to put words to my thoughts.
“That is... adequate background information,” I manage. “Thank you.”
The corner of his mouth twitches. “You're welcome.”
I clear my throat, look down at my notebook, and realize I have written the word “mechanical” in the margin and underlined it twice for no discernible reason.
“Is there anything else?” I ask, snapping the notebook shut with slightly more force than necessary. “Any additional parameters you'd like to establish?”
Casey tilts his head. Oliver snores. The kitchen radiator hisses softly.
“Just one thing,” he says. “We should probably practice.”
“Practice.”
“Yeah. Like, the physical stuff. The hand-holding, the proximity, the whole united-front thing.” He sets his coffee mug down on the table. “Because right now, Arjun, you're sitting in that chair like someone bolted your spine to it, and if we show up to your mom's estate and you flinch every time I get within arm's length, she's going to sniff that out in about four seconds.”
He is correct. I am sitting in this chair with the rigid posture of a soldier at a military tribunal, and my mother, who oncedetected that I had skipped a dentist appointment based solely on the way I was holding my jaw during a FaceTime call, will detect inauthenticity.
“What do you propose?” I ask, and my voice is admirably clinical.