I narrow my eyes in her direction.
“Does he already know it’s happening?” I ask.
Leila’s cheeks pink, and she makes a show of tying on her surgeon’s cap to avoid meeting my eyes.
I am about to bury myself under the tile when Pamela, of all people, comes to my rescue.
“Woop, your patient’s here, Sullivan,” she says. She hops out of her chair and all but hoists me out of mine. “Enough chitchat. Time to suit up.”
“Thanks for the save,” I whisper as she ties my gown five minutes later.
I can’t see her face, but I can hear the shit-eating grin in her voice.
“I didn’t do it out of the goodness of my heart,” she says. “I’m going to need you to spill the deets about this ‘Jules’ guy later.”
Behind my mask, I bite my cheek, but I don’t dare to protest.
Over the next two weeks I see Julian more than I have seen any one person since graduating from medical school. He melds into my life seamlessly, inviting me for impromptu meals at restaurants around the city, joining me at the gym during my evening workouts, and even occasionally misusing his hospital visitor pass to drop off lunch for the entire cath lab. To my relief, he never surprises me on days when Brandon or Leila are in the lab, and my colleagues who’d attended their wedding don’t look at him for long enough to register where they’ve seen him before. Thus, our entanglement remains something of an open secret.
Which is how I like it. It’s been years since my last real relationship, and I’m clearly out of practice, because I’ve totally forgotten how to pace myself. I’m like a little girl again, simpering and kicking my feet over the boy I tell my friends I “likelike.” The truth is: Julian’s world is a brighter, kinder place than I’m used to, and it’s hard to not want to move into it. When we go out to dinner, we get placed at the best tables, the ones by the window with a city street view. Hemakes one self-deprecating joke and suddenly the waiter is laughing and the manager is too and we end up with a dessert, a drink, an appetizer on the house. When we walk down the street the crowds part like the Red Sea around us, and no one bumps my shoulders or steps on my toes. Everyone smiles and is pleasant and understanding and just a bit more beautiful, like he is drawing the best out of them.
And as much as the “Julian effect” amuses me, I understand it. I’m just as bewitched as everyone else, though less by his beauty than the brain behind it. Julian seems to know a little bit about everything, a natural consequence of his voracious curiosity, and what he doesn’t know, he learns. He’s like me, in the sense that no topic is too niche for exploration; he understands how I can simultaneously dive deep into music and design and medicine because he dives deep into everything himself. Thankfully, he seems just as fascinated by me as I am by him. Our conversations never quite end, starting in person before transitioning to voice notes, video chats snuck into stolen moments between my cases and his clients, phone calls that only end as we both nod off to sleep.
Even then, I find him in my dreams, no longer a leering trespasser, now a welcome companion. The night a pregnant twenty-four-year-old woman dies on my table from a massive pulmonary embolism after my attempt at an aspiration thrombectomy fails to turn her around, Julian stays on the phone with me for hours, lending a listening ear. Long after we hang up, I relive twisted versions of her death in a nightmare, and he returns to me in my subconscious to hold me through the horror. When I wake up in the morning to a cool, empty bed, I feel, for the first time in a long time, bereft.
“Love looks good on you, Sulley,” Winona observes over a video call.
“I am not inlove,” I insist. I’m getting ready to meet Julian; as we’re both free for the full day, we’re finally making good on his request to visit the Hyde Park Art Center. He saw an advertisement for a farmer’s market while looking into the area, and so we plan to start our day there. It’s one of the last outdoor markets before the weather officially turns, and I’ve tried on about seventeen outfits for Winona’s approval. When I show her the last option—a calf-length sweater dress with heeled booties—in my floor length mirror, she whistles. Onix, sitting at my feet, huffs in agreement.
“Absolutely yes, that one is definitely getting you laid tonight,” Winona declares. “Which…why hasn’t that happened yet? This is all really fun and sweet, don’t get me wrong, but I’m supposed to be living vicariously through you, and you’re being real old-school right now.”
I prop my phone up on my vanity, stepping away from the camera so that Winny can’t see the look on my face. Truthfully, there have been opportunities. Nights when it would have been so easy to invite him up to my apartment or accept his implicit invitation to come up to his. But I haven’t followed through because I’m scared. I want to attribute our attraction to chemistry, or to the fact that I haven’t had sex worth writing home about in years, but I can’t shake the fact that there’s something more. Because when Julian kisses me, I lose all reason. I become irresponsible. In my symptom journal, which lately has become just a journal, I write,I don’t think I could survive anything more.
But if I tell Winona that I’m holding back from sleeping with my paramour because I’m worried it’ll be a bittoogood, she’ll either roll her eyes and tell me to stop bragging or give me the “look” and ask if I think I don’t deserve it.
“It doesn’t have to be vicarious, Winny. You can go get yourstoo,” I say simply. “And I don’t know. Right now, it feels good to go a little slow. Figure out if we actually like each other’s company, or if it’s just pheromones, you know?”
Winona hums and I silently rejoice; she’s accepted my answer.
“You inspired me, Sean,” she says. “I set my minimum age lower on LMT this morning. I didn’t think the dating pool could get worse after our twenties, but it’s turned into a swamp! Like, check this guy out—”
She sends me a profile of a somewhat attractive man in his forties whose bio reads: “Five ten and twelve inches, loves hot meals, photography, and nude art, if we hit it off, I’ll draw you .”
I make a retching noise and start my makeup as Winona regales me with tales of botched profiles and disastrous conversations. I’ve just put on the finishing touches when a text drops down from my screen.
Julian:Here.
“Winny, I’ve got to go,” I say. “But! Don’t forget! I’m borrowing my goddaughter next week, so please take advantage of your day off and get someone to take you out! Please!”
“Oh yes, please go,” Winona pleads. “And I will try! But you have to promise to get some tonight! And then tell me all about it after.”
“Ha!” I bark, then blow her a kiss and hang up.
Julian is waiting for me downstairs when I arrive, and god does he look delectable. His beard is shaved down to stubble, and he’s wearing the hell out of a charcoal sweater and camel trench. A watch glints on his wrist; a Patek Philippe, he told me once, one of many vintage timepieces he’s collected over the last couple of years.That’s why you like me, I’d joked.You’re an old man at heart.He brushes a kiss against my lips that makes me feel champagne-bubble fizzy, andI brush my hand against his cheek. Something catches the light in his chin: a single silver hair.
“You have grays,” I observe, surprised. Now that I look closer, there are a few more, scattered in his stubble and across his temples.
Displeasure flashes across Julian’s face, and I see that I’ve touched a sore spot.