Forever Love, Inc. - 3/12
3/REID
Reid stood in the lobby of the Lakeview, impatiently tapping his feet. Though the ornate clock hanging on a nearby wall read just before seven, it was 7:01 by his wristwatch-which meant by Reid’s calculation, his date was late. He didn’t like being kept waiting at the best of times, and an evening with two patients in the ICU following back-to-back demonstrations of Reid’s medical mastery was hardly the best of times. Reid chalked up a point against this candidate on his mental scorecard.
A buzzing noise sounded from Reid’s jacket pocket, and he reached down with a grimace to extract his cell phone. He checked the number on the ID screen, then flipped it open and held the phone to his ear. “What is it?” he snapped.
“It” proved to be one of the squeaky-voiced nurses who staffed the hospital ICU, calling with an update on one of Reid’s patients. Reid glanced at his watch a second time as she began her report; then, frowning with displeasure at the noisy hotel lobby, he moved to a more isolated corner of the room. “All right, what are his vitals? Uh-huh. And his CO2 count?”
A shadow fell across Reid, and he glanced up to find a slim, dark-haired man standing beside him. He glared at the man for the unexpected interruption, before pointedly turning his back to him. “How about his motor responses? Hmm. And his speech? Well, of course he’s lethargic,” he snapped. “He’s had enough anesthesia in him to sedate an ox. Did you get your nursing degree from a clown school?”
He glanced over his shoulder to find that the dark-haired man was still standing there, looking somewhat sheepish. Reid scowled at the man again, then moved a few paces further away. “How are his pain levels? All right, good. Yes. Yes, I said. Well, if his headache persists, give him a glass of water and some Tylenol.”
The faint rustle of fabric behind Reid signaled that the man was still hovering nearby. “Wait, hold on a second,” he barked at the phone, before sending an absolutely blistering glare at the intrusive stranger. “What the hell is your problem?” he bellowed.
“Er… you’re Reid, aren’t you?” the man asked hesitantly. “I’m your date for the evening.”
Reid scowled. “Oh. Well, hold on a second, then,” he said, before turning back to his call. “All right, what was that? What? No, an aspirin won’t do, not unless you’re actually trying to kill him. You see that board hanging at the foot of his bed? We call that a patient chart, and if you aren’t capable of reading it, why don’t you find someone who can? Listen, here’s what I want you to do…”
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The next morning, Reid was sitting in a booth at Al’s Diner, listlessly sipping a cup of weak coffee, when a flash of movement caught the corner of his eye and he looked up to find Luke Snyder sliding into the opposite seat of his booth. The young man was dressed in yet another striped monstrosity, this one a blinding mess of thin bands in green, blue, and yellow, and his hair was styled with a look of careless dishevelment that had probably taken him hours to create. The blond leaned back in the booth seat, his arms folding across his chest and his full lips twisted in an unhappy pout. His demeanor reminded Reid of every selfish, overprivileged frat boy he’d ever loathed in his younger years-so there was quite literally no accounting for the undeniable spark of something Reid felt at the vision of Luke Snyder in an obvious snit.
“Your assistant told me I’d find you here,” the younger man said, not wasting any time with salutations. “I think we should have a bit of a hotwash over your date last night, don’t you?”
“You got that right,” Reid snapped, setting his cup down with a forceful thump. “What kind of outfit are you running, anyway? Your so-called ‘top candidate’ sneaked out on me halfway through dinner!”
“Uh-huh,” the blond said, clearly unsurprised at the news, “and do you know why he sneaked out on you, Dr. Oliver?”
Reid hadn’t been in Oakdale for very long before he’d come to the conclusion that nothing the town’s residents did made any kind of rational sense. He spread his hands wide in a gesture meant to convey the uselessness of the question. “Because he gets his jollies running up a bar tab and then sticking his date with the check?” he speculated.
“Noooo,” the other man said, leaning forward and pointing a chastising finger at Reid, “because you spent the entire date on the phone with your hospital staff and completely ignored him!”
Reid sat back in his seat, blinking in surprise at the unexpected-and unfounded-accusation. “That’s an exaggeration,” he sniffed.
The look on Luke Snyder’s face was almost insultingly disbelieving. “Really?” he asked incredulously. “So… you didn’t make your date stand around waiting while you walked a nurse through some kind of neuro exam on a patient?”
“Not for the whole date,” Reid replied scrupulously.
“And when you sat down at the table, you didn’t call your assistant to go over your weekly schedule so you could free up time for a pediatrics consult?”
Reid gave an irritated huff. “The guy was still slobbering over the wine list; I didn’t think he’d mind!”
“And you didn’t send a half dozen texts to an attending physician about a clinic patient with unusual EEG results?”
“How did… I never… What, did you have a tap on my phone?” Reid bellowed, not sure whether he should be more impressed or disturbed by the extent of the professional matchmaker’s intel.
If Reid had been trying to divert the conversation away from his actions, he missed the mark by a mile. “Dr. Oliver, you told me you’d make time in your schedule to meet my top candidates,” the younger man observed reasonably. “You said you understood you had to play a role in this process. But how can you honestly expect to do that if you carry your work along with you on your dates?”
“I…” Pinned by two fathomless brown eyes that held his gaze mercilessly, a mixture of disappointment and determination shading their depths, Reid fought the unfamiliar urge to squirm in his seat. He knew there was little he could say to refute the logic of the younger man’s argument, knew there was a slight possibility he’d been somewhat in the wrong on this one-but then again, that still didn’t mean he was willing to just cede the argument entirely. “You know, you didn’t exactly hold up your end of the bargain, either,” he sniped. “You were supposed to find me someone well-educated.”
The blond’s eyes went wide and his chest seemed to literally expand with affront. “I what?” he sputtered. “What do you…? He had a double masters in Fine Arts and History!”
Reid scoffed at the response. “And you call that educated?” he jeered. “That degree plus a few hours of training should prepare him for a wonderful career in the coffee service industry. Maybe one day he’ll even make shift manager!”
Whatever response Luke Snyder may have been furiously working up, his moment was cut short by the arrival of Reid’s breakfast. Complain as Reid might about the coffee at Al’s, the diner’s breakfast menu was truly a marvel. Fried eggs, sausage, and bacon-piping hot and covered with a thin sheen of grease. Thick, fluffy buttermilk pancakes-generously slathered with butter and syrup. Home fries, ham steak, biscuits with gravy.
As usual, Reid had ordered one of everything.
As the waitress unloaded her burden of plates on the table, Luke Snyder’s face creased with distaste. “You’re not actually going to eat all that, are you?” he asked. “What kind of doctor are you?”
“A hungry one,” came the easy answer. Reid picked up a limp piece of bacon and cradled it lovingly into his mouth, then followed it up with a large bite of fried egg. “Eating a solid breakfast in the morning supports higher brain function throughout the day,” he said through his mouthful of food; then, eyeing the other man thoughtfully, he added, “In fact, maybe you should give it a try.”
With an obliging shrug, the blond reached out for the plate of ham steak and hash browns and tugged it to his side of the table, then gingerly lifted a piece of ham with his fingers and took a generous bite.
Caught in the midst of chewing a thick piece of pancake, Reid’s gasp of surprise was particularly ill-timed. Coughing and sputtering as syrupy bits of cake tried to make their way into his lungs, it was all Reid could do to for a moment to fumble for his coffee and struggle to wash down the food.
“I didn’t mean mine!” he choked finally, blinking back the pained tears from his eyes.
His tormentor gave an unrepentant grin. “You offered,” he sang. “Anyway, you have more than enough for two people here. Give your arteries a break, for once.”
For a second, Reid contemplated starting a tug-of-war over the plate, but finally he subsided with a glower. “I’m subtracting the cost for that from your bill,” he groused.
The blond shrugged, still cheerfully chomping away on his ill-gotten meal, “So,” he said, “you’re not from around here, but I don’t really detect an accent. Where are you from, originally?”
“More profile questions for your database, Mr. Snyder?” Reid asked, with a sneer.
“Small talk, Dr. Oliver,” the other responded. “It’s something normal human beings do when we meet someone new. I figured you could use the practice.”
Reid had never been one for sharing the details of his personal life, but somehow Luke Snyder’s warm eyes and open face seemed to invite confidences. Reid found himself almost unconsciously telling the man about his nomadic childhood-first, bouncing from college town to college town in his father’s search for work as an adjunct professor; then, following his mother’s diagnosis with a rare, degenerative neurological disorder, traveling to enroll her in any medical program offering new or experimental treatment options.
“Your mother’s illness,” Luke asked. “Is that why you became a neurosurgeon?”
Reid shrugged, focusing his attention on scraping up the last piece of egg from his plate. “It didn’t hurt.”
In exchange, the younger man told Reid about his own nomadic childhood-not nomadic in the same sense as Reid’s, perhaps, but in a constant state of flux from his parents’ tumultuous relationships-his mother’s inconstancy, his stepfather’s past, and the divisive schemes of his biological father.
“And then you became a matchmaker?” Reid asked, dubiously. “What, so you could throw the rest of the town on that same rollercoaster ride?”
An amused smile tugged at Luke Snyder’s lips. “This town does that well enough without my help,” he chuckled, before growing serious again. “No, I guess I just… I look at my parents, and they’ve both made some big mistakes, or lost their way for a while. But no matter how bad it seems, they always come back to each other, because they have this love that’s so deep and so… enduring, there’s just no happiness for them apart.” He gave a somewhat embarrassed shrug of his shoulder. “I guess I just think everyone deserves a love that strong. And that’s what Forever Love’s all about.”
“And Mr. Ski Suit?” Reid asked, remembering the other man in the photograph on Luke Snyder’s office desk. “Is he your ‘forever love’?”
“Noah?” the blond said, startled. “Um, y-yeah. Yes. First and last love. Not everyone’s so lucky.”
The response was delivered firmly enough, but Luke’s face appeared less certain, and his bright chocolate eyes suddenly had trouble holding Reid’s gaze. Reid was struck with the sudden conviction that the younger man’s own relationship had seen its fair share of trouble. Luke Snyder might have a ridiculously soppy obsession with romance, might have idealized his parents’ troubles as the ups and downs of forever love, but Reid suspected the blond was learning the hard way how it felt to chart a course filled with unseen and terrible obstacles, and to wonder if it was worth all the pain. Reid felt an unexpected twinge of sympathy for the other man-and an even more unexpected sense of regret that, in leading the young man to reflect on the gap between his dreams and the reality of his love, Reid had unwittingly doused the fire that had been in Luke Snyder’s eyes since the moment he’d sat down at the table.
“Well, Mr. Snyder,” Reid said, in his most calculatedly aggravating tone, “if you ever decide to tie the rainbow knot, make sure your boyfriend is the one who picks the tuxedos. Do you do all your clothes shopping at Toys ‘R’ Us, or does it just look that way?”
The blond looked up at Reid again, sputtering a bit with a combination of outrage and amusement. “What is your problem with my clothing?” he asked, with a laugh.
“I just can’t believe I’m getting dating tips from someone who’d wear that shirt in public,” Reid shrugged, pleased at having nettled Luke Snyder from his troubling thoughts. “You know, just because you like several colors doesn’t mean you should wear them all at once.”
“You’re such a j-… you’re unbelievable!” the younger man exclaimed, laughing again. “And I can’t believe I’m getting style tips from a man with syrup dripping down his chin. Are you sure you know how to eat with a fork, Dr. Oliver?”
As Reid reached up with a napkin to swipe self-consciously over his mouth and chin, the blond’s face creased with a smile that held amusement and more than a little triumph.
“No, not there,” he said, “underneath your chin, on the other side. Oh, hold on!” He reached out to the napkin holder on the table and pulled out a few paper napkins, then gently dabbed at the stubborn bead of syrup that was clinging to the underside of Reid’s chin. “There,” he announced.
The feel of Luke Snyder’s touch on his face, even separated as it was by a thin layer of cheap tissue paper, sizzled along Reid’s nerve endings like a static shock. Reid had known that his hired matchmaker was an attractive man-hell, he was sure even a blind man could see what a hot number he had in Luke Snyder-but until this moment, Reid hadn’t realized how the man’s physical attractiveness, plus the unexpected feeling of liking that he’d been fighting since his first encounter with the younger man, could prove such a threat to Reid’s carefully disciplined mind. He was almost floored by the strength of his desire to reach out and thread his hands through that hair, feel the warm skin of the man’s neck and jaw… to pull Luke Snyder forward and take a deep, lingering taste of his mouth.
How long he sat there, staring stupidly into luscious brown eyes, Reid didn’t know-but then Luke Snyder cleared his throat awkwardly and looked over at the diner’s glass doors. “Well,” he said, “I guess I should be getting back to the office.”
Reid tore his gaze from the younger man and busied himself pulling cash from his wallet for his meal. “You’ll call me when you have another candidate?” he said, coolly.
“Yes. I’ll be in touch soon.” With that, the blond rose from his seat and made as if to leave, but then stopped, presumably unable to resist the chance at one parting shot. “For both of our sakes, keep your cell phone off next time?”
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