Forever Love, Inc. - 7/12
7/REID
Reid was up from his seat in a flash. “Wait… Luke!” He grasped the younger man’s wrist, halting him in mid-step. The blond turned slightly to face him, and the look of hurt and-worse than that-shame that darkened the man’s expressive brown eyes made Reid’s stomach twist into an unfamiliar knot of regret.
“I wasn’t… I didn’t… Look, what the hell do I know?” Reid said awkwardly. “I’m a jerk, you said it; I’m not cut out for this hearts and flowers stuff. That’s why you’re the one teaching me, remember? I didn’t mean… I never…” He trailed off with a grunt of frustration and cast his gaze about desperately, as if hoping the words to set things right might be written on one of the restaurant walls. “Can’t we just call that strike two?” he said finally. “Just stay a little bit longer, and I’ll… I’ll order us some dessert, all right? I hear the gelato’s really good here.”
Reid studied the other man anxiously, till a small, hesitant tremor of laughter bubbled up from Luke’s throat, perhaps surprising the blond as much as it did Reid. “You’re trying to say you’re sorry with ice cream?” Luke asked, incredulously. “I’m twenty-four, not thirteen.”
Reid shrugged at the admittedly clumsy peace offering. “There’s an age limit on ice cream?” he asked sheepishly. He carefully eased his grip on Luke’s arm, eyeing him closely for signs he might bolt, then relaxed slightly as the other man remained still. “Anyway, who said anything about saying sorry?” Reid added gruffly, tapping his fingers against his leg in an anxious gesture. “I’m Dr. Reid Oliver, asshole extraordinaire. I don’t apologize for anything.”
Luke gave a snort of disbelief, the sound seeming to release all the pent-up tension in the man’s form. “I think Dr. Reid Oliver’s a bigger creampuff than he lets on,” he said solemnly.
Back in their seats, with a waiter speeding off to request two extra-large servings of gelato, a nervous silence fell over the pair. Luke was perched at the front of his chair, gripping his water glass with both hands, his shoulders stiff as if bracing for the impact of another verbal blow. Reid summoned up every neglected molecule of social grace he’d ever had, in search of a topic of conversation to break the ice.
“So,” he said at last, clearing his throat awkwardly, “did I ever tell you how I got lured and trapped into staying in Oakdale?”
Luke gave a tentative smile. “I’ll admit, you don’t seem like the usual type that moves here to get away from the big city.”
“Not even close,” Reid replied with a sniff. “No, I was happily ruling the neurosurgical roost at Baylor,” he recounted, “till one day I made the mistake of reading a fax from a Dr. Bob Hughes at some no-name hospital in middle America. He was seeking a consult on a case of intermittent paraperesis-er, a woman with paralysis in her lower limbs that would come and go unpredictably-and the case was just interesting enough that I decided to put my year-long waitlist on hold for a few days and fly out to Podunk, Illinois.”
Whatever Reid may have lacked in Luke’s flair for storytelling, he made up for with the colorful expression of his opinions, and Reid smiled inwardly as he watched Luke relax into his enjoyment of the ridiculous tale-Reid’s discovery that the paralysis had been caused by the patient’s jealous lover, a hospital orderly with access to a supply of the paralytic anectine; Reid’s attempt to escape the Town of the Damned, only to find that his rental car had been involved in a hit-and-run accident; and the incompetent prosecutor who refused to believe Reid’s car had been stolen and instead hauled Reid before the local judge on a charge of reckless endangerment.
“I’m sure you didn’t say anything that might have made the prosecutor less sympathetic to your side of the story,” Luke said, smiling his thanks at the waiter as he placed two dishes of frozen confection on their table.
“The man was sure I was their guy because he had hair and fingerprint evidence linking me to the car,” Reid said, rolling his eyes expressively. “I told him he should get an MRI of his ass, because the tight fit must have cut off the blood supply to his head.”
Luke dabbed his napkin at his mouth, as if hoping it would disguise the grin.
“Anyway, he convinced the judge I was a flight risk, and they were planning to hold me without bail, but Bob-o pulled a few strings and got them to release me into his custody. At first, I thought I’d almost rather sit in prison for a few months, but it turns out this place is a lightning rod for interesting medical cases. By the time they finally found the real hit-and-run culprit, I’d decided to stick around just to show this hick town what a real doctor can do.”
“You put on a good act, Dr. Oliver, but I’m not buying it,” Luke said, narrowing his eyes at Reid thoughtfully. “You could find interesting patients anywhere you go. Admit it; you like Oakdale, and you really like working for Bob Hughes, don’t you?”
“Oakdale’s a dump, and Bob Hughes is an interfering, sentimental old coot,” Reid denied with an indignant sniff, “but at least he knows genius when he sees it. Built a whole neurowing around me, to my specs. I’d work at the bottom of the ocean if it offered me my own neurowing.”
“Well, whatever your reasons, having you here has done a lot for Memorial,” Luke said genuinely. “My grandmother’s the chair of the sponsorship board, and she tells me that just attaching your name to a project’s enough for grant money to start pouring in. There’s even a bidding war among med schools to land a teaching affiliation with your department.”
“Wait, your grandmother is Lucinda Walsh?” Reid asked, with a low whistle. “Guess you didn’t have any trouble getting a bank loan to start your company.”
“Oh, no,” Luke assured him, his eyes twinkling with merriment, “I got most of the money for that from dividends from my father’s multinational shipping company.”
Reid nearly choked on his spoon. “Your dad owns a shipping company and your grandmother’s the grande dame of Worldwide Industries?” he gaped. “I take it back, Mr. Snyder; I think you should be the one to pay for dessert.”
The waiter circled back to the table again with another offer of wine, and once again Luke waved him off. Reid nodded at the water glass Luke had been sipping from all night long. “No drinking on the job?” he asked curiously.
“No drinking at all,” Luke replied simply. “I’ve had a kidney transplant. And…” Luke hesitated, then rushed ahead uncomfortably, “I’m an alcoholic.”
Reid nodded his understanding. “Two very good reasons not to have any wine,” he remarked, shaking his head up at the waiter to decline the offered drink as well.
When Reid turned his gaze back at Luke, he found the younger man studying him closely, his brow knit with uncertainty. “That’s it?” the younger man asked suspiciously. “No ‘who knew you were such a freak show, Mr. Snyder’? Or, ‘you’ve outdone yourself, Mr. Snyder. Looks like you set me up with your biggest loser yet’?”
The strident tone of Luke Snyder’s voice was at odds with the resurgence of shame in the man’s eyes, and Reid found his hands practically itching with the urge to reach out and shake the blond until the look disappeared permanently from his face. What was it that made this man so quick to think badly of himself?
Instead, Reid settled for shaking his own head. “I’m sorry, have you met the people in this town?” he replied wryly. “In my first month alone, I had my car stolen by a woman with split personalities, was quarantined in an outbreak of some rare sub-Saharan disease, and got held hostage at a wedding by a man who thought he was the reincarnation of a deranged billionaire. And you think a history of alcohol abuse and a routine surgery make you a freak?” Reid placed a heaping spoonful of gelato into his mouth and continued thickly, “You’ll have to do better than that.”
Luke eyed Reid curiously for a long moment, as if struggling to decide whether to accept Reid’s response as genuine, but at last his only response was to ask, “You were at Casey’s wedding?”
Reid’s eyes widened. “You know Bob Hughes’ grandson?”
Luke shrugged. “He’s one of my best friends. In fact,” he replied slyly, “I pretended to date him once, to throw off the INS when my boyfriend married an Iraqi refugee to save her from deportation.”
Reid shook his head again, chuckling at this new piece of information. “I take it back, Mr. Snyder,” he said, throwing his hands up amusedly. “You’re just as big a freak as the rest of the folks in this town.”
Luke smiled, and silence reigned for a moment as the pair focused on their desserts. Then finally, Luke spoke again. “Thank you,” he said quietly.
Reid’s face must have been expressive of his confusion, as the young man hastened to explain.
“For not judging me, I mean. I’ve been bouncing on and off the wagon since high school,” Luke frowned, “and even though I’ve been sober for almost three years now, there are a lot of people-even people I love-who still look at me like I’m just one false step away from the gutter.”
Reid dismissed the gratitude with an impatient gesture. “Addiction has a profound effect on the brain, Mr. Snyder,” he observed. “Alcohol floods the brain with dopamine, causing the sensation of pleasure, satisfaction, happiness. Over time, the brain adapts to this artificial stimulation by rewriting neural pathways and reducing its natural dopamine production, making it more and more dependent on alcohol to produce those reward sensations. Similar effects take place throughout the brain, altering areas that control memory, judgment and reason. Those changes don’t just disappear the moment you decide to stop drinking.”
Reid leaned forward, making sure to catch and hold Luke’s gaze as he continued. “Fighting something you’ve been hardwired to crave takes courage, and it takes strength,” he said seriously. “You should be proud of what you’ve achieved.”
“Thank you,” Luke half-whispered. His eyes looked suspiciously glassy for a moment, but then he blinked the moisture away and took a deep, calming breath. “I am proud of it,” he said, voice stronger this time.
Not long afterward, their bill had been settled (by Reid, following an aborted attempt by Luke to offer his credit card as payment, prompting a heated discussion about over-entitled trust fund brats and their eagerness to flash money around), and the two had stepped out of the restaurant into the warm summer night.
“That’s my car there,” Luke said, touching Reid’s arm and pointing at an understated white Prius along the back row of the parking lot.
“No Maserati? No Alfa Romeo? You disappoint me, Mr. Snyder,” Reid commented, following Luke to his car with an exaggerated pout.
“Sorry, they’re both in the shop right now,” Luke said amusedly. They drew to a halt beside Luke’s car, and Luke turned to smile at Reid. “First you hold out my chair, then you walk me to my car? You’re much more of a gentleman than you think.” He gave Reid a joking push on his shoulder.
Reid snorted. “I’m just trying to get my phone back, that’s all.”
Luke’s face fell almost hilariously, clearly embarrassed at having forgotten that detail. “Sorry!” he said, scrambling to extract the cell phone from his pocket and hold it out to Reid. “Thank you for being a good sport about that,” he said shyly.
“Thank you,” Reid replied. He reached out to take the phone from Luke’s hand, and his fingers brushed against Luke’s. The younger man looked up and smiled warmly into Reid’s eyes.
The moment caught, and lingered.
Reid could write papers on the neurologic processes of romantic attraction-could describe with perfect scientific detachment the transmission of sensory neurons from the thalamus to the frontal cortex, the release of hormones from the hypothalamus and pituitary glands-understood the flood of chemicals making his blood pound, his heart thunder in his chest, but he couldn’t begin to explain why his brain had chosen this moment, with this ridiculous, insecure, unavailable younger man, to assault him with sensations he’d never experienced before, longings that were as intense on an emotional level as they were on a physical level. He ached with the confusing, conflicting desire to stand there staring into those ridiculously large, liquid brown eyes forever-and at the same time, to throw the man down on the backseat of his car and pound into him until neither could remember the existence of a world beyond their explosive connection.
Damning himself as an idiot, knowing he was playing with fire, Reid took a step closer to Luke. “Tell me, Mr. Snyder,” he said in a low voice. “If all goes well on this hypothetical date of mine, how do I show my date I’m interested in something more?”
Luke blinked a few times, his eyes caught by the intensity of Reid’s gaze. “Well, you could… take his hand, tell him you had a nice time and… you’d like to see him again.”
“Take his hand?” Reid questioned softly. “You don’t think a kiss… would be more direct?”
Luke’s eyes flickered down to focus on Reid’s mouth. “Possibly,” he said, swallowing thickly, “but… only if your date is giving you the right signals.”
“Signals?” Reid repeated, taking a half-step closer.
“Body language,” Luke answered, licking his own lips as his gaze lingered on Reid’s. “Quick breaths, d-dilated pupils, trouble… concentrating.”
“Ah,” Reid said gruffly. “I’d have to get pretty close to him, wouldn’t I?... So I could observe those things?” He moved even closer.
“Yes,” Luke said, with a quick inhale of air, “proximity is… good. Touch is even better.”
“Touch?” Reid asked, raising a hand to graze his fingertips along Luke’s faintly stubbled chin. “I like that idea.”
Luke swayed almost imperceptibly toward Reid, and the movement was all the encouragement Reid needed. He slowly leaned in to close the distance between their lips.
Reid was only a breath away when, with a sudden gasp of air, Luke sprang back-as if launched from a slingshot. The blond let go of the cell phone abruptly, and it slipped from Reid’s fingers and clattered noisily to the ground.
“Sorry!” Luke cried out, backing himself up against the side of his car. “Sorry!” He spun and fumbled in his pocket, pulling out his keys and juggling the key fob to unlock the door. The younger man tugged at the handle of the car door, and the door opened too quickly, hitting Luke in the side and making him stumble awkwardly. Reid took a step back and Luke slid his way around to the other side of his car door, seeming to want to preserve as much space between himself and the doctor as humanly possible.
It was only when Luke had one foot inside the car that he turned back to face Reid, holding the door between them as a shield and aiming his gaze somewhere in the vicinity of Reid’s right elbow. “Sorry,” he said again, “that was… the dinner was… nice... but I have to go now.”
“Of course you do,” Reid said quietly, studying the younger man’s lowered head.
Luke’s gaze drifted up to Reid’s and then just as quickly skittered away. “It’s just… Noah… he’s… he might be… he’s expecting me.”
“Of course,” Reid agreed.
There was a long, tense pause before Luke spoke again. “Okay, well, I’ll c-call you when I find a new match. Okay?”
“Sure.”
Luke flashed an uncertain glance up at Reid, and the doctor assembled his mouth into a reassuring half-smile. Then in another moment, Luke was off, his car peeling out of the restaurant parking lot and into the night… leaving Reid there alone, his cell phone laying forgotten on the pavement, his chest aching from a wound Reid knew was at least largely self-inflicted.
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