Page 64 of Parallel

31

NICK

Ever since Quinn left my office yesterday, I’ve been hunting for a solution that doesn’t exist. There’s a very good reason doctors can’t date their patients, especially in a situation like ours. It’s possible we could tell the right lies and hide it enough to get away with it, but that still wouldn’t make it ethical.

Yet the minute I get her call, I know I’d be willing to do it anyway.

She insists on driving herself. We arrange to meet at a market near the lake, since my parents’ place is off a series of unmarked roads.

“And pack the red bikini,” I add, only half-joking.

“Nick,” she says softly. “I’m still engaged. This is just one last effort to figure things out.”

But whether she’s admitting it or not, it’s also one last chance for her to figure out she would rather be with me.

The air is warm and moist, the buzz of insects rising toward the clouds. I stand for a moment outside the car just before I leave to meet Quinn, feeling something that’s been absent so long I’d forgotten there was a time when I expected it—hope.

All I should want from today is that Quinn remembers enough that we solve this, or remembers enough of who she was that she decides to end it with Jeff. The hope I feel is a warning sign, a reminder that my desire to get her away from Jeff is not wholly altruistic. There are things I want from today for myself as well as for her, whether I’m supposed to have them or not.

She arrives at the market not long after I do. I watch her climb out of an old Jetta, wearing a gauzy sleeveless dress with a slit up the side. I’m trying hard to pretend I don’t see a flash of tan thigh as she walks toward me. Today is about convincing her to give this a shot, convincing her that she has no reason to fear me. Thoughts about those thighs straddling me in a hotel bed a few nights ago will have to wait.

“There’s a deli here,” I say, pulling the door handle. “I thought we could grab some lunch and eat it out on the dock.”

She walks in ahead of me and makes it five feet before she comes to a sudden stop, pressing her fingers to her temples.

My hands are on her arms in an instant. “Are you okay?”

She nods, slumping against the glass door of a drink refrigerator. “I’ve been here before,” she whispers. “With you. We were buying food for the weekend, because the grocery store wasn’t done yet.”

There’s a chill up my spine. “Yeah,” I say casually, pretending it’s not completely bizarre she knows this. “The grocery store opened just before I got out of college.”

She looks off into the distance, like she’s watching our past on a movie screen only she can see. “We bought a bunch of food here, enough to last the weekend, but we ended up coming back…” She trails off, looking so embarrassed I have to ask.

“What?”

She shakes her head and turns toward the deli. “Nothing. So, what’s good?”

“That’s not fair,” I tell her, gently cupping her elbow to turn her back toward me. “You can’t keep starting a memory and not finishing it.”

The color rises in her face. “We ran out of condoms,” she whispers, not meeting my eye. “So you came here for more. Twice. The cashier gave you a hard time about it.”

It’s a gut punch, but the good kind. The idea of running through multiple boxes of condoms with Quinn…Jesus. I want to pin her against the refrigerator case and make what happened in Baltimore look like child’s play.

Pull it together, Nick. I clear my throat. “I could buy some now, only in the interest of a by-the-book investigation?”

She laughs, as if I was entirely joking. I definitely was not.

My parents’ white, two-story colonial sits at the end of a long gravel road that is dappled with sunlight beneath a canopy of trees. By mutual agreement she rode with me instead of following behind. It still doesn’t seem possible that the sight of the house itself is causing her seizures, but a few weeks ago I didn’t think time travel was possible either. As the house comes into view, I find her hand in mine. I’m not even sure which of us is responsible.

“Still okay?” I ask.

“Yes,” she breathes. “I’ve been here too. Your and Ryan’s room was up there.” I stiffen as she points to the room I once shared with my twin.

“That’s probably the first time anyone’s spoken his name here in a decade,” I tell her. “My mom—I guess we all try to protect her.”

Her face falls. She couldn’t look guiltier if she tried. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine. Seriously.” I open her door and get another flash of her legs as she climbs out of the Jeep. It’s probably for the best that she refused to bring the bikini. I’m having enough trouble as it is.