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Amused, I snorted. “No. There are two factions here, which are easy to spot. Dr Flight’s are leaving me alone at the moment.”
“Molly, you have to remember. Without you, Rapid City would have been unprepared for this event. Thanks to you, we have a chance to save lives. Without your warnings, our home might have burned, and the loss of life could have been horrendous,” Carmine said.
“Do you believe that?” I asked, feeling vulnerable.
“Fuck yes!” Carmine exclaimed.
“You’re kind for saying that.”
“You never had a lot of praise did you, Molly?”
“Not really. My parents expected my grades, and if they slipped, I soon heard about it. Admiration isn’t something I’m comfortable with,” I replied.
“What about compliments?”
“Huh?”
“From men. On a date?” Carmine asked with a slight frown.
“Oh, I never dated. I was always working, my mother and father expected me to be self-sufficient and pay back my college and university fees,” I explained.
Carmine’s mouth tightened, and his gaze narrowed, and I guessed I’d said something wrong.
“Repay your education?” Carmine asked through gritted teeth.
“Yeah. They invested in me to be the best, and then I repaid them.”
“They invested in you?” Carmine asked in sheer disbelief.
“Is that bad?” I asked, puzzled.
“Yes, Molly. It’s okay to invest in your child, but to ask them to pay their education back? That’s diabolical and, frankly, bad parenting,” Carmine hissed.
I shrugged. That was what I was used to. My parents had always been distant, and I knew to keep quiet and let them work. The mantra of being quiet and not causing problems was ingrained in my personality. Initially, boarding school was a relief for me. It was somewhere settled and stable. But I soon realised I didn’t fit in with the other girls there. I was ‘different’, and my social anxiety grew from that.
It seemed I was always saying the wrong thing, not understanding a joke, mistaking sarcasm for truth or fact. Those kids loved bullying me, and I withdrew even more into my shell. Graduating early and hitting college at fifteen didn’t help me either. I was lost among older people once again. University at seventeen destroyed what little self-esteem I had.
I began clawing that back when I started work, only to lose my career within seven years. That had done a real number on me, but my stubbornness to fade into the background kicked in from that. I was determined to prove my theory—and that I wasn’t a laughingstock.
“Huh, I’m thirty-one years old, and I don’t think I have lived,” I whispered to Carmine.
Carmine looked at me with surprise and concern.
“Seriously?” he asked.
“Yeah. I’ve never been to a bar and gotten drunk. Never been on a date. Not been to a club or done anything remotely dangerous like ride a motorbike or gone skiing. I don’t know how to apply makeup apart from the basic, and I’ve never been to Victoria’s Secret. My life is safe and boring,” I mused.
Carmine looked upset. “Well, let’s fix that now.”
“What?” I asked, confused.
“Get your coat. We’re going on an impromptu date,” Carmine replied with a wicked twinkle in his eye.
“We are? But work…”
“Look around you, Doc. There’s plenty of people here. One meal isn’t going to hurt.”
“I should check with Dr Jones-White,” I said, scurrying away before Carmine could stop me.
