Page 35 of Clinically Awkward

I could wait twelve minutes.

The thing I didn’t want to admit. The thing I was actively avoiding admitting was that this wasn’t friendship. Or maybe it was friendship. But it was also something else.

Something I didn’t have a name for yet. Something that made my chest feel weird when she laughed. Something that made me notice the way she argued, the way she gestured when she was passionate about something, the way she looked at me when I said something she thought was funny.

I had sworn off dating to avoid the marriage trap.

I had sworn off dating to avoid becoming Julien—sleep-deprived, covered in baby vomit, married to someone who read tarot cards and believed in “energy cleansing.”

I had sworn off dating to avoid becoming Gabriel, the man who had accidentally fallen in love with his daughter’s nanny and now made heart-eyes at her over breakfast.

I had sworn off dating to maintain my independence, my sanity, my carefully constructed life.

And yet, here I was. Spending every free moment with Vivian Darcy. Looking forward to the weekend. Making spreadsheets about tacos. Buying concert tickets two months in advance.

This was fine. This was totally fine. This was friendship. Just friendship. Nothing more.

I looked at the clock.

Eleven minutes. And I wondered, just for a second, what would happen if I stopped lying to myself. What would happen if I admitted that this wasn’t just friendship? What would happen if I admitted that somewhere between the comedy club and the baseball game and the hiking trail, I had started falling for Vivian Darcy?

The clock ticked.

Ten minutes.

I pushed the thought away.

This was fine. This was friendship.

And I was absolutely, definitely, 100% not in love with my best friend.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Vivian

It was 4:55 PM, and there I was—elbow-deep in the stockroom trenches, waging my latest battle against Nathan’s very personal war on order. The man treated the supply closet like a Jackson Pollock painting: a glorious, chaotic mess that only made sense if you squinted and lowered your expectations. Gauze with syringes, bandages living it up behind IV bags, thermometer covers snuggling up to tongue depressors as if their destinies were intertwined. At this point, I couldn’t tell if Nathan was just organizationally challenged or performing an elaborate social experiment to see how long it took before I snapped and started labeling everything with passive-aggressive Post-its.

Of course, this was hardly my first time playing “stockroom detective”—Nathan’s system (if you could call it that) provided me with endless hours of hide-and-seek. And yet, some part of me still held out hope that one day I would open the cabinet and find supplies sorted with an ounce of logic, or at least a nod to the alphabet. Instead, I’d learned to expect the unexpected: next time, I half-expected to find tongue depressors in the freezer and someone’s lunch in with the bandages.

I was mentally composing a strongly worded note to Nathan’s inner neat freak—assuming he had one—when my phone buzzed in my scrub pocket. I fished it out, the latex gloves box still dangling from my other hand, ready for whatever new surprise the universe (and Nathan) had in store for me today.

Colton: Dinner tonight? Miss you, babe

I stared at the text for a moment before replying.

Me: Sure. What time?

Colton: 7? I’ll pick you up.

Me: Sounds good.

I shoved my phone back into my pocket, fingers lingering on the screen for a heartbeat, as the muted buzz of the stockroom’s overhead fluorescent light pressed against my senses. The faint chemical tang of disinfectant stung my nose, mingling with the dusty scent of cardboard boxes and latex gloves, grounding me as I forced myself to return to the shelves. Each movement felt mechanical, belying the growing knot of uncertainty twisting inside me.

Dinner with Colton. It sounded perfectly simple—normal, even. Good. We hadn’t seen each other in almost a week, the usual excuses piling up: his rotating shifts, my relentless hours. The idea of reconnecting promised comfort, yet a thin thread of doubt tugged at me. Would it really feel nice? Or would the silences stretch, weighted by everything we hadn’t said?

I could wear the green dress. The one Quinton had—My thoughts skittered, stumbling against that name like a stone in my shoe. I pressed my lips together, the thrum of the stockroom echoing in my ears, and forced myself to refocus.

The one I bought two weeks ago. The green dress. That was what I meant.