Hello Stranger

I was cold and hot both at once. Dizzy with embarrassment.

“I, um… I don’t think he… um… likes me like that.”

She laughed. “Believe me, he may seem cold to you, but I’ve seen the way he stares. He may think he’s hiding it, but he’s not hiding it from us, not when you’ve known him like we have.” I held my breath through her pause. “He likes you. Likes you, likes you, I mean. He can’t stop looking at you, even when he tries. He does this weird thing with his lip, pinches it at the side when you’re near.”

She pinched her lip in her teeth to show me, and I’d seen that. Barely there enough to even notice, but I still recognised it when she pulled the same expression.

I didn’t say a word, just stood there, staring in shock.

“Come on,” she pushed. “You like him back. Admit it! You couldn’t hide it if you tried.”

I shrugged and flicked through my clipboard notes. “He’s a great man.”

“A great man and a hot man. A great hot man who likes you right back.”

I took a chance on her, a girl I hardly knew, because I liked her. I liked her enough to reach out with trust.

“So what do I do about it?” I asked her. “I don’t even see him on the train anymore to ask him about his novels. I don’t know what I could say.”

She pushed her way into the pharma room and I followed her on in for the meds restock.

“You’ll have to be the one to do something,” she said. “There’s no way he’s ever going to make a move on you. Not since you’re half his age, and a member of his team. He’ll hardly even reach out to share a birthday card with people he’s known for years, let alone ask a lovely little thing like you out on a date.”

I couldn’t imagine going out on a date with Dr Hall. I’d be shaking like a jitterbug all the way through.

Gina’s face lit up in a smirk.

“You could try to get some chatter going with him next week at my leaving party. We’re all heading down to Casey’s Bar on Friday evening. Even Wendy is coming.”

I’d heard about the leaving party. It was already scheduled in my phone calendar. Liam had moaned on at me by text because it was one of his suggested moving my shit options, and I’d said it was a no go.

“Seriously,” Gina said. “See if you can get some red wine down his neck, and flash him one of those pretty smiles of yours and ask him to give you a personal examination.” She laughed so hard at that, and I couldn’t help it, I laughed along with her.

There was no way on earth I would be asking Dr Hall for a personal examination anytime soon. Not with my duck feet and birthmarks. It would be lamplight at best.

“Honestly,” she carried on. “You have to do something. There’s no way he’ll be the one grabbing hold of you first, not since you’re young enough to be his daughter.” She laughed again. “His very pretty daughter, who is every bit the book addict he is from the sounds of it. You’ll both be reading in bed together when you’re done with the fucking.”

She laughed again and I laughed along but the blush on my cheeks was a scorcher.

I helped her on the restock and changed the conversation back to the day, but I couldn’t shake it off. That butterfly flutter inside. That crazy flash of hope that maybe, just maybe, she was right.

Maybe he did look at me with that tiny pinch of his lip, and that deep dark depth to his stare.

I was still soaring high with that crazy flash of hope when I passed him next in the corridor, just after that Friday lunchtime. I dared to smile my very biggest smile and say a hi and got nothing back from him other than the same clipped nod as he walked by.

I was deflated in a fizzle.

No.

Gina was wrong.

He didn’t want me.

Not like that.

And it was ok. That’s what I told myself. I gave myself a proper talking to inside my head, and said that Dr Hall was just Dr Hall, a great man to be working with, and I was just Chloe, a girl who was learning from him. It was true.

I was trying too hard to be worried about whether I stood a hope in hell that the man I was crazy about could ever be crazy about me too, and I was doing ok. I was doing good.

It was a dumbass part me that believed one short week in Franklin Ward could see me being good in that place. It was naive to think I could ever walk straight into that role with enough strength to handle it.