Chapter 9: Ten More Reps

He said ten.

He said ten reps. That was the deal. Ten reps of wall-sit, in silence, while Aiden Black sat three feet away from me and didn't look away.

I lasted six minutes the first time. Eight the second. Joe had left. The room was beige. The mountain picture was a mountain picture. The chair next to the door had a man in it, who was holding a clipboard he was not looking at, who was very specifically, very professionally, very obviously not looking away.

"Three more seconds," he said. Quiet. Like a metronome.

"This is" I was breathing through my teeth, "a hate crime against my quads."

"It's three more seconds."

"It's three more lifetimes."

He didn't smile. He almost did. The corner of his mouth did a small, slow thing that he caught and stopped before it could be a smile. He has gotten very good at catching them.

"One," he said.

I slid down the wall. My thighs shook. My ribs complained. I sat on the mat in a small, very undignified heap, and I looked at him, and he was looking at his clipboard like it contained answers to a question I didn't know I was asking.

"Ten more," he said.

"You already said ten."

"That was a set. I want a second set."

"I don't want a second set."

"Ten more reps. Wall-sit. Higher." He paused. Glanced at me for a single second. "Slower."

He was critiquing. The way he always did. Single words. No softness. No jokes. No glances that lasted longer than half a breath. He was, very precisely, not giving me anything.

It was, of course, the most Aiden Black thing anyone had ever done to me in my life, and my body which had developed a Pavlovian response to his voice the way lab dogs have to bells was not handling it well.

I stood up. Put my back to the wall. Slid down.

"Higher," he said.

I went higher.

"Hold."

I held.

I did ten. Then ten more. He counted, very quietly, and he did not stop looking at me. The whole time. The whole twenty. He sat in his chair and he watched my legs, my posture, my breathing, the way my hands pressed against the wall when my knee was threatening to give out. He watched with a face that gave nothing away.

I did not know what to do with the way I was being watched.

It was the second to last rep of the second set.

My right knee, which had been cranky all week, decided it had had enough. It buckled. Just a small, soft give. Nothing dramatic. The kind of thing that happens to people whose quadriceps have been at war with their own body for six weeks. I was halfway down. I was going to fall. I had time to register that I was going to fall, in a way that was both slow and fast, the way falling always is.

He caught me.

Both hands. On my waist. He was out of the chair before the wall-sit was even fully collapsed. I did not see him move. I just felt his hands, both of them, on the small of my back, holding me upright with a strength that was extremely disorienting. He had moved so fast. Like something in his body had been waiting for this. Like his hands had been practicing for this exact moment without his brain's permission.

He froze.

I froze.

Both of us. In the small PT room. Beige wall. Mountain picture. The fountain in the lobby, very faintly. The clock on the wall, ticking.

His fingers were warm on my waist.

He was standing very close.

He did not let go.

I did not breathe.

One second.

Two seconds.

He let go. He stepped back. He stepped back like I'd burned him. He crossed the room. He crossed the room like he was physically unable to be near me. He picked up the clipboard. He picked it up and put it back down and picked it up again.

"Careful," he said.

That was it. That was all he said.

"Okay," I said.

That was all I said.

After PT, he walked me to the front desk.

"Dr. Black is just finishing the consultation," the receptionist said brightly, looking between us. "Oh, Dr. Black, you don't usually"

"I have time." He cut her off. He did not look at her. He did not look at me. "The consultation is finished. Ms. Park can be discharged."

"I'm not discharged," I said, in a small voice. "I'm just"

"Discharged. From this appointment." He was looking at the front desk woman. His voice was extremely level. "As a courtesy, I'll walk her to the parking lot."

He didn't wait for her to answer. He held the door open. I walked through it. The hallway was quiet. The fountain was doing its fountain thing. We went outside.

It had started raining.

L.A. rain is a small, polite, surprising thing. Not like the dramatic thunderstorms of places that have seasons. More like the city had been told once that rain was a thing and was trying to participate without offending anyone. The drops were small and soft and a little bit cold.

I did not have an umbrella.

I had, in fact, walked out the door that morning without an umbrella, because I do not generally think about umbrellas, because I am from a place where you have an umbrella and from a place where you don't, and I have not yet figured out which is L.A.

Aiden stopped next to me at the top of the steps. Looked at the rain. Looked at me. Looked at the rain again.

"Hold on."

He went back inside. He came back out with a small black umbrella, the kind that folds into itself. The kind that lives in a glove compartment and never gets used. He was holding it out to me without a word.

I took it.

Our fingers brushed.

He didn't move. I didn't move. We both stood on the steps of the Silverlake Clinic with a small black umbrella between us, in the L.A. drizzle, in a way that was, technically, a single second and felt like a small eternity.

"Your knee," he said. Quiet.

"It's fine."

"It's not fine. Ice it for twenty minutes. Four times a day."

"Okay."

"Ms. Park"

"Emma."

He closed his eyes for a second. Opened them.

"Emma. Drive home. Ice your knee. Eat something that isn't ice cream."

"You don't know what I eat."

"I know you eat ice cream."

"How do you know that?"

He looked at me. The look lasted half a second. It was the longest half second of my entire life.

"Goodbye, Ms. Park."

He said it with his surgeon voice. The flat, professional, every patient gets the same thing voice. And then he walked to his car.

I walked to mine. I had driven here, technically against the rules, in a small act of rebellion against my own recovery. Whatever. I was twenty-eight and I was a person and I was going to go where I needed to go.

I sat in my car. I put the umbrella on the passenger seat. The rain was starting to come down harder. I put my key in the ignition.

I looked up.

Aiden was sitting in his car, three spots down. Engine on. Hands at ten and two. He was looking forward. He was not looking at me. He was absolutely, certainly, definitely not looking at me.

I pulled out.

He did not move.

I made the turn onto Sunset.

I looked in the rearview.

He was pulling out.

He did not pass me. He did not turn. He just followed me, three car lengths back, all the way to the freeway entrance, and then he got off on the next exit and I lost him in the rearview.

I cried the whole way home.

Not sad crying. The other kind. The kind that happens when someone treats your small boring broken body like it is worth the price of gas. The kind that happens when a man who has been told to stay away from you is suddenly driving home on a Tuesday because he has to make sure your knee is okay.

I got home at five forty-five.

The umbrella was on the passenger seat the entire time. I brought it inside. Set it on the kitchen counter, next to the sunscreen, next to the coffee cup I still had, next to the small white sticky notes I'd started collecting from him like a small sad museum of -A.

I unzipped the umbrella. It was a normal black umbrella. The inside had a small leather tag with a name engraved. A. Black. Of course. Of course.

I lifted the umbrella to my face. I don't know why. I think I had a reason. I think the reason was: I have done every other strange thing in the last six weeks, and one more is not going to kill me.

It smelled like his cologne. Something clean. Something cedar. Underneath, the very specific, almost sterile smell of hospital soap. The two of them together, the way he probably smelled at work, the way he smelled when he had been on a long shift and hadn't gone home yet. The way he smelled when he was being a man and not a surgeon.

I sat on my kitchen floor.

I put the umbrella across my knees.

I pressed my face into the folded-up black fabric and I closed my eyes and I breathed him in like a person who is not, under any circumstances, supposed to be doing this, and I was, and he was not here to stop me, and Sophie was not here to yell at me about it.

My phone buzzed.

Unknown number.

Ice your knee. -A.B.

I stared.

A.B.

He had signed his full initials.

He had given me his number. Or I had given him mine. Or someone at the front desk had. Or he had looked it up. Or he had done something highly inappropriate and not looked at me once while doing it.

I have not given him my number.

I have not given this man my number.

I sit on my kitchen floor with the umbrella on my knees and the phone in my hand, and I do not, for the life of me, remember giving Aiden Black my phone number.

To be continued...