The Secret Poet, page 10
It sounded like Joanne was only half joking, so I got up and went down the hall to where the thermostat hung on the wall. There was a small note taped next to it that said Do not adjust. I snorted and shook my head as I flipped open the plastic cover. None of the staff would go against Perry’s orders, but I was his sister. What was he gonna do, fire me? I clicked the buttons to a temperature that was warmer than Santa’s Workshop, closed the plastic lid, and headed back to my desk.
“Those jeans are so cute.” Zoe’s voice startled me. She stood at the window, one forearm on the small slice of counter there, and craned her neck so she could see me. “They look like they were made for you.”
Why can’t we control our own blushing? Why isn’t that a thing? I felt mine crawl right up my neck and cover my cheeks, my face, like I was being submerged in very warm water. I swallowed and made myself smile. “Thank you. They’re new. My niece and I went shopping and she helped me pick them out.” God, Morgan, why don’t you tell her your entire life story now.
“Well, they look fantastic on you.” She held up the doughnut box in her hand. “I have some samples for you, and I brought snacks.”
“God bless you,” Joanne said and jumped up so fast to let Zoe in through the door that we both laughed.
“Somebody’s hungry,” I commented.
“Chewing will help warm me up,” Joanna said as Zoe opened the box.
“It is kind of chilly in here,” Zoe said, furrowing her brow. Summer had blasted in with a heat wave that I wasn’t ready for, but Zoe seemed to be. She wore a lightweight dress today, a yellow and red pattern that was a bit brighter than her usual work attire. Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and I noticed her skin had darkened a bit from the sun. It also was covered in tiny goose bumps.
Joanne snorted, then shoved a powdered doughnut into her mouth, presumably to keep from saying anything else.
“It’s a seasonal battle we have with Perry,” I told Zoe with a grin, as I grabbed a Boston cream from the box and took a delicious bite.
“I know exactly what you mean. In my last office, I fought with the guys. Why do they always want it to feel like we work in a morgue?”
“No idea, but Joanne and I were just discussing how we wear more layers here in the summer than in the winter.” I set my doughnut down and said to it, “Don’t go anywhere, favorite doughnut of mine. I’ll be back, I promise.” I grabbed my keys and led Zoe to the sample closet.
“Those really are great jeans,” she said as she followed me down the hall, reiterating not only her point, but also my blushing, because the only conclusion to come to from her words was that she was looking at my ass. “You always look so put together.”
“Me?” I asked, then laughed. Probably too loudly. But seriously, had she seen a mirror? Like, ever? “Well, thanks. I couldn’t pull off what you do, though. Your wardrobe is amazing.” I wasn’t lying.
“Thank you,” she said, and I wasn’t quite sure, but there might have been a slight tint of pink on those high cheekbones. She opened her bag and began to stock the sample closet as I watched.
I could’ve left her alone. Just like last time, there really was no need for me to hover. But I liked standing near Zoe. She smelled good. “I heard you’re going to play golf in the tournament this weekend.”
“I am. It was really nice of your brother to ask.”
“He’s a good guy.” I don’t know why I said that. Why I let it slip out. I didn’t want her to think I had anything to do with their pairing.
“He is.” A slight grin crossed her face as she said, “And quite the poet. He’s a funny guy. A good guy and a funny guy. That’s a pretty great combination.”
Something warm settled in my core. Pleasant. I smiled back at her, knowing that it was my words that she found amusing, even though we were talking about my brother. “I hope you don’t mind that I suggested you for the tournament.”
“I was a little surprised he didn’t ask you.” She glanced at me, then went back to stocking and counting.
“Oh God, no. He knows I’m terrible.” She made a face at me, and I scrambled to add, “Plus, I work with him every day. I gotta spend Saturdays with him, too?” That made her laugh, and I soaked it in, the surprisingly gentle musicality of it. Then I shrugged and said as nonchalantly as I could, “He likes you.”
“Well, I like him, too.” It was interesting—I noticed there was no dreamy quality to her words or her tone. Nothing that said, I so want to get to know more about this guy! It was more like she was talking about a friend. Or hell, a brother. She didn’t ask me for details about him, didn’t want to know his likes and dislikes or if he talked about her. Which was a little bit surprising. I mean, I didn’t mind not having to educate her on all things Perry, but I was a great source, and she knew it. Still, she didn’t probe. Instead, she finished up, closed the closet door, and took out her tablet for a signature. “You know,” she said, and this time, there was a bit of wistfulness in her voice, “I would never have expected him to be a words guy.” She shot a quick glance at me. “I don’t mean that to be offensive at all. I just…the poems are so cute and sweet, and they got me thinking of my mom and how much she loved words. Has he ever written any that are a little deeper? More serious, maybe? He could be good.”
I blinked at her twice before I could find words. “I actually think he has, but I’m not sure. I’ll hint around about it.” I shot her a wink and hoped it didn’t look like I’d had some kind of twitch in my face.
“I was reading E. E. Cummings again last night. Remember the book I bought from Sylvia?”
I nodded because of course I remembered it. I’d reread a bunch of his poems after that.
“‘I Carry Your Heart With Me’ is just so beautiful.”
I was familiar with that one, of course. She’d mentioned it before, and I completely agreed with her. “I mean, right? There’s this combination of”—I squinted, trying to find the best description—“love and longing in the words. Such longing. You can feel them in your soul.” Things I strove for in my own writing. I noticed Zoe looking at me with this gaze that could only be described as heavy. Okay, so maybe I’d gone a little overboard with the whole stirring my soul thing.
“Yes,” she said finally, softly, and nodded. “That’s exactly it.”
That gaze held. I’m not sure which one of us was the holder, but it held for several seconds before I somehow managed to yank myself back to reality. Because it felt too good. Too…dangerous.
“Let’s get you a signature,” I said and inwardly cringed at my own overcheerfulness. God, I was so the opposite of smooth. I turned and led her down the hall, back to my desk.
Perry came out just as the phone rang. Joanne was already on a call, so I answered, which was probably a good thing. Something else to focus on. As I listened to the patient on the line, I tried to eavesdrop on Perry and Zoe, while also trying not to. Believe me when I tell you, this was no easy feat. I watched Perry sign the tablet and smile the smile he reserved for women he was interested in. I’d been told it was his sexy smile, but he’s my brother and I can’t—and don’t want to—think of him that way. So, he smiled, and Zoe smiled back as she collected her things. Perry said he’d see her on Saturday, and damn if he didn’t look like an excited teenager. I wondered if Zoe noticed, but if she did, she hid it well. She was way more chill than he was. She told him she was looking forward to it and waved at him as he headed back toward the exam rooms, but she didn’t leave.
My call took another seven minutes at least, but Zoe waited near my counter, scrolled on her phone, and never said a word until I finally hung up.
“Did I forget something?” I asked her. Much as I loved that she was still there, I wasn’t sure why.
“No.” She shook her head and smiled. “I just didn’t want to leave without saying good-bye.”
Well.
A repeat of the warmth settling in my core happened. I’m pretty sure the grin that spread across my face was a stupid one. I didn’t care. “I’m glad you didn’t.”
Zoe shouldered her bag and slid the box of doughnuts my way. “Have another one. Doughnuts bring joy. See you again soon.” This time, she waved and headed out.
“Bye.” I waved back and kept watching her until she closed the door behind her. Then I watched through the front window of the waiting room until she walked by.
“She’s so nice,” Joanne said, and I flinched a tiny bit in my chair because I’d forgotten I wasn’t alone and felt like I’d been caught staring. Though I hadn’t been. Caught, I mean. I was definitely staring.
I nodded, not trusting myself not to sound like a lovesick schoolgirl. My crush was growing, and as I heard Perry chatting with a patient, I scolded myself as one thought echoed through my head.
She’s not yours, she’s his.
✥ ✥ ✥
I love thunderstorms.
I know lots of people don’t. They can be unnerving and scary and so, so loud. But there’s something about being inside, in my house, safe with my cats and my books and just watching, that I love. I think that joy was also rooted deep in me because of my mom. She loved to watch the rain, and when I was a girl, I’d sit on our open front porch with her and just watch and listen as the raindrops fell from the sky. Watching the sky change colors, the leaves rustle in the wind, people in the neighborhood scatter to get inside, water rushing down the street toward the sewer grate. There was something peaceful about it.
Now that I have my own place, I still feel that way. I still long for that peace. My house has a small, screened-in porch on the front and a rocking chair where I can sit and watch my neighborhood as it lives and breathes. And I can watch the rain as it moves through. Ross is a big baby and stays in the living room when it thunders, and that Thursday night was no different. He watched through the window to the porch as Rachel sat in my lap, and we rocked slowly, listening to the rumbling as the storm got closer.
Golf had been canceled, and we’d played enough weeks now that I was actually disappointed. I’d been looking forward to seeing my friends, having a few drinks, grabbing some munchies, the golf itself really just a vehicle to get me to the clubhouse. Plus, it had been a beast of a week, and I wanted to blow off some steam.
Instead I sat on my porch with my cat, a glass of wine, and my notebook and watched it rain. I bet you’re pretty jealous of my life right about now.
I had told Perry about Zoe’s comments with regard to his poetry, so it came as no surprise when he practically begged me to write more. He liked the idea of making her laugh, so he told me to get all rhymey again. I did not tell him about how she’d asked if he ever wrote deeper poetry, and I wasn’t sure why. Or maybe I was and just didn’t want to actually admit it to myself. I wasn’t certain. I’d whipped off a silly four-liner about golf the day before, since they’d be golfing together on Saturday, and sent that to him. But then, as I sat there watching the rain, feeling the cool summer breeze as it softly passed through the porch, I started to jot down lines as they came to me.
The rain
I think it knows things
As I sit and watch it fall, can it tell?
It whispers against the leaves
Gently taps the pavement
Rolls along the rooftops
Can it sense my secret?
That you’re on my mind
That you are my mind, my only thought
When it visits your house, will it tell?
Will it whisper that to you?
Will you know?
I wondered what Zoe was doing. She’d said she was walking distance to Happily Ever After, as was I, so it occurred to me right then, that if she was home, she probably wasn’t all that far away. And that was kind of cool. And then it was weird, because here I was again. Thinking about a woman my brother hoped to make his girlfriend. Again. I groaned, startling Rachel in my lap. I laid a hand on her back to calm her and apologized. Then I set my notebook and pen aside and replaced them with my wine.
I took a sip. “Much better,” I said quietly. I glanced down at my black Under Armour shorts and the red T-shirt that I’d had since I was a senior in high school and shook my head. “It’s not like somebody as sophisticated and put together as her would ever even look twice at Gym Shorts Girl, right?” I asked Rachel. “Which doesn’t even matter anyway because my brother called her first.” Then I snorted because Zoe wasn’t the front seat of the car. She wasn’t the biggest piece of cake. She was a woman. An amazing, super sexy, beautiful woman. “Oh, Rach, I need to stop this.” To my cat’s credit, she did seem like she was listening intently to me, but she offered no comment. Then I shook the whole train of thought right out of my head. “Okay. Enough. That’s enough. We’re good, right, sweet pea?” I leaned down and dropped a kiss on my cat’s head, then sat back, sipped my wine, and watched the rain.
Yeah. I was fine.
Before I went to bed that night, I texted the poem to Perry and told him to keep it in his back pocket for a little ways down the road, when he felt it was right to try to take things a little deeper with Zoe.
Your the best, Morgs! TY!
I cringed a bit at the misspelling but didn’t correct him and tease him about it like I usually would. I just set the phone aside, crawled into bed, and reached for the remote. For the next hour, I channel surfed, my cats bookending me as I did my best to just quiet my mind.
Yep. I was totally fine.
Chapter Eleven
“One more week to go,” Diane said on Friday morning. “And then a long weekend.”
I felt my brows rise up in surprise, and I glanced at my calendar. She was right. The following weekend was July Fourth, and we’d have a three-day weekend. “And it’s Friday. Half day.”
She gave a little fist pump and headed back to her office where she’d go over the day’s schedule and get ready for her first patient, who I knew would walk in any minute. Janie Crowe was up first, and she was never less than fifteen minutes early for her appointment. Always. I envied her punctuality.
I’d seen Perry walking around near the exam rooms but hadn’t talked to him since my arrival at work. Next time he passed by, I waved and said good morning. He surprised me by coming toward my desk. Joanne wasn’t in yet, so it was just him and me. He stared at me, took a big breath, blew it out hard enough for his shoulders to drop dramatically.
“Tourney’s tomorrow,” I said, assuming that was why he seemed so jittery. “Nervous?”
“Very.” He swallowed, studied me, then said, “I sent the poem last night.”
I grinned. “The golf limerick thing?”
“Well, yeah. But then last night, I texted her to tell her again that I was really excited for Saturday, and then I sent the other one.”
I gaped at him. “The one about the rain? No…”
A quick head shake and a half shrug combined with a somewhat blank expression. “I guess? Was it about rain?”
“God, Perry, did you even read it?”
He grimaced and looked down at the tablet he held, hit a few buttons, and scrolled as he read. “Not really.”
“Oh, man.” I pressed my lips together into a thin line.
“What?”
“It was kind of…” How to describe the words I’d written, the way I’d felt when I did. “Intimate.”
Sandy brows flew up. “It was? Now I need to read it.” He laughed.
“That’s why I told you to wait.”
He lifted one shoulder and seemed completely unfazed. Because men knew zero about women. “I mean, she’ll like it or she won’t, right?” He headed toward the exam rooms.
Or she’ll fall in love with you, or she’ll think you’ve gotten way too intense way too fast. My money was on the latter. God, I hoped I hadn’t sabotaged my brother’s chances with Zoe. No, it wasn’t my fault that he’d sent the poem sooner than he should have, but still.
Janie Crowe walked in the front door at eight forty, as predicted, and my Friday began.
And for the rest of my workday, all I could think about was Zoe reading my words, and I wondered how they made her feel.
✥ ✥ ✥
There’s something about the peace and quiet of the early morning that I love. Not early, early. I’m not up at five a.m. But I’m almost always up by seven. Even on weekends. I’ll come downstairs, feed the cats, make my coffee, and just sit at my little table, watching out the window. A cardinal came and sat on the railing of my small deck, his red feathers a bright spot in the brown and green of my backyard. My mother once told me that cardinals represent spirits visiting us, and I absently wondered who might have stopped by to say hi to me.
At least Perry had let me get in one sip of coffee before he rang my bell.
“It’s open,” I called out.
“Hey there.” He walked into my kitchen and I gave him the once-over. He wore nicely pressed khakis and a white Ralph Lauren polo shirt. On his head was a navy-blue visor with the Northwood Medical logo on it. This was a charity event after all, and the participants almost always wore some kind of attire with their logo, so people would know which companies and organizations had donated.
“You scream, I’m a doctor playing in a golf tournament.” He really did.
“And I am okay with that.” He looked down at himself, then back up at me, and wrinkled his nose. “Seriously, though. Do I look okay?” And there were those nerves again. Such an uncommon occurrence in my big brother, though I suspected that’s why I could see them so clearly.
“You look great.” It was the truth. “And you smell amazing.” Also true. Kind of woodsy with a little musk mixed in. “Aftershave? Cologne? What is that?”
“It’s a men’s body spray I read about.” His eyes darted away, and I smiled internally at the adorableness of my brother’s embarrassment.
“Well, it’s awesome.” I gestured to the corner by the door to my garage. “Wedge is right there.” He’d broken his sand wedge last time he played and forgot to buy himself another one, so he’d asked to borrow mine.
