My phone buzzed.
Hey. It was from Ricky.
My eyes flickered over to him. Ricky looked like he had before, listening intently to something Markus was saying. I flipped my phone back over with a thud.
“What’s up?” Nia asked, looking from my phone to me in alarm.
“CNN News alert,” I said. “Some guy in Florida wrestling a gator.”
“Fucking Floridians,” Nia said.
Michelle turned on her phone.
“Wait, I didn’t get that alert—”
“Sorry, did I say CNN? I meant Vox,” I amended. My phone buzzed again. I ignored it.
“Another alert?” Nia asked with a knowing smirk.
I silenced my phone. This time I felt Ricky look at me, and I leered back out of the corner of my eye, channeling as much contempt into the look as I could garner. He turned back to Markus, a hint of discomfort on his face, and offered up a punny joke that they all laughed at.
The food arrived, and we set upon it like rabid wolves. I’d never seen anyone stuff an entire half slice of French toast into their mouth, but Markus somehow managed. Michelle and I divided our dishes in half and doled them out to each other with the automaticity of an old married couple. My phone stayed flipped, facedown and deceptively quiet, on the table. I was glad that at the very least Ricky didn’t try to talk to me. There seemed to be an unspoken line between conversations at our table, one that was reinforced by the way Nia had turned her body away from them. That was probably why I missed the fact that the other side was now focused on me.
“Angie. Angie!” Markus said.
My chunk of omelet fell off my fork halfway to my mouth.
“Whoa, sorry, yeah?” I said, ears hot because of course Ricky had seen that bit of inelegance.
“You do your pediatrics rotation at Rogers Children’s, right?”
I blinked. I didn’t know that Markus knew that Rogers Children’s existed.
“Yeah,” I said.
“I knew it!” Markus said, puffing out his chest. He jostled Diamond next to him, who rolled her eyes. “See, baby, I do listen!” Then he leaned forward, his whole body alight with the excitement of a child with a dirty secret. “Ricky volunteers at Rogers! He does Child Life stuff there. Small world, right?”
For the first time during this meal, I let myself look at Ricky with more than a passing glance. We met eyes instantly. I knew all about the tragedy of his mother’s passing; how had he failed to mention that he volunteered at the children’s hospital affiliated with my school?
“Yeah,” I said. Neither of us looked away. “Crazy.”
If Markus was disappointed that I hadn’t been more excited about his discovery, he hid it well, and he didn’t try to force interaction between us again. I appreciated that about Markus. He always knew when to drop what needed dropping, and when to pry. And he knew how to lighten a heavy mood with a stupid story—this time about the time he’d caught pneumonia as a kid and Child Life had tried to send him a guy in a Barney suit to cheer him up.
“I was sick as a dog, but I knew a demon when I saw one,” he said. “Kicked Barney right in his dino-balls, hard as I could. He went down like a felled tree, just tipped right over. My momma was mortified but she couldn’t stop laughing for long enough to help him up. Barney was over there rolling on the floor, in excruciating pain, because I played soccer and I knew how to punt—”
We laughed. At some point, our waiter put down our bill. We ignored it and Nia talked about the time in college Markus had sleepily kicked her in the crotch and we laughed some more until said waiter sidled up to our table ten minutes later to ask if there was anything else we needed, and after that we took the hint and left.
“I’m tired,” I announced. I wasn’t. I yawned anyway to add credence to my claim.
“Me too!” Markus said. “What do you think is wrong with me, doc? WebMD says I got the ’itis.”*
“WebMD is a better doctor than me right now,” I confessed. “Let’s go home, Nia?”
Nia hummed in agreement.
“We’re going to walk through Millennium Park before we head out,” Diamond said. “So . . . ?”
“Yeah, I guess this is it,” Markus said. “Happy early birthday, Angie. Don’t hurt yourself working too hard.”
He opened his arms wide for a hug. I gave it to him enthusiastically. We said our goodbyes like we said our hellos, except this time Diamond was too busy chatting it up with Ricky to be upset by the number of female parts coming into contact with her man.