“Is that where you grew up?”
“Partly. Partly in Turkey, though we left when I was seven, so I remember very little. The smell of roses, and the river that ran through the city. The call to prayer.”
“That’s very evocative.” I taste the soup, garlic sprinkled with Parmesan, layered with parsley, and I have to pause and close my eyes. My father is in the room, in my head and my heart, sitting at the table with us. I think suddenly that this baby will be his grandchild and he will never see it, and my heart cracks.
I keep my eyes closed until the highest peak of emotion passes, but still a tear leaks out, and I have to wipe it away.
“Are you all right?” he asks.
“Yes.” I take a breath. “I’m sorry. I was planning to be completely normal for once, but I guess I’m just going to be a wreck whenever you’re around.” I shake my head. “Or maybe I’m just a wreck all around at the moment.”
“Understandably,” he says smoothly. “And I rather think becoming emotional over this soup is perfectly appropriate. I’m ready to wipe a tear away myself.”
I laugh. “Thank you.”
Our eyes meet and hold, and it isn’t my imagination that there’s something strong and . . . true . . . between us. Maybe it’s friendship. Maybe it’s finding someone else in the same boat. Or maybe it’s something more. The radar in my body says that whatever it is, right now it’s okay.
The moment stretches, but it’s never awkward. I simply arrive at a place where I ask, “What kind of medicine do you practice?”
“Did practice,” he answers. “Nothing very exciting, I’m afraid. Geriatric medicine, but I haven’t done the boards in America.”
“Really? How long have you been here?”
“Almost six years.” His smile is self-deprecating. “It was all a whirl at first, the excitement of the move and being with a celebrity and all the luxury.” He raises a brow. “I found I was as easily swept into it as anyone.”
I nod.
“I was writing on the side in London, and had been modestly successful, so I thought I’d just keep doing that in America, but”—he shrugs—“a year passed and then another and another.”
“I get it.” I tear bread from the loaf and dip it in the soup without thinking, then wonder if he’ll think I’m rude. Instead, he follows suit, nodding. “Do you miss it?”
“Medicine?”
“Yes.”
“I do, but I didn’t realize how much until I was with you at the A&E. The smells, the sound of the machines, the people who need help.” He lifts a shoulder. “Medicine has meaning. Deep meaning. Science is reliable, and powerful.”
“Will you go back to it?”
His expression lightens. “Until yesterday I would have said no. But today, I think the answer is yes.”
I cross my pink-casted arm over my chest and grin. “Because of my arm? That’s so cool.”
He laughs a little, and hair falls on his forehead. “It is.”
The electricity between us is not friendship, and I realize that I’m not entirely playing fair. “I found out something else yesterday,” I say, stirring my soup, sprinkling a little more Parmesan on top. “I’ve been so worried that I’d damaged my liver, the way I’ve been getting sick and all of that. Turns out . . .” I pause.
“You’re pregnant?”
“Yes. Did you know?”
“I suspected.” His gaze sharpens. “How do you feel about that?”
I take a moment, let it fill me, all the gold light and promise and hope. “So lucky.”
His smile this time is dazzling, showing teeth and the creases by his eyes. “I’m so glad.” He raises his glass again. “Congratulations.”
“Thank you.” I clink the glass. “I have to see a doctor tomorrow to see how things are and all that, but”—emotion rises through my heart—“it feels like a miracle.”
“And the father?”
My therapist said I didn’t have to tell anybody anything I didn’t want to tell, that my life and my path were mine to share or not share. For a moment, I weigh the possibilities. I could play it off and just claim Josh, or I can tell him the truth.
But I really, really like him, and the potential for something deep is blooming between us. He’s not a vintner or a dude or any of the kinds of men I’ve been with in the past. He’s a physician and a writer who grew up in a Muslim family; even if he hasn’t said if he’s religious, it must have influenced his views of the world to some degree.