Page 9 of Sharing Silence

Monica sweeps into view, already pulling her dark hair into a ponytail.

“Bad day?” she asks.

“My board is a mess,” Steffi grumbles.

Monica chuckles and tugs on my own ponytail. “We’ll fix it. Happy birthday, by the way. Sorry I can’t make your meal.”

“It’s fine. Grant’s coming though, right?”

She nods. “Of course he is. It’s free food.”

Shouts erupt from the entryway. “Thirty-five-year-old male⁠—”

And just like that, we’re swallowed in the rush. I don’t stand still long enough to register that my feet are throbbing, my throat is parched, and I need another bathroom break. I’m rushed from patient to patient, blood and sweat on my scrubs, the sounds of crying, phones ringing, and the squeak of a marker on the whiteboard mixing together, like a soundtrack to my working life.

I’ve finally found a minute to chug from my water bottle when a familiar face appears.

Everyone at the nurses’ station will be putting in claims for whiplash as they notice Yale one by one. Someone sighs. Another one whispers a prayer. It wouldn’t surprise me if Steffi swooned.

“Hey,” I say as Yale reaches me. “What are you doing here?”

“I called you on your lunch break and you didn’t pick up, which usually means you haven’t had one.” He holds up a takeout bag from my favorite taco joint. “I’m bringing you food.”

I whimper and press my face against the paper bag, inhaling deeply. “I can’t; we’re too busy.”

“You can have a ten-minute break to eat,” he says, then takes my hand and addresses everyone else. “I’m stealing her.”

I think someone giggles in response.

The rain has stopped long enough for us to sit on a bench out front. As I hoover up the tacos, Yale rests his arm behind me, watching the parking lot and passing ambulances.

Yale is my best friend. My entire fucking world. I love him so intensely that sometimes I just squeeze his cheeks together and tell him I want to cut him up and freeze the parts so I can gobble him down whenever I need a bit of him. My love language is aggression, but he’s used to it by now.

So, seeing him now brings back the dream. The way he’d whispered in my ear, what he said … it’s a rush of excitement I shouldn’t be feeling, even if Zayden found it amusing. Yale is good-looking. Outstandingly handsome, just like all the Silver brothers, so it isn’t like I’ve recently discovered that, but as for being someone I’m sexually attracted to? That’s new.

“So, what did you want to talk about?” he asks, interrupting my thoughts and my final bite of taco.

“Hm?”

“This morning. You said to call you.”

Yes, I did. But hours have passed and now embarrassment has set in, and I don’t know whether I can share this anymore. “Right, it was … nothing. Just Steffi called me this morning feeling all guilty and weird because—” I pause, shoving the rest of the taco in my mouth. “She had a sex dream about you.”

Throwing my friend under the bus here, but when push comes to shove …

Yale watches me, an amused smile on his face. “Why would she feel guilty about that?”

I chew quickly and swallow. “Because she knows how close we are. It’s like crushing on my brother.”

Ew. Why did I say that?

Sign me up for therapy.

“But it isn’t that weird, right?” I ask, swigging from a bottle of water. “A dream is just a dream. It doesn’t mean anything.”

“Exactly. We all have weird dreams.”

I nod. “Yeah. Yes! We do. It doesn’t mean anything.”