Chapter Text
She wasn’t quite searching for him, but Mel found Langdon in the liminal space between the ambulance bay and the parking lot. Changed out of his scrubs in jeans and a t-shirt, he would look almost normal, if it weren’t for the way he was clutching his car keys like he wished they were a cigarette.
His eyes shot up at her quiet greeting, something like a tiny bit of awareness swimming back into his features. It had been a particularly rough day, Mel knew— there’d been a six-year-old girl who’d taken a fall down an escalator. Mel had been in the middle of sutures on a college student’s forearm when she heard the ruckus in the hall, glancing up curiously to see that there were already residents piling onto the situation, Langdon’s pointed directions louder than all the other chatter.
The little girl didn’t make it, she’d heard from Princess while entering her file notes a few hours later. Mel had been looking over her shoulder for Langdon all day, wondering if she should check in, but then someone had come in with a bad stove burn, and then another with a compound radius fracture, and then a mother with a toddler who swallowed a few staples. By the time she looked up from her charting and running around, her shift was over.
Mel jerked her chin toward the car keys, which looked to be in danger of being crushed in his hand.
“Do you know where you’re going?”
She realized it was a ridiculous question as it passed her lips, but Langdon looked at her, his eyes a little glassy, and shook his head no.
She gnawed on the inside of her lip, processing. “Would you want to come grocery shopping with me?”
“What?” He looked a little surprised, blinking like he was finally returning to his body. A sharp breeze blew across the ambulance bay, a car horn sounding in the distance, and Langdon finally turned his head, looking around like he had only just now realized where he was.
“Well, you seem like you’re having a bad day,” Mel started, a little more sure of herself. “I don’t like to be alone on my bad days.”
He didn’t respond, just continued to stare with his brows beginning to furrow together in the middle.
She repeated herself to fill the silence, shifting a little on the balls of her feet. “I’m going to the grocery store, if you want to come with.” She wiggled her own keys at him to punctuate the sentence.
Langdon blinked some more. “Okay.”
That’s how she ended up pulling out of the staff parking lot with Langdon in the shotgun seat, one of his knees tucked up and braced a little bit against the glovebox. Mel let the radio play for three stoplights before the sight of Langdon’s unnaturally still hands made her too nervous and she began to babble, asking without waiting for his answer if he’d heard about the two radiology nurses who’d been engaged in the same weekend, and how there was going to be a party but no one remembered to order the food because of that accident on I-79, and how Javadi had seemed relieved because she was always worried about her mom seeing her eating pizza on the clock. By time they pulled into the Aldi parking lot and Mel had grabbed her reusable bags from the back of her car, a little bit of color had returned to Langdon’s cheeks.
It wasn’t until Mel had made it through the bakery section, carefully selecting some bagels and a four-pack of the blueberry muffins Becca liked and then steering them towards the produce, that Langdon began to actually speak.
“That’s a lot of carrots.”
Mel was a little surprised at the sound of his voice, glancing down at the three bags of baby carrots in her hands. “Yeah. Becca and I both take them in our lunch for the day. Good for snacking quickly between patients.” She paused, but the answer didn’t seem adequate. “Plus Vitamin A.”
He nodded. “Makes sense.” She waited for him to say something else, but he stayed quiet, dragging a finger along the neat shelves as he followed behind her.
Langdon let her focus on her list, physically scribbled onto a PTMC sticky note in her hand, as she wove her way through the aisles. Mel kept a very meticulous grocery system, and had a very strict routine. He didn’t say another word as she searched carefully through the boxes of pasta until she found tortellini (Becca’s favorite) or as she sorted through cans of garbanzo beans until she found one that wasn’t dented. His quiet presence would have been comforting if it wasn’t so unnerving. She’d never heard him keep his mouth shut for so long.
He helped her load the grocery bags back into the trunk and Mel waited until she had already turned the key in the ignition to face him. To her surprise, he was already looking at her, his eyes keenly studying her face as if he was looking to find something in it.
“Do you want me to drop you back at the hospital?” His expression immediately fell a little. Mel scrambled to rectify it. “Or, I mean, you could come back to my place. I was going to make dinner.”
Langdon blew out a breath. “I don’t want to intrude.” There was still something a little wrong about his face, though Mel wasn’t great about reading faces.
“Oh no,” Mel felt her cheeks lift as she reversed the car out of her parking spot. “Definitely not. It’s just me tonight, anyways. It’ll be nice to have you there.”
Her cheeks heated a little, overthinking her admission, but Langdon’s lips lifted a tiny bit. “Okay, good. Thank you, Mel.”
She stammered out something about how he didn’t have to thank her as they pulled back out onto the street. Langdon’s hands began to drum against his thighs, timed to the song crackling through the speakers, and something deep inside Mel untensed, just a little.
When they made it to her apartment, Mel had the nervous realization that she’d never had someone from work over before. The apartment was a little small and threadbare, but as cozy as she could make it. It got the job done, if nothing else.
“I’m sorry if there’s any, um, mess,” Mel said as she unlocked the door and guided them to the kitchen, where Langdon set the grocery bags on the counter. He’d insisted on carrying most of them up from the car, which was chivalrous and also sort of made something inside Mel start to burn a little as she avoided glancing at the cords of his arm muscles underneath the straps of her reusable totes.
Langdon looked around as Mel began to unpack the groceries. “Probably cleaner than my place, to be honest.”
As she started to put away the box of her favorite cereal and the bag of honeycrisp apples, Mel paid attention out of the corner of her eye to the way Langdon dragged his eyes over the magnets on the fridge, her flowery mug from that morning still sitting on the drying mat. Without asking, he wandered out of the kitchen.
“Holy shit, Mel, is this a paint-by-number?” His voice was nearly gleeful as it carried from the living room. “I didn’t even know they still made these.”
Mel froze. “Um, yeah,” she called back. “Please don’t touch it. It might be drying still from last night.”
“What is this, a painting of Paris?”
It was, in fact, a painting of Paris. Mel had liked the rosy yellow glow of lamplight from the image on the box, the twinkling of the city behind the Eiffel tower. She hadn’t gotten to that part, yet, so her rendition was mostly stretches of dark blue paint.
By the time she’d put all the food away and rinsed her hands from the grocery store germs, she found Langdon not in front of her painting station but in front of the bookshelf, which was an eclectic combination of Mel’s medical textbooks and Becca’s collection of well-loved paperbacks.
“What is this?” Langdon asked as he flopped the book in his hand in Mel’s direction. “Is this yours?” She could see that the cover had a very shirtless Fabio on it, and a prickling warmth began on her cheeks.
“That’s my sister’s. She’s a big fan of romance.”
“A steamy exploration of intimacy and life on the ranch,” he read delightedly aloud from the back cover. “Wow. I might have to pick this one up myself.”
“Please don’t.” Mel’s voice was sharper than she meant for it to be as she took the book from him and tucked it back precisely in its spot. “It’s not very good.”
“So you’ve read it.” He raised a surprised eyebrow at her.
“I’ve... flipped through it.” Mel’s cheeks were so hot she was pretty sure someone could light a match against them. “Becca has better ones, is all I meant.”
“Right.” Langdon nodded, then turned his head as if her sister was somehow hiding in the apartment. “Is she here, by the way?”
“No. She stays at the center two nights a week.” Mel smoothed a hand over her braid, relieved that Langdon had taken a step away from the bookshelf. “She likes staying over there. She gets to room with her friend Hope so it’s like a big sleepover, and there’s hot breakfast, and I think she has a crush on one of the overnight nurses, so.”
There’s more to it than that— they’d tried having Becca sleep at Mel’s every night, but Mel could never fully promise what time she’d be there to pick her up after a shift, and messing with Becca’s schedule stressed them both out. Despite that, it was true that Becca liked eating the pancakes Mel would never have time to make before a shift, and every time she stayed the night at the center she had a new story about Felix with the swoopy hair who could fold towels into the shape of different animals.
“Ah.” He raised an eyebrow. “So that’s when you get a night to yourself to paint-by-number.”
“They make them for adults, it’s not for kids.” Mel’s words came in a rush, her eyes trained on the rug. “It’s actually very relaxing. I usually do it while Becca and I watch movies together.”
“Woah.” A warm hand cupped her shoulder. “Breathe, Mel. I wasn’t trying to make fun of it. It seems nice.”
Instead of looking at the rug, Mel was now very focused on his fingers against her arm, although Langdon pulled his hand back when he realized what she was staring at. “It’s okay. It is nice.”
She realized abruptly that it was beginning to get dark, long shadows cutting across the room, so she went to turn on the lamp. When she turned back around, Langdon had moved from where he was standing and was now running a thumb over the neck of the guitar Mel kept in the corner.
“This is a nice one, do you play?” His tone was distracted, warbly notes loosely strumming out from under his hand.
Mel crossed her arms over her stomach, clamping both hands securely under her elbows. “No. That was my dad’s guitar.”
“Oh.” Langdon’s hand dropped immediately. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Mel said again. “I’m going to start dinner. Is tomato soup and grilled cheese okay?”
Langdon blinked as if surprised but smiled a little, his eyes still wheeling across the artwork on the walls and the chipped coffee table. “That sounds awesome.”
As Langdon planted himself at her kitchen counter, she realized in the back of her head that she was making Becca’s comfort meal. It wasn’t anything fancy— Campbell’s tomato soup, the type that came concentrated in a can, and grilled cheese, which Becca liked with that plasticky American kind. It was the meal that always seemed to soothe her sister the most when things were bad. When she set the plate in front of him and stood across the counter from him, taking her own bite of sandwich, Langdon was smiling a little.
“Thank you for this, again. I needed it.” His face dimmed a little as he said it, like he was remembering how she’d found him lost in the ambulance bay.
“No worries. We all have rough days.” Mel took a careful spoonful of soup. She wanted to ask how he was feeling, but now Langdon was staring off, his expression a little fuzzy, and she didn’t want to make it worse.
After a moment he blinked hard, shaking his head like he could clear the thoughts away. “How was yours?”
“What?”
He took a bite of grilled cheese and Mel tried her best to ignore the crumbs that fell out of his mouth. “Your day. How was it?”
“It was fine.” Mel scanned through the events of her shift, trying to see if there were any highlights. “Oh, I got to debride a burn and do sutures back to back for an hour, which was nice. There was a guy who came in with hand-foot-mouth, which was less nice.” She shuddered a little, and Langdon laughed but kept eating heartily.
The rhythm after that was shockingly easy. He insisted on helping with the dishes, washing while Mel dried because she knew where everything went. They bumped elbows a little as they worked and Mel didn’t think about how weird it was to have casual contact with someone who wasn’t Becca.
She knew she should probably try to drop him off back at his car after they’d eaten, but he didn’t ask her to and she didn’t offer. Instead, he wandered back into the living room and Mel leaned against the doorway, watching him trace his fingers over the guitar again.
“Do you play?”
“A long time ago, in college. It was a good way to pick up girls.” He glanced back at her as he said this, and something warm started to prickle at her sternum. “Haven’t in a while, though.”
“You can, if you want. No one’s used that thing in a long time.” Mel curled up on the couch as Langdon hesitantly picked up the guitar, settling himself on the other end. He blew out a breath as he fidgeted with it.
“Yeah, strings are shot but I can probably tune it up.” Mel unabashedly watched his hands, as capable in her living room as they were at the hospital, as he plucked different strings until they sounded less twangy and more musical.
Before long, Mel found herself leaning back against the couch, soothed by the sound of his strumming. It didn’t sound like much, not a song or rhythm she recognized, but the notes he coaxed out were pretty, and her stomach was full and her eyes were so tired. She let them slip shut while Langdon played.
When she woke an undetermined amount of time later, he was saying her name gently, one hand shaking her knee. Mel shot up, mortified, scrubbing her hands at her eyes beneath her glasses.
“Sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to fall asleep,” she said groggily, pushing her glasses back into place. With slight horror, she noticed that she had twisted in her sleep, and her socked feet had ended up tucked underneath Langdon’s thigh. The pressure felt nice.
His smile was rueful in the lamplight. “No, I’m sorry. I totally overstayed my welcome. I should get home so you can rest.”
“Okay, I’ll grab my keys.” She braced her hands underneath her and began to push up, but Langdon squeezed her knee, stopping her.
“No, no, don’t worry about it. I called an Uber. You should get some real sleep.”
She wanted to protest, but Mel was still blinking the exhaustion from her eyes by the time Langdon had his shoes on. He braced a hand against the doorframe.
“Thank you again, for this, Mel. The store and the dinner and all of it. I really needed it.”
Before she could really respond, he was out the door, and Mel was left alone in her apartment, the guitar placed carefully back in its stand as if Langdon hadn’t been there at all.
In the days following, neither of them mentioned Langdon coming over to her place. She split her bag of carrots with him the next day, during a break between a patient with a head lac and another who had come in with alcohol poisoning. There was all the normal brushing of shoulders and his occasional effusive praise of her, words that made her feel like the sun was rising inside of her chest, and she was even pretty sure she heard Dr. Robby warning Langdon about favoritism once before she’d stepped back into the room. The thought made Mel feel unpleasantly prickly all over, so she ignored it.
He wasn’t always pleasant. She watched him chew out Whitaker for nearly ordering the wrong meds. He got snappy with Santos, all the time, although she always bit right back. Sometimes, Mel saw him go into the locker room, slamming the door open with such force that the noise hurt her ears. She didn’t like it when he was like that, but most of the time he wasn’t.
“Part of what I’m working on in meetings,” he’d confessed wryly one afternoon. “Not supposed to yell at people so often. There are supposedly better ways to communicate.”
He texted her one evening while she was halfway through her paint-by-number and watching Pride and Prejudice with Becca, asking how her night was going. When she told him, he requested a progress photo of the painting, which she sent. Becca watched her smile and blush and asked if she was texting a boy, and Mel had laughed and shook her head and put the phone down.
“What are you up to tonight, Mel?” Samira asked one afternoon in the break room, pressing buttons on the coffee machine in an attempt to make anything spew out of it.
Mel bit into her peanut butter protein bar, trying not to stare at Langdon, who had been in the room but focused on his phone, most likely texting his kids or Abby. “Oh, nothing. I have to go the laundromat because my washer’s been broken for a week.”
“Oh no!” Samira’s bottom lip pushed out a little sympathetically. “I’m sorry, that’s a bummer.”
It really was a bummer. She’d washed the rest of the load by hand when the machine had seemingly just given out with a loud groaning sound halfway through a rinse cycle, her bathtub full of suds and her hands pruny by the end. Her landlord had said he’d fix it over the weekend, but Mel was running out of scrub tops and Becca was running out of pairs of her favorite kind of socks, the compression ones, and they couldn’t wait, so the laundromat it was. Mel just nodded and took another bite of the bar, focused on the way Langdon’s hand had stilled where it was previously messing with his beaded bracelet.
He waited until Samira ducked out of the room before glancing up at her. “You know, you could come use my washer.”
She was already shaking her head in dismissal before the sentence had fully left his mouth. “Oh no, I couldn’t do that.”
He sat up a little straighter. “Why not?”
“Because.” Mel didn’t really have a reason, but there was something about doing her laundry in someone else’s home, particularly Langdon’s, that seemed impossible.
“Because...?” He let his voice trail off, and the two of them lapsed into silence. She considered.
“I’m very particular about my laundry. It takes me awhile because of how I sort it, and I don’t want to be a bother.” Mel fidgeted with the wrapper in her hands.
“Well, I’m telling you that you won’t be a bother. I’ve got in-unit laundry, it’ll spare you the quarters and the hassle and the waiting around and all of that. Plus, we can watch something.” An indecipherable smile lifted the corner of his lips. “You could bring your paint-by-number set-up, if you wanted. It looked pretty serious.”
She was getting better at picking up on when Langdon was teasing her, and her cheeks reddened. Despite feeling like she really shouldn’t, Mel felt herself undeniably perk up at the idea of watching a movie with him while simultaneously avoiding the sensory overload of a public laundromat. “Really?”
“Really. It gets quiet over at my place, anyway. And you don’t have Becca tonight, do you?”
“No,” Mel shook her head. “Slumber party night at the center. They’re watching the Princess Diaries.”
“Well, then.” He pushed up from the cheap plastic chair he’d been occupying, pausing by the door to smile at her. “I’ll text you the address.”
Langdon’s laundry machine was a lot more upscale than hers. His whole apartment, was, really— all polished stainless steel appliances and sharp black countertops, big square modern windows that looked partially out onto the Allegheny. It was nice, for sure, but Mel couldn’t help but notice it wasn’t very lived in. He had a stack of important-looking papers underneath a Macbook on the kitchen counter, and a few children’s drawings tacked to the fridge, but little else to suggest any personality.
Mel had nodded towards a dog bed in the corner when she’d first walked in. “Is your dog here?”
“No. Stays with Abby and the kids most of the time.” He shrugged, like it didn’t bother him. “Not much time to take care of a pet, with our profession, anyway. Sort of an asshole move of me to get it in the first place.” She had the vague suspicion that when he said it, he was echoing someone else’s words, but hadn’t asked anything else at risk of being invasive.
Not that there was anything less invasive than becoming acquainted with someone’s laundry room. The machines were tucked into a big closet at the back of his apartment, and Mel did her best not to glance through the cracked door across the hall, where she could just make out the corner of what looked to be a very big bed. There were a few loose socks on the floor, an uncapped orange bottle of detergent sitting on the lid of a dryer that was spotted with the occasional drip of blue soap.
Mel had already mostly sorted her clothes, so she placed her first load into the machine and meticulously measured out her scent-free detergent. Langdon didn’t hover, wandering back to the living room where she found him sprawled across one half of the couch.
“It’ll probably take me a few loads to get it all washed. I hope you don’t mind.” Mel stood awkwardly by the doorway before he gestured for her to sit, and she perched herself on the edge of the dark leather couch, still glancing around curiously. He had a few Blu-Ray DVDs underneath the console, which was fascinating. She wished she could go look at what they were.
“It’s no problem,” Langdon said, pressing a few buttons on the remote before handing it to her. The plastic was a little warm from his hand. “Here, you pick.”
Mel scrolled through Netflix, trying to act like the thought of choosing something he didn’t like wasn’t making her palms panic sweat. Eventually, she hovered over something.
“Oh, this is one of my favorite movies.” She looked to Langdon, trying not to appear too eager but wanting to read his reaction.
“The Martian? I’ve never seen it.”
“What?” Mel’s voice was more of a squawk than she meant it to be. “It’s so good! You have to see it. It’s one of the best movies ever made. Matt Damon grows potatoes on Mars.”
“Well, now I think you’ve spoiled it.” If it weren’t for the laughter in his voice, Mel might have thought he was serious. He nodded toward the screen. “You should put it on. I’ve been convinced.”
A little glimmer of happiness warmed her stomach as Mel scooted back onto the couch, wrapping both arms around her legs as she made herself comfortable. She really did love this movie.
Langdon seemed to like it too, laughing and smiling at all the best parts (although Mel tried to be subtle about watching his face). They paused twice when the laundry machines made little beeping sounds and she had to move her clothes around, but eventually her last load was in the dryer and the movie was over. Langdon said he’d liked it, and it made Mel so happy it felt as if she’d made the movie herself.
“Thank you, again, for letting me do my laundry here.” Mel tucked a strand of hair loose from her braid behind her ear. “It’s much better here than at the laundromat.”
Langdon’s face did something funny. “Anytime, Mel. If they don’t fix your machine soon, you could always come over next week and do it again.”
She suddenly found it hard to look at him, and focused her eyes on the couch. “You’re being very nice to me,” she said quietly, tangling her fingers in her lap.
He cleared his throat. She didn’t look up, tightening her grip on her fingers so she didn’t start picking at one of the buttons in the divets in the couch.
“Like I said, anytime.” He paused. “You’re sort of doing me a favor by being here. Plus, you’re one of very few people who’s treated me like a normal person since I came back.”
Now she looked up. His face was still. They didn’t speak much about his kids, or rehab. All Mel really knew was that he’d been gone for six months, and he had meetings with a few different people several times a week. Once or twice, he’d asked her to order meds for a patient on his behalf, although he usually asked Dana or McKay. The rumor mill had churned in his absence, something about inpatient and locker checks, but Mel was always good at tuning that sort of thing out.
When he’d returned, Langdon was a little skinnier, his jaw a little sharper than it had been. But on his first day back, he’d pulled her to help him with a patient, an autistic boy on the basketball team who’d broken a wrist during a game, and had listened intently to her feedback on how best to treat him. She’d wondered over the months of his absence if she’d imagined their synchronicity that one day, the way he seemed to understand when she needed a break even when she herself did not, the softness in his eyes when he’d asked if she was okay. She knew now that she hadn’t.
“Well, you’ve never treated me any differently, so it’s only fair.” Mel tried to smile but felt shyer than before.
He nodded, eyes tracing her face in a way that felt different. He opened his mouth as if to say something, but was interrupted by the buzz of the dryer.
“Oh!” Mel pushed off the couch. “I should go get that.”
Once she was safely in the laundry room, far away from Langdon and that ridiculously blue gaze of his, Mel took a second to bury her face in the freshly cleaned, dryer-warmed clothes and take a deep breath. She needed to center herself. Then she carried her hamper back into the front hallway, her bottle of detergent and box of dryer sheets tucked under an arm.
“Wait,” Langdon said. He met her in the doorway, phone in his hand. “I was going to order takeout. Did you want to stay?”
Of course, she wanted to stay, so she did. Mel spent another few hours on Langdon’s couch, splitting an order of orange chicken and chow mein with him.
“What?” Langdon asked, after catching Mel glancing at his plate for the third time.
“Nothing.” She took a bite of chicken.
“You’re looking at something. What, do I have something on my shirt?” He glanced down at his t-shirt, which, to be fair, did have a stain on it right around the collar. She was doing her best not to look at that, either.
“No, seriously, it’s nothing,” Mel laughed. He stared at her imploringly. “It’s just that you don’t seem like someone who should be good with chopsticks.”
It was true. Being in his apartment had confirmed it— everything was sort of messy-clean, the same way his hair and his scrubs always were. His locker was mostly organized, but sometimes had stuff spilling out of it a little bit. He just seemed like the sort of person who would need to eat Chinese food with a fork.
Langdon looked at her as if he was deeply surprised. “What? I’m a doctor. Of course, I have good chopstick skills. I’m good with my hands.” As if to prove his point, he twirled a noodle around a piece of carrot and popped both satisfyingly into his mouth.
Mel laughed, a strange blush on her cheeks, and continued eating. A second later, Langdon was saying that the Martian had reminded him of an episode of the Twilight Zone, which he queued up on the TV. Mel had seen a bit of it before— her dad used to like watching it and so had Becca, although some of the episodes unsettled her so much she couldn’t sleep after watching them.
She told Langdon this, and he’d looked at her curiously before asking more questions about Becca, what she was like, what she liked to watch. “I already know about the smut on the bookshelf,” he’d teased, and Mel had smacked him before she could think better of it.
“Ow!” He leaned away from her, his face convincingly pained before it dissolved into a smile.
“Sorry, but you deserved it,” Mel said primly, leaning off the couch to set her plate down. When she came back, his shoulder seemed closer to hers than it had been before.
The talk of Becca emboldened Mel to ask about Langdon’s kids.
“I’m not technically supposed to have visitation rights, yet,” Langdon admitted. “Not until all the divorce papers go through and because of the whole rehab thing. But Abby’s been nice enough to let me see them a few times a month, usually at the park with the dog. They’ve actually never even seen this place.”
Mel swallowed. “That is nice. I’m glad you get to see them.”
He nodded. “It’s one of the only things that’s getting me through.” He gave her that weird look again. Mel got nervous and turned her attention back to the television.
When the hour turned late, she forced herself off of the couch, despite the fact that her shoulder had been brushing Langdon’s in a way that was soothing and warm. She’d been tempted to curl up and fall asleep on the couch with him again, except there was no guitar this time, and that’s how she knew it was time to go home.
Langdon walked her to the door. They both stood there, for a second, lingering for a reason Mel couldn’t articulate. He was looking at her like he was trying to read something in her face, and she didn’t have any clue what he could possibly be looking for. Eventually, something in his expression settled.
“Sorry if this is inappropriate,” Langdon murmured, and before Mel could ask what he was talking about, he was taking a step forward and wrapping his arms around her, pulling her into a hug. She instinctively tensed before she relaxed, Langdon’s chest warm underneath her cheek, his arms firm around her shoulders. It was like sleeping with one of Becca’s weighted blankets, the immediate way she untensed. He smelled nice, sort of spicy and warm but also like linen. She let him lay his cheek on her head, and tried to resist the urge to snuggle her nose into his shoulder.
In truth, it probably was inappropriate. Mel wouldn’t hug her other coworkers like this, and she normally hated being touched without being asked. Yet when she fell asleep that night, she found herself tucking her sheets tight around her body, pretending it was Langdon’s arms that she was drifting off in.
Langdon met Becca a week later.
Becca had been bothering Mel for months, asking to meet her friends, and it only became worse when she picked up on the fact that Mel was texting someone with an increasing frequency. It wasn’t Mel’s fault. Langdon seemed to text her about everything.
Did you see this? Northwestern made a pacemaker the size of a grain of rice.
I’m watching P+P. I get why you and Becca like it so much. Darcy is pretty dreamy.
Should I get pizza for dinner or should I eat this limp salad that’s been in my fridge for a week?
Mel had been working hard to ignore the jittery, excited buzz inside of her body every time her phone vibrated and she knew it would be a text from him, but she hadn’t been hiding it well enough. She practically flew across the room with every notification. Within a week, Becca was teasing her about Frank Langdon and practically begging to meet him.
“So,” Mel started, fidgeting with the bottom of her scrub top as she watched Frank brew a new batch of break room coffee one morning. “Becca’s decided she wants to meet you.”
One of his eyebrows lifted. “Oh?”
“Yes.” Mel exhaled. “She knows we’ve been... Well, she knows we’ve been hanging out, and she’s always asking to meet my friends from work, and I figure you’ll meet her eventually, so why not now? Anyways, if you’re not busy this week, she wants you to come over for dinner.” She felt like she was being too forward, all the words leaving her mouth in a rush, but there was no other way she could say them.
Frank looked amused. “And do you want me over for dinner?”
“What?” Mel was surprised. “Yes, I thought that was obvious. Does Wednesday work?”
“It does.” Frank looked even more amused. “What should I bring?”
“Oh, nothing. We’ll probably be making spaghetti, it’s one of Becca’s safe foods and if we’re having a guest over it’s probably best to stick to what we know. Just your presence will make her happy.” She realized she was babbling. Mel forced her fingers out from where they were cramping underneath her shirt hem. “That is, if you eat spaghetti?”
Frank let out a short laugh, pouring two packets of sugar into a disposable cup before setting out a second and filling them both with coffee. He handed the one with the sugar to Mel before his pager began to beep insistently.
He checked it and made a gruff sound before he started moving towards the door. “Yes, Dr. King, I eat spaghetti.” He smiled a little at her, his hand turning the knob. “I’ll see you Wednesday.”
She hardly processed his last words, too focused on the warm cup in her hands and the knowledge that Langdon knew exactly how she took her coffee, although she’d never told him.
When the knock sounded at the door Wednesday night, Becca cried out an “I’ll get it!” before making a mad dash for the hallway, her kitchen stool scraping loudly against the floor. Mel sighed, setting the ladle she’d been using to stir the marinara on the spoon rest, but forced herself to stay in the kitchen so as not to seem as eager as her sister. Nerves fluttered in her stomach.
“Hi, Frank,” she heard Becca say.
“Hi, Becca.” The sound of the door shutting, the shuffling of Langdon taking off his shoes. “It’s nice to meet you. These are for you.”
Becca gasped, and it was that sound that finally made Mel give up the charade of checking on the timer for the noodles and instead walk towards the front door. Frank was standing there, smiling, while Becca had stuck her entire face into a bouquet of pink tulips, inhaling deeply.
“Mel, look at this! Frank brought flowers.” Becca was grinning from ear to ear.
It didn’t seem like a very Langdon thing to do, if Mel was honest. She’d seen him split phlegm into trash cans and insult every single intern doing rounds. True, he’d always been nice to her, but there was something incongruous and hard to process about that very same Frank Langdon handing her little sister a bouquet of tulips.
“Well, that was very nice of him.” She felt a smile of her own tugging at her mouth. “You really didn’t have to.”
“Well, my mother raised me with more manners than to show up to a dinner party empty-handed.” He looked ridiculously charming, pushing his hair back with one hand. He was wearing a black t-shirt that was just a little baggy, his arms all pointy and strong and on display, and if she squinted her eyes, she thought she could see a silver chain disappearing underneath his collar.
She averted her gaze. It wasn’t fair that he could look like that.
Becca scampered off, saying something about finding a vase, although Mel was pretty certain they didn’t have any. They ended up rinsing out and repurposing the jar of sauce, setting the lovely bouquet in the center of the kitchen counter. Mel poured the noodles out into the colander in the sink while listening to Becca drag Langdon around the living room, giving him a tour of a place he’d been before. “This is Mel’s first painting, which kind of looks like the flowers you brought, and this is where we keep our extra blankets, and that’s the radiator which makes weird noises and sprays hot water sometimes, and this is my favorite thing in the whole apartment.” Mel didn’t have to glance up to know that Becca was showing him the tiny ceramic goose statue they’d found at a thrift store a few years earlier.
Langdon gave appreciative oohs and aahs at all the right things, only pausing the tour to help Mel grab plates and silverware so they could settle themselves around the rickety dining table. Becca waited only until they all had plates full of pasta and garlic bread (which was really just slices of bread with butter and garlic powder on them, the way she liked it) before she asked what was clearly the most pressing question on her mind.
“So, are you Mel’s boyfriend?”
Mel choked. Hand flying up to her throat, long spaghetti noodle trapped in her esophagus, strangled noise exiting her mouth, she wondered briefly if she might die right there at the table with Becca and Langdon. But then a hand came down hard between her shoulder blades, and peristalsis did its job, and Mel coughed, able to breathe again. Langdon looked at her, clearly a little concerned.
“Becca.” Mel’s voice was rough. She searched fruitlessly for something else to say, but felt frozen in panic.
“No, no, it’s okay.” Frank smiled, patting her back in a movement that was far gentler than before. “I’m not Mel’s boyfriend.”
“Oh, okay.” Becca twirled her fork in her spaghetti. “Mel’s boyfriends are always really nice to me. I liked Mikey the best. Oh, or maybe Caitlin, although she wasn’t a boyfriend. She and Mel just kissed sometimes. I walked in on them once.”
“Becca!” Mel cried, her face on fire. Langdon’s eyes danced with glee as he looked between her and her sister, but he kept the rest of his expression composed. Mel felt certain that she could melt right into the floor with embarrassment. The room was beginning to feel like it was caving in.
“As much as I would love to know more about that situation, I feel like, for poor Mel’s sake, we should change the subject.” He cleared his throat. “Becca, I heard you’re a Twilight Zone fan. Mel and I started watching a few old episodes last week.”
“Oh, really?” Becca’s face brightened. “My favorite is the Eye of the Beholder episode, you know, the one where her face is all wrapped up?”
Langdon did know, and he smoothly and carefully navigated the conversation with Becca while Mel sipped her water and took deep breaths, hoping to fend off the overwhelming mortification. She’d sort of known Becca would ask about the boyfriend thing, no matter how much she’d begged her not to, but she’d never though Becca would bring up her romantic history. Especially not Caitlin, who really was just a friend back in Ann Arbor— or at least, Mel had thought she was.
Underneath the table, Langdon’s knee pressed gently into her own. At first, she thought it was an accident, but it stayed there, solid and warm against her own. Mel let it ground her as Becca went on a tangent about her other favorite TV shows, which were Gossip Girl and Friends.
“You’re kind of a Joey, you know,” she told Langdon. “Or a Chandler. Which is lots better than being a Ross.”
He shuddered. “Thank God you don’t think I’m a Ross.” The knee pressed a little tighter against hers. Mel pressed back.
After dinner, just like the first time he’d eaten there, Frank washed the dishes while Mel dried. Becca had been dispatched to select a movie, which might take her hours if they let her. The time passed in silence, filled only with the rush of the faucet and the scrub of Frank’s sponge.
When the final dish was put away, Mel finally turned to him. Her face still felt hot, but she was calmer. “I’m so sorry about that.”
Frank considered her, something careful about his expression. “What are you sorry about?”
“I don’t know.” Mel sighed, covering her face with her hands. “Becca just gets excited when there are men in my life. I didn’t realize she was going to bring up my past like that.”
“Hey.” A slightly calloused hand wrapped around one of her wrists, gently drawing her hands away from her cheeks. “Look at me. You have no reason to be sorry. It was totally fine.”
“No, it wasn’t,” Mel went to cover her face again but Langdon slid his hands up to hers, tangling their fingers loosely together as he pulled them down. “That was so embarrassing.”
“It happens. I thought it was sweet.” Langdon’s eyes were soft with just a twinge of laughter. “I won’t push you about it now, but I’m dying to know what the deal with Caitlin was.”
“Oh my God.” Mel made a face and pushed away from him, although she felt a little wounded at the sensation of pulling her hands from his. “Come on, we owe Becs a movie.”
Becca chose When Harry Met Sally, which was one of her favorites. She mouthed contentedly along to the lines, and Mel watched her with a swell of fondness, despite her earlier frustration. Becca had also chosen to lie down across half the couch. When Mel nudged her to move and make room, all she’d done was swing her legs into Mel’s lap, which meant Frank had sat on the other end, one arm stretched along to the back to make room for her shoulders. She found herself wondering idly what would happen if Frank brought that arm down and wrapped it around her, pulling her into him. He never did.
When Becca said goodnight to them both and practically skipped into her room, Mel walked Langdon to the door. He toed his shoes on, smiling tiredly down at her.
“Thank you for coming, and for the flowers, and for everything.” Mel dragged her eyes down to his collar, relishing again in the flash of silver against his neck. “Becca loved you. She’ll want to see you every week, now. It’ll be hard to fight her off.”
“Well,” Frank swallowed. “I’d be happy to come back.” She half-expected herself to be missing some sort of joke in his voice, but his eyes looked as sincere as she’d ever seen them.
“Really?”
“Really. It was nice. World-class spaghetti and marinara.”
Mel nodded, processing, before laughing. “Well, then. Maybe next week?”
So Langdon came the next week. He brought a bouquet of lilacs, and an actual vase with them, which made Becca squeal with happiness. They ate chicken quesadillas and watched Bridget Jones’s Diary and Langdon sat the same way, one arm stretched across the back of the couch. This time, Mel let herself sink into the comfort of the warmly lit room, her sister on one side of her and Frank on the other.