Something Like That
Chapter Four
The air conditioning unit was broken.
Everyone was cranky and sweating. Even the patients were cranky, refusing to speak or snapping every answer, making things horribly worse.
Tori slumped at the circular desk, leaning her face into the cool wind from the little fan she'd brought in while she tried to keep her sweat-sodden hair out of her eyes.
Liz shuffled by slowly, her heels dragging as she flitted from room to room, delivering out mail.
It was Wednesday, four-o-clock, and Chloe's appointment, an emotionally wrecked girl named Sunny, had yet to arrive. Every tick of the clock made her hands itch for the phone, to speak with Sunny's dramatic but kind mother. Patients flowed in and out of the open rooms, some in tears, some sulking, and the psychiatrists were no better, running their hands through their hair or complaining to their friends.
A knock at the door made her jump up quickly, eyes flicking to the clock to see Sunny had missed her appointment entirely.
Derek's hulking form shuffled in through the frame and she sank back down slowly into her seat.
The hot leather burnt her skin as he sat down on the couch across from her, his face red and hair slick from the rivulets of sweat running down his face.
His eyes had this glassy glaze to them, as though he were dazed but muscles in his face kept twitching, belying his dazed eyes.
"Sorry, the air conditioning is broken," she apologized quietly, rising to take a seat in the armchair across from him, right side of a little knick-knack table, and on the other side of it was a similar chair, but in red. She sank down onto the cushion, ignoring the burn of her bare thighs and exposed shoulders on hot leather, and crossed her legs calmly.
His eyes flickered down once and he swallowed, his throat convulsing. A bead of sweat rolled down the column of his protruding jugular.
Absently, she wondered if she flashed him. "Where were we last week? What's been going on lately in your life?"
His steely gaze lifted and locked on hers. Slowly, as though he were a coil unraveling, he rested muscular, hairy forearms on his knees and she noticed the contrast between the golden skin of his biceps and the fleshy inside of his arms. "What's been going on in your life?" he asked in a slightly condescending tone, cocking his eyebrow.
She felt jarred by having her standard question thrown back in her face. "I-I—" Heat flooded her face and she dug her nails into the armrests. "I-I don't know wh-what you mean," she lied and a dark expression shadowed his face before he quickly wiped it away, leaning back instead of confronting her blatant lie head-on.
"A boyfriend, dead parents, shitty friends," he droned, boredom in the set of his mouth.
Whatever patience she had was waning thin, keeping her tethered to her manners. Sweat beaded her neck and she wiped it away calmly.
His eyes slid to her arm and she remembered the scar on her arm, ragged and obvious, never quite healing.
"I cut it open on glass when I was fifteen," she explained and shook herself to rid the memories best forgotten. "No boyfriend, only living relatives are my dad and my aunt, and I have two dogs."
"Do you like your dogs?" he asked, for the first time interest piquing in his tone.
"I love them," she stated as though it were the most obvious question of the millennium.
His eyes drifted up and stared at the spot just above her ear, his head bobbing.
Now, Chloe was at a loss for words. She picked at the loose thread of her skirt and wound it around her finger, watching it turn purple for a moment before turning her face back to him and saying, "Why hasn't Tori or Simon ever mentioned you?"
Apparently, it was the wrong thing to say. His jaw tightened and his posture was painfully rigid, as though he were trying to convince her he was a statue.
"Derek, you're here because Simon, one of the most easy-going, laid-back guys I've ever met, thinks you need help. That's saying something. If you don't want it, then just tell me and I won't bother you again." A tiny, wiry smile touched her mouth as more sweat beaded her skin; creating sheen and making her clothes stick to her.
"We can sit here in silence for—" A quick glance at the clock. "—Almost an hour or you can tell me at least why they never mentioned you," she pleaded on her last thread of patience, knowing how bossy she was being which wasn't very professional but she wasn't going to let some hard-ass make a mockery of her in her own office.
He didn't say anything, just sat there, staring off into space. Minutes crawled by painfully slow.
Anxiety set in and she forced herself to breathe steadily, hiding the tremor in her hands underneath her butt. Oh man, what if he filed a complaint against her for being so rude and unprofessional? She didn't know if she'd ever hear the end of it from her aunt. 'I told you. You should always be polite, even if you don't want to be,' her aunt had told her numerous times. Lauren was one of those Always Polite Even If It's Not Necessary women and Chloe doubted that she'd be too happy about her blowing up at someone—a client nonetheless—and the blonde really didn't want to hear about her horrible Society Appropriate behavior constantly—
"I didn't know," he said at last and the sound of his rumbling voice, like velvet-wrapped thunder rolling in across the sky, pulled her from her thoughts (thank goodness).
"What?" she squeaked.
He blinked at her and shook his head slowly, as though he was trying not to scare her. "I don't know. I knew who you were, of course, but I figured they'd at least mentioned me," he admitted and the words were slow to fall from his mouth. From the pinched expression on his face, Chloe came to the conclusion that he was hated expressing his feelings.
Anti-social? Check.