Two

"How was it?" Dr. Kelly Lee asked the moment her roommate slunk into their loft apartment. She was sitting in one of their very cushy and trendy navy blue chairs, her bare legs stretched out and resting on a matching ottoman. She had shucked her constricting party clothes and was lounging in pink boxers and a matching cami-tank, her long, silky hair in a pony tail.

Robin groaned and toed off her high-heeled slides. "I just want to take a shower and go to sleep." The girls had gone out that night to a new venue near Mercy Hospital in hopes of finding some fresh meat – and avoiding the old meat. Robin bent on putting Dr. Patrick Drake – old meat – out of her mind had decided to explore the freedom her adventure in the Markham Islands – and in old meat's bed – had awakened in her and had left separately from her roommates and with a very handsome doctor of oncology from Mercy.

"That good or that bad?" Dr. Lainey Winters asked, coming out of the kitchen with a bottle of water in her hand. She was similarly already dressed for bed in white shorts and a tank top.

"Come on, give it to us on a scale of one to ten," Kelly insisted. "We deserve a full debrief since you're the only one of us who got lucky tonight. You did get lucky tonight, right?" She looked at her roommate closely trying to discern whether the woman had chickened out.

"Isn't it kind of cheesy to kiss and tell?" Robin walked into the open plan kitchen and grabbed herself a bottle of water. The whisky she had been drinking that night was starting to catch up with her head. She unscrewed the top, took a drag and then walked back into the living room and slumped down next to Lainey on the checked navy couch.

"Only if you're a guy and it's a relationship," Lainey shot in.

"Is it a relationship?" Kelly asked.

"Decidedly no." Robin grimaced as she remembered the lies she told to get out of there. She was definitely feeling kinship with the more doggy of the human male species. "I'm not very proud here, you know."

"You should be. You're not sitting around moping about Dr. Player, you got right back on that bull and rode it!" Kelly laughed at her own ribald humor.

"He was fine." Robin shrugged. "One night stands aren't really my thing. If I needed more proof."

Lainey sighed and put her arm around Robin. "You're still hung up on…"

"No! No! No! We agreed that he would not be mentioned tonight!" Kelly yelled out.

"Technically it's morning, but she's right." Robin grimaced.

"At least you know that your HIV status doesn't scare away every man like you claimed," Lainey said. "You just need to keep at it."

"Yeah, yeah. Force a smile until it comes naturally. I'm going to go to bed." Robin leaned over and pressed a kiss to Lainey's cheek before standing up. "Thanks guys." She patted Kelly on the head as she passed by her.

"We still want details!" Kelly called out as Robin closed the door.

Robin leaned up against the closed door and switched on the light in her new bedroom trying to chase the ghosts away. Though he'd never been there and she could still smell the paint she had painstakingly applied just the day before on the walls, somehow she felt surrounded by him in there. Or rather, she admitted as she walked over to the dresser to grab her night things, not surrounded by him. She ached with it.

Truth was, she missed Patrick Drake and rather than getting easier it was getting harder as time went on. How, she wondered, had she gotten so damned attached so quickly?

TBC