RAJI held her cell phone in her hand and blinked at the screen, trying to make sense of what she saw there.
Darkness filled the on-call room where she had been stealing a fifteen-minute nap in the bunkbeds. The air smelled like sweat and old French fries. Grime clung to her skin, but she wasn’t going to get a chance to shower for at least another twelve hours. She had been awake, mostly, for the last forty-four hours, and the end of her forty-eight-hour call was almost in sight.
But her phone.
It kept making noise.
Noise.
Raji blinked her bleary eyes harder, trying to focus on the screen.
The screen read Peyton.
A picture of a guitar glowed in the semi-darkness.
Oh, yeah. Peyton. That guy. The one who she had hooked up with a couple of times when she had been awake, unlike now.
She swiped her thumb on the screen to answer the call. “Yeah?”
Peyton’s tenor voice said, “Hey, Raji! Sorry for calling at two in the morning. We just got off the stage in Las Vegas. I figure if I catch a flight or rent a car I could be there by morning. Do you want to have breakfast with me?”
“Um, yeah.” She yawned and rubbed her eyes. “I think I get off at six. I could probably have breakfast.”
“So I’ll pick you up? I know a restaurant that makes the best brunch.”
“No, no. Just meet me at my apartment. We’ll eat breakfast there or something.”
“Yeah, or something.”
Raji felt her heart thump harder in her chest. Her skin flushed at his raw voice. “Yeah, okay. See you then.”
Raji tapped her phone with her thumb to hang up and fell back onto the pillow, trying to sleep for several more minutes before someone needed her to save their damn life or something.
There was no way she was going out to breakfast with him in a restaurant where anyone might see. The attending physicians, all of them, were her bosses. Dozens of them. They were all conservative to the point of worrying about whether their car was too dark or too light of a shade of gray.
She could never be seen in public with a rock star, not if she wanted to keep her residency.
She had to talk to Peyton about this. If they were going to see each other on the down-low, they had to make some rules.