Jesse had never had this much fun in a tie. Admittedly, the bar was low, considering how many times in his life he’d worn a tie, much less a bow tie, but still. After the first part of the program ended, and they paused for dinner, he asked if he could sit with Avery and some of the other kids and their families. He was supposed to sit at a table with the hospital bigwigs, but because he was Jesse Jamison, everyone scrambled to accommodate him.
He’d met Avery’s mother, of course, several times. But to see everyone in a party setting was surprisingly buoying. Away from the machines and gowns and institutional green walls, the kids were giddy.
Usually when he was at a fancy event like this, the only questions he got asked was what kind of clothing he was wearing or who he was dating.
This was real talk. They talked about music. They talked about the kids’ favorite doctors—and their least favorite. They talked about missing school.
They talked about death, and whether to be afraid of it.
It all sort of blew Jesse’s mind. It was a living example of what he’d so inexpertly said earlier about getting so much more than he gave with this “charitable” endeavor.
Then Andrea tapped him on the shoulder and cued him that it was time to start the auction.
Damn it. That fucking auction.
But what could he do? He followed Andrea to the stage.
“Everyone’s all lined up over there.” She pointed at a clump of people milling in a makeshift holding pen to one side of the stage and handed him a program. “Go in the order on the program, as we discussed. Read each person’s bio, then open the bidding. I’ll be over on the other side of the stage herding them on and off.”
“Right.” He eyed the program. First up was Juan Ramirez, pediatric anesthesiologist.
Dr. Ramirez was a handsome guy. Jesse worked the crowd, and after a round of spirited bidding, Dr. Ramirez “went” for fifteen hundred dollars to an embarrassed but smiling young woman.
“Winners will collect their dates after the entire auction is over,” Jesse read, trying to settle the crowd. “Next up, we have the emergency medicine specialist Dr. Ramona Pope,” he said, reading from the program as he’d been instructed to. “Dr. Pope has spent nearly a decade working in critical and acute care settings.”
There were three more paragraphs after that, and they looked just as boring. “Okay, let’s translate that for those of us who haven’t been to a hundred years of medical school. I think that means Dr. Pope is like Doug Ross from ER. Remember that show?” Everyone laughed. “What’s the funniest emergency you ever had to deal with, Dr. Pope? Kids get weird stuff stuck up their noses, right?”
Dr. Pope was a good sport. She smiled mischievously and said, “Not to mention other places. But I’d say the weirdest thing I’ve seen in a nose is a Barbie arm.”
The crowd cracked up, and Jesse said, “What do you like to do when you’re not, you know, saving defenseless children?”
“Kayak,” she said. “Also, I hate cooking, so if someone wants to cook me dinner as part of this date, I’d be super into that.”
“All right!” he said, and he started the bidding, auctioning off the charming Dr. Pope for two grand.
And on it went. He kept off script, ad-libbing, joking, and drawing the person on the auction block into bantering with him. The crowd was loving it, and Andrea was smiling and giving him a thumbs-up, so he even had official approval for his deviation from the plan.
He tried not to glance at Hunter waiting off to the side as he went. This didn’t seem so bad. For the most part, everyone—auctionees and audience—was taking it in the lighthearted spirit in which it was intended. He had one surgical nurse who was extremely nervous. He couldn’t get her to loosen up, and the proceedings became a bit awkward.
But Hunter wasn’t interpersonally awkward. Not at all. He had a sense of humor.
But what the hell was Jesse going to say about Hunter?
Hi, here’s my best friend. Yes, he is exceedingly attractive, isn’t he? Be nice to him—he’s had a rough day.
Or: Here’s my best friend. He’s looking for love for real, so if the ladies in the crowd will kindly back off . . .
Maybe: This is Hunter. He has a really big heart. Deserve it.
The question was, was there anyone here who did? He scanned the crowd, unsettled. Then he went through the motions with bachelorette number seven, neonatal ICU nurse Kristi Farmer.
“And next up . . .” He cleared his throat. “Hospitalist Dr. Hunter Wyatt.”
Hunter walked out, smiling self-consciously and waving at the applauding crowd.
Jesse still had no freaking idea what to say. He glanced at the program. As with the other listings, it was several long, boring paragraphs about Hunter’s educational background and job duties. With the others, he had suspected the bios didn’t do justice to the actual people in front of him. And he’d been right, hadn’t he, as evidenced by the fact that they’d learned Dr. Pope liked to kayak but not cook and Nurse Farmer had seen the musical Hamilton nine times?
He’d suspected there was more to the others than was written on the piece of paper he held.
With Hunter, he knew.
He knew if you wanted Hunter to stop working, you had to physically drag him from his office. He knew Hunter was adorably clueless when it came to handyman stuff. He knew Hunter’s patience was so boundless he would examine every stray mark that appeared on Billy’s body at any time of the day or night and do it with a smile on his face.
He knew what Hunter’s mouth tasted like.
Well, shit.
Everyone was looking at him expectantly.
“So, Dr. Wyatt,” he said, “I have to start with the obvious question: what the hell is a hospitalist?”
It broke the ice. Everyone, including Hunter, laughed. He seemed to relax a little as he answered too.
“I’m getting tired of the usual questions, here, and Dr. Wyatt’s an old pal of mine,” Jesse said, to disguise the fact that his brain was actually completely devoid of questions to ask Hunter. “So let’s play a lightning round. Favorite food?”
“Ramen.”
“Lark or night owl?”
“Night owl.” Jesse should hope so, otherwise all their midnight FaceTimes were going totally against Hunter’s natural tendencies.
“Middle name?”
“Edward.” Ha. Jesse had known that, but it always sounded so incongruous.
“What would you be if not a doctor?” That would stump him. Hunter couldn’t imagine being anything other than a doctor.
“Uh . . . nurse?”
Jesse cracked up. That was such a “Hunter” answer. “Okay. Cake or pie?”
“Cake.”
“Invisibility or superstrength?” Jesse knew the answer already. There wasn’t much they hadn’t talked about during their late-night tête-à-têtes.
“Superstrength.”
Okay, how about one he didn’t know? “Boxers or briefs?”
“Boxer briefs.”
Damn. He could imagine it. He could imagine it very well. He cleared his throat. “Katy Perry or Jesse and the Joyride?”
“Jesse and the Joyride, of course.” Hunter’s face lit up with a great big, guileless smile that cut off Jesse’s train of thought. Sucked all the intelligence—such as it was—out of Jesse’s brain.
Should he ask anything else? He’d been thinking of trying to work in a nod to the fact that Hunter was gay, to signal as much to the audience. But they’d probably read the program, and to hear Hunter tell it, everyone knew anyway.
Nah. Better to get this over with. Even though Hunter didn’t want to be here, Jesse was pretty sure he wasn’t having a terrible time so far. That smile suggested as much, right?
“Okay, so let’s open the bid—”
“Four thousand dollars!” a woman of about sixty dressed in a sparkly sequined gown shouted. There was a murmur in the crowd. The highest price so far had been four thousand, so to start with that figure suggested the bidder meant business.
Was this the mother from the creepy mother-daughter team? The pet-food-charity woman who’d won Hunter last year and threatened to come after him this time? He glanced at Hunter, whose face had gone totally blank, like his smile of a moment ago had been a mask that had slid off.
It was the same woman. Jesse could tell.
He looked back over the crowd, trying to will someone else into bidding.
“Forty-five hundred,” came a voice. He followed it to see a handsome man in a black suit and skinny tie. A young man. A man who looked to be of Middle Eastern descent.
Faheem the nurse.
It had to be, given the way the kid was grinning at Hunter and the way Hunter’s eyes had briefly widened in alarm before shuttering again.
Damn it.
The crowd, though, was loving it. They hooted when Faheem stepped forward, though Jesse couldn’t say whether it was approval or something more like glee with a slight edge of jeering to it. Jesse could sort of see what Hunter meant about feeling like the gay mascot of the event.
“Five thousand,” said Lady Sequins.
“Fifty-five hundred,” Faheem shot back.
How the hell did a nurse have fifty-five hundred dollars to spend on someone who had already told him he wasn’t interested? Also, what kind of a jerk did that? The kid probably thought he was making some sort of grand romantic gesture.
“Six thousand,” Lady Sequins called out, sending a withering look at her rival.
Jesse glanced at Hunter. He was watching the proceedings with his lips pressed firmly together in what was probably supposed to be a smile but was actually more like a grimace.
No.
Jesse set the program down on the podium and walked over to Andrea, not looking at Hunter as he passed.
This was not happening.
Not on his watch.
Where was Jesse going?
As Jesse made his way over to Andrea, said something in her ear, and then strode off the stage, Hunter had to physically prevent himself from following.
He had arrived at the gala unsure how he was going to get through the auction. Then Jesse had come, and he’d changed his mind to thinking he could bear it as long as Jesse was emceeing.
Seeing Jesse had made all the difference. Not like he had magically waved away the shitty events of the day, but there was something about his presence, his solidity, that steadied Hunter.
And he wasn’t just talking metaphorically. That embrace, back there at the pond, had literally given him something—someone—to lean on for a few minutes, and it had felt so good. Knowing someone had his back, unconditionally. That was the best part of couplehood.
He assumed. He’d never really had that with Julian, not really. How could you have someone’s back if you were only selectively acknowledging your partnership with that person? Strangely, he had more of it in his friendship with Jesse than he’d had in his whole relationship with Julian.
After Jesse worked his magic, Hunter had actually started to have fun, which was not a sentiment he had ever expected to associate with this evening. Jesse was, as usual, charming and disarming, totally at ease, even in this environment that wasn’t his usual scene.
But then, as things had started getting weird—Faheem and Sandra Worthington the Dog Food Philanthropist both bidding on him—Jesse disappeared? He’d just left?
“Sorry about that.” Andrea stepped up to the podium. “Jesse needed to take a break.” She smiled a little too widely, obviously uncomfortable with this turn of events. “Shall we continue? Let’s see. I believe the bidding on Dr. Wyatt left off at six thousand dollars?” She gestured to Mrs. Worthington.
“Six thousand five hundred,” said Faheem, and who the hell did this guy think he was? Did he think he would somehow win Hunter’s affection with this creepy behavior? When Hunter had texted him that he didn’t think a romantic thing between them was in the cards, Faheem had seemed to take it in stride. But apparently that was only because he’d been retreating to hatch this stalktastic plan. Honestly, he’d rather have Mrs. Worthington.
Which it seemed like he was going to, because she called out seven thousand dollars, and surely that would be the end?
He looked back at Faheem and fuck off—the little shit was opening his mouth.
But the voice that rang out over the space came from someone else.
“Twenty thousand dollars.”
Jesse.
Standing at the back of the room.
Holy shit.
Everyone gasped. Hunter would have too if he’d had any air left in his body. What the hell was Jesse doing?
Well, he knew what Jesse was doing. Jesse understood how not-pleased Hunter was going to be with either of his potential suitors, and he was . . . intervening.
“Twenty-five thousand,” called Mrs. Worthington, her brow furrowing.
Hunter, along with everyone else, looked at Faheem.
He sat down, defeated.
Hunter smiled. He couldn’t help it.
“Thirty thousand.” Jesse walked forward, his eyes on Hunter.
Mrs. Worthington pressed her lips into a thin line. But then she opened her mouth and said, “Forty thousand.”
Okay, this had gone on long enough. Sure, the guy was rich, but there were good deeds and there were good deeds. Hunter could survive another night with the Dog Lady. He shook his head slightly at Jesse, who was still staring intently at him.
“Two hundred thousand dollars,” Jesse said calmly.
There was a brief but large uptick in the noise level in the room, then everyone went quiet.
Or maybe it was the blood rushing in Hunter’s head causing temporary deafness.
Jesse continued to stare at Hunter, so intently it was almost like he was angry. But that made no sense, because Hunter wasn’t making any of this happen. He was just standing there existing.
“How exciting,” said Andrea, finally breaking the stunned silence. “We have two hundred thousand dollars on the table for Dr. Wyatt. Are there any other bids?” She looked at Mrs. Worthington. So did Hunter. So did everyone else. Except Jesse, who kept his laser-like focus on Hunter.
Mrs. Worthington took a step back, and Hunter rejoiced silently.
“No? Two hundred thousand going once. Two hundred thousand going twice . . . And we have a winner.” She grinned. “Well, that was a bit of a thrill.”
The room burst into applause, which seemed to startle Jesse from the trance he’d been in. He smiled and jogged back up to the front to join Andrea at the podium.
He winked at the audience. “Dr. Wyatt’s an old friend, and I’ve been meaning to make a donation to the hospital, so I thought I’d drive his price up a little.” He looked down at the podium. “Okay, where are we?” He clapped his hands once. “Yes, our tenth and final bachelor is Mr. Ted Jackson, a surgical nurse.”
Well, shit.
When Jesse went back to the podium to finish his damned job—there was still one more bachelor to be auctioned off—he was a bit off-kilter.
He’d lost his mind a little, there. The world had shrunk to him and his mission. His imperative.
He felt like he’d come off a bender, except it hadn’t been booze fueling his obsessive singlemindedness just then.
It had been Hunter.
The idea of that woman getting her hands on him again, abusing his good will . . . or, worse, Faheem. Who might literally get his hands on Hunter.
No.
He couldn’t regret it. Would do it all again. He had been planning to make a big donation to the hospital anyway. Maybe not to the tune of two hundred grand, but whatever.
So, onward.
He bantered with Ted—and felt bad when Ted only fetched three grand. In addition to making a fool of himself bidding on Hunter, Jesse had totally upstaged Ted.
But there. Ted was dispatched and the auction was finally over. What was supposed to happen now? He glanced down at the stack of cue cards he’d abandoned for the auction. Right. There were a couple red ones with his closing remarks on them. Time to go back on script.
The first one had a list of people they wanted him to thank. He ran through them, added his own, and flipped to the last card.
“‘This concludes the formal portion of our evening,’” he read. “‘We’ll start the dancing with our traditional dance of the bachelors and bachelorettes with their successful bidders.’”
Wait. What?
Andrea had the bachelors and bachelorettes filing back onto the stage.
He had to force the last sentence out. “‘So, winning bidders, please come forward to collect your prizes. Dance, make plans for your date, and have fun.’”
Right. He’d forgotten about that part. He’d been so focused on getting Hunter out of the clutches of Faheem the Creeper and Weird Dog Lady that he hadn’t thought through the logical consequences of actually winning.
The DJ started playing. Jesse took several moments longer than required to tidy his cue cards on the podium, trying to think how to handle this.
When he looked up, Hunter was ambling over, his eyes twinkling. Gone was his discomfort from the auction, as well as his pain from earlier in the evening.
There. That alone was worth two hundred grand.
“You. Are. Insane.”
Jesse couldn’t really argue with that assessment, so he smirked. “I didn’t like your prospects.”
Hunter shook his head in disbelief. “Let’s hit the bar. I, for one, could use a drink.”
“What about the dance?” All around them, the winning bidders were collecting their “prizes” and leading them out onto the dance floor.
Hunter’s smile dimmed. “Oh, you don’t have to dance with me.”
You don’t have to dance with me.
When Jesse didn’t reply right away, Hunter said, “Come on. You did me a solid—a very expensive solid—but you didn’t sign up for the dancing-and-dating part.”
He started to walk away. Jesse thought about that time he couldn’t take Hunter to the Junos.
No, that time he wouldn’t take Hunter to the Junos.
He thought about that fucker Julian, and all the quiet, unseen damage he’d done to Hunter.
Fuck all that shit.
He jogged to catch up with Hunter, grabbed his arm, and started towing him toward the dance floor.
He would have paid another two hundred grand for the look on Hunter’s face—it was surprise, yes, but also pure, unadulterated happiness.
But just for a moment. He shuttered it quickly—it was replaced by a smile tinged with sadness—and reverted to protesting. “Jesse, quit it. You’re off the hook.”
“What if I don’t want to be off the hook?”
Hunter planted his feet and halted their progress, but he didn’t pull his arm from Jesse’s grip.
“Hey,” Jesse tried. “I paid two hundred grand for this package. It was supposed to include a dance, and I’m damn well getting a dance.”
“But you can’t,” Hunter said, lowering his voice and stepping closer. “People are going to think . . .”
“People are going to think what? That some deluded rock star did something crazy and now he’s dancing with his friend? Big deal.”
It was kind of a big deal, but Jesse wasn’t about to back down now. It was all in how he approached it. How he carried himself. Anyway, it wasn’t like they were in public-public. He’d charmed the hell out of this crowd. They weren’t going to rush to misinterpret an innocent dance between friends. He’d told the crowd that Hunter was an old pal and that he’d been looking for an opportunity to donate to the hospital.
So he kept Hunter’s hand and started backing him toward the dance floor. Hunter came reluctantly. “Unless you don’t want to dance with me,” he teased. “Afraid I’m going to mar your upstanding reputation, Dr. W.?”
Hunter shook his head and laughed, and more importantly, he kept coming.
“Come on,” Jesse exhorted. They were almost there. “The song’s half over.”
They were playing Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World,” which was the perfect song for a bunch of people dancing semiawkwardly with strangers. It wasn’t too mushy or too slow, so you could kind of do a shuffle that wasn’t a fast dance but wasn’t a slow dance either. You could be in each other’s arms but not have to be pasted together. It was a song that invited joyous silliness.
So as Jesse led them onto the parquet floor, he traded Hunter’s elbow for Hunter’s hand, extended his arm, and then reeled Hunter in with an overexaggerated flourish. The joking theatricality kept things light.
They both grinned.
Then Jesse pulled Hunter close to him, reflexively lifting his left hand, which was holding Hunter’s right, into the air.
Wait. Was that wrong? That was how he would dance with a woman.
He’d never danced with a man before.
But Hunter didn’t seem to mind. In fact, Jesse could feel his body relaxing, like it had outside earlier, by the pond. Hunter laid his other hand on Jesse’s shoulder.
“There now,” said Jesse, who had no idea where to put his other hand—it was hanging awkwardly by his side. “That wasn’t so bad was it?”
If Jesse were dancing with a woman, that other hand would have come to rest somewhere on her back. Maybe on her mid-back, under her shoulder blades, if it was a formal thing, if they didn’t know each other well. Probably lower if they did.
He wanted to put his hand on Hunter’s back.
No, it was stronger than that. It was like Jesse’s hand had its own consciousness. It was simultaneously more intelligent and more primal, and it wanted to be on Hunter’s back. Needed to be on Hunter’s back.
The hand floated up, but Jesse forced it to stop short, to land on Hunter’s elbow. It was a more casual placement. It went with the whole “We’re swaying goofily to this silly song but we’re not really dancing” vibe.
It was a cop-out.
His hand didn’t want to be there, resting on a pointy elbow. It wanted the wide surface area of Hunter’s lower back. It wanted room to splay its fingers.
It wanted territory to mark.
Jesse shifted his weight a little, suddenly too hot and hit with an intense infusion of the tie-as-noose sensation.
But Hunter didn’t seem to notice anything amiss. “You are . . .”
“What?”
“You are amazing,” Hunter whispered.
Every part of Jesse felt those three words. They were sharp and stinging and . . . perfect. He had to look away.
The song was ending. Too soon. They’d only just got themselves situated.
Jesse’s hand still wasn’t where it was supposed to be.
They stood there, swaying until the last strains of the song faded.
And was instantly replaced by the opening notes of “When You’re Mine.”
Hunter’s song.
Holy shit.
But they couldn’t know. It was clearly a nod to Jesse’s presence as emcee, and the song happened to be the third single from their record, the one that was currently climbing the charts.
Before he could overthink it, Jesse pulled Hunter in. All the way in—into a proper slow dance stance, lining them up from thigh to shoulder and letting that hand slide around and press against Hunter’s back. How could he hear Hunter’s song and have Hunter in his arms and not?
He realized too late that he was popping a semi.
Had he been too busy anthropomorphizing his hand to pay attention to his dick?
Hunter’s eyes went wide.
This was Jesse’s cue to back off, his opening to apologize. To step away.
Instead, he leaned over and said, “Do you have shit you still have to do for this shindig? Or can we get out of here?”
It was possible that his dick had taken over for his hand in the driver’s seat.
But that didn’t seem quite right either, because although he was attracted to Hunter—he had always been attracted to Hunter, if he was being honest with himself—that wasn’t his driving force right now. No, he just wanted more time together. He wanted . . .
“My date. I want my date now.”
“Now?” Hunter echoed, looking dazed.
“Yes.” Jesse had to fly out to who-the-fuck-knew-where tomorrow to resume the tour, and then it would be another month before it was over. “So are you done here? Do you have official duties to perform still?”
Hunter shook his head.
Jesse enjoyed having struck Dr. Hunter Wyatt dumb.
“C’mon, then.” He stepped farther away from Hunter, and all his parts—in symphony—protested. He hitched his head toward the entrance, and once he’d made sure Hunter was following, he used one hand to loosen his tie and the other to order an Uber.
“Where are we going?”
“I have no idea.” Where did you go on a date that cost you two hundred grand? But then, he knew. “Ramen?” He’d barely touched his dinner—he’d needed to stay on his toes with the hosting duties and had been chatting with the kids and their families during the brief break in the program—and he was suddenly starving.
“Yeah,” said Hunter, and goddamn it, he was gazing at Jesse with something that looked a lot like admiration, or no, something . . . deeper than that? Something more serious. “Ramen is . . . perfect.”