Page 86 of The Deception: Hercules Valentine and I

When I look up, Lake is still smiling at me. “It’s nothing big,” I say, thumbing over my shoulder. “I need privacy.”

“You’re the boss,” she says in a syrupy voice.

I roll my eyes, grinning, as I race to my office.

* * *

Dr. Hammerstone got backto me less than fifteen minutes after I left a message with her assistant. She said she could squeeze me in today at five p.m. I booked the appointment and called a cab to take me to my old neighborhood. Now I'm wearing a gown and lying on Doctor Hammerstone’s examination table, with my legs spread and feet in stirrups.

“So, we’re having sex regularly. And a lot of it too,” she says with her face in front of my vagina.

She decided to give me a Pap smear since I haven’t had one after graduating from college.

“Are we?” I ask jokingly. I do wonder how she’s able to tell I’ve been having a lot of sex. But I’m sure as hell not going to ask.

She looks away from my vag as she puts the swab into a glass tube while she chuckles. “All jokes aside, I want to make sure you know to be responsible. Getting pregnant is not the only result of unsafe sex.”

Oh… the lecture. Only, I’m almost thirty, so isn’t it too late for this talk?

“Aye, aye, captain,” I say.

This time, when she laughs, her eyes are bright and glossy. “Look at you, Paisley. You’re all grown-up. I remember when your mother brought you in after you got your period.”

I smile nostalgically. I also understand why she’s speaking to me as if I’m a teenager. To her, I probably still am.

“I remember that,” I say. Even though we lived in Agoura Hills and she resided in New York, Dr. Hammerstone was always the private physician for the females in my family.

“You took our talk like a champ. It’s probably too late for the talk I’m giving you today, huh?”

I burst out laughing, and so does she.

She tells me that birth control pills are passé and asks if I want to consider other methods, like an IUD or the spring.

“And the IUD may lessen your period days.”

I tell her I’ll think about it. My periods only last three days and aren’t bad at all. I remember how periods used to incapacitate Eden and Dandi for the better part of five days. I was always lucky in that department.

Dr. Hammerstone ends up giving me a week’s worth of birth control pills along with a three-month prescription and tells me to call and make an appointment if I decide to go with the IUD.

As soon as I’m in a cab, I text Hercules:I’m officially on the pill.

Right away, he replies,I’ll see you soon.

It takes seven days to work, I tap out.

Shit, he pings back.

I don’t know how to reply. I want to ask if I’ll still see him now that he knows he’ll have to wait to do me without a condom. But asking that just seems wrong and sort of cheapens our relationship.

And—are we in a relationship? When I referred to him as my boyfriend, he didn’t contradict me.

I sigh as the cab stops in front of my building. Hercules is so hard to figure out.

After paying the cabbie, I take the elevator to my floor. Once I start down the hallway, I gasp into my palm when I see who’s standing in front of my door.

* * *