Page 13 of The Heartbreaker

“Don’t feel awful. If I didn’t want to talk about it, I would have danced around the question—something I’m learning you’re very good at.” He winked.

But even with a gesture as cute as the one he’d just made, I could see how much the loss of his dad upset him.

“The good news is that he’s no longer in pain,” he continued. “Now, my siblings and I are just finding our own way of dealing with it. It happened three months ago, so it’s still fresh.”

“I can’t even imagine,” I said softly. “The thought …” I lowered my head. “I can’t even go there.”

“It’s rough.”

“How many siblings do you have?”

My hand left his arm when he took a drink of his iced green tea. “A younger sister and an older brother.”

“Do they live around here?”

I was surprised by how many questions I was asking. It seemed, once I got a taste, I needed more.

Like this ramen.

But where the soup had started to cool, Ridge was scalding hot.

“Their houses are less than a mile from mine, and we’re coworkers. Time spent together is something we’re not lacking in my family. We’re close in many ways.”

“I’m jealous. My sister lives in Dallas, and I don’t get to see her nearly enough. One day, I’m hoping she’ll transfer hospitals and come here to work—or at least somewhere in California so she’d be easier to get to.”

The waitress refilled our glasses, and as soon as she was gone, he asked, “What kind of medicine?”

“She’s an anesthesiologist, and let me tell you, she sees some wild shit.”

His hands unhooked, and he lifted his spoon, taking a mouthful of the broth. “How wild?”

There was only one other couple in the restaurant, so I didn’t really have to keep my voice down, but I lowered it while I said, “There’s a woman who’s addicted to swallowing batteries. Every month or so, she ends up in the emergency department with a battery or two or four”—my eyes widened—“in her stomach. And the thing is, she knows it requires surgery to get them out, yet she still swallows them.”

“Man”—he took a bite of a noodle and covered his mouth with his hand—“I can’t understand why she would swallow something so dangerous.”

“From there, things get a little spicier.”

“Like?”

I chewed my lip. “Broken light bulbs.”

“You’re telling me someone swallows a broken light bulb?”

I giggled. “No, I’m telling you someone uses a light bulb to get off and it happens to break in the process.”

He went silent. “You’re fucking kidding.”

“And the pieces of glass have to be surgically removed.”

“Dude, no.”

I devoured some fried nori. “But it gets worse—kinda. Because what I didn’t know—and maybe you don’t either—is that the butt acts like a suction cup, so once something is in there and the end is lost, you can’t go searching for it. Once it’s gone, it’s gone.”

“Surgery is the only way to get it out?”

I slowly nodded. “Yep.” I stirred the rest of the broth with my chopsticks. “This one lady had that happen during a vacation in Bali. She didn’t want to go to the hospital there, so she flew home—all of those hours sitting on a plane and probably having a layover and going through customs—with a dildo up her tush.”

“Jesus Christ.” He couldn’t stop laughing.