Run, Girl (If You Can)

Everything did not go back to normal.

First thing in the morning, Keeley saw that Aaron tried to friend request her on Facebook. She deleted it instantly—no way did she want him seeing her posting things about her life.

Since she avoided going to the café where they bumped into each other, he started hanging out around the medical school after he got off work. After about a week of desperately trying not to be seen, he finally caught her.

"Keeley!"

She flinched so hard she may have dislocated her shoulder. "Yes?" she asked with a wince.

"You're a difficult person to track down." Yeah, because she didn't want to be found!

"What do you want, Aaron? I only have a thirty minute dinner break before I have to go back to the research lab and I've already used up nine."

"I need your help with something," he said nonchalantly, as if it didn't actually matter to him at all. Clearly it did or he wouldn't have staked out her school for a solid week.

"Spit it out already, I still need to eat and the clock is ticking," she said impatiently.

He was clearly displeased. "You could at least pretend you're happy to see me."

"Tick tock," Keeley said crossly. He had to be kidding. Why on earth would she do that? "You have thirty seconds before I'm going to Paco's Tacos and leaving you here."

"…you actually eat that stuff?"

Unbelievable. She gave him a time limit and he was still trying to pick a fight over his rich kid sensibilities being offended.

"Goodbye."

"Wait! You have a cat, right?"

She was totally creeped out by that; she never mentioned she had a cat. "How do you know that?"

"Your cover photo on Facebook is of a fluffy white cat sprawled out on a pile of genetics textbooks; not hard to deduce."

Okay, that was a reasonable explanation. She relaxed fractionally. "What about it?"

"I've been thinking about getting a cat but nobody else I know has one so I don't know how to go about it. Where do you buy cats? And what sort of things do you need to get for them? What about veterinarians? I know nothing."

First of all, Aaron Hale admitting he knows nothing? Unheard of. Secondly…what parallel universe was this that he wanted companionship of any kind? Aaron didn't like animals! What on earth possessed him to want a cat?

She was so startled by all of this that she stammered, "Can't you just look this stuff up online?"

"Do you really trust everything you read on the internet? I prefer sources I can trust," he scoffed.

Always so high and mighty. Who in this day and age was too good to use Google?

Keeley saw the time at an angle from his watch. Her precious dinner break was ticking away. To get him to let her leave, she blurted, "Okay! I'll help you! Just let me get dinner, will you?!"

His pleased smirk appeared on his handsome face. "That's all I needed to hear, thank you. Give me your number; we can talk about this over dinner tomorrow."

"I'm busy tomorrow but whatever, just text me."

She rattled off the number and sprinted to the Paco's Tacos without even saying goodbye. Half of her break wasted, just like that. Curse him!

She had to scarf down her bean burritos as she walked back to the lab and it ended up giving her horrible indigestion.

"What's wrong with you?" her fellow lab assistant, Erica Simon, asked after witnessing Keeley groan in agony for the tenth time.

"I think I may have food poisoning."

"Paco's Tacos?" Erica asked sympathetically. "We've all been there. It's the closest place to eat near the medical school but at what cost? It's greasier than anything else I've ever eaten, including meat lover's pizza."

"I'm actually dying," Keeley moaned, pressing her cheek against the metal table because it was cold.

"You look like you're about to hurl. Go home!"

"But Doctor Kim—"

"I'll deal with her. Get out of here before you puke on something and contaminate the lab," she insisted. "Go!"

"Okay," Keeley said miserably as she gathered her things and went to clock out, hunched over in pain.

This was entirely Aaron's fault! If he hadn't held her up, she might have been able to walk farther to the smoothie shack that sold acai bowls and wouldn't be on the verge of death by burrito right now.

He had texted her to give her his number already and she was so pissed off that she actually sent him a message. 'I have food poisoning because of you. You suck!'

His response was immediate. 'How is your getting food poisoning related to me in any way?'

'If you hadn't wasted my time I wouldn't have had to go to the Taco Shop of Death'

There wasn't a response for a few minutes and she woozily made her way towards the subway stop. If she puked on the train at this time of day when it was so crowded…somebody might actually murder her.

When a text did come, it simply said, 'Stay where you are, I'm on my way.'

Keeley didn't want to see him again but she couldn't deny that being in a car, which was less crowded, would lessen her chances of projectile vomiting on a fellow commuter. And she would get home faster.

Besides, if she puked in his Mercedes-Benz he would probably never speak to her again. That would be a plus. So she parked herself on a bench on the sidewalk and waited for Aaron to pick her up against her better judgment.

She tried to remember if there was ever a time during their marriage where he personally took care of her when she was sick. Usually he'd just get the driver to take her to the hospital and that was the end of that.

So why was he rushing to the rescue now? Did he actually feel guilty?

Maybe he felt obligated because he still wanted a favor out of her and thought she might be too mad to follow through if he didn't help her out this time. That was still pretty thin reasoning.

Aaron never did anything without believing it would benefit him somehow; he was a capitalist down to his very core. How would he benefit from helping her out when she was about to throw up?