The Exception by Lauren H. Mae

Thirty-two

So maybe mixing sex with studying wasn’t Trav’s best idea. Not that he regretted a single minute of those study sessions, or the late nights that had followed, but besides not retaining much, this week, he was, admittedly, dragging ass.

And to top it off, that day he skipped class to hang out with Sonya, he’d missed a pop-quiz that he would have aced. If he’d aced that quiz, it would have boosted his grade enough to not be having this conversation.

“How you do here reflects on me. How many times do I have to tell you that, Benjamin?” Jack Travis puffed his chest and squared his shoulders in an attempt to throw around his stature, but after what Trav had been doing the last fourteen years, a middle-aged man in a suit wasn’t so intimidating anymore.

Though, it sure was infuriating.

“No one else saw my exam, Dad,” he said. “You pulled strings to see it, so don’t tell anyone, and your reputation remains intact.”

It pissed Trav off to no end that his father always found a way to be right on the heels of any misstep Trav made. And that he always found a way to blow it out of proportion. It was a bad grade on a test; no one was dying. So he’d spread himself a little thin lately. Overall, he was doing fine. But fine was never good enough for his father.

Jack’s eyes narrowed. “If you fail out of this—”

“I’m not going to fail.” He’d raised his voice louder than he meant to, and a nurse turned to look at them as she passed.

“Now you’re making a scene,” his father said.

Jesus. He was always running point with no one behind him these days. If it wasn’t for Sonya… “Look, tests aren’t my thing. They never have been. It doesn’t mean I don’t know how to do this job.”

“In medicine every interaction is a test, Ben. You’re already behind Elliot. You should want to be the best.”

“I want to graduate and get a job so I can help people. It doesn’t matter to my patients if I end up top of the class when I’m saving their life.”

His dad scoffed. “Top of the class for an associates degree. Yes, I suppose that doesn’t matter.” He straightened and pinched the French cuff of his dress shirt. He always did this—minimized whatever it was Trav was putting his energy into. It was a constant stream of “be the best”followed by a reminder that even if he was, it was at something that was beneath his potential. The goal posts always moved.

“Go ahead and play loose with this, Ben,” his father said, “but don’t come crying to me when you’ve squandered yet another opportunity. I’m out of life-lines to toss you.”

Jack turned on his heel, marching away, and Trav shoved his hands in his hair. Why he ever thought he could take roaming the same halls as his father for an entire semester was beyond him.

He looked at his watch and saw it was his dinner break. Thank fuck. Sonya would be in the breakroom waiting for him. Seeing her would lower his blood pressure before he had to finish his shift.

He rounded the corner to the nurses lounge, pausing in the doorway to watch her press buttons on the Keurig, that bottom lip of hers between her teeth as the machine did its thing. He would have laughed at himself for being so smitten, if he was in a laughing mood.

“Hey,” he said. “I was hoping you’d be in here.”

She looked over her shoulder and smiled. “I do love making your dreams come true.”

Trav didn’t usually touch her at work. Maybe a quick peck on the lips in the parking garage after scouting the perimeter, and one time she’d slipped her fingers into his beneath the table after everyone had left a meeting, but that was it. They were extremely careful for obvious reasons, but after that conversation with his father, he was going to take just a little bit more.

With one more glance at the doorway, he leaned in and brushed his lips over the back of her neck.

And she froze as if he’d stung her.

“What are you doing?” she whispered.

“What? No one’s here.”

She scooted around him and stuck her head out the door. “That you know of. Anyone could have come in.”

So much for making himself feel better. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking. I just got into an argument with my—”

“Trav, not thinking is not an option. I could get in trouble.”

He ran a hand over his face, suppressing a sigh. “You said you couldn’t.”

“I also said it would make me look very unprofessional.”

“Right. Slumming with an almost-paramedic.” He crossed his arms over his chest, knowing full well he looked like a petulant child.

Her lips twisted. “Wow. I haven’t heard that snark in awhile. You know it’s not like that. We’ve been over this.”

He pushed off the counter and went to the fridge to unpack his dinner. And hers. “Sonya, come on. It’s late and I checked the door. Maybe lighten up a little?”

“Lighten up? This is my job. We agreed on this.” She took the container of soup he held out, her brow creased in confusion. “What is going on with you?”

“I’m tired of being the skeleton in everyone’s closet around here.”

He slammed the door to the microwave harder than he’d intended and she flinched.

“What does that mean?”

“Nevermind.”

She held a hand up, her brown eyes wide. “No. Wait. Are we fighting?”

He laughed bitterly. “Haven’t you ever had a fight before? Sorry, maybe I should have scheduled it in your planner.”

“Woah.” She set her food down and crossed her arms. “I’m sorry you had a fight with your dad, but please don’t take your personal issues out on me.”

The microwave beeped and he pulled out his dinner. “Funny, I was under the impression my personal issues might be of interest to you since we have a personal relationship. Thanks for letting me know where that stands. I’m going to eat in my truck.”

“Trav, wait. I didn’t mean it like that.”

He made it to the break room door, then forced his feet to stop. If he was going to pop off at the mouth every time they argued, then he deserved the way his stomach felt right now. He turned around and un-gritted his teeth, forcing the words. “I’ll see you after dinner.”

“Yeah. Okay,” she said, looking more confused than anything. “I guess I’ll see you.”

* * *

Sonya tossed her purse and coat on the passenger seat of her car and climbed in behind the wheel. She’d made it through the last two hours of her shift managing to avoid Trav by asking another nurse to take a report from him, but that was obviously unsustainable. Not to mention, unprofessional. “This is the exact reason why you don’t sleep with your coworkers,” she mumbled to herself.

Even as she said it, guilt twisted in her chest. That was a dismissive way of describing what they were doing, but she did have a new appreciation for the timely transfers that usually accompanied these situations. At one point, she’d ducked into the women’s room to avoid passing him in the hall.

This was exactly the kind of thing she was afraid of, but Trav just needed to hold up his end of the bargain and she couldn’t understand where reminding him of that had gone wrong.

She looked down at her bouncing knee, trying to figure out why her stomach was in knots.

“You’re just anxious because of the confrontation,” she said to her reflection in the rearview. “It’s a normal physiological response.”

Or maybe she knew there was something else behind his reaction.

Having a mental health background was weird in relationships. Emma was always lamenting the same when it came to her and Adam. Being a family therapist, Emma was constantly assessing her own marriage and parenting choices by her clinical expertise. Sonya knew from watching this play out over years of friendship, that it was exhausting and confusing.

Sonya’s brain quietly and calmly told her that Trav’s behavior was a classic defense mechanism brought on by feelings of unworthiness stemming from his childhood.

But that achy feeling in her chest screamed: Screw him for resorting to being a cocky ass because his feelings were hurt.

She needed to talk this out. Calling in another mental health professional wasn’t going to be helpful, so Emma was out. She was pretty sure Cat and Josh hadn’t had an actual fight since they got married, so as much as Cat gave great advice, this wasn’t her forte.

Dani, on the other hand…

She left the car in park and hit a video call, hoping she would catch Dani at the office instead of at Dylan’s house.

As soon as the call connected, Sonya recognized the panoramic view of the city through the window behind Dani’s desk. She was in luck. “Hey, what’s up?”

“I need advice.”

“Getting right to the point.” Dani laughed and pulled her Prada reading glasses off of her nose. “Sounds like an emergency.”

“Not like a Code Red emergency, but maybe.”

Dani pushed her laptop to the side and propped her phone on her desk. “Let me hear it.”

“You and Dylan, y’all… fight sometimes, right?” She wasn’t sure why she was beating around the bush. She’d called Dani for a reason. “More than sometimes. You two argue a lot.”

“Okay, wow.”

“Wait. That came out wrong.” Apparently that was the theme of the day. “I just want to know how that works, I mean, how you get over it.”

Dani bounced her eyebrows. “Makeup sex, obviously.”

Sonya couldn’t help the eye roll. “Are you serious?”

“Kind of. Dylan drives me crazy in a good way as much as in a bad way.”

“So it’s not an issue, the two of you spending so much time irritated at each other?”

Dani’s face turned serious and she leaned back in her chair. “This is about Trav. Did you have a fight?”

Sonya nodded. “I think so.”

“Was he a dick or something?”

She considered it, then shook her head. “That’s too harsh, but he wasn’t his charming self. It’s just that Marcus and I, we didn’t fight.”

Even if she was angry at Marcus over something, by the time she eventually saw him again, she’d had weeks to cool off. It was very convenient in hindsight.

Still, even the few times she could remember disagreeing with Marcus, it hadn’t felt like that. Her stomach was in knots and the dull ache in her chest wouldn’t subside.

Dani laughed. “That’s because you never saw each other.”

“That’s the truth. But isn’t it a sign that Trav and I have only been doing this for a few weeks and we’ve already had an argument?”

“Um, Dylan and I had about seven-hundred arguments before we even started dating.”

“And that doesn’t worry you?”

Dani shrugged. “Not really. Tell me what the fight was about.”

“He broke our rule… about touching. In the breakroom. He kissed me and I might have overreacted.”

Dani’s nose scrunched. “Could you have gotten caught?”

“In all likelihood, no. But that’s not the point. We set a rule and he broke it. Anyway, I think maybe I hurt his feelings.”

“Sonya, we’re all used to your unemotional, head-driven responses. It’s why you give great advice when the rest of us are crying in our ice cream. But when someone’s been inside you, you have to give them a little more. Especially when they’re new to the Sonya Effect.”

Sonya narrowed her eyes. “What’s the Sonya Effect?”

“It’s when you say something completely withering and expect people to take it with the love its intended. Like when Dylan and I started dating and you said I was too old for dumb boys and too young for a midlife crisis. You have to ease people into that type of tough love.”

Sonya felt her ears get warm. “I don’t sugar coat,” she said. She wasn’t defending herself, more realizing something from a different perspective.

“How exactly did you react?”

“I told him not thinking wasn’t an option, and then he tried to explain and I told him not to take his personal issues out on me.”

“Ouch.”

“That’s kind of what he said. I know I was wrong, but when he gets snarky and smug, it makes me want to throttle him.”

Dani was silent for a few beats, chewing on the end of her pen. “Look, I think we both know it wasn’t just the distance that kept you and Marcus from having it out. He just didn’t spark that kind of reaction in you. I liked Marcus, but he could be a little bit of a know-it-all. You, being you, it always surprised me that you never called him on anything. It was like you didn’t care enough to engage.”

Sonya sank into her seat with that revelation. Where was this advice before she ran off to elope with the man? Though, she would have had a hard time taking it back then.

Dani smiled. “Trav’s been getting under your skin from the moment you two met. I may have been kidding about the supply closet sex, but I wasn’t kidding about the two of you just needing to bone for God’s sake. The first time you mentioned his name, I could tell you were “do me now” mad.”

Sonya groaned. “That sounds ridiculously dysfunctional, Dani.”

“Says your textbooks maybe, but you know it’s true. Passion is a good thing, but like cake, and margaritas, and almost all good things—you don’t get to enjoy it scot free.”

“This dynamic doesn’t work for everyone. Can you imagine Cat and Josh interacting like that? Neither one of them could take it.”

“Cat has issues, and I’m convinced Josh was born without an anger gene. Look, even when I’m mad at Dylan, we always fight fair. He’s obnoxious and perverted, but he’s sweet and loyal too. I try to remember that. And just so we’re clear, I’d fight anyone on his behalf.”

“I know.” Sonya wasn’t above admitting that Dylan and Dani had turned out all right if this was the relationship advice she was getting from Dani six months later.

“Just try to take Trav’s sensitive little soul into consideration from now on. It might be the perfect balance to your… you.”

Sonya nodded, that guilt making her cheeks burn again.

“And definitely channel some of that fire next time you two are naked. He looks strong. That could be fun.”

Dani winked, and Sonya shook her head, but she was smiling. “Good night, Dani.”

“Good night, friend.”