-Sloane Pierce:
I hadn't been able to stop thinking about her invitation all day. Roxy's voice still lingered in my ears long after she left my house that morning, like the echo of a song I hadn't learned all the lyrics to yet but couldn't stop humming.
I had gone to the hospital, tried to bury myself in work, slipped into my routine as if it could shield me from the thoughts that kept circling back, but every time I tried to focus, my mind betrayed me.
Every chart I read, every patient I checked on, every hallway I walked down—it all came back to her. To the way she had looked at me in my kitchen, to the way she had said those words. "You don't have to be celibate just because you want to focus on your career." They had sounded so casual, almost teasing, but there had been weight behind them, a kind of permission I hadn't known I was craving until she gave it to me.
And the truth was, I couldn't stop thinking about her since.
