he walked in with a pep in his step. jack greeted everyone who crossed his way, asked how lupe and chantanah’s weekend had gone, bet one hundred bucks on ahmad’s newest betting pool (apparently, robby and baran had a spat so big that weekend that everyone decided that the reason of their animosity towards each other is because they were secretly in love. after that, ahmad’s beloved white board was cleared, who, how and when columns were created, and now they’ve amassed almost one thousand dollars in bets. oh, jack’s guesses are: both, after a bad case and in three months), and even entertained in myrna’s shenanigans, twirling her wheelchair around a couple of times. 

robby shook his head when he heard the frequent flyer say “that’s why i like you better than dr. fruitcake, dr. abbot.” between giggles. his friend laughed and shook his head, giving her an “oh, myrna” as he made his way to present himself for shift change. 

“i’ll take the date went well.” robby said to jack without taking his eyes from the chart he was finishing. 

“date?” dana and lena shouted in unison. 

“louder ‘cause whoever is in north one didn’t hear it.” he said with not one ounce of anger in his voice and opened a huge smile before continuing. “and yes, i went on a date on saturday and it went really well.”

dana patted jack in the back, her smile just as big as his. “happy for you, abbot.”

those close to him knew the importance of this step on jack’s life. eliza, liz, lizzie, the love of his life. the woman jack met when he was eighteen, fresh out of high-school, through liz’s cousin and jack’s best friend, diego, at a birthday party at diego’s parent’s house and were inseparable since then. she was the one who was with him through the highs and lows of life. during med school, his deployment, the death of his father, the loss of his leg and everything that came with it. liz was jack’s rock and guiding light.

and he had to watch that light dim over the course of a year. 

on a routine check up, they found out liz had stage 3 cancer. liz tried every treatment available, but the worst outcome possible happened one year to the date they discovered the disease. 

the first year without lizzie was the worst of jack’s life. he blamed himself for it everyday, even if he knew he did everything he could. jack felt like a zombie, pilling shifts on shifts, pulling doubles whenever he could and sleeping no more than an hour a night. jack lost so much weight that his phone face recognition didn’t recognise him anymore. 

it was a particular case that helped jack take his first steps to ask for help. 

he may not admit, but jack remembers that shift particularly well. the day of the first anniversary of his wife’s passing was approaching and jack had been on edge all week. it was one of those harsh winter shifts that doctors had a hard time arriving and patients only set foot in the streets if extremely needed. a strong snowfall hit pittsburgh earlier than expected and robby’s day team had a difficult time arriving at the PTMC, so jack, shen and a few of the night shift nurses pulled a double. 

it was around two in the afternoon that a wife arrived at the pitt with her husband, a prostate cancer patient in palliative care. jack was the one to attend him, not before robby insisted he could take on the case. 

jack couldn’t lie, it was one of the hardest cases he had been a part of, not because it was beyond his capabilities, but because it hit too close to home. jack saw liz in steve; the way he breathed, the hums, how he looked at his wife like silvia meant the world to him. 

jack had to blink twice whenever he entered steve’s room as his mind kept playing tricks on him. 

steve left this realm a little over an hour after he arrived at the hospital. like he always did, jack lent a sympathetic ear to the widow in case she needed it. and jack found someone who was in a much more sane state of mind than him. 

he learned that steve and silvia were a few years older than him and high-school sweethearts, kind of like him and liz. they had been each other’s only partners and had eighteen year old twins. like he had seen in his chart but hadn’t computed the information, steve discovered his cancer ten years prior and the disease had come and gone twice, but ended up being fatal the third time. 

when the third time came around, steve made a bucket list of things he wanted to do before he passed like going on a worldwide cruise, watching a football match in england and writing a book. the book was a love letter to silvia in the form of poems; in the last one, steve made silvia promise that she would live her life, that she wouldn’t mourn him for long and that, if she ever felt like falling in love again, she would do it and not think about her dead husband. 

the morning after she had won the gift, silvia called a therapist specialised in grief, who helped her understand and go through the grief stage four cancer brings. 

jack found him one during his lunch break that day. 

“is she pretty, jack?” lena asked.

“she’s stunning and smart and funny and i seriously don’t know what she saw in me.” jack laughed and shook his head. 

robby snorted at his best friend's self deprecation. “give yourself your due credit, brother.”

across the hub, trinity listened to the conversation and thought about the video she had just watched, happy that the attending would, supposedly, be getting his second date. 

you walked down the halls of university thankful that you would be getting ten days off starting tomorrow. 

since leaving his apartment that sunday, all you could think about was your date with jack. you weren’t one to compare, knowing the circumstances and everything in between, but taking into account the last few years of your marriage and the dates you had gone since you started the experiment, the moments you shared with jack were the best you had had in years. jack made you laugh and was attentive, he actually listened to you and was interested in knowing you and what you had to say. jack looked at you with reverence and the want in his eyes made your skin prickle. 

but there was still a side of you that was on alert. 

the rules you created were set for a reason. eighteen years with someone aren’t eighteen days. and, even if the only feelings you had left for paul were disgust and annoyance, you felt like you couldn’t get into another relationship. firstly, as independent as you had been your entire life, you didn’t exactly have the time to develop and get to know the you out of a relationship.

secondly, this was the first time in your life that you had been living alone since you went straight from your parents house to college, where you shared dorms with grace and leticia, to living with paul once you graduated and got married, and you were loving living alone. there was something about getting home after work and not having to play house and pretend to be lively that was so enticing and liberating to you. and the silence, god, the silence. 

thirdly, the dating pool was shit. yes, overall, you had been graced with (mostly) good dates since the experiment started, but the measly ones you had and the horror stories you heard were enough for you to want to protect your peace long term. 

that is why your newly found infatuation for jack scared you so much. 

you felt an inexplicable pull to him from the moment he joked about your choices of drink that first day at the bar, and it only grew day by day as you texted or called, when you went to sleep with “goodnight” texts everyday for the past two weeks – even if jack was having a busy shift – and when you woke up to his 06a.m. “good morning” messages. 

you knew you were fucked, but you were trying not to think about it. 

with a groan, you sat down on your comfortable orthopaedic chair, stretching out all limbs before pulling your phone from your back pocket. it had been going off with texts almost all morning, and you were pretty sure ninety nine percent from them were grace’s, so, after confirming your suspicions, you facetimed her. 

“look who decided to finally stop avoiding me.” was grace’s “hi” to you. you rolled your eyes. 

“you know i was in class.”

“yeah… well, i gotta be dramatic somehow. but what you’ve been avoiding is telling me how things with your hot doctor are. you posted that short ass tiktok weeks ago saying he was going to get the first second date, and that was it. i still don’t know how the date went.”

after the post button was hit and realisation downed on you that you had just told your thousands of followers that you were going on a second date with mcdreamy, you panicked. you kept your weekly vlogs that served as a rundown of what you did that week and shared a few things here and there, but refused to open the comments on the post jack’s date video. grace didn’t get much either, as much as she bugged you for it daily.

you decided to put her out of her misery. 

“i’m afraid of my feelings.” you said with a sigh. 

“elaborate.”

you told grace everything. from how the date went, to the museum educator saying you and jack were a beautiful couple, to how he acted with you all night and how easy it felt for you to be truly yourself with him, how you didn’t have to make yourself smaller next to him (not only physically, but personality wise too), to how he acted like he was the one who was granted the biggest opportunity of his life that was being in your presence, to the sex (grace was particularly amused by the way he had to eat you out before breakfast), to the fact that you guys text daily and talk about nothing and everything. 

“again, what are you afraid of?” your friend asked. 

“grace, you know what i’ve been through. you know the rules and why i’ve set them, i can’t just go and mess it all up.”

graced laughed like you had said the most ridiculous thing. 

“this is ridiculous.” ok, she confirmed what you were dreading. “those are self imposed rules, there’s nothing in the constitution saying you can’t catch feelings for a pretty awesome guy just because your ex-husband ended up turning into a bitch after a few years of marriage.”

“first of all, i’m not–“

grace interrupted you, calling your name using the stern tone of voice reserved for when you were being unreasonable or going on a spiral. and you were about to be both. 

“remember that conversation we had when we’re high as a kite and talked about walking past our soulmates and meeting them? you’ve just said he often goes to the brewery with his best friend and apparently the two of you have the same habits,” in those two weeks of texts, you found out that you and jack shared too many habits, from going to the same farmer’s market almost every sunday, to only going to the century square luxury cinemas, even if it was out of your ways, because of their chairs. 

you shook your head. “yeah, but that doesn’t mean he’s my soulmate. or that they are real.” grace gave you a look that felt painful.

“i hate that paul hurt you so badly that it turned you into a sceptical person.” she inhaled and rubbed her hands across her pretty face. “what i’m saying is that maybe you shouldn’t pass out on a good opportunity because you are afraid of a ‘what if.’ you don’t– he’s texting you, isn’t he? you face just lit up like you won the lottery.”

damn it. sometimes you hated that your face had a life of its own. and yes, the same notification came up on your phone and macbook at the same time, your imessage app warning you that jack abbot had finally woken up from his post shift sleep. 

jack from the bar: Hey, sweetheart. Robby is going away for a couple of weeks and I’ll be on the day shift for the foreseeable future starting thursday. I have the whole day off tomorrow and would love to finally take you out on that second date. 

you read the text out loud to grace. 

“you better tell that man ‘yes’ right now.”

sent: would love to. dealer’s choice.

“hey, guys! we’re having a morning/afternoon date today. mcdreamy has the day off today and so am i, so we’re embracing the opportunity to be out in the sun. anyway! make up is the same old, forgot to record it, sorry. skirt is H&M and the top i have no idea where i got it from, because i cut the tag off. flats because ja–“ you cut yourself short, eyes widening when you realised his name almost slipped out. you muttered a “fuck”, deleted what you had recorded so far and started again. 

“flats because mcdreamy told me to be comfortable and a coach bag.” you twirled around, showing off the white flowy, cotton midi skirt, the red and white gingham shirt that showed your cleavage well, your purse and shoes of choice.

“i have no idea where we’re going, but apparently he has the whole day mapped out, and i’m soooo excited! as usual, see you guys after the date. bye!”

jack had been secretive about where he was taking you from the moment you agreed to the second date. he offered to pick you up at your place, and, as usual, you told him you would rather meet him there. you don’t know if that annoyed him, jack never showed any annoyance and respected your wishes when you didn’t agree with something he offered. but, to reach a middle ground, jack told you to choose a coffee spot for you to have breakfast together, so the first stop of your date would still be a surprise. 

you picked the little coffee shop two blocks down from your building that you loved so much. 

jack was already there when you arrived, looking a little anxious and a bit out of place as he played with the lid of his drink of choice. there was a another drink on the table that looked a lot like your favourite iced coffee, and you had to stop yourself from squealing at the sight of the handsome man. 

the tingling sensation you felt whenever you talked with, thought about or were close to him grew stronger as you approached the table, and you took a deep breath when you saw his eyes light up when he saw you.

can’t run away now. 

shouldn’t have agreed to this. 

what was i thin–

“hey!” jack greeted and hugged you. you moved awkwardly around each other, not knowing if you should kiss the other on the cheek and, on a whim, you pecked jack’s lips. the man visibly relaxed on your arms and kissed you back. 

i am sooo fucked.

“hope i didn’t keep you waiting long.” you told him shyly. 

“no, of course not!” jack shook his head enthusiastically. “i ordered you that coffee you told me you liked.”

you thanked him. 

when jack told you to choose a place to have breakfast together, you mentioned the brazilian coffee shop you discovered when you moved to your new neighbourhood after the divorce, and how you went there almost everyday. their doce de leite iced coffee was the only thing that made you happy months after your life got turned upside down. 

“what should we eat?”

you pursed your lips, considering the options. “everything is so good, but for breakfast? pão de queijo.”

“pão de queijo?”

“yeah, it’s these little cheesy bread ball thingies that are so fucking good.”

jack smiled at your enthusiasm. “alright, ‘pow’ de queijo it is.”

you giggled and held jack’s arm. “jack, hold on.”

“what?”

“pão de queijo.”

“yeah, ‘pow’ de queijo.”

“no, pão.”

jack furrowed his brows. “what am i saying wrong?”

“it’s like ‘pawn’. the way you were saying sounds a lot like the brazilian portuguese slang for “cock”. i know because i asked for ‘cheesy cock’ for almost two months before the girls took pity on me.”

the owners and the whole staff of the brada coffee shop were brazilian, and in the short time you started going there, sabrina and fabiane, the morning cashier and barista, became good friends of yours. 

“oh god, no cheesy cock for us.” when you and jack turned around, you found fabiane and sabrina smiling at you. “two ‘pawn’ de queijo, please.”  

“did you like your breakfast?” you asked jack when the car turned into a familiar road. 

“loved it, actually. i walk by it on my way to the hospital but never had the curiosity to sit down. i’ll definitely go there more often.”

“right? i’m happy you liked–” you noticed the building you haven’t visited in ages and stopped yourself. “jack, are you serious?”

“surprise!” he smiled at you. 

“god, i haven’t been here in such a long time. thank you!”

jack took your hand as you walked inside your favourite place in the city, the pittsburgh zoo & aquarium. that place became your second home during your college days; whenever you had a bad day, you would buy a ticket and sit in front of the shark tank and look at the animals swimming around until your problems washed away. 

walking around the zoo and aquarium with jack abbot turned out to be another tick on the ever growing list of things that made jack abbot a living breathing threat to your rules. 

he had an enviable knowledge of the animals there, having a titbit about almost all of them, played around with some of the kids visiting, asking them about their favourite animals and telling them his, and even explained the concept of a prosthetic leg when a group of three four year olds gathered around him once he sat down and the fabric of his pants lifted up, leaving a bit of his prosthesis exposed. one of the little boys screamed “cool!” before they went back running to wherever they came from. 

when you got to the aquarium, jack listened to you as you talked about the animals there, stared at you as you excitedly told him about the good and bad days you had in front of the shark tank, laughing when you told him about the day you and grace smoked a joint in the parking lot and went straight to the fishes, only to leave the building having the worst trip of your lives, and was incredulous when you told him you tried to volunteer to feed the animals, with a very thoroughly put together presentation, only to never hear back from them. 

“ready?” jack asked when he pulled out of the aquarium’s parking lot, heading to the next destination. 

“i don’t know what else will top this.”

“oh, you just wait and see.”

the forty minute drive was filled with laughter stemming from silly shared stories, and with you judging jack for his playlists after he handed you his phone with spotify opened, so you could choose something to listen to on the way to the second part of your date. 

after poking fun for his countless dad rock songs saved, you searched for your favourite divorced dad rock playlist, and even had a very off key duet to audioslave’s like a stone. 

it was close to three in the afternoon when jack parked his truck in the red barn winery’s parking lot. you had heard good things about this place, apparently a professor from the history department had had her bridal party there and it had been memorable enough for the whole campus to know of. 

the place was indeed beautiful, the green of the trees that took over the property contrasted really well against the red of the old building. the staff was just as welcoming, and the rustic, woody interior of the barn felt warm and cozy, you had finally understood why it had been such a hit with the wedding party. 

you could definitely see you and jack celebrating–

“jesus, fuck!” you hissed to yourself and pressed the heels of your hands against your eyes so hard, you saw stars. 

this was a second date that shouldn’t have had happened. how the fuck were you thinking about getting together with some guy, some very sweet, caring and hot guy, one that acted like giving you the world was too little, after everything?

you had your rules, no strings attached being the biggest one of them. 

just a date. no strings attached.

just a date. no strings attached.

just a date. no strings attach–

“you okay?” jack interrupted your internal mantra chanting when he came back from the bathroom, looking concerned and so delicious that it made you forget you were about to go on a spiral. 

“great, handsome.” the term of endearment slipped out of your lips before you could think, making jack perk up and turn red instantly. 

he cleared his throat. “umm, do you know what you’ll order?”

you and jack decided on sharing a charcuterie board, with a hazy IPA for him, that he soon switched for dr. pepper, and a couple glasses of their on-site crafted lemontine moscato for you. 

it was another couple of hours of you and jack talking about nothing and everything, and of you falling more and more for him. you learned more about his relationship with robby, how, after everything that happened with him, they had each other to count on. it was beautiful the way he talked about and praised his friend. 

you shared some more about you and grace, how you knew she would be there for you for anything (and you for her), and how you couldn’t see yourself without her in your life. 

the wine helped you loosen up a bit, so much so that your flirting got bolder and you got touchier. jack ate it up, and gave you as much as you gave him. 

next thing you knew, the bill had been paid and you were making out against his truck. 

thank fuck jack parked in a secluded spot. 

“shit.” jack hissed against your lips when you ran your hand against and softly squeezed his obvious hard on. 

with swift fingers, you opened the truck’s door and told him to get in. 

“how do i pull the seat back?” you asked as you felt the seat around. 

“there a lever under it, in the middle.” jack said, showing you where to find it, and doing what he had just told you with his own seat. 

you mimicked him and it pulled back abruptly, making you laugh. you kissed jack again, this time with hurried lips as you fumbled with his belt, your dexterous fingers circling his hard as a rock cock. 

you pulled back to spit a glob of saliva on his red tip, eyes never leaving his while you massaged his length. 

“you’re so good at this, honey.” jack murmured, eyes and voice filled with want. you smiled back at him, dropping slowly to press a barely there kiss against his leaking head. with eyes still glued to his, you licked a torturous stripe along the prominent vein that ran under his dick, making jack’s grip on your hair tighten when you finally took him inside your mouth. 

thank god for tinted windows. 

you sucked jack off, hollowing your cheeks, head bobbing up and down, hands covering where your lips couldn’t reach. the glint on jack’s eyes and the look of want and care he gave you made a pit on your stomach rise.

jack was all over you – with the salty taste of his precum on your tongue, with his member heavy on your jaw, with his fingers circling your clit, and with the smell that was so characteristically his – overriding your senses. 

it was after a throaty moan, a sign that he was getting you to your tipping point, around his cock, that jack pulled you back. 

“come here, honey. i need to be inside of you.”

jack helped you lift your skirt, staring intently to where your body met as you sinked slowly and bottomed out.

circling his arm around you, jack brought you closer and held you tighter, working his hips progressively faster against yours. 

a kiss and god, it feels so good.

a thrust and why am i doing this. 

a tongue on nipples followed by the graze of his teeth and i want this to last forever

a pull on your hair and fuck, i can’t keep doing this 

you don’t know how long it lasted; torn between guilt and pleasure, the mix of his tip hitting your cervix repeatedly and the way your brain played tricks on you, the feel of his lips against your ear as he whispered sweet nothings and the filthiest words known to men got you floaty and how you were letting an honest-to-god-good-man on. you came after a particularly erratic thrust, followed by jack telling you he wanted to feel you forever, and being filled up by jack’s cum and the dread of knowing the best thing that happened to you in years should end.  

the drive back was done in comfortable silence and with jack’s hand softly caressing your left thigh, and you questioning a thing or two about the last month of your life. breaking another rule – after many had already been broken – jack dropped you off, with the promise of seeing you again in a few days. 

dread took over you the moment you closed your apartment’s door when the fresh memories of your date flooded your mind. the praises, the talks, how his hands felt against your back, the fact that you had forgone a condom and the way his spend was still inside of you after he dropped you off.

you tallied off all the things you said you wouldn’t do and did. 

the strings were attached. too attached. 

you knew exactly what you had to do. 

with shaky hands, you grabbed your phone and typed “i’m doomed” to grace, hitting “send” before getting into a much needed shower. 

jack had been in a foul mood for what felt like forever. one day he came in looking renewed for the slew of day shifts he had ahead of him after his second date, and a few later he was telling patients to shut the fuck up like it was nothing. 

dana tried to pry on, asked if anything had happened, wanting to know how things were with you – to which he replied with a very short tempered “fine” – and even texted robby to ask if jack had said anything, to which the answer was “no.”

it was after jack gave poor whitaker a less than nice answer to his (kind of stupid) question that dana pulled him out to the ambulance bay and told him to take five. 

“this is the type of shit i expect from robby, not you. what happened?”

jack sighed and said your name. “ten days since i last heard of her. no news since a couple of days after our last date.”

“did you do something?” dana asked softly. 

“i don’t think so? no. we had a great time, she told me so. she just… vanished. i’ve tried texting her, she replied a couple of times and then nothing. i know she hasn’t blocked me, but all i got was a ‘read’ on my last message.”

dana ran a sympathetic hand over jack’s arm, her face a mix of pity and sadness for her friend. she looked at the watch around her wrist and asked “we still got forty minutes to go, think you can handle it?”

“yeah, i’m fine.”

john, parker and crus came in not long after he went back inside the emergency room, promptly doing the rounds with jack and the day shift residents. he was back at the central hub, discussing with shen a few shift details so he could pass the torch to the younger attending, when jack heard a very familiar voice, one he missed very much. he looked around, his heartbeat increasing when the mere thought of you being hurt graced his mind, only to find out it was coming out of trinity’s device. 

“hey, guys.” jack took the phone from the R2’s hand and rewinded the video. he was met with a you he hoped to never see, sad, with bags under your bloodshot eyes, like you had been crying for days. “hey, guys. i’ve been missing for a few days and i know you are worried about me, but i’m fine, i promise! the date went well and mcdreamy was perfect as usual, but–“ you sniffled and wiped your nose “but my feelings got in the way and i… i don’t think i can do this. the experiment is over.” 

jack stared at the phone with glossy eyes as the video replayed. he was in a trance, your words echoing in his head over and over again. 

it was when parker ran a careful hand over his shoulder and asked “you alright, boss?” that jack woke up, only to find both the day shift and night shift crews staring at him. jack dropped the phone back into the hands of a very stunned trinity, who muttered an “i’m sorry” before he turned around and left. 

jack doesn’t know how he got home. the last thing he remembers is asking john to meet him in the break room and asking the younger man for help to set up a tiktok profile for himself, and next thing he knew, jack was in bed, sans prosthesis, watching hundreds of your videos for hours. 

his heart was in a rollercoaster of emotions he didn’t know how to name and, quite frankly, didn’t want to feel. jack felt betrayed; he understood that you two didn’t have anything serious, that you were just getting to know each other, but as days passed, all he wanted was to spend more and more of his time with you and cherish your moments together. 

jack also felt used. the way you posed the dates as an experiment made him feel like a toy who was easily discarded when it didn’t serve its purpose anymore. did the moments you share together not matter? was it all a play for you to have fun for a couple of hours? should he feel happy that he was the only one who ever got a second date?

six in the morning hit and jack didn’t know when exactly he stopped watching your videos, he didn’t even know if he had fallen asleep at all that night, if he got some shut eye, or if his sleep was so restless that all he dreamed of was your date videos. 

the only thing jack abbot knew is that he needed answers. 

in the morning after you posted your time off video, when you woke up from another restless night, in place of your dearly missed “good morning” texts, you woke up to the link of your tiktok profile and a “we need to talk.”

previous chapter | next chapter