Chapter 4

I waited about five minutes at the restaurant, doodling on napkins before Blake, Tyler's brother in law finally showed up. I got up and went for a manly hug, happy to see my friend.

"Blake, my darling, we have to stop meeting clandestinely like this. If we get caught your wife is going to murder me," I joked, though the possibility of my untimely death by the tiny hands of Mrs Lexi Eaton was still a very plausible outcome if she learned about our nice little meetings—or what they were about, really.

"I'm actually more worried about Josh and Tyler," Blake answered with a snort. Josh was supposedly his best friend.

"Please," I waved the matter away. "Josh's a has-been and Ty-Ty just doesn't get you like I do."

"You gorgeous moron," Blake just replied, chuckling.

I blew him a kiss. He laughed more. "So, what have you got for me," I asked, getting down to business. I had already ordered for us, this wasn't our first time out so I knew the drill. It was nice to hang with Blake and joke around and he was the kind of guy you just got along with, the kind of person you naturally felt at ease with, but we weren't meeting just for the joy of each other's company. If we did, we'd tell other people.

Blake handed me a big envelope and I took out the scans, raising them up to the light to get a better look. Not good. There was shading I didn't remember seeing in the last ones.

"How does it look?" Blake asked.

"Not too good. Not catastrophic, but not amazing either. What did your doctor say?"

Blake sighed, running his hand through his hair. "Same old tune. He wants to open up my brain again and go poking."

"I thought this one was going to be a little more forthcoming. Sorry. We'll find someone else." I dropped my hand with the scans and looked at my friend in the eyes. "How are you feeling? Any more episodes?"

"Twice this last week, which is why I called you. Once I was sitting in class and I suddenly couldn't understand a word the teacher was uttering. It all sounded like gibberish. And two days ago when I woke up and saw Lexi in bed with me, my mind went completely blank and I had absolutely no idea who she was." This made sense. I didn't remember saying he couldn't understand a speech before, but the shading on the scans sort of hinted at that. And the memory lapses were just the usual drill.

"What did you do?"

"Well I'm so freaking whipped, so deep down I think I still know who she is, and it didn't last over a minute so all was good."

I rolled my eyes. That wasn't what I had meant, but of course he just thought about how Lexi dealt with the whole issues. Whipped man.

That got me curious though. "Lexi didn't notice?"

He shrugged. "She says I blank out whenever it happens and I prefer not to tell her that I in fact lose all grasp on my memories. I've worried her enough as it is. The headaches freak her out way too much. I'm not going to add to her worries."

I rolled my eyes. How could a guy so smart be such an idiot sometimes? "I specifically remember her saying she'll be by your side through sickness and health," I reminded the idiot, thinking back to their wedding a couple of months back, "I don't think she'll leave you because of this," I added shaking the scans in emphasis.

"I know she won't. But she'll worry. And I don't want her to worry. I can worry on my own."

"You can't keep this from her. You can't keep this to yourself."

Blake grinned at me but it wasn't exactly cheery. "I'm not keeping this to myself. I'm telling you, aren't I?"

"And I'm such a well balanced and knowledgeable guy," I snorted. Sure, I had studied pre-med. I had grown up at the hospital with my father. I had read everything he'd written and actually helped him write a couple of his articles when he was too lazy to make sense of his own notes. But I wasn't a neurologist. I wasn't a specialist in the domain. I understood a whole lot, but I didn't know everything. I wasn't in a place to fix him. I would have probably needed to fix myself first.

The waitress arrived with our food and we started to dig in.

"You're better than that moron doctor I had last September," Blake said, mouth full of burger.

"Dr Vonaghan is just misguided. And a drunk."

"No shit. Anyway, you understand what your dad saw with my condition. Nobody guessed what he did with just one glimpse of my scans."

I remembered my father sitting on the plane looking at Blake scans while we were on our way to him, dad on his way to play with his brain. I remember him showing me the scans and asking me if I saw what was wrong. Three problems with his brain, in different places, not just one. "Well, my father was a maniac."

"A genius you mean. And you saw it too."

I shook my head. "It might have been just luck, really. Brain injuries are so complicated and god knows yours got its fair share of injuries. The brain is such a complex organ. We've barely began to grasp all of its inner-workings. The scar tissues in your brain affected the memory center. The not-understanding-speech bit that's different. And I can see it in your scan. That wasn't there two months ago. Did you have bigger headaches than usual in the last two months? Any shock to your head? Another seizure?"

It felt so weird to ask those questions, to be that guy again. Every time I met up with Blake to talk about his brain I never could shut up this deep sense of loss I felt. Medicine had been more than just a future career for me. It was all my life. It was all I had ever known. It was my last connection with my father, and I had severed it.

"I think I might have had one seizure but I'm not sure. It might have just been one bad headache. I can't always tell. I might have had more headaches than normal though."

I nodded slowly. "Makes sense, you've clearly had another trauma to your brain tissues."

"That sounds bad."

Not shit, Sherlock. "That's because it is. You need to meet Dr Allen. I'll give him a call. He specializes in degeneration of brain tissues. He'll see what I can't." I wrote it on my hand to remind myself.

I saw it instantly, the panic behind his eyes. "So, my brain might be degenerating?"

"Hopefully not." That was the best I could say. The idiot should listen to me and tell his wife if it ended being worse than what I imagined. "Hopefully something triggered the headaches and they're the root of your problems. Did you change medication?"

"Not in the last two months. Five months ago I started to take something more."

Gain, I nodded. That was good, well, bad, but good. "That might be it. Meet up with Allen. He'll know more."

"Thanks Nik."

"You're welcome. I do have to admit that your brain always fascinated me. AVM is so unique in each case."

Blake shook his head at me. "Glad to hear."

"Tell your wife," I repeated. Maybe saying it enough times would change his damn stubborn mind.

"Nope."

"You stubborn son of a bitch. She'll be even more pissed off the longer you wait, you know, right?"

"Or the issue could suddenly disappear and I'll have her worried for nothing."

"Or, oooooor," I pushed, "I'm right and things get worst and you wake up one day with no memories and they never come back."

Blake narrowed his eyes at me. "But it won't happen."

"It might."

"You'd look more worried if it was an actual possibility."

Sure, but it didn't mean it would never happen. "You'll always be prone to seizures and headaches though, that's a fact and that's never going away."

"I can deal with it. Look, when I had the big seizure, it really traumatized Lexi. And when I was finally out of the hospital Lexi didn't have sex with me for like six months. It was torture, trust me, she kept teasing me but she never indulged me. I was not a happy camper."

I might punch the bastard. "Wait, so are you telling me that you're not telling your wife that sometimes you can't even recognize her because you're scared she'll stop having sex with you?"

"That's not the main reason, but that's a reason I thought you could relate with."

I'm gonna punch him. "If you weren't such a lovable moron and if I didn't respect you as much as I do I would be calling your wife right now."

Blake threw a napkin at me. "Come on, stop worrying."

"Well at least one of us morons should be worrying," I exclaimed.

"Worrying won't change anything, might just make us prematurely gray and we're too gorgeous to get gray hair too young."

"Wait a minute, chicks kinda dig the gray hair," I brushed my hands on the sides of my head, "makes us look mature and stuff."

"Please, looking mature isn't what we should be aiming for."

"Looking maybe, not being."

Blake snorted. "Moron."

"Tell your wife," I repeated. I wasn't Tyler Grayson. I wasn't that easily distracted.

"You tell her when I die."

"Jesus," I threw my head back, "that's not a good joke."

"Fine, I'll tell her. I'll write a nice long letter."

"That you'll give her once you die?"

Blake grinned. "You know it. I already wrote my death letters, I could change hers. I've kind of perfectly hit the nail on it though, I'm not sure I want to change it just yet."

I shook my head slowly. "I'm not sure if I should applaud you or punch you."

"Applaud, always applaud."

"Dumping your face in a toilet bowl maybe."

"Oooh, that's a cheap one. You know I have a thing with toilets."

I hit my head on the table this time. "Christ..." Blake just laughed. What was the point in arguing with him? Damn idiot. I raised my head suddenly. "Hey, did you know your father in law is taking bets on me being gay?"

"Oh yeah, I put four hundred on it."

I frowned. "On what?"

"That you're gay of course"

I threw my hands up in the air. "Are you freaking kidding me?"

"Totally serious."

"Really?" I pressed. The friends I had...

"Well, I figured if I want to win, I just need to invite you to a family dinner. You wouldn't keep it in your pants."

I narrowed my eyes. "You underestimate me."

Blake burst into laugher at that. "I'm kidding. I just figured that when I lose that's four hundred more for Tyler."

I nodded. "Good thinking."

"Thanks. You still haven't told him that he didn't actually get a scholarship that pays for his housing and meals, right?"

I grinned. "If the dumb bum hasn't figured it out, I'm not going to tell him I'm paying for everything."

When I had realized that Tyler would come to my college and that we could be roommates if I planned my cards well with the administrators, I had also known I would be paying for everything. I knew Tyler could have paid, he wasn't in a paid place financially, but it was the least I could do for him. Back then I still had my father, but I had never had a friend. Tyler gave me that for the first time. He gave me a lot of friends actually.

"Look at us, doing good deeds without telling anyone. We should start a club."

"Make t-shirts," I added.

"Start a website."

"Get matching tattoos."

Blake snorted. "You've got enough of those for the two of us."

"Are you hating on the tattoos?" I asked, gapping, looking as shocked and hurt as I could.

Blake laughed. "If I lick them will I be forgiven?

"I got one in my buttcrack, how about you lick that one?"

"Frack, do you guys know how you sound without a context." I turned around and Blake's wife was standing there, eyes narrowed.

Ooops.

"I think that even with a context we're a little questionable," I replied, smiling sheepishly, slowly hiding the envelope with Blake's scans beside me.

"Hey Niiiiik," Lexi drawled.

I grinned at her. "Hey Lexiiiiiii."

She grabbed a chair from the table beside ours and went to sit beside Blake, picking at leftovers fries in his plate. "You know if my dad heard this that would mean that Tyler owes us a whoooole lot of money."

"What a second. Us? You betted on me being gay too?"

"Of course," she shrugged, like it was no big deal.

That bunch of Grayson bastards. "Are you freaking kidding me?"

"Dude, if I locked you in a room with a shirtless Blake that's game over for you."

"I hate you all," I groaned, crossing my arms over my chest.

"Bring us a girlfriend and we'll change our mind," Lexi offered.

"Really? That's all it would take?"

"Not a one night stand playing as your girlfriend," Lexi countered, expecting my plan. "An actual girlfriend you like. You don't like any girl, you just fuck a lot of them. That doesn't help your case. You need to actually like girls to be straight."

"Yeah, at the moment, you really only like me, so that doesn't help your case."

"Yeah, we're never going to happen, there's Miss-Cock-Block right there," I said pointing to Lexi with my thumb.

"Yeah I know..." Blake trailed faking sadness.

And then, just because I was an idiot, I mimicked the perfect Don Lafontaine voice, the guy who narrated movie trailers and started to say, "In a world where Lexi Grayson never existed, one man in assless chaps stands against them all to win the heart of Blake Eaton."

Lexi snorted and then asked, "Assless chaps? Really? You'd be that guy?"

"Oh yeah, totally." I nodded enthusiastically and grinned. "If I was gay I would be flaaaaming. I would be a walking talking rainbow. Other gay peeps would tell me to sit my ass down and stop making all of them embarrassed. I would be a disaster of epic proportion."

Lexi pushed my shoulder a little. "Don't say that." I shrugged and smiled a little.

And then her hands fell on my hand. "New tattoo?" she asked, pointing at it with her chin.

Shit.

"Oh, no, just a note," I casually replied.

She grabbed my hand to look at it. Yeah, you really picked the perfect time to be observant for once Mrs Eaton. "Call Doctor Allen?" she read and asked.

I took my hand out of hers. "Yeah, I'm pretty sure the last girl I slept with gave me gonorrhoea, I'm oozing green out of my dick, I need to get that checked."

Lexi closed her eyes and groaned a little. "Christ, Nik."

"In that case we'll have to postpone our weekend camping," Blake joked.

"Damn it." I snapped my fingers. "Anyway, I never asked, what are you doing here Mrs Eaton?"

"Well, Blake said he was going to have dinner with his Mistress here," she explained, "so I figured I'd let you boys have your fun before I came to steal him away."

I pouted. "You have him all the time. You should share more you know."

"Nah," Lexi shook her head, "not gonna happen."

"You're selfish," I pointed out.

"Damn right I am," she gloated. Blake was smiling contently beside her. "But we've also got dinner with my mom and I need the moral support."

I made a face. "Yikes."

"Yeah."

"Good luck with that," I chuckled.

She glared at me a little. "Thanks."

"Well, then, I guess I'll leave you two lovebirds to it." They both smiled at me as I got up. I grabbed the scans. "Blake, you don't mind if I keep these drawings?"

"All yours."

"Thanks, and when the doctor clears up my gonorrhoea, I'll give you a call and we can schedule that weekend away." I was sure he understood what I meant by that. Doctor Allen. Degenerating brain. "Give your mother a kiss from me. Tell her I love her but I really just don't have the stamina to keep up with her anymore."

Lexi covered her eyes and squealed. "EW!" I grinned victoriously.

"You're weeeeelcoooome." I waved at them with the brain scans safely hidden in the brown envelope and walked away, towards my car, leaving them behind.

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I hope you enjoyed the Lexi and Blake moment! :D Also, sorry again for not uploading last week, but now I've made up for it, you've got all the chapters you were supposed to have. 

Hopefully I won't have any problems uploading next Wednesday. :D

Thanks for reading and see y'all next week!