Anything You Can Do

by R.S. Grey

That’s what he does to me—makes me lose trust in my own mother.

I don’t hate flowers; I hate daisies. They give me hives. They’re the flower everyone wants me to be.

The world sees me with my pale blonde hair and my big, shining blue eyes and they want to pat my head and plant me in their gardens.

I’m not a daisy. I’m a doctor. I never want to be reduced to a daisy, and Lucas knows...

Roses are red, Daisy is you, I heard you came back, and I did too.

Lucas Thatcher and I have been in competition with each other since day one. Yes, the actual day one, the day on which we were born, all of 58 minutes apart.

I am the Annie Oakley to his Frank Butler and I firmly believe that anything he can do, I can do better.

I laugh loudly and aggressively. I need her to shut up and go have her baby somewhere.

I’ve thought about Lucas for longer than I care to. It feels like I’m already losing a competition that doesn’t even exist,

My mouth dries. My hands shake. My stomach plummets and then flips over and over like a rollercoaster set to MAX SPEED.

Technically, I’m getting my wish—I’m seeing him before he sees me—but my wish has changed and I want him to disappear, to go back up to his hidey-hole and stay there forever.

11 years have taken his chubby cheeks and sharpened them to hard lines. They’ve stretched his tall frame and blown it up like a muscled balloon. Without a doubt, he eats protein and has a gym membership.

Our eyes lock in the mirrored surface and neither of us turns or wavers. We’re the only ones out on the street;

Chivalry is dead. Lucas killed it.

He doesn’t know me at all if he thinks I’ll bow out now that Lucas Thatcher is my coworker. If anything, I’m more committed to this job than ever before.

Lucas is a man now—a man who enjoys crowding my space and getting inside my head.

Lucas and I both have two personas—one for when we are alone together, and one for when we are in public.

That’s why nobody on the outside ever truly understands what we represent to each other.

Madeleine was everything Lucas wasn’t: friendly, decent, human. She was two years behind us in school, but I often forgot.

She was wise beyond her years, and though I’d tried many times to turn her against her brother, she never picked sides.

“Friction implies contact. What we have is magnetic repulsion.”

Another bright spot for me is that men regularly mistake my exhausted ramblings and honest deprecation as humor and personality.

By 28, I really should have things figured out. I should have built a well-rounded life for myself, but in actuality, I have been stuck in the same loop for nearly three decades.

The backdrop has changed and supporting characters have flitted in and out, but the script has stayed the same:

I am Daisy Bell, rival to Lucas Thatcher, and the weight of carrying around that hatred has started to wear on me. Deep down, I’m starting to forg...

I will be Daisy Bell, gracious winner, beautiful taker-of-the-high-road. I won’t rub his face in it or gloat. I will just forget about him. Dear God, please let me forget about him.

Lucas and I have been at this for so long that he very rarely gets a rise out of me, an unexpected reaction. I turn on my heel and slam my office door closed, nervous for what his next move will be.

My breathing picks up and Lucas notices. He’s staring at me like he wants something. Like he wants me.

For some incomprehensible reason, I wonder if he’s going to kiss me. Right here, right now, after 28 years of this war. Maybe he realizes he doesn’t stand a chance going up against me head to head so he’s employing the other parts of his body, but he should know that the street he’s pushing me down goes both ways, and all the swords he’s playing with are double-edged.

Sure, he’s no longer the scrawny Lucas from a decade ago, but even with his new Body by PubertyTM, he has to have calculated the risk in playing a game of sensual chicken with me.

I squeeze my eyes closed, preparing for death, and instead his lips press against mine. I am still alive. Maybe more than ever.

Lucas Thatcher, bane of my waking life and lead role in my nightmares is kissing me, and my good hand is wrapped around the collar of his white coat and tugging him. Hard. Against me.

There is nothing Lucas Thatcher doesn’t excel at and I find myself appreciating just how adept he is at mouth-to-mouth combat.

He tastes like a guilty pleasure, one that will undoubtedly sour once I’m alone again. We are enemies. Foes. And yet when Lucas takes my waist in his large hands and rolls his hips with mine, I feel like we’re working together to build something. Mutually assured destruction.

“To your earlier question: yes.” “What?” I ask, my voice raspy. “I’m the only one,” he says before walking away.

Ever since our little hallway mishap, I’ve started having what we in the medical field call “intrusive thoughts” involving Lucas.

I know he is trying to get inside my head. What was once a childish chess match has turned into an X-rated game of capture the flag, except our underwear are the flags.

Lucas innocently filling a cup of water becomes Lucas turning and drizzling it down the front of my white coat.

Lucas politely bending down to retrieve my dropped pen becomes Lucas on his hands and knees, begging for me.

Medical talk becomes dirty talk. Stethoscopes and blood pressure c...

I’ve gone 28 years without so much as a second glance at the dweeb I used to call “Lucas the Mucus”, and in the matte...

I need to go home and exorcise whatever demon he...

I need to Amazon Prime some sage and perform an ancient cleansing ritual under a full m...

I need to Google how to erase a few hours from someone’s memory so I can go back to the wa...

“Well if it isn’t Daisy Bell, the most eligible bachelorette in Hamilton County.” “Oh! And look, it’s Lucas Thatcher, the only human man with no heart.”

Suddenly I have the urge to lean forward and tell Lucas that even though he’s still in his work clothes and his hair is all mussed up thanks to his hands, he is shockingly handsome for a nemesis.

Daisy Bell and Lucas Thatcher manning a booth together without coming to fisticuffs. To so many, it’s unimaginable.

I catch a glimpse of his audiobook: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. It’s ironic, and I can’t help but feel a kinship with Sirius Black—except instead of being locked away with thousands of soul-sucking dementors, I’ve only got one, and he’s currently staring at me.

We’ve never been closer, but in this moment I feel a gulf between us larger than the 11 years we spent apart.

“You listen here, Lucas Thatcher. I hate you, but you’re going to kiss me. You’re going to kiss me and you’re not going to stop.”