I chewed on my lip.
If Jacob was shy, losing all his patients on his first day and then pissing off the entire nursing staff wouldn’t help matters. No one really gave him a shot after that. If he really was “one of the good ones,” like Zander said, that kind of made me feel bad, like it was his first week at a new school and I was one of the mean girls.
Maybe I was one of the mean girls.
I was so crabby lately I was probably shorter with him than I would have been if my life wasn’t a dumpster fire.
Benny was an introvert too. He had a really hard time in school…
Through the sliver in the curtain, I saw Jacob get up and I started for the nurses’ station, but I only got a few feet before I let out a groan and turned back around.
A moment later, when the door to Jacob’s room slid open, I was waiting outside. I stepped in front of him with my arms crossed. “Hey,” I said flatly.
He froze with his hand on the door. “Hello,” he said, looking like a deer in headlights.
“Bring them desserts.”
He blinked at me. “What?”
“You should have brought the nurses donuts on your first day. You showed up empty-handed, that was your first mistake. Cupcakes might save you, but not the cheap stuff. Nadia Cakes, two dozen, get a keto one for Gloria, at least four gluten-free ones, and one vegan. Hector doesn’t do animal by-products. Bonus points if you get a doggie cupcake for Angelica’s new puppy.”
He stared at me, and I turned and walked away.
There. I was nice to him like Zander had asked. I gave him the tools to dig himself out of his nosedive with his team. Whether he chose to take my advice was on him. My conscience was clear. I was no longer a mean girl.
“Hey,” he called after me.
I let out a long breath and turned back around. “What?”
He stood there with this earnest, hat-in-hand, puppy-dog look that made it hard to keep my flat expression. I registered again, almost to my own annoyance, that he was cute.
He had this super-sexy, strong-quiet-type thing about him. Deep, gentle brown eyes, a square jaw with just enough scruff to look a little rugged but still put together. He was maybe five-nine, five-ten, to my five-four. Mid-thirties, in shape. His hands were plunged into the pockets of his black scrubs and he had veins running down his toned arms. I loved well-hydrated veins.
I shook it off. Was he hot? Yes. Fine. Doesn’t matter. Super annoying, though.
“Yeah?” I said impatiently.
“What about you?” he asked. “What kind of cupcake do you like?”
“Red velvet, and I don’t want one,” I said, turning back around.
I didn’t want anything from him.
Chapter 6
Jacob
After my shift, I stopped and did the second round of labs Zander had ordered. Then I called in the cupcakes Briana told me to get for the nurses so they’d be ready in three days when I went back to work.
I didn’t know why she was helping me. It clearly pained her to do it. Did Gibson say something to her? I hoped not. I didn’t need some intervention from the boss on my behalf, some forced Play Nice.
I walked Lieutenant Dan and got something on Grubhub. I had dinner, took a shower, and had just sat down to journal in my plant room when my phone rang.
Mom.
I didn’t answer it. I’d been ignoring everyone’s calls and texts since the phone call last week. I knew what they wanted—to know about my girlfriend. I had no idea what to do about it.
I contemplated dragging it on. Making excuses for why she could never make it to anything and then eventually saying we broke up. Maybe I could suspend their disbelief right up until the wedding—which I would then show up to alone, for everyone to look at with pity as the newly single again, twice-jilted, brokenhearted ex of the bride.
Maybe I should just come clean. Or at the very least end the charade and “break up” with her now.
It was one thing to keep it vague. Say I’m seeing someone and leave it at that. But the details bothered me. I didn’t like looking my family in the eye and giving them some made-up name and made-up background for a made-up woman who didn’t exist. It felt wrong, even if my intentions were good. And I just didn’t know how to get around this. Frankly, I was surprised nobody pressed me harder for her name when I’d told them the news. At the time, I think they’d been too shocked to dig for more info—but they were definitely ready to dig now. Even Walter had called me.
Mom’s call ended. Then a text pinged through.
Mom: Jacob, will you be having a plus-one on the nineteenth? I have to know how many cutlets to make.
And then a moment later:
Ping.
Mom: Never mind, I’ll just make my pesto pasta. There’ll be plenty. Unless she’s allergic to nuts? Is she allergic to nuts?
I pinched the bridge of my nose. I don’t know, Jacob. Is your imaginary girlfriend allergic to nuts?
God.
How was I going to do this when I had all of them pecking at me in person?
Then I remembered that even the most unrelenting interrogation would be better than the alternative—everyone watching to see if I was unraveling, everyone blaming Jeremiah and Amy. I could feel the tension of that inevitable situation bearing down on me like radiant heat.
I just wanted to be invisible. I wished I could wipe everyone’s brains and have them forget that Amy and I had ever been a thing.
Hell, I wished I could forget Amy and I had ever been a thing.
Lieutenant Dan got up from his spot by my feet and put his big head in my lap. He always knew when my anxiety was high.
Lieutenant Dan was a three-legged two-year-old Bernese mountain dog. He was also one of the many reasons why I wasn’t interested in a chief position at Royaume Northwestern. When Amy and I shared him, he was never home alone for more than a few hours, even if I was working my eighty-hour week. But now he just had me. I wasn’t interested in never being home anymore. I liked being home. These days, home was the only place I felt true peace.
Especially now that everyone at work hated me.
I sat back in my chair in my plant room and stared wearily into the succulents. I hoped the cupcakes helped. I didn’t see how they could. The situation felt well beyond baked goods to me.
I looked back down at my journal. Journaling centered me, made me feel calmer. It was one of the skills I’d learned in therapy, and it helped me work through the events of the day and subsequent emotions when I transferred them onto paper. But in the end I didn’t journal.
I wrote a letter to Briana Ortiz.
Chapter 7
Briana
You move in with me or I call in Mom.”
It was seven p.m. and I was driving a discharged Benny home from the hospital after my shift.
He looked at me, horrified, from the passenger seat. “Why are you punishing me? Isn’t my life shitty enough?”
“I’m not doing this to punish you,” I said. “You need help right now, and I can’t be over at your place cleaning for you and making sure you’re taking your medications. You’re not paying your rent and you just put yourself in the hospital. You’re skipping dialysis. You’re not even showering.”
He leaned his forehead on the car window. He looked so frail and exhausted. So different from the healthy, fit, virile man he was just eighteen months ago, before this nightmare started for both of us.