Benny didn’t answer. Justin looked back at me as if to say, This is how he was all day.
“Thanks for trying,” I said quietly.
“Yeah. Of course.” He glanced at Benny again. “We’ll try again tomorrow.”
Justin was a good friend. Brad too. The three of them were tight. Justin’s dad had died a few years ago and Benny and Brad had been there for him during that, and now the guys were here for Benny. Both had been tested to see if they were a kidney match. All of Benny’s friends had. But after that, they started to drop off one at a time. With the exception of Justin and Brad, no one else really came around anymore. I was infinitely grateful to the ones who did.
Justin left. I put Alexis into the guest room, and then we went to set Benny up on dialysis. Alexis helped me get him situated. We spoke without saying a word the whole time. After ten years of working together plus med school, we had our own language. She was concerned about him.
His physical deterioration had to be shocking for her. He’d lost at least thirty pounds in the six months since she’d last seen him. He was in shorts. His legs were so thin they looked like ropes with knots in the middle. He hadn’t shaved, his eyes were sunken. He’d barely said two words to us the whole time we were setting him up.
Alexis made eye contact with me while she checked his blood pressure. It was the same look she gave me back when we worked together, the one that meant we needed to discuss the patient in private.
I had to look away from her.
I hated that this was the state of things now. That I didn’t have a better life to show her, happy news to share. That she had to come here because I was going to be divorced tomorrow and she didn’t want me to be alone and then when she got here, this was my life. This old, worn-down house, my sick brother. My broken heart.
It was pathetic.
I peered around my living room, trying to focus on anything other than my best friend’s worried gaze and my languishing patient, but the rest of the scene wasn’t any better—the ugly, tired couch, the brown shag carpet, the fucking cat tree.
A sudden surge of despair washed over me.
There were times when my protective shield cracked down the middle. When the anger parted and the sad seeped through. I hated when it did. At least when I stayed mad, the emotion was directed outward and not in. But it was too heavy today. The feelings collapsed onto me and I broke.
I pretended I needed to go get a blanket for Benny in the linen closet and excused myself. The second I got around the corner I stopped in the hallway and burst into muffled tears.
What was my fucking life? How had I ended up here?
Everything had gone wrong.
Once the tears started, I just couldn’t get them to stop. It was an avalanche. A tidal wave. Proof that I really, really wasn’t okay.
Nick.
It was over. It was officially over.
I didn’t want to celebrate my divorce. I didn’t want to pop champagne or hit the town and act like I was happy to be done with my marriage. I wasn’t happy. I was living a nightmare. Some alternate reality that I was never supposed to know.
Nick and I were supposed to grow old together. It was good. We were happy.
But I just wasn’t her.
I think I always knew something was there. She was his partner at work. They’d never dated. She had a boyfriend when I met Nick and then she had a husband. We went to BBQs at each other’s houses, we went on couples’ trips together. I liked her. She was my friend.
And now I saw the truth I couldn’t recognize then.
I saw Nick at her wedding, drinking more than I’d ever seen him drink and passing out on the bed in our hotel room, still in his clothes.
I saw them whisper-arguing in the kitchen the night of our ten-year anniversary dinner, and he said it was about work and I believed it because I wanted to believe it. I saw all the times he was moody and distant because I wasn’t her and that annoyed him.
It was like finding out you have cancer and finally connecting all the dots and realizing you’ve been seeing the symptoms for years and wondering how something so horrible could be something you missed. And now I wondered how I’d been so stupid. How I didn’t know until that day.
Mom was right.
Only an idiot puts all their eggs in a man’s basket. And I’d given Nick everything. Now I had nothing, not even hope. Because he broke the trust in men that I’d need to ever be with one again. There wouldn’t be a next time for me. There wouldn’t be a second husband, another love of my life. There would only ever be this.
“Hey. You okay?” Alexis asked gently from behind me.
I turned around, wiping under my eyes. “Yeah. Sorry. I just…”
I shook my head, doing my best to regain my composure. “It just all sort of hit me.”
She reached into the bathroom and pulled some tissues from a box and handed them to me. Then she leaned on the wall opposite me.
“Thanks.” I sniffed, dabbing at my eyes.
She waited, peering at me quietly.
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Do you remember teleporting when you were little?”
“What?”
“You know, when you were a kid and you’d fall asleep in the car and your dad would carry you to bed and you wouldn’t remember it? You’d just have a foggy memory of floating through space. And then you’d wake up in bed the next morning not remembering how you got there, but sort of remembering it at the same time?”
She narrowed her eyes like she was thinking. “Yeah. Only it was never my dad. It was the nanny. But yeah.”
I sniffed. “My dad was gone by the time I was eight. I never teleported again after that. There wasn’t anyone strong enough to carry me.” I paused for a long moment. “Men have only ever left me, Ali,” I said quietly.
She waited, silent.
“You never realize you’re living the best time of your life,” I said softly. “It happens and then it ends, and you only see it for what it was after. I gave Nick the part of me I don’t give anyone. I gave him the kind of stupid, innocent love that you can only give before you know better. He got the best of me. And I’ll never find that me again.”
“Yes, you will—”
I shook my head. “No. I won’t. Because I’ll never be that trusting again. I’ll never give myself to someone else with the complete abandon that I did with Nick. I don’t have it in me. He was the exception. He was me saying ‘Okay, so Dad left. But this one won’t. I picked right, not all men are like Dad. This one’s going to carry me. All my broken pieces.’” I paused. “And he didn’t. He did exactly what Mom always warned me that men do. He validated every cautionary tale I grew up hearing. Always have a separate bank account. Make sure your name is on the house. Trust but verify.” I shook my head again. “I didn’t listen,” I whispered. “And now I’ll never teleport again.”
She looked at me, her eyes sad. “This isn’t your life, Bri. This is just a shitty chapter in your story. You know, I didn’t think I’d ever date again after Neil, but then I found Daniel. There are good men out there, you’ll find someone too.”
I scoffed dryly. “That ship has sailed. I am no longer a reliable source of judgment when it comes to picking men.” I wiped under my eyes and took in a deep breath.