Bend (42 page)

Angela snickers, then lets out a fake groan. “Oh, fine. At least there’d be zero chance of getting knocked up again.”

We’re still giggling as we walk out through the double glass doors.

When I get home after dinner, still stuffed with Thai food, I take a quick and hot shower that I would’ve preferred be a long and hot shower, but there’s a serious drought going on right now, and my conscience is a nagging bitch.

Then I consider streaming an episode of
House, M.D.
There’s no reason to wait for Jay to watch it with me now, is there? The thought sinks like a rock into my stomach, and I know that I’d get less enjoyment out of it than depilating my legs with tweezers. Or walking barefoot on a scorching-hot sidewalk. Or cleaning a public restroom…with a toothbrush.

So instead I curl up on the couch in my robe with Adele on the stereo, my hair wrapped in a towel, my notebook computer in my lap, and a glass of water on the side table.

Lately I’ve been collapsing into bed as early as I can without feeling like an old lady, the cutoff for which I’ve decided is about nine thirty. But tonight I’m feeling on edge and wide awake and know I’ll toss and turn if I hit the sack, so instead I check my email and answer a couple of them from coworkers, and then I bring up Facebook in my browser.

After going through my news feed and catching up, clicking Like on some posts and commenting on others, it’s as if my index finger becomes sentient and starts making its own decisions. I bring up my profile and click on Photos, open the Mobile Uploads folder, and start scrolling.

Pretty soon I find a picture of me and Jay. It’s a selfie I took with him on a weekend trip to Lake Arrowhead with a few other friends. I’m hugging his waist, and Jay’s got an arm draped over my shoulder. He’s wearing a gray T-shirt and dark sunglasses, and he’s smiling. Not a toothy grin or anything, just his lips thinned and turned up crookedly at the corners, but it’s not a fake picture-posing smile at all. It’s Jay, being happy. Gorgeous and sexy and smart and sarcastically funny Jay, enjoying a couple of days off from the stress and chaos that is his job and choosing to spend it with me.

God, I miss him.

The fucking asshole.

I miss seeing him, talking to him, and I miss just knowing he’s there. Shit, I even miss his pedantic and uptight lecturing. There’s no one now to tell me when I’m being an idiot. I need someone to tell me when I’m being an idiot.

And yes. I miss the sex. His bare skin against mine, his lips on me and mine on him. I miss the kissing, the touching, the breathless urgency, and the feel of him inside me. Is that really never going to happen again? How is that possible? How is it fair?

In fact, I miss Jay so much that several times I’ve considered faking an illness or injury and going to the hospital just to have half a chance at seeing him. And if that’s not the most disgustingly pathetic thing ever…

It feels almost luxurious to indulge in this self-pity. Here I am, still reeling from being suddenly Jay-less. My best friend, walking out of my life without a backward glance. And all too soon, I’ll be Grandma-less as well.

Yeah, I can take a few moments to feel sorry for myself and not feel bad about it. Pretty sure that’s okay.

After picking up my water from the side table and swallowing a big gulp, I grab my phone and bring up the messaging app. Finding my grandmother on the list of recent people I’ve texted, I tap in a quick note to her:
How are you doing? Did you find a turkey yet?

And then, after hitting Send and while waiting for her to respond, I find myself typing a name into the Facebook search box.

Matt Nolan.

A long list of Matt Nolans pops up, but I spot the right one immediately, right there at the top of the search results. I’ve done this before, and I’m not proud of that. Guess I could blame it on boredom, but that wouldn’t be true. I’ve Facebook-stalked my ex-boyfriend…on more than one occasion.

The first time I did it, I knew it was him because it said his location was Manhattan Beach, and it said we had three mutual friends—college acquaintances that I honestly have no idea why I’m Facebook friends with—and his profile picture was an orange curved lightning bolt on a blue background.

That image is still there. So he’s still a Chargers fanatic.

My heart pounding and tongue feeling dry, I click on his name. There’s still not a lot of information that I’m able to view, but it does list an employer, which I’ve Googled before. The result wasn’t all that surprising: an LA-based investment bank. Guess he’s putting that business degree to good use there.

Closure.

I never had a real conversation with him after he broke up with me. Saw him a few times in passing—in the hallways in between lectures, in the campus food court—but I always did a fabulous job ignoring him. And then I’d rush to the nearest restroom, scrambling to hold back the tears until I could break down with some privacy.

My phone dings with my grandmother’s reply.
Doing fine!
she wrote.
Your dad found a turkey. I’m trying to decide which pies to make. Any requests?

Deciding to answer in a little while, I set the phone down. Because I can’t focus on pie right now.

All right. What’s the worst that can happen? That’s a rhetorical question, really, because I have no idea what the answer is and don’t really want to know.

I grab my water glass again. Toss down the rest of the flavorless liquid.

And then I click the button at the top of Matt’s Facebook profile page.

The one that says “Message.”

F
resh air hits my face as I push open the heavy emergency exit door that leads into the back alley behind the hospital. The narrow, paved dead-end street and the white building I just exited are shrouded in the dark-gray hues of late twilight. It’s June, and stepping outside no longer feels refreshing, even at this time of day, when the world starts to quiet down and the street lamps should flicker on at any minute. The heat radiating from the hospital laundry a short way down the lane doesn’t help.

I suppose there will be a blue moon tonight, since I’ve actually managed to get away and take a breather. Even though there’s a sign by the door that says there’s no smoking within twenty-five feet of the hospital, it’s well known that staff members step out here to light up, and no one stops them or snitches, because who the hell wants to deal with a bunch of coworkers who are suffering from nicotine withdrawal? Like this job isn’t stressful enough already.

No one else is out here right now, though, and I’m relishing having a moment to myself, away from the cacophony of moaning patients and bleeping machines, with a thick wall between me and the pungent scent-soup of bodily fluids and industrial disinfectants.

Leaning back against the sharp-ridged stucco wall, I slide down until I’m sitting on the concrete, draping my arms over my bent knees. With closed eyes, I draw in a deep breath and blow it slowly back out through my mouth, my cheeks puffed.

We just had a patient rushed in with a gunshot wound to the chest. Though I assessed and stabilized the guy, who’s now in the hands of the on-call trauma surgeon, I still feel unsettled and fidgety and ready to jump out of my skin.

I fucking hate gunshot wounds. It’s not a mystery why. Nothing sends my imagination into overdrive like patients with GSWs. One look at the blood and gaping entrance wound and crushed tissue, and I can see them. The family my dad destroyed—the husband and wife and their preteen daughter and her little brother—lying in pools of their own blood.

I can also hear the deafening cracks and booms as bullets fly from the car rolling past on that dark street, can see Sean jerking with the impact before collapsing to the ground, can see him lying there while blood seeps out onto the asphalt.

When a GSW rolls into the ER, all of that passes through my mind in a flash that lasts no longer than a couple of seconds. Then my instinct and training take over, and the grisly mental pictures get pushed to the back of my mind.

It’s the aftermath, as soon as I have a minute of downtime, that the images come creeping back and the idea of trying to beat them out with a hammer starts to seem tempting.

This time my thoughts begin to drift, though, just like they have been doing with maddening frequency for the past three weeks. Gory wounds are replaced by Mia’s facial expression in her car that night.

“Kicked puppy” would be an understated description of the way she looked at me. Seems more fitting to compare it to a puppy that had been tossed from a moving vehicle. In the middle of the desert, in scorching summer heat.

Shit.

No matter how much I try, I can’t stop the guilt and the longing and the almost constant sensation of being off-balance. I miss her so much it’s like a bone-deep agony that’s grinding and pounding and shredding me.

Extending my leg and twisting off the ground, I grab my phone from where it’s strapped to the waistband of my scrub bottoms. And like I’ve done so many times lately, I tap on her name in my messaging app.

The last text conversation I had with her pops up. It started with her sending me a selfie from a fitting room that day she went shopping with the other women in her family while I was helping with her dad’s backyard project. In the photo, she’s wearing a short, white, and pretty summer dress, and she’s posing with a hand on her outthrust hip, her knee bent.

What do you think?
she wrote as a caption.

And I replied,
I’d hit it.

To which she typed back:
If only you were here right now.
Followed by a winking emoji.

I tighten my grip on the phone, my insides clenching and twisting, squeezing the air from my lungs. My vision blurs, and I’m blinking frantically, trying to bring the picture back into focus. It’s beautiful and sexy Mia, smiling and happy Mia, playful and flirty Mia—and it fucking hurts to look at her, but I can’t not look at her.

And like I always do, I start scrolling up, reading older and older texts from her, conversations spanning back almost two years, back to when this phone was new. A lot of it is just mundane back-and-forths. The WTSs and griping about work draw smiles and a painful knot in my throat at the same time.

My favorites, though, are the exchanges that start with her texting me just two words:
Good night.
I always knew that message didn’t mean she was going to sleep. It meant it was late at night, and she wanted to talk. Because she had something on her mind or because she was feeling lonely…or because she just wanted to know I was there?