by Ali Parker
After taking care of a few things at home on Thursday morning, I decided to go to The Cottage where I knew Jerrod would be working. I had tried a couple of times to fix things between us, and every time he hadn’t been interested. But I was hoping that this time would be different. I missed my best friend, and I could really use some objective advice right now.
There were only a few cars in the parking lot at The Cottage, three tables with customers in the dining room. Jerrod was behind the bar, taking stock of the alcohol available to them before the evening rush. He worked with a clipboard and whistled through his teeth, a tune that didn’t really sound like a tune at all.
When I leaned on the bar, Jerrod turned around to tend to the customer. His face fell when he saw me, and he was visibly irritated.
“What do you want?” he asked.
I knew he wasn’t offering me something to drink. He was still angry with me.
“Is this how we are going to be from now on?” I asked. “Are we never going to speak like adults again?”
“I don’t see why. We’re not friends.”
I groaned. “Come on, don’t be like this.”
“I’m not being like anything. You’re the one that decided to keep secrets from me after you started fucking my sister.”
I looked around, hoping that none of the customers had heard what he had said.
“Jesus, will you lower your voice? This is your sister we’re talking about.”
Jerrod shrugged. He didn’t look like he cared about who heard him and what he said about Mila. This wasn’t like him. But then, I hadn’t seen him this pissed off for this long. Ever. And we had been friends since we’d been in kindergarten.
“I just want to talk. Can’t we fix this?” I asked.
“Why do you want to fix it?”
“Because I’m going back to New York soon, and I want our friendship to be what it used to be,” I said.
Jerrod shook his head. “You should have thought about that before you went after my sister. Besides, what do you care? You’re leaving so it doesn’t matter where we stand.”
“You know that’s a load of shit.”
Jerrod gave me a cold stare that was void of any emotion. This wasn’t going to go away, was it? Maybe we were never going to be able to make it right.
“You know, you’re mad about Mila, but I’m leaving so it’s not like we’re going to be together,” I said. Maybe it was a bit of a cheap shot. I was pissed off. But it was true. Yeah, I fucked up. But surely Jerrod could get over that, especially since the reason why he hated my guts now wasn’t even there anymore.
Jerrod shook his head, leaning on the bar with both hands.
“You’re a son of a bitch to leave her like this, you know that?” Jerrod asked.
I frowned. “So, now I’m wrong for leaving?”
“You said you were serious about her. Not serious enough, obviously. Must be nice to live a life where you can change your mind like that all the time without worrying about how people feel. Is it the money that’s doing this to you?”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” I asked.
Jerrod looked over my shoulder at the diners. Maybe it was because I was swearing. No one was close enough to have heard me, though. And he had been just as bad. I was almost sure of it. Besides, if Jerrod and I had been friends, we would have stood right here where we were standing now and cussed like sailors anyway.
“You’re a coward, Ben,” Jerrod said. “You don’t know how to be a real man.”
I had had enough of this bullshit.
“If you want to be pissed off with me, fine. But you have to decide what you’re so angry about. You can’t keep falling around from one thing to the next. It makes you look like a sullen teenager.”
“Fuck you, Ben,” Jerrod said.
I wanted to say something nasty like “your sister already did that” but I knew that was only looking for trouble, and I didn’t need more drama between the two of us than I already had. Jerrod would always be my best friend, even if I wasn’t his. I didn’t want this to get worse.
I left the restaurant without saying hello or goodbye to the Castles, and I drove back home. Jerrod confused me. He was pissed off at me about being with Mila, and at the same time, he was pissed off at me about leaving her. When we had hooked up, it was because I had genuinely fallen for her. Even though I hadn’t seen her since we’d come back to Portland and we hadn’t spoken, she was on my mind all the time.
I had left her to keep her safe. It had blown up in my face, but I had made that right. Even though Brantley had kidnapped her, I had come to her rescue and brought her home. And I had scared Brantley enough to let him know that he couldn’t just fuck with me like that. So, Mila was safe now. I didn’t know for how long, but I was going to figure that out.
But she would be safest here in Portland. I needed her to be safe, and I couldn’t ensure that as long as she was in my life. I still owed Brantley, he was still Pirelli’s right-hand man. The danger was far from over.
If only Jerrod would see it that way. But he didn’t know half of what was going on, and I didn’t want to tell him.
Before, it was to keep him safe. But if I told him the whole story now, he was going to see it as me groveling, giving him a reason why he shouldn’t be angry with me.
And if there was one thing I never did, it was grovel.
When I arrived home, I walked to my makeshift bedroom and took out my phone. I dialed Mila’s number. I was leaving for New York soon, and she deserved to know. I had left without telling her before, and it hadn’t gone down well. And after what she had been through, I wanted to be sure that every experience I was capable of giving her, would be a good one.
“Are you at work?” I asked when she answered.
“I am about to go in. My shift is starting, soon.”
“I want to talk to you,” I said. “Can I see you?”
She hesitated. I had no idea what response to expect from her. We’d had a great time in New York together, but we’d both known that it had a time limit, that we weren’t together. And we hadn’t spoken, since.
She could very well turn me down.
“Are you leaving?” she asked.
I couldn’t lie to her. “Yes, I am. I don’t want to go without seeing you again.”
“When are you going?”
“I’m not sure yet. Soon.”
She hesitated again. She still hadn’t said yes or no.
“Will you still be here on Saturday?” she finally asked.
“I will.”
For her, I would make sure I was here on Saturday if that was the only time I would be able to see her.
“It’s the best day for me. I have the weekend off.”
“Two days?”
“Almost. I’m working later on Sunday. They think I need the break,” she said in a way that made me wonder if she did. How was she coping with all of this? I had left her alone because I hadn’t wanted her to feel like I was leading her on. But now I felt guilty that I hadn’t found out how she was doing after everything she had been through. Indirectly, because of me.
“I’ll see you on Saturday, then,” I said. “I’ll pick you up.”
She agreed, and we set a time. When I hung up the phone after she had to go, I felt good about arranging to see her. I had to see her at least one more time before I left. I had to end this all on a good note.
Chapter 60
Mila
By Friday, I still hadn’t spoken to Skylar about our fight. I hated that we weren’t okay. Skylar had been my best friend since high school, and we talked all the time about everything and anything. It sucked that I didn’t have my best friend with me, just now that I was going through what was easily the worst time of my life.
The only other thing I knew how to do in the face of adversity was to escape. I eventually faced the music, but when things became too hard to bear and too much to think about, work was my way out. I buried myself in my routin
es and rounds, taking care of the patients as if they were the only thing that counted in my life. I filled my reports out meticulously, and I took shorter lunch breaks and worked longer hours.
Maybe it wasn’t the best thing to push myself so hard, considering that I had been through a traumatic experience and I was pregnant on top of it. But it was exactly the reason why I was pushing so hard.
Ben wanted to see me again, and it was just another thing to add to the pile of things I had no idea how to handle. I wanted to see him, of course. But I knew that we would never be what I wanted us to be. Ben had very clearly made his choice, and he had the right to do that, whether I liked it or not. I was worried that seeing him again would only result in more heartache.
Although, now that I knew where his head was at and that we would never be together, I could go into it with my eyes wide open and not be fooled into thinking that I had found my true love.
“How are you doing today?” Claire asked when we arrived for our shift together. We were in the locker room, dressing in scrubs, ready to take on the day.
“I’m doing okay,” I said. “I’m getting back into my routines, and I think that’s all I really needed.”
“I’m glad,” Claire said, putting on her comfortable sneakers. I did the same. To spend that much time on our feet meant we had to have shoes that would get us through a twelve-hour shift. “I’m worried about you.”
I shook my head and tied my own shoes. “You don’t have to be. All I need is time to get back into it.”
I was lying, of course. Time would do wonders for being kidnapped. The further I moved away from the incident, the better. The same counted for the breakup. But time did nothing for being pregnant. In fact, it only made it worse. I wasn’t going to talk about that to Claire, of course. We were on the same shifts all the time, and we spent a lot of time together during our breaks, but she wasn’t the kind of friend I could share this stuff with. Skylar was the only person I could really talk to.
Which made it that much worse that we were still fighting. I really needed her.
Claire and I made our way into the ICU and signed in. When we started our rounds, I was happy to find out that the roofer with the five children was doing better. I always felt awful when people with children were hurt. It was just as bad when single people got hurt, but it seemed that much worse if they left a family behind when they didn’t make it. When I walked into the room, the roofer was smiling and talking to his children. His wife sat next to him, quiet, looking cautiously optimistic.
“If the doctor does his rounds later and finds that you’re still doing this well, we’ll move you to a regular recovery room, soon,” I said to him.
“Thank you,” his wife said. “You’ve all been very good to us.”
“Of course,” I said. “If you need anything, just shout.”
I left them to their family time and went to check on the old man with pneumonia. He wasn’t doing nearly as well as I had hoped. He hadn’t gotten worse, but it was hardly a consolation. He wasn’t conscious and looked like he was withering away, barely taking up space in this world anymore.
“How did the patient in one oh seven do during the night?” I asked one of the nurses at the nurse’s station when I finished in his room.
“He’s not doing too well,” the answer came. “We’ll be lucky if he gets through the weekend.”
My heart sank. “Has anyone been in to see him yet?”
No one had come for him. He was completely alone, and he was dying. It had to be the worst way to go.
I couldn’t stand around and cry about one patient all day. I had rounds to complete. I walked to the accident couple’s room. The man was awake, and his eyes followed me around the room as I checked his vitals before moving on to his partner. She was still in a drug-induced coma. It turned out she’d had internal bleeding, and the surgeon had to patch her up and keep her under to help her get through it.
“Is she going to be okay?” he asked.
I nodded. “She’s stable. We’re keeping her under until the worst of the pain wears off.”
“It’s my fault,” he said. “I was driving.”
I shook my head. I had heard that the guy who T-boned them had run a red light.
“Don’t blame yourself for something you weren’t able to stop. Just because you were driving doesn’t mean you were at fault. The other guy was wrong. You’re both lucky to be alive – hold onto that.”
He nodded slowly, and I hoped he would see it the way I did and not blame himself. It would be better once his partner opened her eyes, once she could tell him herself that it wasn’t his fault. I had hope for them, though. They were showing signs of improvement, and they would leave the ICU eventually.
When it was finally time for my lunch break, I walked to the cafeteria and bought lunch, but I didn’t sit down and eat it at one of the tables. Instead, I walked with my food to my car and climbed in. My car was warm and cozy, and after eating a bit of my lunch, I put my car seat back and closed my eyes. I was so tired.
I had been getting nightmares of the kidnapping. I had woken up three times last night after being grabbed or stuffed away in the basement again with no hope of Ben coming for me this time. After the third time, it had been close enough to the time I woke up that I hadn’t gone back to sleep. I’d been too scared.
As soon as I started drifting off, I got another flashback. I felt the thud on the head again, the feeling of sinking into darkness and waking up in a van with a blindfold over my eyes. I jerked up, cold sweat running down my back. My mouth was dry, and I felt like throwing up.
How was I going to handle being kidnapped if it kept coming back to haunt me?
I was suddenly terrified. I looked around the parking lot, looking for people who might come to harm me. A young man was walking to his car. I watched until he climbed in and drove away. He wasn’t a danger to me.
But he’d had dark blond hair, and he hadn’t been very muscular. It reminded me of Victor.
I climbed out of the car, leaving my food behind, and hurried to the hospital entrance. I couldn’t handle being in my car. I had hoped to doze off for a couple of minutes to reboot my tired body, but I was safer inside. Even if it was just from my own demons.
When I sat in the locker room on one of the wooden benches, my back against the cold tiles, I could finally breathe again.
Everyone knew what I had been through. They tried to be there for me, asked me how I was doing and offered me all the time I needed to myself. Even if I was already far over the number of days off I was allowed each year. But none of them knew what I was struggling with. There was nothing they could do to make this better.
Despite being surrounded by people who cared for me, I was completely alone.
I suddenly felt like crying. I would have called Skylar if she and I were talking. But I couldn’t do that, now. And tomorrow I was seeing Ben. He knew what I had been through. He’d come to find me there, after all. But I was sure that seeing him tomorrow wouldn’t be the romantic date we’d had so many times. He was leaving for New York again, and he was probably seeing me to say goodbye.
There was nothing happy about that, and instead of a mistake, it was only going to be more sorrow, and I would be toeing the edge of heartbreak. Again. I didn’t know if I had what it took to handle it, but there wasn’t much choice. I couldn’t ask my best friend’s advice, and I didn’t want Ben to leave without saying goodbye. That was the only thing that would be worse than having to live through a goodbye when all I wanted was for him to stay.
When I finally drove home late on Friday night, I was exhausted. My back ached from being on my feet for so long as if I wasn’t used to it. I wasn’t in the best mood after knowing that one of my patients wasn’t going to make it. I wanted a hot bath and a warm bed after that.
Skylar sat in front of my door when I walked up.
“What are you doing here?” I asked. “You should have called.”
“I wasn’t
sure you wanted to see me,” Skylar said. “And I knew what time your shift ended today so I decided to wait for you.”
I shook my head. “I wouldn’t have turned you away.”
I unlocked the door, and Skylar followed me into the building. When we were in my apartment, she sat on the couch. I had sunk down after being unable to stay on my feet anymore.
“I’m sorry,” Skylar said.
“Me too,” I said.
“I was wrong to get so angry,” she carried on. “I know you’ve been through a lot.”
I shook my head. “You were telling me the truth. But the truth is hard to hear sometimes, and I got upset because you were right.”
Skylar shifted closer to me and hugged me. We sat there for a while, our arms wrapped around each other, and it felt good to have someone close to me again. I’d missed my best friend. We didn’t usually go so long without talking, and it had been so much worse because I’d known we were fighting.
“How are you doing?” Skylar asked when we finally let go of each other.
Before I could answer, someone buzzed the front door. I answered the intercom and buzzed my brother up.
“It’s Jerrod,” I said. “We’ve only just started talking so I don’t want to shoo him away.”
“That’s totally fine,” Skylar said.
When I opened the front door, my brother smiled at me. I invited him in, and he greeted Skylar.
“How are you doing?” he asked. “I just came to check up on you.”
“I’m doing okay,” I said. “I’m just exhausted. Working long hours, not a lot of sleep.”
“The baby can’t make it any easier,” Skylar said.
I froze. The tension in the room was suddenly so thick, I couldn’t breathe.
I looked at Skylar who had gone ghost-white pale.