“How are you allowed to be a doctor if you’re this much of an idiot?”
“Wow, thank you for that. So helpful.” I shoved another bite in my mouth. “The thing is, he’s a bit of an adrenaline junkie, always hopping from one challenge to another, and I asked him to make sense of his reasons for wanting this.”
“He wants it because he loves you,” she said, “and it’s never been a choice for him.”
I dropped my fork to the plate and dragged my fingers through my hair. “I don’t know what that means or what I’m supposed to do with it.”
“It means he didn’t sit down and logic his way through his feelings for you. He’s not going to be able to provide you a bullet point list of his reasons. He knows he loves you and he knows nothing else matters.”
I wished she’d stop saying that. It felt too close, too real. If I spent too much time with those words lurking in my mind, they might stick around. Then what would I do? What would I do when this thing finally fell apart and those words had burrowed inside me like artifacts? How would I go on, knowing I could run into Henry around any corner, in any elevator, all while those words went unspoken?
“You’re telling me people actually go through life like that?” I glanced over to catch her reaction. We didn’t have much experience talking about these things.
“All the time.” She patted my arm and gave me a smile that said I was very simple. “Think of it this way. When Henry met you, something changed for him. Like a chemical reaction or he was struck by lightning. Since that moment when you locked eyes across a crowded operating room?—”
“We didn’t meet at the hospital.”
“Are you being serious?” She twisted in her seat to face me. “Then where did you meet?”
I cleared my throat. “At a wedding.”
“Really? I don’t remember you going to any weddings. Whose wedding? When was this?”
“Uh, it was actually Mason’s wedding.” Murkier territory I could not have stumbled into. “Last summer. June. While I was out of town with Meri.”
She tipped her head to the side. “I didn’t know you went to a wedding then. Or that you knew Mason.”
“Yeah, it’s kind of a long story.”
Brie gathered the plates and carried them to the sink. “Well, we have about three dozen cupcakes and another bottle of wine. Why don’t we sit down and”—her gaze snapped to the sofa and she winced—“or pile into your bed since my room is going through an identity crisis, and we’ll make our way through this long story. Because I, for one, need to understand how all of this happened.”
I bit back a cool, snappy reminder that we didn’t do things like that. She was trying. I could try too. “You want to hear about Mason’s ex,” I said.
“Obviously, yes, no detail spared.”
She dumped all the bowls and pans into the sink while I checked my phone again.
“Text him. Thank him for the cupcakes. Tell him you need him to create a slide deck outlining his adoration for you. Whatever. Just don’t go to bed with olives.”
The funny thing was, I knew Henry would create a slide deck if I asked for one. He’d get serious about it too—while also being extremely silly—and he’d make a whole event out of it. He’d do anything I asked.
Thinking about that hurt my heart.
Not the one in my chest. Not the organ I knew better than any other in the human body. No, I felt this pain in a place I couldn’t examine, couldn’t study. I couldn’t even press a hand to that pain to alleviate the throb because it was everywhere, all over, all at once.
“I need to change out of this and take off my makeup.” I headed toward my room before she noticed the tears in my eyes. “Give me a few minutes, okay?”
Hands in the soapy water, she said, “Call him. I swear I won’t listen at the door, but you should know the walls in here are very thin.”
True to my word, I stripped off the day’s clothes and wiped away my makeup. Then, I pulled Henry’s fleece out from between my pillows and stared at it for longer than made sense. Eventually, I tugged it on and sat on my bed, staring at my phone.
Whitney
Thanks for the cupcakes.
Henry
Anytime.
