But then, just as quickly, I shook it off and headed for the kitchen. I fed Plink and Jumbo and would have pulled out some food for Pippa if she wasn’t next door again.
Instead, I grabbed a bottle of beer, cracked it open, and took a long pull.
This weekend, I would update my resume. Actively start looking for something new, something I should have done weeks ago.
Apply at some smaller hospitals, maybe buy into a private practice.
Somewhere I could actually do the work without needing to translate it into metrics.
Hell, even my condo felt hollow. The place smelled faintly of disinfectant—Friday’s signature from the maid service.
Clean, technically.
But it didn’t feel like home. Not even close.
I’d felt more at home in those hotel rooms out west. Impersonal rooms, with bleached comforters and mass-produced artwork.
But I knew why I’d felt comfortable there, and it had nothing to do with the décor.
No, it was because, for a little while at least, I hadn’t been alone in them.
A spunky, stubborn, curly-haired woman had snuggled up beside me in those rooms, stealing the covers, laughing in her sleep.
She'd made those generic walls and scratchy sheets feel like home.
I took a long pull from the bottle and watched Jumbo go to town on the food. As usual, Plink just hovered nearby, chewing once every thirty seconds like he’d forgotten how to eat.
“Seriously?” I muttered. “Dude. Show some initiative.”
For the thousandth time, I thought about putting them in separate tanks.
For the thousandth time, I didn’t.
The condo was quiet, except for the occasional thunk from upstairs and the muffled sound of teenagers tossing a ball around outside.
I grabbed a second beer, dropped onto the couch, and reached for the remote, but even after I found something decent to watch on ESPN, my mind drifted back to that last fucked-up day in Vegas.
Just a few hours in Sin City, and everything changed.
One minute, I was halfway convinced that whatever was building between Luna and me—might actually have a future. I’d been hopeful, maybe even a little reckless with it, letting myself imagine what came next.
But then? It all unraveled.
I’d ducked out to find a pharmacy—Mom had forgotten one of her prescriptions at the hotel the night before—and when I came back, Tay was waiting. Furious.
“Why the hell would you do that to Luna?” she’d asked, and I remember the confusion hitting first. The way my stomach dropped when I realized something had happened.
Luna had gone upstairs to find Courtney in our hotel room. In nothing but a towel.
Because my mother—God help me—had invited her. And not just invited her. She’d made Courtney believe there was still a chance. That I wanted to talk. That I missed her.
It was bullshit, and by the time I understood what had happened, Luna was already gone.
And Courtney…she had no idea what she’d walked into.
I’d had to sit her down and tell her—kindly, but clearly—that whatever my mother said, it wasn’t true. That I wasn’t coming back, that I hadn’t been holding a torch. And I could see it in her face, the quiet humiliation of realizing she’d been used too. Another casualty in my mom’s manipulations.
But that wasn’t even the worst of it.
