“I wasn’t sure if it was you,” he says, shoving his hands into the pockets of his dark pants as he casts a quick glance over me. “You look different.”
Different is code for shit, and I’m well aware of how much I’ve changed. “It’s been a while,” I remind him.
“Eight months too long.” Sadness seeps from his pores, and grief clings to him the same way it clings to me. “Can we grab a coffee?”
“I’m heading home to change before going to the hospital, and I’m on a tight schedule.”
“I’ve just come from there,” he admits, rubbing a hand across the back of his neck. “It seems like fate I’ve run into you.”
His words might as well be a machete cleaved straight through my heart.
Fate.
I fucking hate that word.
More than ever since the only man I have ever loved has been stolen from me. Garrick is still a prisoner in his own body. His mind trapped who knows where. I wonder all the time if he is aware of anything around him. If he knows where he is and what has happened. If he hears me talking and reading to him. If he hears my footsteps twirling across the tile floor of his private hospital room as I dance to the soundtrack of our romance. If my words of love and regret register with any part of him. If he understands how fate screwed us over. If he now realizes I was right all along about cursed fate.
“Maybe another time.” I offer him a fake smile. One I’ve gotten so good at.
“Please, Stevie.” His eyes plead with mine. “I need to apologize, and I’d rather not do it in the middle of downtown during rush hour.”
“You don’t owe me any apologies, Will.”
He steps up closer. “I don’t agree. Come on.” He jerks his head across the road. “There’s a coffee place right there. I promise I won’t take up too much of your time.”
I reluctantly relent, only for Ellen though, because I know the rift between me and her boyfriend has been difficult for her.
We don’t speak until we are sitting in a corner of the coffee shop nursing coffees. I declined his offer of cake, and I could hear the unspoken words hovering in the air as he watched me peel off my coat, revealing my formfitting black pants suit that doesn’t disguise the weight I’ve lost.
You’re far too thin.
You need to eat more.
It’s not healthy to work all the time, exercise so much, and eat and sleep so little.
You should speak to a therapist.
I’ve heard it all for months from Mom, Nana, and Hadley.
I’ve tried telling them this is how I’m coping and they need to get off my case. I know they mean well, but I’m doing the best I can. It’s not like I’ve got an eating disorder or I’m so thin I’m at risk of permanent injury or dying. Most models are thinner than I am, and you don’t see them dropping dead.
“How is your job going?” Will asks, blowing on the top of his coffee before he takes a drink.
Small talk.
Super.
“Great. I’m learning a lot.” That is true. The company was very understanding after the accident, holding my job open for months until after I had successfully completed my exams and graduated with honors.
The first couple months after the accident were really bad, but when my physical injuries healed, I threw myself into my studies, brushing up on things before I took online exams. As soon as I started at Mimosa Floral Corporate Services in September, I immersed myself in my new role, and it’s the only way I’m maintaining my sanity.
“Ellen said you’re living in the city with Hadley?”
I nod. Hads goes to school in Seattle, and now she has a paid part-time job at the library, she can afford her share of the rent. “We got a place in the International District, not far from here. It’s only a three-minute tram ride to work and fifteen minutes to the hospital, so it’s perfect.”
“That’s good.”
God, this conversation is awful. I used to have no trouble talking with Will, but things are so tense between us now. We haven’t spoken to or seen one another since that day at the hospital. I haven’t seen Ellen since last summer as senior year is crazy busy for her and she’s miles away in Oregon. But we talk weekly. However, I had no idea her boyfriend was in Seattle. “How come you’re in the city?”
