“Uh, you’re not driving, are you?” He could almost pass for sober now, but he still shouldn’t be driving.
“Of course not,” he says, pulling out his phone. “I’m calling an Uber.”
“Great.”
As Ethan’s tapping away, my own phone pings. I snap it up eagerly, hoping Melissa’s answered my text.
But it’s not Melissa, it’s Sloane, with a BS question about our research project. I set the phone down without replying, and when I glance up, Ethan’s staring at me curiously.
“Bad news?” he asks.
“What? No.”
The lift of his eyebrow makes it clear he doesn’t believe me. “When you showed up, I was talking to a girl,” I admit. “I thought she might have texted.”
“But she didn’t,” Ethan concludes.
“No.”
“Sorry, man.”
“It’s all right,” I say with a sigh. “It’s probably for the best.”
“Yeah?” Ethan asks curiously.
“Yeah,” I admit. “I operated on her daughter last month. You met her, actually; she’s the mom of the girl who had the allergic reaction.”
Ethan smirks. “I wondered.”
“Yeah. But if I want to keep my medical license, I shouldn’t be talking to her at ten o’clock at night.”
Ethan nods sympathetically. “Good luck, man.” He glances down at his phone. “Uber’s here.”
I lock the door behind him and head back to my couch to call Melissa, because I’m desperate to hear her voice. At the very least, I need to explain why I cut our conversation short. And despite what I just told Ethan, a relationship with Melissa is worth the risk.
But her phone goes to voicemail again.
TWENTY
MELISSA
If I didn’t have two kids and a job, I wouldn’t have gotten out of bed this morning. To be strictly accurate, I’d have gotten up for just long enough to get the carton of chocolate Haagen Dazs out of my freezer and bring it back to bed with me. A pity party is always better with ice cream, especially when you’ve been dieting.
And after slaying the Haagen Dazs, I’d have gone back to sleep, since I barely got any sleep last night. It’s hardly surprising, given the way my call with Luke ended. Not only was I sexually frustrated, I was frustrated with myself. I’d let myself imagine a fantasy, one in which Luke wanted me again. Despite the way we ended ten years ago.
And despite my new curves and stretch marks.
But it seems I was just a girl he could use to practice his sexy talk, a convenient way to warm up for the girl he was really waiting for. He even had the audacity to text an apology, claiming a ‘friend’ had shown up. He must not have known that I’d heard his friend arrive, and heard her say ‘Hi Luke’ in an unmistakably feminine voice.
I didn’t reply to his apology text, or to the message hesent after midnight, asking if I was still awake. I was too disappointed—too broken—to talk to him.
But since I have two kids and a job, I couldn’t wallow in bed. Instead, I hustled Claire and Liam out of bed and nagged them to brush their teeth and eat their Cheerios. I even resisted the temptation to eat ice cream for breakfast, since it would have been a bad example for the kids. Then, after a heavy-handed application of undereye concealer and a slick of lip gloss, I dropped the kids at school and came to work.
Now I’m standing in front of the twelfth graders, trying to teach a calculus lesson. Unfortunately, the students stopped paying attention as soon as Vanessa Abernathy started knitting. That’s right: as soon as I started to teach, she pulled a fuzzy ball of yarn and a pair of needles out of her backpack. Theclick, click, clickof her needles is irritating, but the real distraction is the question of what I’m going to do about it. I can see eyes flickering between Vanessa and me, and a few people are giggling.
At first, I tried to ignore her, hoping if I didn’t react, she’d give it up. She’s a slow, awkward knitter, and from what I can see, she’s just started her project. I’m pretty sure she only took up the hobby to irritate me. But after ten minutes of clicking, she’s still going strong, and a confrontation seems inevitable.
“Vanessa.”
