Chapter Fourteen
BEA
The week passes in a blur of work; wards and clinics and surgeries. And before I know it, the following week is here. I’m thankful for my job—and I love it, really—for keeping my mind exercised and away from my personal woes. When I’m at work, there really is no time to focus on anything else. When I’m at work, five minutes spent with the parents of a child born with a congenital cleft palate deformity or surgery on a victim of some awful fire puts my problems into perspective super-fast.
There but for the grace of God go I.
It’s what made me call Jon, relenting on the wholehell-freezing-overthing. He wants to see me, but if he couldn’t make it before, I told him I don’t think it’s worth it now. When pressed, I told him I’d think about it. But then, I also told him where he could stick his excuses and his apology.
Cathartic this call was not.
I didn’t even bother calling him out because, even after speaking with him, I find I just no longer carewhy.He thinks I’m going to change my mind because I haven’t told my family. That I’ll come around, eventually. Meanwhile, I told him he could get fucked, and then I hung up.
I’m not sure why I haven’t told anyone. Maybe it’s because I’m a planner. I’m someone who knows which direction their life is heading. Well, usually. Only now, I’m feeling adrift. Or maybe it’s because I don’t want people’s sympathy? Who knows.
The only thing I am certain of is it doesn’t mean I’m going back to him.
I flew to Edinburgh for a medical conference yesterday. Initially, I planned to be here until Friday afternoon and then fly home following the last seminar, but now that Friday night is here, I’ve decided to stay in town another night—maybe the whole weekend—because I’ve devised a course of action. A plan—something to move forward with, to get over this hurdle with a hump to get over, so to speak.
Yes, I’m going to have sex.
I don’t know with who, or how it’ll come about, I just know I will. Hot and steamy sex, preferably with some random man I’ll never see again.
Contrary to what Jon said, this won’t even us up. There should be no scorebook in love, and contrary to what the song states, love shouldn’t be a battlefield. I have no aspirations of taking his advice touse this break to sleep with someone else.
So I can be content after the marriage that I’m not missing out.
Not happening. No nuptials here to see. Move along, space cadet.
So our future won’t be plagued with what-ifs.
What if... he pulls his head out of his ass?
Maybe he’ll realise he really is single right now?
I will have sex—I’d even entertained the notion of reporting it back to him. Though I doubt he’d want a blow-by-blow account, especially if I spell out exactly what it means. I’d tell him I’m breaking the seal. That it may be the first time I’d fucked someone other than him, but that it was unlikely to be the last. I think this would make it perfectly clear I have no intentions of ever being with him again.
What I wouldn’t tell Jon is that sleeping with a stranger might help me stop obsessing about Kit Tremaine. That I need help to banish every hot inch of him from my mind. Assistance to stop thinking about him screwing me...andanother man. The images, taunting and just out of reach. The dreams I wake from with my hands between my legs.
But maybe I won’t get lucky tonight. Maybe I’ll wait until tomorrow after my colleagues have all cleared out. Maybe it’ll take longer to find a suitable candidate. Someone worthy of breaking Kit’s hot bisexual spell.
Who’d have ever thought I’d be into bi guys? It’s just my luck that the one man I’m hot for is a step too close to home.
I clear my throat, catching the bartender’s expression, and take the opportunity to get him to refill my empty glass. I slide it over to him as I cross my legs, struggling with my wrap dress and modesty, before deciding that showing a little leg might aid my cause.
The bar is pretty full. It looks like happy hour pulled in a lot of office types who’ve yet to make it home. I don’t think I’ve ever sat alone at a bar before. At a table, yes. Lunch and a book while waiting for a friend. Dinner at a restaurant by myself, too. But never at a bar. On a high stool. People watching. Or man hunting.Errgh.Or as Rory might say, on the pull.
The bartender sets my glass down, and I murmur my thanks with a polite smile. He’s been a little cute and flirty, but I’m not sitting here all night waiting for him to finish work. That’s assuming, in this scenario, he’d even be interested. No, I’d rather leave my mission until another night. I’d probably be drunk by the time the bar closes, and that won’t do at all. I want to be fully functioning when I take someone to my hotel bed. I feel like there should be some gravity to the evening, my plans almost ritualistic because, before tonight, there has only been Jon. Well, apart from some stellar fingering from—no, I’m not even going to think his name. It’ll just jinx things.
I take a sip of my drink—I know it should probably be wine, you know, like I’m some delicate flower of a female, but I’m in a beer mood—and set it down. I become aware of the hairs on the back of my neck beginning to prickle and stand. I know someone’s watching me. Hopefully someone male and cute. I’m not foolish enough to think I’ll find someone as gorgeous—arrogant? Infuriating—as Kit, but I think I could manage doable.Dodoable. The thought makes me giggle, though not so much that I’ll look like a psych patient on day release.
I turn my head, you know, just looking. Not scoping out the place, but wondering...God, if you’re listening, make him good looking. And Scottish—I want those luxuriant, rolling r’s pressed into my sensitive bits.
I can’t help it—blame the dreams I’ve been having.
And there, sitting by the window with the roofs and chimneys of Victorian buildings barely visible just beyond, is a man. There are a lot of men here tonight—it is a bar, after all—but none looking at me so pointedly. Our eyes meet, and he smiles. Friendly. Nice. Amiable.
Lacking in wolf.
