Chapter Seventeen
Seventeen
My scream almost runs Winona off the road.
“What the fuck, Sean!” Winona shouts, regaining control of the steering wheel.
“Language, Mom,” Sophie says, snickering.
“Not the time, Sophie,” Winona says. She makes a hard right into the Steak ’n Shake parking lot, then slides smoothly into a spot, hands her daughter a twenty-dollar bill, and points to the door. “Go get yourself something.”
Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, Sophie snatches the cash and leaps out of the car, running inside to get her treat. The moment she’s gone, Winny rounds on me.
“Okay, so I wasn’t going to ask until we got home, but you’re kinda freaking me out,” she says. “What’s going on with you?”
I’m still shaking. It takes effort to tear my eyes from my reflection to meet Winona’s.
“Winny,” I say slowly. “Do you…notice anything different about me?”
Winona squints, looking at me carefully from top to bottom.
“Aside from the random psychotic break you had just now?” she quips. “No. Not really.”
“Really?” I say. I grab ahold of my hair and bend my head until she’s looking at the crown of my head. “Are you sure?”
There’s a heartbeat of silence, and when I peer back at Winona, she looks confused.
“It’s…” She pauses. “White?”
“Exactly,” I say.
“I thought you liked your grays.”
“I do,” I say, frustrated. She’s right—I’ve always loved them, even more so after my own brush with death, after I started seeing patients my age and younger appear on my cath lab table.
Each hair a sign of life, of the years I had been gifted and not guaranteed.
But all that’s beside the point. “But they’re not gray, they’re white. And they weren’t white yesterday.”
“Overnight, Sulley, really?” she asks.
I’m stunned by the mildness of her response.
“I’m not crazy, Winny.”
The look Winona gives me can only be described as indulgent.
“I’m not saying you’re crazy,” she says. “You’ve just had a hard week. Hard month, honestly. Is it possible that you—”
My phone dings, and I dig it out of my back pocket before Winny can complete her dismissal. It’s a text from Julian. I read it, and the fear that I’d felt in the stairwell resurges.
Where did you go? it says. I’ve been looking everywhere for you.
The dance floor at the SCAI conference, drained of its strobe light color.
Melody’s face, slack and wan, her eyes darting to his in search of approval.
His hand splayed on her neck, the slow, sensual hiss of his words, improbably loud against the booming music.
Leila’s voice echoing against concrete, I don’t think there’s any controlling that one—
That’s what she’d said, right? Under Winny’s worried eyes, I feel less certain.
Maybe I am going crazy. Maybe I’ve been so sick and sleep-deprived for the last two weeks that my brain is jumping to find supernatural answers to mundane questions.
I did go to a new loctician for my retightening; maybe she just did a bad job and my new hair is unraveling.
Maybe I’m looking at my roots more closely now because I’ve been more self-conscious after the conference.
A hand squeezes my thigh.
“Is everything okay?” Winona asks. Concern is etched into every one of her features, and I deflate and squeeze her hand back.
“I followed Julian and Leila, after they left the hall,” I admit. “They were talking, and they said some things that sort of freaked me out. And I don’t know, I’m probably being paranoid, but…”
“What did you hear?” Winona probes.
I tell her. I feel more and more foolish as I speak, because I realize that I’ve made a hundred logical leaps.
They never mentioned me; if I’m honest, they didn’t mention a person at all so much as a situation.
These two have been friends since childhood; there are a thousand grievances they probably share—a deal gone wrong, a mutual relationship gone awry, money into the wrong hands.
Julian’s new girlfriend, whom Leila not only approved of but practically helped orchestrate, is probably the least of their worries.
By Winona’s pitying expression, she agrees.
“I’m losing it, aren’t I,” I say when I’m done.
Winona nods, eyebrows up and lips screwed as if she’s holding back laughter.
“Yeah, kinda,” she says.
We both snicker, and the tension that has made my chest tight since I woke up in Julian’s bed a few days ago eases like air out of a balloon.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” I say. “It’s like I don’t know what’s up or down sometimes these days.”
Winona turns to face me bodily. She opens her mouth like she’s about to say something, thinks better of it, then swallows and tries again.
“You actually like Julian, and he seems to be pretty serious about you,” she starts. “It’s been a long time since you’ve let anyone this far in…”
Oh bother. I know where this is going.
“You think I’m traumatized,” I finish.
“I think you’re understandably cautious, and that healing is a process, not a destination,” Winona amends.
“You’ve probably done all the work you can as a single woman.
But it looks different in the context of a relationship.
A lot of your fears that Julian might not be who he says he is, the distrust, might not have anything to really do with him.
” She silences my oncoming objection with a finger.
“I just want to encourage you to assess him for his actions. No one else’s.
” Her gaze becomes fierce. “Especially not Eric’s. ”
My blood chills when she says his name, but I know why she does, and know that she’s right. In trying to protect myself, I’ve painted Julian with a broad brush, one that overlays all his behavior with ill intent, and it’s not the first time I’ve been guilty of that with him.
“Okay, Dr. Evans,” I groan.
Winona rolls her eyes at me affectionately.
“Keep playing around, and I’ll run you a bill,” she teases.
The door to Steak ’n Shake bursts open, and Sophie walks out with a large milkshake in one hand and a bag of spoils in the other.
“You’re right,” I say as Sophie skips up to the car.
Winona unlocks the door and gives me a wink.
“I usually am.”
It takes me too long to fall asleep in Winona’s guest room.
A hand brushes past my temples. It is too dark to see, but I know who it belongs to.
“You ran off on me,” Julian whispers. “Why?”
I try to move, but my body is glued to the bed.
I am hyperaware of the heaviness of my arms at my sides, the weight of my head on Winona’s down pillow, but oddly, I’m not afraid.
This dream feels different from the others, like Julian has slid into a layer of my subconscious and is making pleasant conversation rather than pulling me into a new reality.
“You scare me sometimes,” I confess. I’m not sure if my mouth moves or if I am just thinking it, but either way, Julian hums in understanding.
“Is it strange that I find that exhilarating?”
“Absolutely,” I insist. “I would argue that strange is a gross understatement. Fucking terrifying is more like it.”
It shouldn’t be funny, but we laugh, and when we are done, I feel the mattress lift; he’s standing.
“You’re brilliant, Sean,” he says. “And perceptive. It’s one of the things I like most about you.”
“See?” I mutter. “That cryptic shit right there? Freaky.”
His chuckle fades into the darkness.
“Good night, songbird,” Julian whispers. And then he is gone, and so am I, drifting into sleep so peaceful that it feels like a small death.