Asher #4
He does, and after a few moments, the elevator closes, leaving me to stare at my distorted reflection in the metal.
That idiot liar has two women who want him enough to bear his children. Two.
My thoughts finally flitter back to Joss’s claims earlier that I’m some sort of catch. I roll those words over in my mind
and examine them. Joss’s opinion matters more than it should, but in most ways, it doesn’t matter at all.
Of all the people I know, I want her good opinion the most. But having it doesn’t change anything. Joss’s friendship, like
her opinion, holds too much weight. It’s priceless, irreplaceable even, but it’s still just a friendship.
We are only friends. Just acknowledging she might mean slightly more than that to me has guilt tugging at my edges. Feels like a betrayal,
conceptualizing something more, hypothetical as it may be.
She’s closed up behind her walls, and if I was going to be the one to break them down, it would have happened already.
And that is why her opinion shouldn’t matter.
But it does.
A bit irritating, that.
To distract myself, I text Geoff.
You down for a drink tonight?
Can’t tonight
Baby stuff.
IYKYK
Ah.
Have fun with that
Everything okay?
I was hoping to talk.
Who are you and what have you done with my friend Asher?
haha
nbd
We’ll talk later.
So I text Joss instead.
Want to be lonely together tonight?
Titty
Damn it!
I still don’t know why it does that.
I snort loudly into the empty space of the parking lot. Glad no one’s around to witness it.
I actually can’t tonight. Scheduled an evening facial. FaceTime after?
Sure thing
Everything okay?
Just a weird day.
I shake my head at the screen. It isn’t a weird day. This day sucks ass, and I decide to turn to the one guy who’s been there for every mistake and misstep, and has guided me out to the other side: my big brother.
“What’s doing, little bro?” Brandon says after the third ring.
“Nothing. Just had a bad day.”
He laughs in his loud, boisterous way. “How come you never call me on the good days?”
“I don’t need your dumbass voice on the good days.”
“All right, all right. What’s got you down in doctor land?”
I slip into my truck and turn on the engine, waiting for the Bluetooth to connect before speaking. “You remember Mrs. Givens
in tenth grade?”
He whistles. “Yeah. The witch gave me detention for dropping a pen once.”
“You remember the toilet paper prank?”
He cracks up on the other side of the line, and I chuckle as well, remembering how pissed the old crab was about having to
unspool layers and layers of toilet paper from around her desk.
“That was epic,” Brandon says. “Didn’t you put it around her car, too?”
“I had help for that part.”
“Classic.” His chuckles die off. “So what about it?”
“When she found out it was me, she told me that I act like a child, I’ll never amount to anything and no one will ever take
me seriously because I’m an absolute screwup.”
He curses under his breath. “The woman was awful, Ash. We all knew that.”
“Yeah.” I throw my truck into Reverse and back out of my parking space. “I think about that sometimes, though. It just . . .
It kind of feels like she was right.”
“Asher, you’re a doctor.” He says it like that’s all it takes to be winning at life.
Still feel like a fraud, though. Even with that meaningless MD after my name.
Okay, maybe not meaningless. Took a lot of work to get, actually. Wasted my twenties on it. So why does it feel trivial?
“Being a doctor isn’t enough,” I say. “I want to be a good doctor.”
“You are a good doctor. Do you know Mom reads us your patient reviews sometimes? She’s so fucking proud of you, man. And from what
I can tell, your patients think you hung the moon or some shit.”
“Not all of them,” I mutter.
“Well, yeah. No one can please everyone.”
I sigh. He doesn’t understand what it’s like to work so hard at something and still be found wanting.
“Your whole life, people have loved you from the second they meet you, Asher. You got Dad’s charm, and you’re damn lucky you
did. But maybe you’re so used to people loving you, that the few who don’t bother you more than they should.”
That rings true, but it doesn’t ease the ache that’s taken up residence in my chest, screaming You’re not good enough and everyone knows it.
“I’ll think about it,” I say. “Thanks for the advice.”
“Anytime, little bro. Talk later?”
“Yeah. Later.”
Jocelyn: I can’t FaceTime you. My face is bright red.
I don’t care what your face looks like
How dare you.
Rolling my eyes, I video chat her anyway. When her face pops into view on the screen, it’s indeed fire-engine red.
“Holy shit, cupcake. Did you let them douse you in acid?”
“Don’t look at me,” she fake screeches. “I’m hideous!”
“Does it hurt?” I perch on the armrest of my sofa.
The screen jostles, and suddenly she’s in her bed, snuggled up with a million pillows. “Nah. Looks worse than it is. So hey,
did you reach a sudden epiphany about your greatness after our chat today?”
“Not exactly.”
She squints at the screen, probably reading my thoughts through a ticker visible only to her. Not sure how she does that.
“What’s that mean?” she asks.
I slide down the armrest onto my couch while tension gnaws into my chest wall. “It’s . . . nothing.”
“No, it isn’t. Talk to me, Foley! I’m a great listener. I gasp in all the right places.” She raises her eyebrows, expectant
and waiting for me to spill.
Temptation drags against my spine. What would happen if I divulged all these ridiculous thoughts? Would she laugh in my face?
Invalidate my feelings? Get all awkward and push me off the phone?
Or would she listen? Understand? Make it better?
She’s trustworthy. She’s here. She wants to talk about this.
Sweet, wonderful woman.
In a great rush, everything pours out of me.
All the self-doubt. The unguarded vulnerability.
The disgusting lack of confidence. The desire to be taken seriously.
Work. Women. Life. I lay it all on the line.
I tear her idealized version of me—the one that doesn’t exist—to the ground and piss all over it.
Because she’s mistaken, right? I’m a total fraud.
Or maybe I’m just hoping she’ll prove me wrong, that she’ll have some magical combination of words that will erase these insecurities.
I really don’t mean for it to happen. Years of growing angst has finally overflowed, and she’s the sieve beneath, sifting
out the anxiety. Some of these thoughts I’ve never spoken aloud, not even to my therapist, but they gush out of me now, and
she listens.
Wholeheartedly.
Empathetically.
Like she truly cares.
Joss is always so unapologetically herself, ugly parts and all. After so many years, it’s about time I trust her with my ugly
parts, too.
Though I sort of wish there weren’t any ugly parts. Want to be bright and shiny all the time. Is that too much to ask?
When I finish, her eyes are glistening in her crimson face.
“Oh, god.” I pull the screen closer to study her expression. “You aren’t going to cry, are you?”
“No!” She sniffles. “Why w-would I do that?”
I laugh. Awkward and forced, but still a laugh to hide behind. Might die from humiliation any second. Does she pity me? My silly struggles have her in tears. “Why the fuck are you crying, J?”
“I’m just on my period or something. Shut up.” She wipes her face. “I don’t even know what to say other than that you’re wrong.
You’re, like, so, so wrong. Like, wronger than those publishing houses who rejected Stephen King. Wronger than the people who believed in Y2K.
Asher, you are more wrong than that guy who said the Titanic was unsinkable.”
At this point, I’m scrunched into a corner of my couch, one hand covering my face while the other holds the phone. “I can’t believe I told you all that. Can we forget this and go to bed?”
“No. We absolutely will not do that.”
I chance a glance at her face, still wet. “I made you cry.”
“Shut up. I’m just a little leaky.”
“Why?”
“Because this is sad, Asher! I’m so sad you don’t know how special you are.”
“If by special you mean pitiful,” I say in a teasing tone, fully embracing the self-mockery—my last remaining defense mechanism.
Can a wormhole open up right now and take me back in time? How about a black hole? Can I just cease to exist?
“You know, from the outside, no one would ever guess you think like this. Do you have any idea how confident you come across?
I’m just . . . I’m shocked.”
“We’ve all got our secrets, Miss I-guard-my-emotions-like-a-gold-filled-chest.”
“I’m choosing to ignore that little dig on account of you’re fundamentally broken and I need to fix you.” She sets the phone
on something and backs away, so I can see a little more of her. She’s sitting cross-legged on her bed, blanketed in an oversize
T-shirt that says “I LIKE PEOPLE (under general anesthesia).” She puts her hands out, fingers splayed, all I’ve got a plan! “Okay. So here’s what you’re going to do. Every time a patient lets you help her through a difficult moment. Every time a
resident says they love working with you. Every patient review that throws up five stars. You snapshot those moments in your
mind and remind yourself that’s all that matters.”
That’s what my therapist said. Feels more reasonable coming from Joss, though. Less silly. Still, I’m not so sure. “I don’t
think—”
“No! There are no buts. You will do this, and you will like it. Every good thing that happens to you—snapshot. Okay?”
I’m very well trained, so I know the correct answer here is a simple, “Okay.”
She smiles.
See? Compliance. Pleases even the grumpiest of people.
“You are good enough just as you are,” she says. “And if someone isn’t taking you seriously, then you don’t need them in your
life anyway, so good riddance.”
“Yeah. Bye, Felicia.”
She sets her fists on her hips. “You aren’t being serious on purpose.”
“To be honest, I’m doing my very best not to end this call right now, cancel our friendship out of self-preservation and never
speak to you again. This is giving me a stress ulcer.”
She snorts. “Whatever. You clearly needed to get all that off your chest. Don’t get awkward now. Don’t you feel better?”
Yes. Sort of. Still dealing with this gnawing pain in my stomach.
Need Tums.
Should probably see a gastroenterologist.
“You have all my secrets,” I say. “The balance of our friendship has shifted. You need to tell me something I don’t know about
you before I die of a heart attack brought on by embarrassment and the revolting sight of your blood-red face.”
She sends me a flat stare that translates through the tiny screen as If I was there, you’d be in pain right now.
“Fine,” she says. “How about this? I really don’t like people thinking I’m slutty for having one-night stands.”
Ah. This again.
“You’ve actually already told me that.” Along with a lot of other confusing drunken things before she passed out at a medical conference last year.
Her eyebrows shoot up. “I have?”
“In Vegas. Remember how drunk you got? Drunk Joss is very melancholy.”
She giggles, but the sound is tight, a bit uneasy. “Oh, man. I was smashed. I can’t believe I told you that. That’s my deepest,
darkest fear.”
No. She’s got something far deeper and darker in there. It’s always lurked between us. I wish she’d tell me what it is. Sometimes
I wonder what we’d be without it. Like always, I won’t press her, but I want her to confide in me more than I want to rewind
time right now. “You have to tell me something that’s new to me, not new to you.”
She looks up, thoughtful. “All right. Here’s something you’d never guess. I secretly wish Cassie was nice to me.”
Ha. Not what I was expecting, but okay. “Really?”
“Yeah. Like, why does she hate me? What did I even do to her?”
“Maybe you should ask.”
She jerks back. “Ew. Don’t be extra. That sounds like a lot of work.”
Always quick to dole out advice, never one to take it. “You’re a lot of work.”
A proud grin stretches over her scarlet face, and it strikes me somewhere deep in my chest, kicking my heart up a gear. That’s
weird. Probably just the anxiety. Or the embarrassment. Or the peculiar feeling that this girl is sinking into my skin like
sunlight, altering my very DNA.
No, not that last one. I’m tired. That’s all.
Ignore, ignore, ignore.
“But you really need to do something about your skin,” I say, “because you look like Hellboy.”
The grin falls. “You’re dead to me. You’re wonderful, but dead to me. I’m done with you.”
And with that, she disconnects, leaving me to stare at my own tired face, glowing on the screen.