Jocelyn
You have an entire meadow in your heart you’ve watered with fear, but loneliness makes an ugly garden.
—My Therapist
Several days after we return from Florida, profound worry has sunken its claws in me.
I think I’ve lost Asher. He won’t talk to me, not like he used to. He still smiles—mostly. Still chats. But something’s different.
Colder.
And why wouldn’t it be?
I’m in love with you.
My entire body breaks out in a cold sweat every time I remember the way his voice sounded when he said those words. Resonant
and resigned. Dejected. Like he knew before I even spoke what my response would be.
But of course that was my response.
I can’t.
I just . . . can’t.
Dispirited in the OR physician lounge on Thursday, I stare between the vinyl blinds to the outdoor courtyard a floor below.
It’s noon, so nurses eating lunch have taken most of the tables. I have no appetite, but the cozy scent of brewing coffee
on the other side of the room does draw my attention.
Cassie stands at the brew station. Because of course she does. My week couldn’t get worse, so let’s throw her in the mix, too. Her painted nails tap on the laminate countertop
while the brown liquid fills the pot before her.
I turn back to the courtyard. It’s a much prettier view.
You don’t need to qualify it, Jocelyn.
But I want to so bad. He needs to know why. It isn’t him. I’d give him everything if I had anything left to give, but I’m broken. Half-living.
Sharing that night with him only confirmed I’m not brave enough, not strong enough, to raze my own vicious shortcomings. My
emotional handicaps.
I can’t have him every day, listen to his smooth voice whispering how much he loves me in my ear, then lose it. Far easier
to never have it at all. It’s such bullshit, the whole better to have loved and lost schtick. It’s a lie we tout to widows to make them feel better about being halved by death.
I want to explain this to Asher. He knows my past. He’ll understand if he lets me tell him. We can go back to how it was before.
Right?
“Trouble in paradise?” Cassie sits on the sofa across from me, blowing on a mug of fresh coffee.
I blink a few times and turn to her. “Huh?”
“Your boyfriend asked me to have someone else cover his cases the other day. Figured you guys were in a lover’s spat.”
He asked her to move me? That’s—
Ow.
This is worse than I thought if he’s actively removing me from his day-to-day life. God, I really am losing him, aren’t I?
The thought makes my eyes prickle, pushes fine-tipped needles straight into the most vulnerable places of my heart, but I
refuse to cry in front of her.
With a sip of her coffee, she lifts an eyebrow. She’s not gloating, which is . . . weird.
“He’s not my boyfriend,” I say.
Her lip quirks. “Then how do you know who I’m talking about?”
My stare transitions into a glare, and I face her. “What do you want, Cassie?”
“Nothing. Was just curious. Thought you guys would have kissed and made up by now.”
I lean forward, resting my elbows on my knees. “Is it any of your business whether we’ve kissed and made up?”
“No.” She sets her mug on the side table and sighs. “Listen. I’m, uh, sorry, or whatever, for, you know, that stuff I said
at Asher’s the other day. Or whatever.”
Nonplussed, my glare does not abate. “Which part?”
The cat eyeliner somehow sharpens when her lids lower to stare at her nails. “Hmm?”
“Which part specifically are you apologizing for? The part where you implied I’m an alcoholic, or the part where you shamed
me for using dating apps?”
She sighs. “All of it, I guess. It was a bad time for me. My ex had said some not nice things that morning, and I just— I’m
sorry, okay?”
I let out a bitter laugh. “One grand, sweeping gesture, then?”
Her gaze snaps up, eyes blazing. “I don’t like you.
” She leans back and crosses her legs. “I won’t lie and say I do.
Every word you speak, everything you do .
. . They feel like a front, like you’re wearing a shield, and no one is important enough to lower it for, not even your friends. I tried in the beginning, but—”
“You tried? What do you mean you tried?”
“The girls and I invited you out several times when you started.”
What? No, they didn’t! “That’s not how I remember it.”
She curls her lip. “I’m not surprised. You barely even acknowledged I said anything. Always hiding behind that front. Posturing.”
Is she calling me a poser?
“What the—”
In a cutting gesture, she raises a hand. Everything about her is razor-edged. “I’m not going to argue. I was only trying to
say that I don’t like you, but I’m not a cruel person, and what I said that day was mean. You didn’t deserve it. I was . . .
not in a good place. I apologize.”
I want to tell her to piss off. My gut instinct is a raging bull of indignation and resentment. How dare she perceive the
hostility between us as my fault? I’ve done nothing wrong.
Or . . . have I?
I try to recall my first days at the hospital. What had Cassie said?
The girls and I are heading to a wine bar.
The girls and I do an annual Christmas exchange.
The girls and I are attending the medical society dinner.
All in her haughty Cassie voice. Was I supposed to take those blunt statements as invitations? Where was the additional Would you like to come?
She thinks I hide behind a front? I don’t. I hide behind fear.
Which is . . . a thinly veiled front, I guess. Shit. Is this what people think? That I’m fake because I won’t engage below the surface? I’m just trying to protect myself.
I think you need to focus on what you have, not what you have the potential to lose.
You aren’t running, Joss. You’re hiding.
Argh! Why is his voice popping up now? Stupid Asher and his wise observations about my life. I swallow down the urge to spew
hatred and try to smile instead. “Thanks.”
“Wow. You look like you’re in pain.” Laughing, Cassie takes her mug and stands. “Good luck with your non-boyfriend thing. I heard he’s taking a resident out this weekend, so I guess you’re not lying.”
Too shocked to respond, I only watch as she struts away, the boxy hospital scrubs somehow flattering her enviable figure.
Asher asked someone else out? Some resident? Only days after claiming he’s in love with me?
. . . And I rejected him.
He didn’t even give me a chance to explain, and he’s moving on?
Cassie’s at the threshold of the lounge, one foot in the hallway beyond when my impulsive mouth betrays me. “Which resident?”
Pausing, she looks back at me, then laughs. “You don’t even know which one? You must have really fucked up.”
She walks away, shaking her head, and I’m left to question how my heart is pounding so hard when it has ceased to exist.
When I arrive home, I make a PB&J and open EverX. The app has been useless to me over the past couple months, but I need it
now. If Asher’s going to be seriously dating, I’ll require distraction.
I scroll through my matches while my jaw fights with the overload of peanut butter in my mouth. My attention snags on a familiar picture.
Ashton.
Still labeled Sebastian on his profile.
Without stopping to consider, I open his message stream.
You still dtf?
Aren’t you the girl who said I look weird?
I said you look like someone I know
There’s a difference
So I don’t look like him anymore?
No. You still do.
But I no longer care.
Sounds like a win for me.
Tmrw?
After that’s settled, I call my sister and spill everything: the words Asher said, his heart-stopping declarations, his artistry
in bed.
“Do you love him back?” Ali asks after skiving off details of the sex the same way she’d take a peeler to a carrot.
“I don’t . . . I don’t know.”
“You do know. Even I know.” She sighs. “Why can’t you admit it?”
Bent over my kitchen table, I drop my forehead to my arm. “How was it so easy for you to fall in love with Nic? Weren’t you
scared?”
“Of course I was scared, but I married him when I was twenty. Before Leo. Just after you lost Aiden. For me, burying Aiden was a sign I needed to love Nic faster and harder because I didn’t know how much time we had.
For you, burying Aiden was proof love hurts.
That isn’t a lesson you unlearn. It’s something you have to charge through and break apart. ”
My voice drops to a whisper. “I don’t know how.”
“Think about it like a math equation. Is losing him now worth it? Are you saving yourself pain in the long run?”
I tap my fingernails on the wood table. One, two, three, four.
“You’re in for pain either way,” Ali says in my silence. “You can pretend you don’t know if you love him, but we both know
you’re lying. You’re in love with that man from the bottom of your feet to the top of your fake platinum head. So, the question
becomes . . . if I took him from you now, would the pain be any less today than it will be in five years? Twenty years? A
lifetime?”
“I can’t answer that question,” I snap. “How do I know what it’ll feel like in five years? I can only assume I’ll continue
to fall deeper and deeper in love with him every day. I’ll continue to attach more and more of myself to him. Sounds like
that will hurt a hell of a lot more.”
“No, Leo! Don’t touch that!” Ali’s words drift away, then return. “Your nephew is a frickin’ mess. Listen, Joss. Can you imagine
pain worse than losing him today?”
I can’t. I can’t imagine it, but I’m still scared. It’s fucking illogical. Why can’t we go back to how we were? Why is that
so hard?
The thick knot in my throat is difficult to speak past. “He has a date tomorrow with another girl.”
“Then maybe you’ve already lost your chance. If he wants to move on, you have to let him. It isn’t fair to hold him back when
you don’t want him.”
I growl into the phone. “You have zero empathy.”
“You don’t need empathy. You need a kick in the ass.”
Nic’s voice filters through the speaker, as if from far away. “Jeez. Who are you talking to?”
“My sister,” says Ali.