38. Jo
Chapter 38
Jo
“ D r. Carello,” a soft woman’s voice greets me as I peruse the refreshments table. I turn to find Victoria Lyon holding a white paper plate stacked with fruits and cheeses. “Your presentation was phenomenal.”
“Oh,” I pause, setting down my plate on the edge of the table next to the tray of mini sandwiches. “Thank you, Dr. Lyon. To be honest, I was incredibly nervous.” She shifts from one heeled foot to the other, glancing from me, to the ground, and back.
“Deep neural networks in psychiatric disorders have always fascinated me.” She clears her throat. “It’s interesting looking at it from a stress and mental health perspective.”
I nod, unsure how to respond. “My life’s work,” I laugh.
A beat of silence passes, but she speaks up again. “Would you want to grab coffee before the next panel?”
“S-sure,” I stutter, a sudden feeling of unease flooding my body from top to bottom. “The place across the street is way better than the nonsense they’re serving here,” I say with more confidence, nodding towards the self-serve coffee station in the corner of the room.
Bustling with conference attendees, we are lucky to find the very last open table at the coffee shop. Victoria gestures for me to sit, but remains standing. “Let me get you something,” she says.
“You don’t have to do tha?—”
“I want to,” she cuts me off. “Please let me.”
“Just a hot coffee with almond milk, please.” I let through a gentle smile as she turns and walks toward the counter. She’s back with our two coffees before my brain has time to even process the fact that I’m sitting at a table with Isaac’s ex-fiancée.
“So…” Victoria wraps her fingers around the mug in front of her, blowing gently on the rising swirls of steam. Her eyes flick to mine. “How’ve you been?”
Interesting conversation starter…
I slide one finger through the handle of my mug and pull it toward me. “Oh, you know,” I laugh. “Living the dream.” It’s only partial sarcasm.
For the first time in a very long time, things feel still. The anxiety of this trip and extra time with Isaac has dissipated, and my brain feels mostly content. She eyes me contemplatively, waiting for me to continue.
“No, really, I’m good,” I continue, nodding. “Being back at MMCI has been an adventure.”
She smiles down at her cup. “How has it been having Isaac back?” I nearly choke on my first sip of coffee. “I mean back at MMCI,” she corrects, the tips of her ears turning a familiar shade of pink. “How is it having him back on campus?” Victoria covers half her face by lifting up her mug. She stares at me over the edge of the white porcelain.
“It’s been—” I pause, making a wholehearted attempt to find a word to describe every rogue emotion I’ve experienced over the last few months. “Good.”
She takes a sip of her coffee as silence falls over us once more. I clear my throat.
“So, where are you work?—”
“There’s something I need to tell you,” she blurts before I can finish my small talk question. My teeth clamp shut, likely loud enough for her to hear. “I assume you know at this point that Isaac and I never got married.”
I nod silently, studying the lines of anxiety on her forehead. “He did mention that.”
“Did he tell you why?”
I blow air through my nose, remembering our brief encounter in the classroom. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. “As I recall, he said ‘ Victoria is much smarter than me’ or something like that.”
The band of tension that has surrounded us since our hellos finally breaks, and we both fall into a fit of laughter. “Well, he’s not wrong about that,” she says between snorts. “He is a man.”
I nod, and the smirk on my face falls slightly when I see the lines of worry return to Victoria’s forehead. “Did he do something to you?” I’m not sure where the defensiveness comes from, but I swear, if he did anything to hurt her, they’ll find his body in the cadaver lab on campus.
“Oh my God, no, no, no.” She waves her hands in a desperate attempt to clear away my thoughts. “Never. Isaac is stupid, but he’s not that stupid.” My shoulders relax to their normal anatomical position. She takes a slow, deep breath. “I was the one that ended our engagement.” Repositioning myself in the coffee shop chair, my brain plays all the interactions I ever had with Victoria. Though most of them are stained with a tinge of green jealousy, not once was she ever mean or ill-willed. “Do you remember the weekend we all went to Golden Hour? I think it was right after midterms?”
How could I not remember? Isaac walked into the bar with Victoria on his arm. They were picture perfect by the door while Andrew berated me for having another drink. “I remember,” I say quietly.
“It must’ve been after midterms.” She silently recounts the events before speaking again. “I got a call from Ana. Do you remember Ana Arroyo?” I nod.
“She was Carmen’s lab partner all the time.”
“Yeah!” Victoria continues. “She called me and told me that you were at Golden Hour with your boyfriend.” I huff out a pathetic laugh.
“Ex,” I correct. “Good riddance to that one.”
“She told me I needed to get Isaac there. So I did.” I eye her curiously. “And honestly, it was a good thing I did.” I clear my throat as embarrassment washes through me. Everyone saw how Andrew treated me that day. And everyone saw Victoria wrap me in Isaac’s coat before he escorted me out of the front door. And everyone saw me fall back into the toxic, familiar pattern after Isaac left.
They are right when they say that hindsight is 20/20.
“Yeah,” I whisper, still wholly unsure of how this relates to the end of their engagement. “Thank you for that.”
She nods, sucking her teeth. “We spent so many years trying to get you two together.”
Record scratch .
Excuse me, what?
My eyebrows draw together in a combination of confusion and interest. I’m going to need her to elaborate.
“Oh?” I say, prompting her for more.
“I can’t believe neither of you saw it,” she laughs. “Honestly, Carmen was the only one who thought it was a bad idea.”
I roll my eyes. Carmen has always been vocal about how Isaac and I together would screw everything up.
Well, everything got screwed up anyway.
“I really had no idea,” I say, and she laughs again.
“Completely oblivious.”
“Okay, I’ll ask the stupid question,” I start. “What does that have to do with you and Isaac?” A crowd of conference attendees piles through the door, happily chatting about the most recent research presentations. We should be getting back soon for the afternoon panel.
“It was partly my fault,” she says. “I tried so hard to get you two together that I—” she slouches back into her chair, never breaking eye contact. “I spent so much time with him that I fell in love with him.” She finally looks away. “And I’m fairly certain I convinced him to love me too.”
“Oh.”
“It wasn’t right Jo. We weren’t meant to be together.” The noise of the coffee shop fades into the background. “We both knew it.”
“I… I’m not sure what to say.” A bus boy clears our empty coffee cups.
“This is probably too little too late, but when I saw you sitting next to his hospital bed, I just knew. We ended it that day.”
He called me over and over and over again that week. I never picked up. The same bus boy comes back with two paper to-go cups filled to the brim with steaming coffee.
“Thank you,” we say synchronously.
“Isaac and I were better as friends anyway. It took me a while to see it through my rose-colored glasses, but that man adores you.” I harumph.
“If he adores me, he’s got a funny way of showing it…”
“Have you ever asked him why he came back?” she says, and I swallow hard, a harsh realization bubbling to the forefront of my consciousness. “He did his fellowship at Brigham. He could’ve gone anywhere .”
I nod. She’s absolutely right. A neuroscience residency and fellowship at an incredible school. Every door was open for him, yet he chose to find his way back to MMCI.
To me .
I clear my throat, attempting to work through the possibility that Isaac followed me here. It just doesn’t make sense. A sudden and unexpected clamminess of my palms has me wiping them on my pant legs.
“I guess I was too caught up in the past.” I shrug, assuring my brain that in no world would Isaac Britlyn change the course of his success for me. After everything? He never chose me before, what would make him choose me now?
I clear my throat, picking up my coffee and pushing to stand. Victoria follows my lead. “Maybe it’s time to start getting caught up in the future,” she says matter-of-factly. “Talk to him.”
I nod, the lump in my throat becoming too large to ignore. “Thank you, V.”