Chapter 10
10
GUY ‘FOSTER’
I don’t know what the uncomfortable silence radiating through my hospital room is exactly. But I wish Matty would read me and shut the fuck up before he says too much and sends Eve sprinting away from me already. Sure, I’ve daydreamed about this moment for the last five years, but honestly, I never expected to see her again, and certainly not in this way. But she’s in my hospital room and has been for days on end. I feel like that’s a big enough sign that I need to spend some time with her until I can figure out when the right moment to say what I’ve meant to say and have never had the balls to say is. All I know is that the time is not now.
‘You told her you two were still married, didn’t you?’ Matty accuses Eve.
Her eyes widen. ‘I had to, because to get into ICU you must be close or family.’ She glances up at Matty, then at me and guilt flashes across her face. ‘My heart couldn’t let him be alone, so I left out one word and nobody asked questions. Anyone could have walked in here and done it, had they known Foster’s full name.’
Her heart couldn’t let me be alone. The beeping to my left speeds and Eve’s gaze moves to the monitor.
‘You alright?’ she asks, standing with worry.
‘Fine,’ I lie, rubbing my chest. Slow down, heart. She’s gonna know what you’re up to and that’ll make her run.
‘Wow,’ Matty says with a laugh. ‘If it’s that easy, you could have ended up with way worse than your ex-wife here. Gia could be sitting in that exact chair right now complaining about that soup. How she hates plastic cutlery. Bitchin’ about the AC blowing down on her and drying out her hair. And I don’t doubt sterile environments make her feel just as icky as hot days on the track do.’
Matty and I share a full-body shiver, only I groan through mine as it sends pain through my body.
‘Who’s Gia?’ Eve asks, suddenly interested.
‘Asks the girl who knows Google me better than I do,’ I tease, drinking the last of the lobster bisque that I don’t remember ordering. It’s alright – sort of bland, but I’m pretty sure I’m on the bland food diet right now. I’ve got apple juice, a now-empty soup bowl, and green Jell-O sitting in front of me. I wonder if Chelsea specifically requested the green because of my bike color? Not that she’s a fan, but by now I’m sure Eve’s convinced her to do a little digging – it was one of Eve’s favorite things to do, Google Foster – then quiz me on the information to see how much of it was true. I didn’t hate the game because it gave me a chance to clear some shit up.
Based on the shy smile creeping up on her face, I’d say she doesn’t want to admit the Google thing, or she’s not done it this time. But I know this woman – or at least I did – and I’d say she’s for sure googled me recently. And she knows exactly who Gia is.
When neither Matty nor I answer her question, she continues. ‘Did you really refuse to marry her?’
I chuckle, coughing as I’ve still got a tickle in my throat that’s driving me up a wall. ‘Yes. I refused to marry Gia.’
‘Why?’ she asks, seemingly perplexed. ‘She’s like – perfect.’
‘She did Google you,’ Matty says, midway through a third burger.
Eve looks at me, her interest clearly piqued.
I grab my juice cup, peeling off the metallic seal. ‘Gia wasn’t my girl.’
Matty is nodding his head repeatedly. ‘He found that out when he called her by the wrong name when she popped the question.’
Eve’s eyes widen and her brows furrow in curiosity. She tilts her head slightly to the side, her gaze fixed on the object in front of her – me.
‘Whose name?’ she finally asks.
Matty laughs, not holding back even a little, shaking his head and taking another bite of his burger. Thanks for the help, man.
‘Uh—yours,’ I admit.
Yep. It happened. After casually dating Gia for about a year, she one day dropped down onto one knee at the side of the track after a comp and actually said the words: ‘Will you marry me?’ I swear, my heart actually stopped. And in that second, the name of the one person who could make it start again left my lips. A name that got me punched – the video’s online – by Gia, right in the fucking nose. It wasn’t my finest moment, that’s for sure. The only thing that still stands out about Gia for me is her smile – she had a great smile. Too bad it was a facade for the entitled thirty-year-old beneath. I’d never missed Eve so much as I did while I was dating Gia.
‘Google “Famous 15 gets punched”,’ Matty tells her.
‘Don’t,’ I advise. ‘How about we change the subject? I dreamed of you.’ I say the words I wasn’t planning on saying, catching Matty off guard as he glances my way curiously. I look at Eve instead. ‘While I was sleeping, after the accident, I dreamed of our first date. And that poker night where you whooped everyone’s ass.’
She smiles, her cheeks growing pink again. I don’t remember her blushing this much before, but my mind is foggy.
‘By the way, tell your friend Kait she owes me a Voodoo box before I leave this place, as payback for tormenting me with the smell as I lay in confusion a few days ago.’
She grins. ‘OK…’
‘They didn’t feel like dreams,’ I continue. ‘It was more like… I was there. In the moment. Then something would snap me back to reality and I’d know I’d been awake the whole time, but it’s like my soul went to revisit the past.’ I run my hand over my head, shaking out my hair that hasn’t been washed since I got here and is probably filled with dust from the track. ‘Does that even make sense?’
‘I get it,’ Eve says. ‘Like an out-of-body experience. But instead of seeing the present, you relived the past.’
‘Yes,’ I say with as much enthusiasm as I’ve had since I got here. ‘The only thing missing was the ghost of Foster’s past.’
She laughs.
‘Pain meds can be a real roller coaster of an experience according to patients I’ve worked with. When I had my wisdom teeth pulled out a few years ago, I got an unexpected package days later.’ She shakes her head. ‘Do not shop while medicated, is my only advice. I now own what Amazon calls a naughty boy lamp, which is a lamp shaped like a boy wearing a black lampshade, and the off and on toggle switch is located where his wiener would be.’ She presses her lips into a flat line, clearly regretful of this purchase.
I let out a laugh that sends me into another coughing fit. I hold my injured arm closer to my side, attempting to reassure my broken ribs that they will survive this.
‘I named him Willy,’ she continues, this time making Matty nearly spit his black coffee at her. ‘I smile every time I turn him on and off.’
This is the Eve I remember. She’s funny. Witty. Laughing at her own joke. Note to self: look this lamp up to get a full visual later.
‘Don’t trust your judgment right now, is all I’m saying.’
Touché. This girl just changed the subject without me even noticing. Distracting me from telling stories of daydreaming of her. Do I make her nervous? We’re quiet for too many seconds and Matty can’t take it; I see him fidgeting.
‘So, Eve, you work here? What do you do?’ he asks.
She works here. That’s right. My mind is loopy at best and that day in the ER feels like forever ago. I do remember her saying my name. The rest of her words were a jumble because I thought my heart was going to stop right then and there with her familiar voice. Never had I let myself forget this woman. I’d memorized everything, and I think of her often. I just always hoped she’d reach out to me so I wouldn’t look desperate. She left me. I wasn’t going to chase down a woman who only left a note – a note I’ve had memorized for five years.
‘I’m a trauma nurse in the emergency room.’
‘Oh,’ he says, stunned. ‘You were there when Foster came in? Like in the trauma room?’
Her eyes meet mine as she nods her head softly. ‘I was.’
‘How was that?’ Matt asks.
‘Um…’ She takes a breath. ‘Terrifying.’ Her gaze doesn’t leave mine and I see fear in her eyes.
She was terrified, yet she’s here now. Not Gia. Maybe there is a God.
‘I didn’t realize you’d become a nurse,’ Matty says. ‘But I didn’t know you long either, did I?’
‘My early twenties were kind of messy,’ she says, scrunching her face. ‘Got my nursing license when I came back to Oregon and I’ve worked here ever since. Lots of hours – so I don’t have a lot of time for myself. But, on Saturdays, my best friend and I go to the farmer’s market, that’s always fun.’
‘Huh,’ Matty says. ‘Well good for you. You still single?’
My heart nearly flatlines. Why is he asking that?
‘I got engaged?—’
‘You’re engaged?’ The words just tumble out of my mouth, surrounded by disbelief and jealousy.
‘Two years ago,’ she finishes her sentence. ‘It didn’t work out.’ She frowns, clasping her hands between her knees and fidgeting with a ring on her middle finger.
Matty and my eyes meet. I don’t know what he’s trying to say to me but I feel like it’s ‘Do not do this again, dumbass.’ Or maybe I’m seeing, ‘Shoot your shot, bud.’ Either way, he should know by now that I never listen. I’m alive and that feels lucky. I don’t want to press that.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say to her, sincerely being sorry that she was so obviously hurt, but not denying that knowing she’s single sparks something up in my chest. Something I don’t have the brain capacity to think through right now.