Chapter 15 Audra
AUDRA
Watching the clock at work, I was getting poutier with every minute going by.
The other night the girls talked about going to a traveling flea market and I was bummed I couldn’t join them.
I bet they were at some completely outlandish tent, laughing and having a ball, while I was at the hospital trying to convince my attending doctor we needed to hire more nurses.
Spoiler alert, it was falling on deaf ears.
I was so fed up. If we had accreditation come in at this very second, we’d be docked for our ratio of nurse to patient being way out of whack.
My happy place today was thinking about karaoke on Friday.
I loved that Donovan just kind of fit right into our little crew.
I was really enjoying getting to know him.
The fact that the twins invited him to their sacred poker night was a great sign, too.
You had to be real good people to get an invite to that, and he got it after a single outing.
By the time my shift was over, I couldn’t wait to get out of there. But when I made it to my car in the parking lot, I saw a most unwelcome sight.
“Audra. What’s up, sexy girl?” Everything about that raised my hackles. The way he was just standing there, the way he said sexy girl, like that was a clever nickname, the way he looked at me. All of it.
“Why are you here, Theo? Do you need emergency care?” I asked. There was a tiny part of me that got scared he was hurt, but when I gave him a quick once-over with my eyes, he seemed fine.
“Just wondering what you’re doing tonight.”
What the hell? “What does it matter to you?” I asked, confused. I may have answered with a little more attitude than I intended to. Or maybe it’s exactly how I wanted to sound.
“Come to dinner with me. Or let’s get a drink.” He said it like we were old friends. Like there was anything left between us. Like I was still willing to play his stupid games.
“Yeah, no, Theo. That train left the station years ago. When you broke up with me and told me I could be your mistress.”
“You still like jumping on board occasionally, though, don’t ya?” His smarmy smile made my skin crawl. I had made a handful of poor decisions since we had broken up for good, one more recently than I’d like to admit, but I was completely, irrevocably, one hundred percent done with him.
“That was inappropriate, Theodore.” I used his full name when I wanted to piss him off. “Unless you want me to contact your mother to tell her you’re propositioning the town peasant, accept my ‘no’ and leave me alone.”
“We’ll see, Audra.” He said, taking steps backwards, but still looking at me. “We’ll see.”
The encounter rattled me so much that I locked my door when I got in the car.
Then the thought hit me—what the hell was he even doing at the hospital?
Did he wait outside specifically to ask me to dinner?
I was thrown off enough to text Bennett and ask him if I could hang out for a little.
The girls were off doing their thing, so I couldn’t call them, but I wasn’t quite ready to make it back home.
Even though I had texted him, he called me back right away.
“I’m heading home from Whiskey Summer.” He didn’t even say hello. Whisky Summer was another bar they owned in a different town. “I’ll be home in thirty, you okay?”
“Yeah…” I trailed off even though I didn’t mean to.
“What’s wrong, Audra?”
“Nothing, honest, just … I got off work and don’t want to go home quite yet.”
“Yeah, head over. I’ll be there soon. I’ll call Murph to let him know you’re coming too.”
Thankful for my friend, I drove right on over to Waterlily Lane. Murphy and their beefcake of a dog, Jenkins, were on the porch waiting for us.
“Hey, Audra!” Murphy said, standing to greet me. I’m sure Bennett told him to proceed with caution because something was up. “You wanna go inside, or just hang out here and kill time playing phone games?”
“I’ll do you one better. How about I cook if you haven’t eaten yet?
I might just run downstairs to shower first, then I’ll find stuff in the fridge?
” I suggested. The three of us had such a comfortable sibling dynamic, and since cooking was a way for me to decompress, this was perfect.
Plus, they always had stuff in their house to cook.
“Not going to say no to that.” He said, sitting back down.
“You know where all the stuff is downstairs.” The twins were overly hospitable.
Their entire basement was like a hotel, and the people close to them used it like that.
There were towels, extra clothes we left there, and all kinds of shampoos and conditioners.
It didn’t happen often, but it’s not the first time I’ve showered in their basement.
In this case, I had to wash the hospital away; that was always my first move when I got home.
When I was all clean, I came back upstairs with wet hair, and Bennett was sitting in the kitchen reading his book. He didn’t even look up, just spoke.
“You showered here instead of at home. What’s going on?”
“Nothing, B. Really.”
“Audra King, you know me. You know I will not let this go.”
“I just…” Knowing I would not get out of the conversation without a small explanation, I tried to give the vaguest answer I could. “Theo kind of freaked me out today.”
“Theo?” He put the book down and looked up, narrowing his eyes at me, discerning what exactly I was trying to say. “What did that fucking guy do?”
“Nothing, really. He saw me after my shift and asked me to dinner.”
“And him asking you to dinner freaked you out?” He questioned.
“Not that he asked me to dinner. Just, kind of, I don’t know.
Something felt a little off, Bennett. I can’t even put my finger on it.
Honestly, I think everything is fine, he just caught me after a tough shift.
I didn’t feel like heading home yet. Plus, I wanted company for dinner.
” How do you explain how innocent words made you feel off?
When Bennett repeated my complaint back to me, it sounded like a foolish reason to be put off.
Maybe the way he was looking at me or the tone of his voice?
But I couldn’t capture that in words. All I knew was that there’s a reason people say you should trust your gut, and my gut after today was uneasy.
“You sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“I’m taking your answer at face value. If you want to continue the conversation, you know where to find me. So anyway, what are you making me?” He laughed, dropping the Theo stuff.
“Whatever I can find in this godforsaken house.” I joked with him.
And after that, we just fell into our normal routine.
I ended up taking a bedroom for the night because I was too tired to head home, but that gut feeling about Theo was still pinging around as I closed my eyes.
Something just wasn’t right about today, but it was confusing because all he did was ask me to dinner or drinks.
Yeah, the disrespectful comment was thrown in, but nothing about it was aggressive.
I don’t know; maybe I was just overreacting because he was really starting to get under my skin.