20. Chapter Twenty
Chapter 20
While her twin greeted her with demands and attitude, Sorcha greeted her like a long-lost bestie. Just what she needed.
Entering their apartment, Linda’s eyes swept over everything in her line of sight: their living room, dining room, and kitchen. It was a modest apartment where she’d lived some of the best times of her life.
She’d lived with Sorcha for four years and often wondered which one of them would move on first. Her money was on Sorcha falling in love and moving out. She had plans to convert Sorcha’s bedroom into a craft room/office, and now maybe her business command center, when Sorcha left.
Sorcha squeezed her twice and grabbed one of the cat carriers out of her hand. “Oh, the babies are home!” she squealed, quickly putting the carrier down and releasing the latch. Missy ran out quickly and ran to the empty food dish. She sat primly and thumped her tail twice.
“Patience,” Linda called, opening the door to Buddy’s carrier. He followed his sister and meowed.
“Feed me, meow!” Sorcha called, making "meow” sound like “now”.
Linda dropped the carry-on bag and rolled her shoulders. “I’m glad to be home. What’s for dinner?”
“Takeout.”
“Chinese?”
“Yeppers.”
“Yum. I’ll run out and grab my suitcases. Will you please feed the little monsters?”
Thirty minutes later, Linda and Sorcha were sitting at the small round table in their dining space. The girls had painted the dinette a bright, sunny yellow. They’d found the set sitting in an alley on garbage day. They’d looked at each other, yelled “Score!” and grabbed it.
“Now, tell me how the rest of the time went with hottie, Mason,” Sorcha said, dipping an egg roll in ketchup.
Linda always wanted to eye roll at Sorcha’s preferred way of eating an egg roll, but she refrained. It was losing its strangeness, now that she’d seen her roommate do it a hundred times. “It was good. We patched things up. Found our friendship again.”
“Only friendship?”
“For now. To be real, I think I could fall back in love with him, if I haven’t already. But the long-distance thing…it’s so hard. We’ve reconnected, but you can’t build the trust needed for a relationship in just two weeks.”
“Says you.” Sorcha scooped another spoonful of fried rice onto her plate.
Linda sighed. “He hurt me deeply before. And he loves what he does. He loves nursing. He loves moving somewhere new every few months. How can I compete with that?”
“It’s not a competition when it’s love.” Sorcha shook her head, her eyes dancing with conviction. “You figure it out and make it work. Where’s he off to now?”
“Seattle.”
“Hey, you said you would like to go there!”
“I know. I told him that, too. Might be why he picked it. He was debating going there or Portland, Maine. He chose Seattle.”
“See? He’s got it bad for you if he’s picking where he’ll live based on your suggestion.”
“I didn’t suggest it. I just said I wanted to see the city.”
“You should go. When can you go?”
“I think I’ll wait until I’m invited first. We’ll see how things go once he gets settled and I get back to normalcy.”
“Normalcy is for muggles, Lulu.”
Linda thought about sharing her new business ideas with Sorcha. Sorcha was always her biggest cheerleader. But as with Mason, she worried that sharing something too soon could ruin it. Take away her drive for it. Better to keep those ideas to herself for now. If things went her way, she might share something cool soon.
By Tuesday night, Mason was bored. In the prior seventy-two hours, he’d unpacked, studied the transportation routes, worked three shifts at the new hospital, stocked up on groceries, lifted weights in the apartment building’s gym twice, and picked up his phone fifty times to call Linda.
He’d only texted twice.
Once on Sunday night to make sure she was home (she was), and again on Monday night to see how her workday went (she said it was fine).
He’d had a grueling shift. A morning commuter bus had crashed, sending eighteen people into the hospital before seven. By noon, he’d assisted with six of the patients. He disliked working in the emergency department. Patients were scared, in awful shape, and wanted to be anywhere but there.
Being the new guy didn’t give him a lot of choice on rotations. He went wherever the hospital had the greatest need.
That was another reason to consider a permanent gig. He could get into a line of work he excelled at. He could master the skills needed for advancement. Perhaps he could even supervise or teach.
He’d dreamed of that at one point. Being highly skilled. That’s when he’d planned to be a pediatric orthopedist, a doctor like his dad and sister. Before his mom got sick.
Back then he was driven, secretly competing with his older sister for dad’s admiration and attention.
All that changed with his mom’s diagnosis. He saw the days for what they were—a gift, fragile, not guaranteed.
He’d shifted focus from long-term goals to short-term gains. How could he help people as soon as possible? Spend time with his mom and not countless hours studying? How could he…
Glancing at the clock that came with the furnished apartment, he waited. It was only 4 p.m. in Illinois. He’d wait until after five to call Linda. Even though her workday was flexible, he wanted her full attention. He didn’t want her to be working on an email or chatting with her boss when he called.
His eyes swept the apartment. It had looked better in pictures than it did in real life. Typical. The trendy gray walls had looked cool and interesting. Now they looked cold and impersonal.
The framed black and white photographs of the Space Needle, the Pop Culture Museum, and the Pacific Science Center seemed lifeless and boring.
He knew his malaise came from missing Linda. Usually a new city, a new job, and new digs energized him, made him want to fill his Instagram feed with photos of the interesting places and sights. Now he wanted to fill his feed with pictures of a certain gorgeous, pink-haired woman.
He needed to get out and get some air. Rain or no rain. An hour’s walk around the neighborhood would clear his head, maybe even provide inspiration for an Insta-pic.