Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
Remi
“He might be groggy for a while, and his stomach might be sensitive for the rest of the day. I would keep him to a mild diet,” I explained leading Ol’ Man Terrance out of the exam room.
I held his little dog, Sheriff, under one arm, his eyes were glassy, but he had come out of anesthesia nicely.
Terrance hobbled along beside me with a cane gripped in his right hand.
He’d slipped on some ice, and the healing was going slower than he’d like.
“Did you hear that, Sheriff? No sharin’ my fuckin’ ice cream tonight,” Terrance said in his usual fuck-ridden dialect.
“It wouldn’t make any difference if I told you dogs are lactose intolerant, would it?”
He harrumphed. “It makes him fuckin’ happy. Let the dog fuckin’ live.”
“Fair enough.” I accepted Terrance’s keys in order to deliver his dog to the passenger seat while he paid the bill. When I got back inside, Terrance was almost to the vestibule.
Just inside, I held open the lobby door. “Thank you, again for being so understanding about the damage to my neighbor’s apartment.”
He owned the duplex that Alicia and I lived in, so it was really his property that I’d demolished.
“No fuckin’ worries, son. You got that little flyin’ fucker out of my house, and you’re fixin’ the fuckin’ problem you made,” he responded.
“I still appreciate it.”
He paused just before the vestibule to face me. “That new neighbor of yours, she got a good car for this fuckin’ snow?”
“Uh,” I considered the nondescript SUV she drove. “I think so.”
“Give her a fuckin’ hand if she needs it. She works for some goddamn environmental firm in Chicago. I don’t know if she’s got the balls to make the fuckin’ cut up here.”
“I think she’s good.” I didn’t point out that Chicago’s winters were no joke.
I also didn’t tell him she’d grown up in a town just outside of Mackinaw City, that she knew exactly what to expect from February on the coast of Lake Michigan.
It’d just spark more questions. So far, the town hadn’t discovered that Alicia and I had been married.
Once it did, it was going to run through every social group like wildfire.
There was nothing that united this place like juicy gossip.
“You keep a fuckin’ eye out for her, anyway. I hear she’s a fuckin’ looker, maybe you’ll like the sight.”
“Uh,” was all I could manage for a moment. “Sure.”
We waved goodbye. I chuckled as his voice carried from the outdoors through vestibule. “Shit on a goddamn dick it’s fuckin’ cold.”
Nora snorted behind the front desk. Hazel was so focused on the chart opened next to her that she didn’t seem to hear him. Her car was packed to leave directly from the office to visit her boyfriend, Elijah, in Detroit, so she was working as fast as possible to get on the road.
I shrugged. “At least the waiting room is empty with the mouth on that guy.”
“Oh, I only schedule him when no one else will be here. I remember one time when I was a teenager, he swore in front of Lily and her mom lost her shit.” She talked to her computer screen while typing.
I didn’t know how she could do it; I would have been typing everything I was saying.
“And Ol’ Terrance was just standing there with his arms out going, ‘What’d I fuckin’ say?
’ Some of the funniest shit I’ve ever seen. ”
Hazel snorted down at her chart.
My phone buzzed in my scrubs’ pocket, and I paused halfway through the lobby reading Alicia’s name on my screen.
We’d exchanged numbers to coordinate my fixing her door, but still her presence on my phone sent a jolt through me.
An excited bolt of lightning. Hanging out with her last night had been one of the most fun nights that I’d had in a while, even if we’d only chilled in my living room.
Sure, the whole time I had to fight the desire to be on the sofa with her, or the fantasy of her climbing onto my lap. Straddling me. My hands roaming over the curves of her body. My lips on her neck. My cock—
Yup, the problem had continued into today.
Alicia: Is my door still held together by duct tape?
Me: Yeah, sorry, I have to ask Brooks if he can help me. It’s been a crazy day. He’s finishing his final appointment now.
Alicia: Mission Unfuck my Door is still in motion.
Me: Can’t put the genie back in the bottle.
Alicia: Is that what you’re calling it these days?
Me: Give it a rub and find out—
“Nope,” I said out loud erasing the text before I could hit send.
Alicia: Sorry, that was inappropriate or something.
Alicia: Anyway, it’s no big deal that it’s not done, yet. I’m working late tonight.
Alicia: I’d say let yourself in, but you really don’t need encouragement.
Me: *eyeroll emoji* You break down one door.
Alicia: *GIF of Kool-Aid Man running through a wall* I’m only sending you this because, unfortunately, there isn’t a gif of someone humping a door. Which seems unrealistic.
Me: I’m not mad, Internet, I’m just disappointed.
It was the quiet that I noticed first. Nora’s typing had stopped, and I had the unnerving feeling of being watched. I looked up to find my coworkers staring at me. “What?”
They exchanged a silent conversation, a raised eyebrow from Hazel and a smirk from Nora. It didn’t sit well. I slid my phone back where it was, as if that would hide away whatever they were reading into.
“Who’re you texting?” Nora asked, a gleam in her eyes.
“It’s nothing, I just need to do some work on my neighbor’s place and we’re coordinating.” It was true, although not the whole truth, and even I found it suspicious that I chose to minimize the details.
“Your neighbor?” Hazel asked, at the same time Nora said, “Your ex-wife?”
Hazel’s eyes widened. “Alicia’s your neighbor?!”
I opened my mouth, but Nora spoke before me. “You didn’t know?”
“You did?”
“Brooks told me.”
Hazel glowered at me. “Apparently, I’m the last to find out you’re co-habiting with your ex—”
I rolled my eyes. “We don’t live together.”
“You might as well! That wall is so thin.” She crossed her arms over her chest and leaned back in her chair. “Why did you tell him and not me?”
I opened my mouth to explain, but Nora spoke first. “Is it that big of a deal?”
“You weren’t there,” Hazel exclaimed, and I struggled between compassion for my friend who was clearly feeling protective and irritation that she was making a big deal of everything. “She treated him like shit—”
“I wasn’t exactly innocent,” I pointed out, not that Hazel paid any attention.
“And when she finally served him divorce papers, out. Of. Nowhere—”
“There were warnings if I’d been willing to see them.”
“He barely passed our senior finals and then fled the state.”
“You make it sound like I was a fugitive.”
“No, you just couldn’t continue living your life. You had to run to the other side of the country, and fuck and drink your way through the state of Arizona.” A flash of uncertainty lit across Hazel’s features; I could practically hear her wondering if she’d gone too far.
I didn’t know if she had either.
Suddenly the vaguely flirty texts didn’t seem as fun as they had been just a moment ago.
I swallowed with my jaw set.
Nora’s gaze flicked between me and Hazel.
“It’s not . . .” I began, searching for the right words. “It’s not like that . . . anymore.”
Hazel fidgeted with a crease in the pant leg of her scrubs. “What’s different?”
“Me,” I said simply. “Her.”
She lifted an eyebrow.
“You never got to see the best in her, because you were only seeing her through me, and she wasn’t getting my best either.” I rubbed my palm along my jaw, wrestling with what to say next.
“We’re different,” I went on. “We’re just two people who used to know each other, and for a little while we’ll occupy space nearby each other.”
Hazel gripped the end of her braid. “Just . . . be careful.”
“I don’t have to be, because there’s nothing there anymore,” I lied.
It didn’t matter that to this day, Alicia still burned inside every molecule of my body; I was one everlasting flame. I knew her. She’d never let her guard down with me like that again. Not after that night in the rain.
It didn’t matter that I carried a flame I couldn’t put out.
Or that it grew stronger with each interaction, text, glance.
My feelings for Alicia were more like catching the essence of something out of the corner of my eye, something I wasn’t capable of dissecting.
I just couldn’t fully deny it—not when I ran through a door, not when her every laugh made me smile or the fact that my little apartment hadn’t felt like home until she was in it.
I could package my emotions into neat little boxes and tell myself that I just wanted to make things right or find closure. It wasn’t a lie. It just wasn’t the whole truth.
I wanted Alicia in any way that I could have her, even if for just a short while.
“You don’t have to worry,” I said, sounding cheerier than I felt. “She’ll do her job and go back to Chicago. There’s nothing to worry about. Also, it looks like I’m off the hook with Lily.”
“Oh, shit, yeah, she’s got that new guy from Darling,” Nora said the last word like it tasted disgusting. I didn’t quite understand the Grand Ridge hatred of the neighboring town of Darling, but nothing made them more angry than its existence.
“Get drinks to celebrate tonight?”
“Not like there’s anything else to do.” She went back to her typing.
Hazel’s shoulders relaxed away from her ears. She wasn’t fully satisfied, but she wouldn’t push it further.