Chapter 13
The Realization
Nate
My walk to Robyn’s work is quiet, except for the hum of the vents and the sound of the coffee shifting in its tray.
Her order—oat milk, one pump hazelnut, extra hot—wafts up.
It smells of mornings lazing around and reminds me of lakeshore walks.
Memories of when things made sense dull the ache in my chest.
I shouldn’t be nervous. It’s just coffee. My palms are sweating, my heart rate’s spiking, and my stomach’s fluttering as if I’m about to do something wrong. If only I’d felt this way before showing up at her apartment and throwing her career choices at her.
My mom’s voice is still in my head. “Yeah. I know firsthand how hard it is to share your life with a liar.” She’s never coddled me.
She was a single mom working two jobs and dealing with the mental toll of being whispered about in every corner.
Her words were a punch that went straight through my gut, shuffling and rearranging my insides.
I stand at the staff’s hospital entrance by the lakefront and check the time on my watch.
Robyn’s lunch break starts in ten minutes.
I lean against the ramp balustrade by the side entrance, the one that curves toward the garden on the left.
Nine seconds. Robyn made me count them. The sight of my girlfriend kissing her best friend: tongue, affinity, tenderness and all.
Nine seconds is a long time. While watching her lips move against her friend’s, one thought kept surfacing on a loop: That’s exactly what I did to her.
I watched that clip again after Mom left. It was still there on Tessa’s profile, public, with a caption. Robyn was right. Nothing about it looked like a joke. The truth hits like bile—hot, corrosive, swift. I’ve become my father.
The automatic doors open with a whir, and Robyn steps out, a whiff of cafeteria fries and rubbing alcohol moves with her.
She’s here—coat collar flipped up, container of salad in one hand, phone balancing as she holds it with her shrugged up shoulder.
I’m gobsmacked. She’s so fucking beautiful and driven.
And no longer yours, asshole. I brace for Julian coming behind her.
Inseparable, those two, but it never bothered me until now.
They made out early in med school after pulling an all-nighter. She burst out laughing when he slid his hand under her shirt, and he felt nothing as she licked his neck. No chemistry, she’d said. But I saw it when they kissed. What the fuck is chemistry supposed to look like?
I shake the thought away, and Robyn spots me. She doesn’t smile, and my chest tightens around the place she’d once been happy to claim.
I walk over, slow enough to give her a chance to tell me to leave. “Hey,” I start, holding the cup out like a peace offering. “I come in peace.”
She looks at me, blinking at the sun, her mouth still tight around her next words. “I’ll call you later, Kells. Nate’s here.” She pauses. “Yeah, noted.”
“I was an ass on Friday.” My voice comes out rougher and needier than I imagined. “I shouldn’t have held your career choices against you. I—”
She puts her phone away, takes a sip of the coffee, closing her eyes around the liquid in her mouth. Then she tilts her head in the direction of the gardens, toward the benches closer to the lake. “Nate, you didn’t get to that train of thought overnight.”
“I know.” The wind cuts between us, and I shove a hand through my hair. “Med school, residency, all of it was always your plan. You didn’t blindside me, I just—I miss you. I miss us.”
“Nate, you were right about something. We never had a real conversation about this diagnostic fellowship.” She takes a seat at the edge of the bench closest to the crabapple tree leaning over the path.
“I-I was embarrassed to admit how worried I was that I hadn’t done well enough to land a position in the city. ”
She’s looking down, thumb tracing the seam of her coffee cup, her breath fogging in small bursts.
Her shoulders are tight, but every now and then, even as she keeps her eyes on the ground, a tiny shake escapes her.
And my chest fills when I slide closer to her on the bench and pull her to me, my arm over her shoulders.
For three minutes, everything is perfect.
Robyn’s relying on me, not staring at the clock.
“Hey …” I start, then stop, letting her fear seep into me, reveling in the fact that we were both afraid and we can work through it. “You know what I remember?” I swipe my thumb under her chin, coaxing her eyes to mine. They’re red-rimmed, shining, the kind of vulnerable she never shows.
“You, intern year,” I say, my voice almost breaking on the memory. “You’d fall asleep mid-conversation. You’d wake up and pick up right where you left off, never even missing a beat.”
Her laugh is quiet, cracked around the edges. “I’m pretty sure I fell asleep mid-fuck a couple of times too.”
I huff out a laugh, half disbelieving. “Oh, I noticed. You had me questioning my skills there for a while.”
She smirks, shaking her head. The tension softens enough that I can see who we are together. I tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. Her skin warms beneath my fingers, and in that moment, I believe our second chance lives in that small touch.
“I was proud of you then,” I say. “But I’m even prouder now. You cut no corners, you’ve overcome everything that tried to pull you under. I know you’re going to land somewhere that makes you shine—even brighter than you already do.”
The air stills. The lake murmurs against stone, the leaves from the crabapple tree above us sigh, sharing Robyn’s exhaustion.
She looks over, eyes unreadable. “Without you now,” she murmurs. “It’s not fair.”
The air whooshes from my lungs. “It doesn’t have to be that way, Robyn … I know I—”
“No.”
And I see it in her eyes—clarity, not anger. This is the first real conversation we’ve had about what’s happened, about what’s going to happen. She’s not yelling, and I’m not deflecting. We’re finally standing inside the truth.
“It doesn’t erase anything.” Her exhale trembles, but her hands are steady when she slides mine off her shoulders. “Tessa may have kissed you, but you kissed her back. You blurred boundaries that should’ve been clear. At least to you.”
“They are cle—”
She shakes her head. “If they were, we wouldn’t be here, Nate. I’m not worried about Tessa or whoever. Other people don’t owe our relationship respect. You do. And you lost sight of that. It’s written all over your face, and I can’t fix it for you.”
I open my mouth, but nothing comes out. The words dissolve somewhere around my heart.
“Nate,” she says, quieter now, “I appreciate you coming here so we could end this like adults. So I’m just going to say two more things, because I love you and I want you to eventually be in a place where you can love back.”
The breeze stirs again. A bird pecks at the fruit on the tree, and a crabapple falls, splitting open on the pavement, its scent sharp and sour.
“I was honest with you about Julian. You even knew we almost hooked up. You said you were okay with it. Had you not been, we wouldn’t have started dating. But I don’t think you’ve ever given me, or yourself, that same kind of honesty when it comes to Tessa.”
Her gaze flicks to the tree, then back to me.
“Your mom said some things over brunch. More her read of things than facts. Maybe you really do love me, and maybe what you feel for her is just attachment. Something you built out of … I don’t know, I’m no shrink.
But either way, I can’t stand here while you try to figure it out. ”
I want to reach for her, but I don’t. My hands curl uselessly in my lap. The wind lifts her hair across her cheek, and she doesn’t brush it away.
“I have four months left in this program,” she says, her voice steady now. “In two, I start applying for attending positions. I can’t afford lukewarm recommendations. And that’s what I’ll get if I’m distracted. I need to crush every diagnostic opportunity, Nate.”
I swallow hard, my throat raw. “You need four months, I’ll give you four months.”
She stands, brushing off her coat. “Don’t give them to me, I won’t be waiting. Use them on yourself.”
Then she walks away, her footsteps fading along the gravel path. The crabapple tree sways overhead, and another fruit gets knocked to the ground with a soft, hollow thud.
I stay there, breathing in the scent of rot and sweetness. Maybe she doesn’t want me to give her these four months. She wants me to be better. Well, I can do both.