Chapter Three
Sommer
With the back hatch of her SUV yawning wide and the second-row seats laid all the way down, Sommer Hayes stretched out full length in the relative privacy of the far corner of the hospital lot.
Scrolling her phone and powering through the leftovers she’d packed for dinner, Sommer let her bare feet dangle over the edge, finding relief in the movement of cool air between her toes.
One shift down, Sommer had a few minutes to herself before she needed to report back in for nursing duty in the emergency department.
When her phone pinged, Sommer rolled over to check the screen.
Abbie: Are you done with work? Two quick things. I have gossip!
Sommer dipped a carrot into her plastic container of hummus, popped it into her mouth, then tapped her phone to autodial her friend.
“You called about tasty gossip?” Sommer asked.
“Tasty … in this instance, I’d be reticent to use that particular word,” Abbie said with a laugh. “How are you defining tasty gossip?”
“Anything that I can both feel bad when crap happens to strangers and also feel mildly superior that it didn’t happen to me.” Sommer reached for another carrot.
“I guess this fits the bill. This is from work.”
“Good, that’s the kind I like to hear. I can chew on it and enjoy the flavor, but I don’t have to watch my tongue around anyone.” Sommer popped the baby carrot into her mouth, appreciating the play on words that accompanied her meal.
“Yeah, well, once you hear what I have to say, you’ll rethink your word choice. I can hear you chewing. What are you eating?”
“Dinner. I took part of Shoshana’s shift, and I need to get back inside,” Sommer lifted her watch to read the dial, “in thirteen minutes.”
“What’s up that you took Shoshana’s shift? That’s hard to say.”
“Only a part of her shift,” Sommer corrected. “She said she’d be here by ten. A kid only graduates from kindergarten once, and the grandparents are in town to take the family out for a fancy dinner. I was promised a most excellent dessert.”
“Yeah, well, good luck tonight,” Abbie said. “You know it’s a full moon, right?”
“Shhh, we do not speak those words out loud,” Sommer said as she rifled through her bag to find the chunk of cheese she remembered tossing in. “We sneak past the windows and try not to add an exclamation point to the situation.”
“Sorry.”
“Too late.” Sommer used the wedge of gouda to swipe up a glob of hummus. “What’s done is done.”
“And what’s worse is that when you leave the hospital, you’re going home to your little cottage in the woods with a graveyard out front.”
“The graveyard is off to the side,” Sommer said with her mouth full. “The church is across from me. So I have a protective buffer from any creepy crawlies that might try to sneak out of their side of the field.”
“You sent a shiver through my whole body,” Abbie heavy-breathed into the phone for a moment. “Why in the world would you say that? You’re nuts, you know, right? Who in their right mind would buy a house there?”
“Anyone confined by a nurse’s salary. The only place I could afford was somewhere that most people would turn down.
Besides, I’m around death and dying on the daily.
It’s not something that bothers me.” Sommer considered another carrot, but they seemed like too much work to chew.
“It was a choice between the cute little cottage in the woods covered in flowers or the shack near the train track, or the cement bungalow near the junkyard with the rats, or there was that split-level downwind of the sewage treatment plant.”
“Oh yeah. Okay, well, I’m going to look up some witchy something to do as full-moon protection,” Abbie said. “Maybe sprinkling some salt across the threshold.”
“You do that. I’ll call you when I get home for your notes if it’s not too late. In the meantime, I was lured into this conversation with the promise of gossip?” Sommer checked her watch. “About ten minutes until I have to hang up.”
“Okay, really quick then,” Abbie said. “Today, my boss’s wife caught him flagrante delicto on his desk with another woman.”
“On his desk at work with an office full of people?”
“Yes! And a whole bunch of people saw through the open door. Not me, thank goodness. His wife was holding the door wide while she processed the scene.”
“Shit.”
“She gets herself together, storms in, and slams the door shut. That’s when I realized this was going on.
It was the door slam heard ‘round the world. They were screaming at the top of their lungs. Even from my cubicle, I could hear the whole fight. He told his wife that was the end of their marriage. He was leaving her for the other woman. The woman on the desk.”
“Surely she’d gotten off the desk by that point,” Sommer said, sitting up. “Wait, your boss or the boss. Is the guy getting fired for sex on the desk or is it the owner?”
“Owner. Oh, Sommer, I’m so sorry. Is this too close to home? I shouldn’t be telling you this.”
“I’ve never been left for another woman and never walked in on anyone. My last two boyfriends had affairs with other men and left me for them.” Sommer heard her own voice. As much as she’d wished that she had made her peace with the situation, sometimes she still felt the sting.
This was one of those times.
“The men part of that sentence seems to irritate you the most,” Abbie said.
“It does. It’s meaningful.” Sommer’s muscles tightened, braced because Abbie had a way about her.
She didn’t mind wading in and talking about tough stuff as if it were a can of soup and she was taking it down from the shelf to read the label.
“Oh, look what’s in here.” A trait that Sommer appreciated when they were out on the hiking trail, and there was time and space for introspection.
Though with the short window she had now, she’d prefer not.
“Yeah? What does it mean?” Abbie asked.
Yup, here we go, Sommer thought. She could truncate the discussion, but instead she said, “I haven’t put my finger on it. But something. It might carve a little close to the bone. Once might happen. Twice in a row? What kind of vibes am I giving off?”
“Girl-next-door who grew up to be a do-gooder vibes. Both Brad and Michael were obviously bisexual, right? I mean, you were having a sex life with them.”
Sommer looked out the window at the sea of cars in the hospital parking lot. People who were inside for treatment, people who visited friends and family. That was the big stuff. Her love life? Not so much in the grand scheme.
She should let the hurt fade.
“There weren’t any telltale clues in your intimate relations?” Abbie asked.
“Like what?” Sommer pulled her paper bag over and dug out a bar of chocolate from the bottom. She wasn’t soothing her nerves with sugar; chocolate was heart healthy.
“I don’t know,” Abbie said, “like butt stuff maybe?”
Sommer looked at the chocolate, then tossed it back in the bag. “Butt stuff has nothing to do with sexual orientation. It has to do with nerve endings and pleasure.”
“Yeah. I don’t know. I mean, I guess they both had a great sense of style.”
“They did, didn’t they?” Sommer watched an ambulance pull into the bay, lights off. The patient was either dead or it wasn’t life-threatening. “But that’s really stereotypical and wrong of you to say.”
“And they danced really well. And they went to the gym regularly.”
“Again, stereotypes, not telltale signs of men who had not yet had their epiphanies.” Sommer reached for her socks where she’d left them at the edge of her hatch.
“Epiphanies,” Abbie sounded the word out slowly. “Is that what you’re calling it?
“No. But I won’t say the other word out loud. It’s rude. And wrong. And I’m not going to be the bad person.”
“You think there’s a bad person in this?”
“Well, obviously. They cheated, then left me. If they said, ‘Hey, I had a revelation, and I need to leave this relationship to go and experience this other side of me,’ it would have hurt, but I loved them. I’d want them to be happy.
I said as much to Michael after Brad’s betrayal.
Michael had a damned road map for how not to hurt me, and he did it anyway.
” Sommer kicked her clogs out the back so she could put them on without touching them, hospital kooties.
“Here’s another interpretation,” Abbie started.
“Somewhat listening,” Sommer said, tapping the speakerphone so she could get her socks on.
“Okay, how about this. Brad hadn’t met a man that sparked the kinds of feelings that made him want to explore a relationship. He left you to figure out who he is.”
“Which I endorse. I wasn’t holding the man hostage. I want to be loved and to love, not manipulate and trap.”
“Brad would know that about you. And that might have made it easier for him.”
“This was leading to a theory?” Sommer scooted to the back of her vehicle and slid her feet into her rubber clogs.
“Exactly.” Abbie was fully invested in her speculation while Sommer was barely listening. “You told Michael all about Brad and how it went down and how you felt. Perhaps Michael had never felt that he had permission to explore who he wanted to be. You told him the path that Brad took.”
“Handed him the template.” Sommer stood, then bent to touch her toes and wiggled her hips. She’d really like to be done for the day and heading home. She’d also like to be done with this conversation. She regretted getting lured in.
“Possibly Michael saw parallels and also saw that, while hurt, you have always wanted Brad to be happy. He knew that about you and had faith in you.”
“Okay, well, there’s a—It can’t be lost that it happened to me twice. Fool me once.”
“Were they trying to fool you?”
She pulled her keys from her pocket, picked up her phone from the deck, and pressed the fob to lower the hatch and lock the doors. “Twice. That means something.”
“So you already said. But does it really?” Abbie asked. “Truth be told, you do have a lot of yang energy.”
“What does that even mean, Abbie?” She started off across the parking lot.
“Yin is feminine and receiving, and Yang is the masculine and the doing.”
“I have yin energy. I have a flower-covered cottage in the woods and five cats. My bedroom is ballerina pink. Where’s this going?
” Sommer asked, wishing that she were, in fact, at home, curled up in her front window where she could see the rose bush blooming, a cat in her lap, some good dragon smut on her reader.
“Just that someone who liked male energy and hadn’t yet explored liking that energy in a male body might be attracted to that can-do spirit.”
“I’m not rejecting the idea,” Sommer said, looking up to see if that drop of rain was going to be another downpour. “My job has taught me to be assertive, aggressive even. I’m not the big-boobed sexy nurse of triple X fame.”
“Your boobs are good.”
“Thank you.”
“And you’re cute,” Abbie said.
“Okay.” Sommer knew Abbie enough to know she was petting her before she salted the wound.
“But you’re also self-sufficient,” Abbie said.
“As an adult should be. Don’t you think?”
“Which might be more yang heavy than yin. So you’ll be attractive to men who find that level of—”
“Competence?” Sommer suggested, pausing to let a car pull out of their spot.
“Men who don’t find that level of skill to be threatening.”
“I’m sure there’s some wisdom in this – but can I set that on a shelf for later?
The text you sent said you had two things.
There was the sex on the desk gossip and what else?
” Sommer stepped onto the sidewalk and watched the line of cars turning into the emergency lane. It was going to stay busy tonight.
“Forget it,” Abbie said quietly.
“No. Come on. You said you had two things, the gossip and something else.”
“Fine. There’s a new guy in the engineering department. And your type. He’s really cute with a good sense of style.”
“I’m busy. I have cats to tend to. And I’ve decided to take up watercolor. And just last week, I went back to singing opera.”
“Oh wow, opera. It’s been a while. College? How did you land back on opera?”
“I get that you hate it. I won’t sing around you.
” An ambulance turned off the main road, flashing lights.
That meant the person they were transporting was in dire straits.
Sommer picked up her pace to a jog. “I read an article about how singing stimulates the vagus nerve. And mine could use some stimulating.”
Abbie laughed. “True for all of us, don’t you think?”