Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
OAKLEIGH
It’s been five days since our date. Five days of going to work like a ghost of myself as I sit with my worry and regret.
“You look like shit,” Nicole notes as I trudge through the ward.
“You’re so sweet,” I reply sarcastically.
“Is everything okay?”
“Everything’s … everything, I guess.”
I slam into the chair behind the desk as I check the rotation to see what I need to do.
Nicole, on the other side of the desk, leans on it with both arms, eyebrow raised and searching for info.
“We have a couple of minutes … spill.”
“You know better than to say something like that in a trauma ER.” I lift the chart higher so that Nicole hopefully can see how little I want to talk about this.
“Nice try. Spill.”
“Spill about what?” Antoine, our nosy fellow nurse, asks—probably sensing potential gossip from fifty yards away.
“Why Oakleigh looks like a truck ran her over and then reversed again.” Nicole fills him in.
“I do not!” I do.
Antoine cringes as he looks me up and down. “Sorry, Lee, but you do look a little…” I send him a warning look. “Tired.”
“I’ve worked five night shifts in a row, of course I’m fucking tired.”
“She has a point,” he tells Nicole.
“No, no, no. You don’t usually look this bad. I’ve seen you after a five-nighter and this isn’t it.”
I sink further into my chair and pull the chart higher.
“Oh my God, is this about a guy?”
I scoff pathetically. “No.”
“If you want me to be on your side, lie better,” Antoine says.
With a roll of my eyes, I stand and put the chart back in its place before preparing to go and check on Ms. Porter, a patient who came into the ER three hours ago after a fall down the stairs.
“Tell us,” Nicole whines as she blocks my way out.
“Nicole, there’s nothing to tell.”
“Lie. Better.”
“Antoine, shut up,” I snap, to which he just rolls his eyes.
“It’s not my fault you suck at lying.”
“You ever thought maybe I just don’t want to talk about it?” I ask, staring down at Nicole who is a good three inches shorter than me (for us short people, that’s a lot).
“It occurred to me, but then it also occurred to me that you look like you need a good rant.”
“Or a good fuck,” Antoine adds.
We both give him a look.
“Don’t you have to go and find Doctor Flitwick so you can flirt with him?”
Antoine looks genuinely confused. “Flirt with him? Why would I flirt with him?”
“You always flirt with him.”
He looks more confused. “Why would I flirt with another guy?”
Now it’s our turn to look perplexed. Nicole and I look at each other, then back to Antoine.
“You’re…” Nicole pauses. “You’re gay, right?”
“What?” Antoine’s eyes flit between the both of us. “No. Why would you think that?”
We’re all silent for a minute, neither Nicole nor myself really knowing how to take this news.
We’ve always thought that Antoine was gay. He openly flirts with Dr. Flitwick who is one of our on-call doctors, and he’s always sort of implied it. We never asked outright, because why would we, but it just always seemed to be right there at the forefront.
At least we thought it was.
“Wait.” Antoine takes a step back, looking panicked. “Is this why Asher always comes to me and asks which patients I want to avoid and if I have plans to take my lunch break whenever he has a lunch break?”
We don’t reply.
“Oh, fuck.”
Antoine runs off, leaving Nicole and I standing here in stunned silence.
“Well, shit. We got that wrong, didn’t we?”
I nod in reply. We both look at one another for a last time before walking off to our respective patients. I breathe a sigh of relief on the way, grateful for the distraction.
By the time my shift ends, I’m exhausted both mentally and physically. Thoughts of Finn, angry and hurt refuse to leave my mind all night and the sun rises along with my worries.
“Hey, Lee.”
Bash is sitting by the entrance just like he has for the past four nights.
I sigh in resignation. “Bash, you really don’t need to keep doing this.”
He shrugs. “Not a big deal. I’m usually up around this time anyway. Besides, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if Finn asked me to pick up his girl and something happened to her.”
He speaks with his usual playful smile, but a single mention of Finn and my face is dropping more, despite me not thinking it possible.
The smile leaves Bash’s face. “Woah, was today’s shift that bad?”
“Yeah, pretty bad,” I lie. Today has been hectic but not nearly as bad as it could have been.
He wraps a friendly arm around my shoulders as he leads me out to his truck. He lets his head rest on mine in a sort of side-hug.
“You wanna stop and grab something to eat before we get you home?”
I shake my head. “No thanks, B. My bed calling me is too loud for me to ignore.”
“I hear that,” he says, and it sounds like he’s thinking about something more than just his bed.
He opens the door just like Finn does for me and my heart sinks.
God, I usually can’t stand the man and now I’m here allowing him to plague every thought in my mind?
What has happened to me? What has happened to us?
Our relationship was so set in stone that it was the one that caused me the most comfort.
I knew that no matter what, every interaction with Finn would end in an argument and we would end up annoyed with one another.
Now, every time we talk, we come to this proverbial fork in the road and I never know which way we’ll turn.
Now, for the first time in the entire time I’ve known him, we both went in two different directions and without even thinking about it, I turned around and went back to the fork to wait for him.
But I still can’t see him.
I’ve been giving him his space, but maybe it’s down to me to reach out since it was me that crossed the line?
“You’re either exhausted, or you have a shit ton on your mind,” Bash observes.
“Is both an option?” I ask as I watch the hospital disappear behind us.
“Both is always an option.” When he sees I’m not going to reply, he speaks again. “I don’t know what’s bugging you, and it’s clear that you’re not in the mood to talk about it, and that’s fine. Just know that you’re my friend, which means I kinda love ya, so I’m always here for you.”
That brings forth my first genuine smile in days. “I kinda love ya, too. And thank you.”
Before I know it, Bash pulls up in front of my house, and with a kiss to his cheek, I jump out and enter my house.
Ollie must sense my mood because he doesn’t come up to me when I come in. He simply looks up from his bed and then lowers his head back down.
“Nice to see you, too.”
I trudge over to the kitchen, hoping that a good cup of herbal tea will put me in a good enough headspace that I can at least get a decent night’s sleep. One more night shift. One more and then I can get a minimum of twenty hours of sleep and waste my day away doing fuck all.
I manage to get as far as making the tea before I have to stop, my current situation with Finn slamming into me yet again.
I leave the cup on the countertop and turn so I can lean against it. I close my eyes and remember what I said.
Wouldn’t you want to fix it if you could?
“Fix it,” I’d said. I never wanted to fix Finn. There’s nothing wrong with Finn.
My phone is in my hands before I can even think about it. Surely just one message to check on him can’t hurt? I start to type, remaining stubborn enough that I can’t talk myself out of it.
I hope you’re okay. Maybe we can talk soon?
As soon as I press send, a message from him pops up.
Dumbass
I hope you got home safely and I hope you’re okay.
Relief slams into my chest. Relief that he’s okay enough to message, but also relief that he’s checking up on me, meaning that he can’t completely hate me.
Gray bubbles fill the bottom corner of our chat.
Dumbass
I’m okay.
Short and blunt, but so much better than nothing.
Me too.
I press send and hop into bed with a chest that, while still being heavy, is so much lighter than it was before.
On my day off, I’ll fix this. He gets one more day of space before I kick his door down and mow him over with an apology.
Because I can no longer say I hate Finn.
I can no longer say that I hope he takes a tumble down the stairs.
Now, while I can still say he’s the bane of my existence, I’m not entirely sure what else I can say I feel.
* * *
I stare at the draft email on my laptop—the attachment that is making me want to throw up and the email address in the top corner.
From: OakleighMichaels@
To: submissions@
ATTACHED: TIME SAVES NO ONE—CHAPTERS 1—3 BY OAKLEIGH MICHAELS
FOR THE ATTENTION OF: JANELLE PARSONS
My hand has been hovering over the mouse pad for forever.
There’s a slight shake in my fingers that I can feel even when they’re resting.
Nerves are zipping through me, around my stomach, inside my head, up and down my back.
I check the email for the fiftieth time.
Everything I need to include is there, and I’ve tried to make sure it’s as catchy as possible.
I need to make sure that it stands out from the others.
At the moment, dragon-themed romantasies are all the rage, and that’s part of the reason I feel so anxious.
Imposter syndrome curls itself around my mind at least once a day.
How am I supposed to stand out in a world where authors like Rebecca Yarros exist?
I’m not sure if mine is written well; all I know is that it’s written to the best of my ability and that’s all I can do.
I’ve spent countless late nights and early mornings working on this novel, and even though it’s not yet done, I feel like if I don’t send it now, then I never will.
It will remain sitting idle, covered in dust on my desktop until my laptop kicks the bucket and then I’ll lose it forever.
I can’t let that happen when I’ve put so much into making it.
I’ve wanted to write ever since I was a gawky teenager, hoping above hoping that some guy would come along and give me my own 10 Things I Hate About You moment.
I wanted someone to look at me like I’d hung the stars in the sky for them, but that never happened.
Back then, the braces had bright green caps, the hair was a frizzy mess that couldn’t be tamed and the spots that decorated my face were a permanent fixture.
Any boy in high school back then would only look for a skinny girl with clear skin and a spot on the cheerleading team.
So, I wrote. Short stories, mostly, at first—girls who looked like me at the time who always got the guy no matter what, because they saw beauty as something more than naturally straight teeth and clear skin. They saw it as a personality that attracts them, a heart that holds them.
God, I’m stalling.
I make sure that the mouse is hovering above the send button before closing my eyes and taking a deep breath.
You can do this, Michaels. This is your time to shine. Time to get yourself and your life on track for something better.
Before I can chicken out, I click the mouse and I hear the whoosh that tells me that the email has sent. Dread pricks at my skin and I feel a tingle at the back of my neck as sweat starts to appear.
My heart sinks when I grab my phone to message Finn about what I’ve done, only to remember my current predicament.
The thought of telling him the news sends a rush of energy through me, adrenaline pumping through my veins.
My skin tingles and I itch at it, eager to move, to feel, to do something.
I know in my heart that this feeling isn’t going to go away until I talk to him; not until I fix things between us and admit to myself that his company over the past few weeks has felt like something more than friendly.
Something comforting and exciting at the same time.
Oh, fuck it. I’ve already done one thing I’ll probably regret today. May as well make it two for two.
I make sure there’s food for Ollie in his bowl, then shove on some sandals and grab my car keys and rush out the door before I can talk myself out of it.