Page 44 of The Love We Deny
He shows up to work on time and comes to dinner at Frank and Joyce’s on Monday. Even stopped by the house with a pizza for the kids two days ago and never said a word about it.
He’s being completely normal, and it’s driving me crazy.
I can’t even be mad at him. He’s not being mean about it, he’s just not bringing it up. I should be grateful.
Instead, I feel unsettled.
At dinner, he talked to Frank about finding a used car for decent price and helped Joyce make a pie. He played a game with the kids that had Ollie laughing so hard he could barely breathe. Everything has been great. He’s really becoming part of the family again.
But he ignored me the entire evening.
He didn’t look at me. Didn’t talk to me. Only answered when I spoke to him, the way you’d act with someone you don’t know. Polite, but kept at arm’s length. And the entire time, I sat at that table, and I smiled, and I made conversation, all while feeling like my heart was breaking in half.
And that sucks, considering I don’t evenwantto want him.
He and Victoria have become thick as thieves out of nowhere.
I hear them from my office sometimes, in the lull between patients, his voice and her laugh. I’ve walked past the front desk more than I’d like to admit this week.
It’s not that I’m jealous. What is there to be jealous of? I don’t have a chance either way.
He said so himself.
I’m concerned that he told her is all. That her boss has a big, stupid crush on him. She’s notactingas if she knows. Other than the weird look she gave me when I walked through the lobby for the third time to get to the bathroom, even though there’s a bathroom in my office.
The only thing off, the only sign that he’s eventhinkingabout me, is the smirk.
Every time I catch his eye, he gives me that look. One corner of his mouth barely ticked up. Mostly in his eyes. An acknowledgment, a reminder that he knows, and he could do something about it at any moment, and he’schoosingnot to.
He makes me want to pull my hair out. And kiss him until I can’t breathe.
Once again, I have to wonder why it has to be him? The universe is full of people. Rosehill alone has plenty of them, and some of them even like me.
Karen, for instance.
She’s a lovely woman. I had a perfectly good evening with her, and we’ve been out one more time since. She’s kind, and she’s pretty, and I feel nothing when I talk to her.
Or the man who waited our table last week when I took the kids to dinner, since I now know I can like men too. Addie announced loudly that he was cute, and I looked at him and thought, sure, objectively, he is handsome.
I didn’t want him, though. No. That would be too easy. The person I want is a man who laughed in the face of my feelings.Who’s spent every minute I’ve known him hating me for no good reason.
By Thursday, I’m running purely on bad coffee.
My shift at the hospital ended at five, giving me enough time to go home, fall asleep in the shower, and get the kids up and ready for school.
We almost made it in time, if Addie hadn’t lost the shoes shehadto wear today. So by the time she found them, she was running late to school, and I’ve been behind ever since.
I have back-to-back appointments, twenty minutes behind for every patient after this morning, charts that need to be finished, and phone calls I have to skip lunch to return.
Victoria brings me a coffee without me having to ask, and I’m reminded that I really need to give her a raise.
When the final patient leaves, I sit down at my desk, pulling out my reading glasses, faced with an endless amount of paperwork I wasn’t able to get done earlier. I’m so tired I hardly know what I’m doing, moving through the motions of the work without being present.
Sometime later, Will appears in my doorway, knocking once before opening without me telling him to come in, but I don’t have the energy to act insulted by that.
He leans against the doorframe, and I look up from my charts. I’m aware of the tight shirt he’s wearing and his hands, dirty from the work in a way that would normally draw my attention, but right now, all I want is to sleep for a year.
“Room’s done,” he says.
