Page 77 of Parallel

I arrive at my building just after five. I decide to skip my morning swim in lieu of a few more hours of sleep. In truth, what I’d like to do is just sleep until Quinn is back, and safe. It’s new for me, caring like this about someone else. As if my heart is now somewhere outside my body, completely beyond my control. What will I do if we don’t find a solution to the tumor? We’ve only been together for a few hours and I already feel like I won’t survive losing her.

I unlock my door and stagger to a halt when I step inside. Meg is sitting in a chair at the kitchen table, looking at me like I’m a cheating spouse caught tiptoeing home.

“I went to the lake yesterday,” she whispers, her eyes red-rimmed and raw. She looks from me to the window and stares at it blankly. “I really thought that if I just did things your way, did the stuff you like for once, you’d see how good we could be together. But you weren’t there, and you didn’t sleep here either. So I want to know who you were with.”

I exhale both guilt and irritation. We aren’t together anymore. I broke up with her for the right reasons, and I shouldn’t have to feel bad about it. I shouldn’t have to come home at five in the morning with her waiting to confront me. But I don’t want to hurt her either, and the way I feel about Quinn would definitely do that. It could also get me in a lot of trouble if she were to ask about it.

“I was at the lake,” I tell her, forcing myself toward the table and taking the seat across from hers. “I must have missed you there.”

“Alone?”

I should lie but somehow the truth slips out instead. “Most of it.”

“So you took someone to the lake,” she says, voice warbling now, heavy with tears, “but you never took me.”

“You wouldn’t have wanted to go to the lake.”

“That’s not the point!” she cries. “The point is that you never asked! I had to drag you kicking and screaming into this relationship, and this girl—this stupid, stupid girl you barely know—gets everything I had to fight for. She’s the one you stayed out with last week, isn’t she?”

My ribs seem to pull in, constricting my breathing. It looks bad. Maybe it is. I should have ended things with Meg a lot sooner than I did. I should have ended them the first time I tried, months ago. “It’s not what you’re thinking.”

“Then what is it, Nick?” she screams, standing and pulling at her hair. “Because I figured out weeks ago that you were interested in someone. I thought it was the patient Lynn said you were spending so much time with, and I figured it would pass because we both know that can’t go anywhere, so if it’s not what I’m thinking, please tell me what the fuck it is.”

I sink low in my chair and rest my head against its back, cornered and suddenly depleted. I could lie right now, but I have a feeling it’ll come back to bite me in the ass. It’ll be easy enough for her to find out who Quinn is and assume the worst. “She’s someone I knew a long time ago, and now she’s here and”—I pause because the next words sit like something bitter, gritty on my tongue—“she’s dying. So I want to spend every hour with her while I can.”

Meg’s mouth hangs slack. For the first time I see a hint of disgust in her eyes when she looks at me. “So she is a patient. Why didn’t you turn her over to someone else once you realized you knew her?”

Because I don’t trust anyone else to take her case. “She wanted me to treat her.”

Meg laughs, an angry, hysterical sound, loud enough to wake the neighbors. “Yeah, I bet she did. Who the hell is she? You said you’d never had a long-term relationship.”

Cornered again. Jesus. For a guy who’s been generally truthful through most of his life, I’m getting called on a lot of shit right now. “I haven’t. It’s complicated…we didn’t date for long, but we’ve known each forever.”

Her arms fold over her chest as she paces. I feel like I’m being cross-examined. “Where do you know her from?”

The easiest answer would be London, except that’s also the easiest to disprove since Quinn’s never been. “College.”

“We’ve talked about college a thousand times,” she says, throwing out her arms, “and you never thought to mention you were in love with someone there?”

I pinch the bridge of my nose. “I wasn’t in love with her,” I say, though it feels like a lie. “I don’t know. Maybe I was. But I just ran into her again, and—”

“Decided it would be fun to fuck someone behind my back while we were making plans to move in together?” she snarls.

“No. Not at all. I didn’t sleep with her. I still haven’t.” Though God knows if we’d been anywhere but the back of my car last night I would have. Repeatedly.

Her jaw tightens and she takes the chair farthest from mine. “You’re a smart man. You see what’s happening here, don’t you? This has nothing to do with some random girl from your past. You’re just scared of commitment. Tell me something: did this magical connection with a girl you fucking forgot take place before or after I suggested moving in here for a while?”

I know what she’s saying. As an outside observer, I’d agree with her. But she doesn’t get the fact, and I can’t explain, that some part of Quinn has been living inside me this entire time. “After,” I reply. “And I know how that sounds. All I can say is that it’s real.”

She stands, her eyes damp, pushing the chair back in with too much force. “How long does she have?”

I swallow. “I don’t know. A few years, maybe.”

“A few years, maybe? That means a year. And when that year’s up, or however long it is,” she says, heading for the door, “you’re going to be back where you started, with the same job, and the same life. And then what?”

I flinch, unwilling to contemplate the answer. “I don’t know.”

The door clicks as it closes softly behind her, leaving only her question ringing in my head. The idea of a world without Quinn is already unthinkable. I can’t imagine what I’m going to do with myself when she’s gone.