Page 36 of Cherish

“I can’t get enough of these,” I say against her soft skin.

When I leave for work, she walks me to the door, kissing me deeply. I promise to come and find her in her office before I leave the hospital in the morning. Giving her breasts one last squeeze, I pull myself away and walk out my front door.

The minute she locks the door behind me, my vibrating phone bursts my bubble of bliss. It’s the same unknown number. I hit ignore and put the phone back in my pocket, unwilling to let Natalie or anyone else ruin what’s been a perfect day.

I don’t make it halfway to the train station when my phone vibrates. I ignore it, but it starts to vibrate again almost immediately.

At the end of my rope with these constant attempts at contact, I finally snap.

“Stop calling me.” The words are bitter and come out through my clenched teeth.

“So, you do know how to use a phone?” I pull the phone back from my ear and look at the screen, making sure it’s the same number. Her voice is usually flirtatious, bordering on overconfident, but that’s missing today. She’s more irritated than confident.

“Yes, and I’ve been using my super phone skills to ignore your calls. This is the last time I’ll take one of your calls. Go back to your husband.” My words come out fast, some spit flying out of my mouth.

“I need to see you, Ty.”

“Don’t you fucking call me that!”

“It’s your name, Jason Tyler Dupree,” she taunts. Now the confidence is back. Her taunting nature that I used to find sexy is now so irritating, I want to toss my phone across the damn street. Ty used to be our private joke. Everyone thought it was just a shortening of my middle name, and since we had two other friends named Jason, it was assumed it was a way for her to differentiate us, but that’s not it. She started calling me that after she agreed to let me tie her up the first time.

Only we know the real meaning, and every time she would call me Ty, her eyes would practically undress me. I used to go crazy whenever she would call me that. Now, it makes my blood turn cold, and for whatever reason, I feel like I’m betraying Alex.

“I’ve moved on, Natalie. Stop calling me. I don’t love you. I don’t miss you. I don’t want to be with you ever again. Is that clear enough?”

She takes a deep breath before she speaks again. “Tell me how you really feel.” She sounds pained. I open my mouth, but she speaks first. “Listen, it’s not always about you, okay? This is serious.”

Unwilling to play her games any longer, I say, “What’s so damn serious, Natalie? Say it so that I can hang up and never have to speak to you again.”

“Not speaking to me ever again might not be an option anymore, Jason. I can’t say it over the phone. I need to see you. When’s your next day off? I can come to you.”

“Are you fucking deaf? I just said I don’t want to see you anymore. You’re married and—”

“As if my marriage mattered to you when you were fucking me. You fuck me much better than Daniel ever could.”

She’s taunting me, waiting for me to remind her how she shouldn’t have married him, that she should be with me instead, but those days are over. “I never fucked you when you were married, Natalie. If you weren’t such a liar, I wouldn’t have touched you while you were engaged either. That was the worst mistake of my life. Almost as big of a mistake as taking this pointless call. Your games won’t work. I’m going to block this number, and when you call from a different number, I’ll block that one too. Eventually, you’ll get it through your thick skull that I want nothing more to do with you.” I hit end, not caring or hearing whatever the hell she was yelling. I resist the urge to throw the phone against the sidewalk and slide it back in my pocket.

Thankfully, the night is slow, and after performing an emergency small bowel resection, I get a couple of hours for a break. Despite the slow night, I’m irritated and short-tempered with the nurses and other residents.

The call with Natalie has put me off my game. I’ve known her for over a decade. I know her and her ways, but there was something off about the phone call. As I think back, there was an urgency in her voice when she said she needed to see me. Normally, the request would come off as flirty or sexual. I would know exactly why she wants to see me, but there was none of that when she made her demand. It’s almost as if she sounded scared, but I push that thought out of my mind. Fear is an emotion I’m sure Natalie has never experienced in her life. Whatever it is, it’s not my problem. She’s not my problem, so I push all thoughts of her out of my head and focus on the best part of my life.

The flashlight from my phone is the only source of light in my dark on-call room as I scroll through the pictures she sent me.

She’s still in the yoga pants and V-neck tee I left her in, and her hair has gotten even bigger. She has her mouth open, faking surprise at the camera and holding one of the couch pillows as if she’s about to hit Ananda on the head.

I can’t even get upset at the mess of open Chinese food cartons on my coffee table and the opened bottles of my expensive imported beer. She taunts me in the next picture by holding a bottle of that beer and pointing her index finger at it. The next photo is of her drinking from the bottle.

My boyfriend has the best stuff.That’s what she typed when she sent that last picture.

You’re my best stuff.

I don’t even care if my response sounds corny. Since I send it in the middle of the night, I know she won’t see it until she wakes up, which leads me to the final photo, which is nothing but her cleavage. She’s pushing her breasts together, and my mouth waters at the sight, at the same time I must deal with the frustration of not seeing her nipples.

She’s lying in the middle of my bed, the sheets even more rumpled than before. I start to text that I miss her but decide to tell her in person when she gets to work.

“Jesus, are you going to swallow her head, Jason? You two are disgusting.” I don’t even break the kiss as I give Mellie the middle finger. This causes Ananda to laugh.

“I bet Doyle never kissed you that way,” Ananda says. Alex stiffens in my arm, but that doesn’t last long because I deepen the kiss even more.

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