Page 39 of The Risks of Reuniting

The dentist I work with in Salt Lake doesn't like to have conversations while he's working, so it's been an adjustment to be with someone so chatty.

He gestures to the man we're working on. "Good news, I have time."

"Well, Holt and I dated for a year, then we broke up about ten months ago," I reply.

When I don't say anything else, he chuckles. "So much for it being a long story." I laugh too, and then he continues. "Why did you break up?"

"Oh man," I say without thinking. "That's the golden question."

"It must have an answer, or you'd still be together."

I look over my shoulder to where Rachelle is wiping down and organizing tools, and she pauses, also interested in my answer. I can't blame her, really. I may have told her last night, but if there's a chance I'm about to share more detail, she'll want to hear it. Makes sense – I'd want to know if she was mixed up in some sort of tragic love story.

"Holt got into pharmacy school at Chapel Hill in North Carolina," I begin. But, then I don't really know where to go and so Dr. J pops in.

"And he didn't ask you tocome along?"

I shake my head and am relieved when he signals me to turn on the suction and it's too loud to talk over for a few minutes. The patient waves his hand and I stop, and we pull our instruments out of his mouth so he can say something to the dentist. While they speak in a language I only know about three percent of, I watch and try to pick up on what the situation is. After a few moments Dr. J tells me to adjust the suction to another part of the patient's mouth and gets back to work.

"All right," Dr. J says once we're underway again. "So, I'm guessing he did ask you to come along and you said no?"

I tip my head side to side. "That's the short answer, yes."

"Why?"

"Why is that the short answer, or why did I say no?"

"Why did you say no."

I clear my throat and adjust my seat slightly. The nice thing about confessing all of this to Dr. Joseph is that he's basically a stranger who I will never see after our service is over in a couple weeks. He doesn't know me well, he doesn't know Holt at all, and he won't have skin in the game. I talked this through with my friends, family, and cousin group at the time, but they all had definite ideas, and to be honest, most of them did not agree with me. That had stung.

Maybe it would feel good to talk to a neutral third party. Although, how this was even a topic of conversation boggled me. I had not seen this coming when I signed up to volunteer.

"Holt and I were both doing four-year degrees at the University of Utah," I start. "I graduated with my dental hygiene degree a semester before he graduated with a degree in chemistry, with the intent to get a PharmD directly afterward."

We're interrupted again by noisy tools, and my mind tracks back to those early days. Holt was magnetic from the first time I saw him at thelibrary. I was with Allie, and we'd had our heads bent over a presentation on proper flossing techniques when he'd sat across from us. I'd looked up and paused mid-sentence, just staring at the man like my brain had stopped working. He was handsome, yes, but that wasn't it. There was something about his open expression and the way he'd smiled over at us. He'd said something about sharing our table, but I hadn't really heard his words. Two hours later I knew nothing more about flossing and we'd made plans for our first date. Holt had told me later that he'd had the same reaction. He'd seen an empty chair, took it, and looked up and saw me, and that was that.

How did you go from instant connection to broken in one year?

I turn off the suction when Dr. J motions for it, and when he looks up with raised eyebrows, I get back to the story. "Anyhow, while he finished his last semester I got to work settling into adult life. I got a great job at a dental office. I purchased a little two-bedroom condo, and nearly paid off the small student loan I'd had to get, and I felt like I was putting down roots for both of us. He'd helped me pick out the condo, and I thought of it as our place – that before too long we'd marry and he'd move in. The University of Utah has a great pharmacy school and I assumed he'd get accepted there and things would keep going on our same track."

"But it didn't," Rachelle states sadly, giving up all pretense of not listening in, and coming to stand by me.

"He got accepted at both the University of Utah and Chapel Hill. He'd never told me he was applying there, so it came as a shock. But, I was happy for him and assumed he'd stay in Salt Lake, so I didn't give any thought to Chapel Hill. When he came to me a week later and said he'd decided on Chapel Hill, I didn't take it well."

Dr. J nods. "That would have been a bigsurprise."

"Huge surprise. I was out here building us a foundation to start life, and he was rejecting it to move across the country," I respond.

"Rejection hurts," Rachelle sighs.

Oh, it had hurt. Everything I'd done, I done with us in mind, and he'd acted like it was nothing to uproot everything and move. Like my career, and my house, and my family and friends were expendable. Like his dream was the right dream and I should pick that too.

But mostly it had hurt that he'd been considering this whole different plan without ever communicating it to me. I'd been in the dark, and that had made me feel like an idiot on top of being sad.

"I asked him to accept at the U and stay where we had family and friends, where I had a career and a new house, but he said he felt like North Carolina was where he was supposed to be. It felt like it didn't matter where I felt like I was supposed to be – he was going there with or without me. I wasn't part of the equation." The pain washes over me, still fresh, and I feel my voice locking up a little, so I reach once more for the amethyst gem and stroke it lightly. "We couldn't reach a compromise, so we broke up. That was ten months ago."

"Had you spoken to him since then?" Dr. J asks.

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