Page 27 of The Back Forty
Before she can answer, I pivot because I can tell where this is headed. “What’s going on with you and Sean?”
She shrugs. “We’re on a break.”
“I see.”
Sean's Catalina's long term boyfriend. A guy who's been working just as hard as her since medical school and taking a position at the same hospital where Catalina works. He's a plastic surgeon which from what I've gathered at family holidays, might be the worst type of surgeon because they aren't just looking and assessing what might be wrong on the inside of your body, they are doing that on the outside with every person they pass.
I had one of those once, too. A boyfriend who worked in the same career as me. Someone who after hours we could trade stats and tips with and for a while, it was fun having something we bonded over.
But then I started to see the cracks. The way that it felt like I could never shut it off and just relax. Because when I'd get back to the apartment that we shared, he'd be there, reminding me that I wasn't doing enough. That to be a real success in the world of tech sales, you had to always beon. Always be one step away of your competition, constantly cold calling and following up on leads.
And after my stroke, I realized he was part of my stress too. Actually, he was a major driver of it. So, I dropped him alongwith my job and life behind and thankfully, I haven't missed him once.
She doesn’t elaborate on what's going on between her and Sean, and I don’t push. We’ve always known when to give each other space and sometimes that's failed us as sisters because we haven't been emotionally vulnerable with each other.
After a beat, she looks at me again. “Is Lawson single?”
I wet my lips and nod, mostly because I don’t know what else to do. My sister has just made a casual, almost throwaway comment about my boss, and for some reason, it lands like a rock in my stomach. It shouldn’t bother me, she flirts with everyone, and Lawson flirts with no one. At least, not around me. But still, the way she said it, the gleam in her eye, it settles wrong.
I love Catalina. She’s sharp, beautiful, successful, and just as emotionally unavailable as every man I’ve ever dated. Maybe that’s why she and Lawson would work. He’s a workaholic. She is too. On paper, they probably make perfect sense.
And sure, I’ve seen the type of women Lawson’s entertained over the last year—the ones he meets at the hotel bar and takes back to his hotel or connects with over a pitch. Women with blowouts, blow-your-mind heels, and the kind of effortless glamour that looks good next to a man like him. I’ve rescheduled his meetings to accommodate late-night dinners, bumped into more than one of them leaving his hotel room early in the morning with a smile and just fucked hair.
He’s never mentioned any of them to me after the fact. Never confirmed or denied what they did the night before. It’s just been this quiet, unspoken understanding between us that he lives his life, I live mine. We don’t ask and we don’t tell when it comes toour sex life. We keep things professional when we're on the clock and out of it, we're... friends and coworkers.
And maybe that’s what’s bothering me. Not that Catalina might be interested in him, but that he might respond to her advances. That she could become one more name I don’t ask about and he never thinks about again.
That he could want her instead of…
I drain my drink because I refuse to let my mind go there.
It’s not like I haven’t meant to date since moving to Whitewood Creek. It’s been on my mental checklist all year. Right underneathcut out coffee again and get a tattoo.But between the constant traveling, trying to prove myself in a job I wasn’t sure I’d keep, and managing an anxiety disorder like it’s a second full-time gig—I just haven’t gotten around to it.
Maybe now’s the time. Maybe it’s time I finally carve out space for it. For fun. For something casual. For dating apps, even. That way I can stop these spiraling thoughts and focus on anything but my boss because I've been doingso, sodamn good and I can't let this visit with my sister change that.
“Yeah,” I say, when she looks at me again. “I mean, I really don’t know what his deal is. He dates, I think. But I don’t think it’s ever anything serious. He has a teenage son and from what I gather, he isn't interested in introducing a new mom to his world.”
Catalina hums, thoughtful, and I want to ask her straight out if she’s really going to go there with him. She’s only in town for ten more days tops, before she has to fly back to California and back into her world of structure and surgery. I could totally see Lawson going for her pretty brown eyes, her serious mouth, that slim figure that looks like she’s still living off Ramen noodles and salads while interning. And it wouldn’t mean anything. Not to him. Not to her. But it’d mean something to me.
I don’t want it to. God, I don’t want it to.
Why would it matter to me?
The server drops off our drinks before I can spiral too deep, and Isla slides back into her seat across from us, still bubbling about the state fair welcome parade and the booth she's volunteered to work at this coming weekend when the fair takes place. But I barely register a word. Because all I can hear is the rush of blood in my ears and the brutal question that keeps punching me in the ribs:
Why am I jealous? Why am I upset that Catalina finds Lawson attractive?
I shouldn’t be. I knowI shouldn’t be. Any woman with eyes would find the man attractive. Maybe my sister could use a wild night with my boss.
I order another drink and dig into my food like it might fix whatever's fucked up inside of my brain because clearly something is wrong with me. My second whiskey sour goes down too fast, and the buzz in my brain hits harder than I expect.
I know I’m being ridiculous. I know that I have no right to care what Lawson does or who he does it with. He’s my boss.The man I report to. The man who signs off on my budgets and gives me client referrals and lets me talk shit about our competitors when we’re having a casual dinner of sandwiches in the middle of a freaking airport terminal.
And that's certainly all it should ever be between us. All it can ever be.
So, if he hooks up with Catalina tonight? That would be perfect, actually. Ideal. Exactly the kind of thing I need to help shove him back into the “strictly off-limits” category. The category henever really left, but somehow wandered out of anyway for some reason I can't figure out.
I’m sure it’s the alcohol, maybe the lack of food, maybe the strangeness of having a two week stretch of time off work where I'm not glued to his hip like a good little assistant. Oh wait, I'm living with him for these next two weeks.
