Page 106 of Dr. Stone
My soft exhale and another bite of the nearly flavorless apple stopped Jake from saying anything else. I simply just nodded at Jake’s concern like it was just another Monday, but something in me cracked wide open, and I was bleeding where no scalpel could ever reach.
“This is about Andie, isn’t it?” he questioned somberly.
“She came over and ended it.” I kept my voice flat, but it burned coming out. “Said it was moving too fast. That she had baggage to handle. That she didn’t want to hurt me.” I stared at the half-eaten apple in my hand like it held the answers.
Jake walked over to where I sat slumped on a chair with my ankle crossed over one leg, just trying to focus on eating a fucking apple…anything to keep my mind from focusing on her.
“That doesn’t sound like the woman who had her feet curled up under your ass while we were out by my pool when Ash and I hosted you two for dinner the other night.”
“No shit,” I shrugged. “I have no idea what the fuck happened that made her change. Maybe it was her parents? Maybe she told them about us, and they put something in her head about her being a single mom, and dating a man who has a reputation?—”
“Knock it off,” Jake said, spinning a chair around and straddling it. His voice had that low, steady edge he used when Iwas spiraling. “Andie wouldn’t run to her parents and blurt out your history. You’re not giving her enough credit.”
“Nothing else makes sense. Unless there’s another man? I don’t know. Maybe the food poisoning she got the night she dropped Brandon off was worse than I thought.” I shook my head. “I’m lost, man. She just hasn’t been the same since that night.”
“Ash said something about Andie not acting like herself at work,” Jake said. “I just figured she was distracted by love.”
“How’s she acting?” I asked, surprised at how numb I felt during this conversation. I was detached, but desperate for some clarity. Answers. Anything.
“I don’t know. I’ll talk to Ash about it tonight. She mentioned something about her being a bit off…nervous or something.” He seemed to shuffle his thoughts, “Andie would confide in Ash if it were about your relationship, though, right? All I know is that Andie has cancelled on a bunch of lunches with the girls. Oh, and she’s driving her old Porsche, not the new one. I didn’t think any of those things were red flags, but you know Ash and her intuition. I guess she was right.”
“She’s doing all that just because our relationship was moving too fast?” I asked, grasping at straws to make sense of it all. Nothing added up in my mind. Everything had been going so well, and suddenly calling it off felt, I don’t know…forced, or like something else was going on. It just seemed like a drastic response, so there had to be more to it. Right?
Jake nodded his head, “Could be, but Ash said she’s acting nervous…like she’s paranoid, looking over her shoulder and shit.”
“Paranoid about what? What the hell is going on?”
“No clue,” Jake said. “Now, you’re telling me she dumped your ass likeyougave her the food poisoning, but I’ve got to be honest here. I don’t think this has anything to do with you.”
“Fucking hell, man,” I said, my heart racing because I knew something was messing with her, and she wasn’t telling me anything. “What the hell could scare her this much? She breaks up with me, then shuts herself off from her friends?—”
“She even gave Kaley the fucking bitch yapper,” Jake said. “I was going to give you hell about it today, but now that you’re single and alone, you can happily let that asshole move in and keep you company while we try to get to the bottom of this shit.”
“Well, I’m not going to force that damn dog into your family; however, why don’t I take the fucker on the nights I’m not working?”
“Sounds like a fucking plan,” Jake chuckled. “Don’t worry, buddy. We’re going to figure this shit out, but it’s going to take the girls getting her to talk. Once they do, we have our in.”
“Christ,” I said. “If something or someone is scaring her, why wouldn’t she tell me?”
“It’s the price we all paid for running full steam ahead and not stopping to ask questions in the relationship early days,” Jake shrugged. “None of us bastards knew what we were getting into or what to do with what he had when we finally got it.”
“Yeah, well?” I chucked my apple core into the trash across the room and stood, “I’m done talking about all of it.”
Jake stood, eying me, “We’ll see about that.”
Jake’s voice carried genuine concern, but I didn’t give a damn, and I didn’t want to talk about it anymore. The facts were clear in this situation: Andie didn’t trust me enough to open up or let me slow things down to a place where she’d feel comfortable. We’d barely started building that trust before, out of nowhere, I managed to scare her off.
That was the part that hurt the most, and I didn’t want to feel it. So, just like I trained myself to do when I lost patients in the damn OR, I would flip off the goddamn emotion switch andblock it out. I wasn’t going to let myself feel any of this. Not now, not fucking ever.
The following month,I canceled dinner plans with my parents, still keeping quiet about losing Andie to anyone but Jake. I avoided everyone and everything outside of work, and sticking to shop talk with my doctor friends shut down any talk about my messed-up love life.
If I kept my mouth shut, maybe that meant none of it ever happened. And if it never happened—not meeting her, not falling for her—then I couldn’t have been the one who fucked it all up and lost her.
I knew I was fucked the morning I stood under the shower until the water ran cold, praying it would numb the goddamn ache in my chest. It didn’t. Her laugh lived louder than silence, her scent still clung to my sheets, and I couldn’t tell where she ended and I began. Now she was gone, and there wasn’t a scalpel sharp enough to carve her out of me.
That was the moment I knew I had to bust my balls and dig myself out of this pit of despair I’d blindly fallen into and get my shit together.
So, I buried myself in work, forcing every damn memory of her out of my mind. The weirdest part was that I had no interest in taking out anyone else, which was probably for the best. If this was karma’s way of serving me some revenge, well, I was getting it served up my ass sideways.
