The Doctor Who Has No Chance - Victoria Quinn Page 0,7

drown out my thoughts, my misery.

A week had passed, and now that Sicily and I were officially done, people had stopped mentioning her. Other than the subtle awkwardness between us whenever we interacted, it was like it had never happened. She didn’t seem angry with me, and she obviously didn’t bring it up again.

Time to move on…I guess.

My phone vibrated on my thigh and lit up.

At this time of night, it was usually Sicily, still working because she was a bigger workaholic than I was.

But it wasn’t her.

It was the last person in the world I’d ever expect.

Catherine.

Can we talk?

I stared at the message for a minute straight, reading her words over and over, unable to believe she’d sent that. It wasn’t a different Catherine because there had always been just one Catherine in my life.

It was her.

The Catherine.

Her words paralyzed me, and all I could do was stare, feel the adrenaline rush in my veins, feel my heart pound like I was about to bench three hundred pounds. It was the same rush of anxiety I felt every time a patient flatlined.

I’d pictured this moment so many times over this last year, how I would respond if she ever reached out to me, and my reaction was always different, depending on how long it’d been since she left me.

I didn’t expect the reaction that hit me.

I was fucking pissed. Now you wanna talk? Over a year later? Is this a joke? I probably shouldn’t have texted her back at all, but once she’d dropped her line, I got hooked and couldn’t let go.

The dots didn’t pop up.

I continued to stare at the screen, wondering what she would say to that.

Clearly, she had nothing to say.

Now, I regretted my reaction, because I wanted to know what would drive her to text me after all this time, on a Tuesday night, completely at random. I almost texted her again, but I refused to. Ball was in her court.

You don’t owe me anything, Dex. But I’d really like to talk to you…

Why?

The dots stopped.

“Goddammit, why?” I screamed at the phone as if I were screaming at her.

Her message came a few moments later. Because I need to apologize to you.

There I sat, in an empty café, almost nine in the evening, with a cup of coffee in front of me that I hadn’t touched.

Felt rude not to buy something.

I had just as much adrenaline in my body now as I had in the apartment. I couldn’t believe I’d actually come, agreed to meet her on a whim, to look her in the eye, when I hadn’t seen her in the flesh in over a year.

Then she walked in.

Same long brown hair.

Same bright eyes.

She carried herself the same way, like she was in court, ready to win her case. It was easy for her to find me since I was literally the only person in there. Unlike me, she didn’t bother to buy anything before she walked over, wearing a thick gray pea coat and a dark blue scarf. Her movements slowed more and more as she approached me with apprehension.

The closer she came, the harder my heart began to pound.

Pound. Pound. Pound.

Then she took a seat—and the pounding stopped.

My heart slowed down dramatically, the drums in my head going quiet, the moment finally arriving.

She sat across from me, her eyes shifting back and forth slightly as she took in my expression, as she studied how much I had changed since the last time she saw me. Her hands came together on the surface of the table, her back straight and poised, her fingers interlocking like this was a deposition rather than a clandestine meeting of two people who once promised to love each other forever.

I didn’t say a word because I couldn’t believe this was real. There were so many days I woke up in bed alone and wondered if she’d done the same. There were times I didn’t wake up alone, and when I considered if she’d done the same, it made me feel like shit. Months and months had gone by, and I kept glancing at my phone even when it didn’t vibrate, when the screen remained black, so I had to tap it to brighten it and look for a text that I knew wasn’t there. I’d been living in the dark, wondering if she had any regrets, wondering if life as a single person had been easier for her than it’d been for me. Her silence made me