every muscle in my body is tight with fury. How dare she come here to find me, hoping to do what? Reconcile? As if that’s ever going to happen.
My heart is beating so fast I fear it’s reaching the danger zone. Naturally, the fucking keycard picks that moment not to work, but there’s no way I’m going back to the lobby while she might still be lurking about. I slide down to the floor and bust out a beer from the six-pack of Sam Adams I bought on the way back to the hotel, realizing it’s not a twist-off and I don’t have a bottle opener.
“Motherfucker.”
Remember a month ago when your life wasn’t a complete disaster? The thought has me pulling out my phone to check what I was doing a month ago today. I scroll through the calendar app and find the date on which I had three back-to-back surgeries, a two-hour meeting with my research team and a late dinner with Ginger at my place. I remember that particular night. I tried to get her to tell me more about herself, but she dodged the questions the way she always did.
I was too tired to care. All I wanted was to eat, have sex and sleep. Looking back, picking apart every minute I spent with her, I can see the signs were there. I just chose to ignore them. For the first time in years, I was in an actual relationship, having regular sex with someone who seemed to like being with me as much as I liked being with her. Why would I blow that up by making an issue over her not wanting to talk about herself? Wasn’t that a refreshing change of pace? I’d found a hot, sexy woman who preferred to talk about me rather than herself. She was a true unicorn. What more could I possibly want?
So much more, as it turns out. She might’ve played me for a fool, but I was rather easily played. I’ve never been one to be led around by my dick, but that’s exactly what she did, and I let it happen. With ninety percent of my mental energy expended at work on any given day, the ten percent I had left wasn’t enough to delve deeper into the inner workings of my relationship with her or to come up with questions I should’ve been asking.
That’s my bad. Not that I’ll ever think I deserved what she did, but for someone who’s always been told he’s freakishly smart, I was anything but when it came to her. I was a typical dude who didn’t care about the details as long as he was getting laid on a regular basis.
In my heart of hearts, I knew something about us wasn’t quite right, and I didn’t care enough to figure out what.
My phone chimes with a text. I pull it out of my pocket and experience a moment of pure elation when I see it’s from Carmen. Mr. Augustino reviewed the PP presentation today and said we need more about your research. Not sure if you still plan to meet with the M-D board, but if you do, send me more on that.
I read the message three times, looking for something extra that isn’t there. She’s all business, and I can hardly blame her for that. Since she can tell I read the message, I respond with, Will do.
Do I still plan to meet with the Miami-Dade board of directors? I turn it over and over in my mind. It would be so much easier to go back to New York, to pick up where I left off as if none of this ever happened. Before I met Carmen, that’s exactly what I would’ve done. I would’ve been on a plane within hours of hearing from the new board chair.
But here I am, still in Miami, and why is that exactly?
I think about the first time I saw Carmen, standing in the blazing sun waiting for me outside the hospital. I think about going to get her out of jail and how adorably undone she was by spending time in that cell. I smile, recalling how her hair had gone from ruthlessly straight to wildly curly in the two hours since I’d last seen her thanks to my convertible and the humidity. I thought she was stunning the first time I saw her, but even more so the second time, when her prim, perfect veneer had been upset by