of the waiting room chairs. Her hands pressed together between her thighs as she watches me with deep, troubled concern on her face.
“Yes, Regan, He knows. He knew before me. I’m sorry. But I need to call Tyson, too and then we’ve got to get on the road. I know I owe you a million apologies and explanations. I was reeling from shock when I first heard. Then I had this argument with Mom, right after. She tried to justify it all—”
“Mom knows, too?” My voice comes out in a wheeze. I can’t breathe.
“She’s known the whole time. Pops, too. Listen, I know I owe you more. But I really need to go.”
I take a deep breath and compose myself…My whole life is unraveling. And I don’t know what to do next.
“That’s fine,” I say in the voice he expects me to use—calm, collected, cool.
“I love you, Reggie. We’ll be okay. We’ll get through this.”
I almost laugh at his use of the word we.
Is there a “we”?
I hang up and face Confidence.
“You already knew?”
Her nod is slow, her eyes sorrowful and downcast.
“I couldn’t say anything because Hayes asked me not to. I’m so sorry,” she sounds so sad.
And, it pisses me off. Why is she sad? When it’s me who’s entire life is a lie. I curl my lip at her. “So, was all of this friendship shit so that you could keep an eye on me for Hayes? To make sure I wasn’t planning on fucking his brother, since it turns out he’s my fucking stepbrother, too?” I yell and Confidence’s eyes nearly bug out of her head, and fill with tears.
Guilt deflates my anger. I’m not mad at Confidence. She’s not the one who betrayed me. “I’m sorry.” I cover my face with my hands and try to catch my breath.
“It’s okay. I can’t imagine what you’re feeling,” she says after a minute. Her voice is soft but guarded. I nod, but don’t meet her eye. “But I didn’t even know about you and… I’m praying it’s Stone… until right now,” she says.
To my horror, a sob breaks loose and a tear streaks down my cheek.
“Can I call someone or take you home myself? I know it’s a lot, but everything is going to be okay.”
Nothing will be okay, but I don’t have the strength to argue. My whole life has unraveled.
In the days to come, all of this will feel like a gust of warm wind compared to the tsunami that will land on our doorstep.
Opportunity
Stone
“I’ve got some news. Call me when you can talk.”
Hayes’ text is curt and ominous.
My first thought is that something has happened to Regan. Then, I remind myself that if that was the case, he wouldn’t be the one calling to tell me. I’m not surprised she’s the first person I thought of, though, there hasn’t been a night, since I got back to Colombia, that I haven’t dreamed of her.
They’re vivid dreams, all set on that beach in the Sea of Cortez. They alternate between nightmares of me drowning or her disappearing and wet, hot fucking where my mouth and dick learn every inch of her intimately. I feel them all like I’m living them. I wake in throes of emotions and physical sensations so strong that either my pillow or boxers are wet with proof of how gripped by the dream I was.
And every day, I leave my bed and force all of those thoughts to stay there. And they do. I go through my day in complete isolation from my emotions.
But three months of trying to pretend that I don’t miss her, has left me exhausted.
Something tells me that Hayes’ news, even if it’s not about Regan, is going to force me to call on the same discipline that saw me through the night the first time I lost a patient.
I put my percolator on the stove and walk out onto the small balcony of my apartment.
I stare out at the fog-covered valley I call home. The sun will be up soon, and the small courtyard of our building is already full of the aroma of coffee brewing and bread baking. The city stretches out in a sprawl of churches, and homes and businesses that mingle to create a vista of soaring stone steeples and the red tiled rooftops that are ubiquitous to this area. On the edges of the city, modern residential skyscrapers sit like sentinel barriers of the town and ominously dark Cordillera Oriental, a discontinuous cluster