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“Me too,” I say. “Took me a while to pass out after you.”
“Well at least we’re both feeling fresh and rested for our hike back to town today,” she quips.
I laugh, and then stand up and head over to the kitchenette. I make her a black coffee, and myself a tea. I also heat up some of the microwavable rice, so we have something to soak up any remaining liquor in our stomachs.
“We should get an early start,” she says. “I need to go to work tomorrow. We should make sure there’s a boat ready to take us to Mount Desert Island.”
My heart sinks like a stone to the bottom of my stomach.
Right. She wants to get back for work—totally understandable. I’m also supposed to be back on campus on Tuesday for a meeting with my supervisor. But I’ve barely even thought about my PhD over the last few days. I’ve been entirely focused on Angela. And if she wants to get back to Harborview in time for work tomorrow, it means I have roughly twelve hours to convince her to forgive me.
I need to take things up a notch.
“As soon as we’re out of here and I pick up some service, I’ll call around,” I say easily, holding the coffee out to her. “I’m sorry there’s no milk or sugar,” I say.
“How do you know how I take my coffee? I could like it black,” she says suspiciously, and tries to take the mug from me.
But I don’t release my hold on it, instead letting her hands linger on top of mine.
“Because I know you. And I have a long memory—we made coffee together at mine one time. We’d been up all night and you really needed it.” I stroke my thumb along hers, just once, and then I finally release her.
“Oh,” she says. “Well thank you for making it. And for remembering. I’m less picky now that I’ve gotten used to drinking whatever I can find at work. At the end of the night I’m lucky if there’s anything left but black tar at the bottom of the pot.”
“How long are you normally at the hospital?” I want to know more about her day-to-day. It’s the type of thing I’ve rarely, if ever, had the chance to ask her about over the last few years.
“I usually work a ten-hour day.” She shrugs like that’s nothing. “But only four days a week. More if we’re having staffing issues.”
“How often does that happen?”
“A few times a month. But it means I get overtime pay, which is really useful because living in Harborview isn’t as cheap as itused to be. I could save money living with my moms, but…” She wrinkles her nose at this. “I love them, but I’m twenty-seven, you know? I need to have my own space.”
I hate that she’s worried about money. That she’s working overtime frequently, that no one else she works with seems to be dependable. And I could help her—I have the money. I make next to nothing as a PhD student, but my parents are generous, and I basically have the Harborview house all to myself.
“Are you happy being back in Harborview, though?” I ask.
She stayed away for a long time, only coming home on holidays and for a week in the summer. I’m not actually sure why she returned.
“I am. I think, anyways. I don’t know. Sometimes it feels a bit lonely. Especially now that Cat and Jamie are, you know.” She waves her hand to emphasize the point—that they are happily ensconced and intertwined together, now more than ever before.
“They’re sickening, aren’t they?”
She laughs at this, the sound clear and bright, and I realize how long it’s been since I was the cause of that. I want to do it again and again—to make her happy, to make up for the time when I didn’t, when I caused her pain.
“I love them both, but oh my god are they justtooadorable. And I don’t think I’ve ever felt that—the way they feel for one another. That deep, unending connection of souls,” she says, voice turning serious.
“I haven’t either,” I say, the lie rolling easily off of my lips.
Because I feel that way for her. But unlike Cat and Jamie, Angela and I have always struggled to be on the same page, and by the time I was ready to face that feeling, it was too late. I’d already fucked it up.
“I’m not even sure I want it,” she says. Her eyes have a far away look in them, like she’s gone somewhere in her head I can’t ever know.
“What do you mean?”
“I think…I think I’d feel like that type of connection demanded too much from me. Like it would ask something from me that I don’t have to give.”
“Whateveritis, I’m sure you have it, Angel.”
She makes a humming noise in response, clearly not willing to elaborate much more. And maybe I’ve overstepped. She’s the only person who gets to determine what she wants.
