Page 40 of Clinically Awkward

I kissed him back.

It was fine. It was perfectly fine.

It was also completely, utterly, devastatingly underwhelming.

“Text me when you get home?” he asked.

“Sure.”

He kissed me again, then walked to his car.

I sat in mine, staring at the steering wheel before I pulled out my phone and opened the text thread with Quinton.

I stared at the screen. What was I supposed to say?

Hey, sorry I ditched you for my boring boyfriend who spent two hours talking about himself?

Hey, I made a terrible mistake, and I wish I’d gone to Thai food with you instead?

Hey, I think I might be falling for you, and I have no idea what to do about it?

I started typing. Then deleted it.

Started again. Deleted it again.

Finally, I just typed.

Me: Did you end up getting Thai food?

I stared at the message and hit send before I could talk myself out of it.

The three dots appeared immediately.

He was typing and my heart did something weird.

Something I absolutely refused to analyze right now.

CHAPTER NINE

Quinton

If boredom were fatal, tonight would be my obituary. Picture it: Local doctor found sprawled on a couch, remote clenched like a lifeline, tennis ball in the other hand—victim of terminal ennui.

As the woman on TV droned on about miraculous hair transformations, I tuned out her promises of keratin bliss. My mind wandered, cataloging the slow decay of my evening. Seven PM on a Tuesday: me, sweatpants, couch, infomercial, cold pizza—living proof that the bar for excitement could always sink lower.

I absentmindedly tossed the tennis ball at the wall, catching it out of habit more than skill. It was less a game and more a ritual—a lazy orbit, repeated until even the wall seemed bored of me. The monotony didn’t break; it just looped, punctuated only by the infomercial’s increasingly desperate offers and my own increasingly desperate need for distraction.

The pizza had cooled to the temperature of existential despair; three slices down and five left, waiting patiently for me to muster the energy to eat them. Maybe I would get to them. Maybe not. It hardly mattered in the grand scheme of my Tuesday night.

It was not just that I was alone. It was that I felt disconnected—from everything that used to give this time shape. I missed Vivian’s stories: the chaos at the clinic, the way she made even the most mundane complaint sound like a sitcom recap. I missed the comfort of sitting across from someone who understood my jokes without explanation, of trading bites and banter instead of catching tennis balls and catching myself in a spiral of self-pity. Now, my only companion was a woman with impossibly shiny hair, hawking a fourteen-step hair routine and an allegedly magical brush, as if that could fill the void where conversation used to be.

Once, this hour meant Thai food, laughter, and the kind of connection that didn’t need words. Now, all I had was the sound of a ball hitting the wall and the nagging feeling that even a golden retriever would’ve moved on to a better hobby by now. If the universe were listening, I would take dinner with Vivian over a free detangling brush any day.

So when my phone finally buzzed, I sprang up with all the energy I thought I had been conserving. Hope—ridiculous, persistent hope—flickered for a second. Please let it be someone who could remind me what it felt like to actually live, not just exist. Preferably Vivian, but honestly, at this point, even a telemarketer would get a warm welcome.

Vivi: Did you end up getting Thai food?

I stared at the screen, and then I smiled.