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Chapter 13
Ayawn claimed Stephanie as she stood in front of the vending machine in the breakroom debating which form of nourishment she would purchase. Chips or candy. Salt or sweet. She sipped the soda pop she’d already procured and decided that chocolate was the way to go. Pushing the button she watched the metal rings turn and her chosen snack drop down.
Caffeine and sugar. That was what her diet consisted of now. Were they the healthiest choices? Nope. But, she didn’t care. All she cared about was getting through the next few hours of her shift and giving her patients the best care she could provide. Snickers and Pepsi were necessary evils for her to accomplish that.
She was currently working her thirteenth day in a row. There was a nasty virus going around and it’d taken out half of the hospital staff. Every one of her days off had been interrupted with a phone call asking her to come in to work. Which she had done. As much as she would love to say that she’d done it out of the goodness of her heart or even that she was doing it for the money to ensure Scott stayed at Brookside, her intentions weren’t that pure. The truth was she didn’t want to be home. At home she was alone with her thoughts and these days that wasn’t a pleasant place to be.
As much as she tried, she just couldn’t manage to get back into her zone. Her emotion-free, numb zone. She just couldn’t lock into her default of numb on the inside happy on the outside. Feelings weren’t her cup of tea and these past few weeks it seemed that’s all her mind was serving. Instead of sipping chamomile, green, or Earl Grey she was gulping sadness, loneliness, and heartbreak.
In the eighteen days since Ace had left and she’d gotten the call that her father passed, she’d felt like she was walking in an emotional mine field. She’d be fine, navigating her way through her day, and then she’d hear a song, an innocuous conversation or an ad on television and boom, an explosion of melodrama would burst in her. One second she’d be fine and then the next there were tears, sadness and anxiety.
Since she’d found out that her father was gone, she’d tried to go on with her life and return to business as usual. Realistically, nothing had changed so that shouldn’t have been difficult. She hadn’t seen the man in twenty years and he stopped sending checks when the twins had turned eighteen, so it wasn’t like she had any financial or emotional dependence on him. Apparently, her subconscious saw things differently. A dark cloud had settled over her and no matter what she tried to do she couldn’t shake it. Thankfully, the twins weren’t suffering from the same melancholy that she was. As far as she knew, Simone was back at school and doing fine. Scott had taken the news in stride.
She supposed it made sense that they weren’t affected. They had no memory of him. He was an abstract concept to them. Not the man he was to Stephanie. The man that had tucked her in at night when she was scared and had a bad dream. Or had stayed in the hospital with her when she was four and had to have her tonsils removed. He wasn’t the man that when a snowstorm had knocked out the electricity had made blanket forts and slept in the living room with her because he knew she was afraid of the dark.
In the two decades since he’d left, Stephanie hadn’t thought about those things, but now she couldn’t stop thinking about them.
As she bent down to retrieve her Snickers from the vending machine her pocket vibrated with an incoming message. She set down her soda and pulled her phone out. When she saw that the text was from Mason, her heart sank. He’d been on a campaign to see her since she’d run into him at The Plate reopening. He’d sent flowers last week after he’d found out about her father. He’d stopped by her condo and the hospital several times wanting to talk to her. So far she’d been able to dodge him.
Either because she was a glutton for punishment or she was still holding out a small glimmer of hope she checked her missed calls. When she saw that there was one and that it was from the attorney of her father’s estate, her heart sank further. She’d been in contact with Ms. Lancing because there was a will that she and the twins were named in. Everything had been going smoothly, but a couple of days ago there’d been a snag; it was being contested. Stephanie didn’t know by whom, and honestly didn’t care. If it were up to her, she would tell the lawyer that she wanted no part of any of it. But it wasn’t just up to her. She had the twins to think about. So, instead of being able to treat this situation like a Band-Aid that she needed to rip off quickly, it was going excruciatingly slow.
Pushing the phone back into her pocket she also tried to stuff down the disappointment over the messages not being from the only person she actually wanted to talk to. Ace hadn’t been in touch since he left. Not once. The last communication from him had been the text he sent the morning after their night together. Since then it had been radio silence.
She’d been telling herself she didn’t care. He wasn’t her boyfriend. He was her neighbor. One night, one perfect night, didn’t change that fact. She’d gone into this thing with her eyes wide open and had gotten exactly what she wanted, a night of fun. Her mind was fully prepared to return to her regularly scheduled programming. The snag with that was…her heart and hormones were not. They were playing Ace montages twenty-four seven. She couldn’t stop thinking about him. She missed him. Not like, “Oh I wonder how he’s doing” missed him. No, this was a soul deep, ache that she felt in her bones.
She missed his smile, his eyes, his voice, his arms, his chest, his…everything. She missed knowing that he was just next door. She missed hearing him working in his garage on his bike. She missed wondering if he was shirtless while doing so and finding some excuse to go outside to find out. She missed the possibility of seeing him at any moment. She missed the knowledge that if there was a knock on the door, it could be him.
An audible sigh escaped from her as she slid into a chair at an empty table in the breakroom. Her teeth sank into the candy bar and she closed her eyes to enjoy one of the only pure indulgences she had. Chocolate. As she chewed the sweet treat, hoping to lose herself in its goodness, she did her best to ignore the voice in the back of her head. It was the one that kept telling her that her only option at this point was to move.
She knew that living next door to Ace while he was gone was miserable. She feared that living next door to Ace once he returned and things went back to normal would make her go crazy. Like, certifiably insane. Her prediction that she would be mature enough to handle just being neighbors with him after the night they’d spent together was a naïve one at best. As much as she wished things were different, that she hadn’t developed the feelings that she had, it was time for her to face the truth. She needed to find a new place to live. It was her only shot at surviving this, whatever this was.
She was smack dab in the middle of her pity party when two nurses came in. One was talking about a guy that she was thinking about giving a screen test to, which Stephanie knew was code for the third time she would be having sex with him. The other said that her date the night before would not be receiving a call back.
After grabbing snacks the two continued chatting as they left and Stephanie sat in silent envy. She wished that she could be that cavalier about sex and relationships. She wished she could look at the night that she’d spent with Ace as what it was, a one and done, and move on with her life. But, the past two and half weeks were evidence that that was something she wasn’t capable of.
She may have decided not to participate in the study because her life was too complicated, but honestly, even if it wasn’t, she didn’t think she was cut out for it. Just like she didn’t have the “rude” gene, apparently she didn’t have the “hook up” gene either.
Stephanie closed her eyes, wanting to take a moment to shut out the world. Her feet hurt. Her back hurt. Her head hurt. All she wanted to do was go home, get in a bath and have a glass of wine. The only problem with that was then she would be alone and her mind would start wandering to one of the two men she absolutely didn’t want to think about. Her father or Ace. It was like a broken record playing over and over.
“Well, hello there young lady.” A voice boomed.
Stephanie opened her eyes to see one of the only men that had been a constant in her life, Colonel James Hunter, or “Grandpa J.” Grandpa J was Sophie Hunter-Sloan’s biological grandfather, but he’d basically adopted the entire town as “his kids.” He volunteered here at the hospital and treated everyone that worked there like family.
“You feeling okay?” he asked with genuine concern as he took a seat across from her.
“I’m fine.” That was her story and she was sticking to it.
All of her life when people asked how she was doing, how she was feeling, “I’m fine” was her pat answer. Most people took her response at face value either because they believed her or because they didn’t really care how she was doing and just asked because it was the social norm.
Grandpa J wasn’t most people.
“I’m not so sure about that.” His weather worn hand reached across the table and patted her forearm before giving it a little squeeze. “I think that you need to get some rest, you hear me? The last thing you want is to catch that bug that’s floating around.”
“I know.” Stephanie knocked on the table that was made of wood.
Grandpa J didn’t look impressed by her superstitious response. His head tilted a hair as his left brow raised. “I’m serious. When the boat is sinking you have to put your own life vest on first before you can save anyone else. From what I’ve seen, you make sure everyone around you is in a lifeboat and you end up dog paddling in the middle of the ocean. I think sometimes you forget to take care of yourself as well as you take care of everyone else.”
His insightful words hit her, hard. Tears began pooling in her eyes. She did her best to sniff them back. Before the waterworks really had a chance to flow her pager beeped with a code that indicated she was needed in the emergency room.
