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I wanted to cup that chin in my hand. I wanted to force her to look at me and see if she could still say those words looking into my eyes, but I stopped myself.
She was right. We had no reason to see each other again, last night be damned. The quicker that we both moved on, the less painful it would be.
Why was I even thinking about pain? I had a fun night with a beautiful woman. That was it. End of story.
***
Reagan haunted me for months after that.
She was right. We didn't run into each other, and that turned out to be an agonizing realization. There was nobody to argue with, nobody to irritate, nobody to derive pleasure from teasing.
The thing was, that it was all surely one-sided. She had just broken up with Brian, and I was clearly the rebound. Yet, here I was, six months later still thinking about her.
"That makes sense. It's not uncommon for people to reach for somebody unlikely after a breakup," my patient, Mr. Ellerbee, commented.
I looked at him sharply. "Did I say all that stuff out loud?"
The old man smiled pleasantly at me. "More of a mumble about great sex and never seeing her again and your best friend."
I let out a heavy sigh. Mr. Ellerbee patted me on the shoulder. "Don't worry Doc, it gets better with time."
I shook my head. "I'm sorry, Mr. Ellerbee, I didn't realize I was letting that loose. Forget you heard anything."
"Screw that! Tell me about this great sex," he said with a mischievous smile.
I laughed, knowing that the old man would happily spend all of his appointment time swapping lewd stories just to relive his glory days. "Maybe next time. Now, tell me about these reactions you've been having with your medication…" Mr. Ellerbee proceeded to fill me in on the unfortunate and frankly gross side effects that he was experiencing.
After I finished with Mr. Ellerbee, I squeezed in a couple more appointments and then called it a day. I would take my case files home and work on them there. That would distract me, surely.
I spent one night, one night with Reagan, but now, the memory of her followed me around everywhere.
This was the woman I was used to arguing with all the time… she was also the woman I’d had to thank for the most amazing night of my life. There wasn't one place in my apartment where I didn't think of her. My bed wasn't the only place that had seen some action. In fact, there wasn't a place in my apartment that I could look at that didn't make me relive some sort of memory with her. Even memories that didn't have anything to do with our forbidden night together.
I couldn't look at my kitchen counter without remembering the first night we met. Brian had brought her over to introduce her to his friends. We were all going to have dinner someplace fancy together, but when they walked in, she saw the track event of the Olympics playing on my TV and immediately became engrossed. Much to Brian's dismay, we ordered in that night, and I watched, fascinated, as the tall and beautiful woman screamed bloody murder for her chosen one or two to "Move faster, what do you have? Two lead feet?"
Brian looked at me apologetically, but I thought it was funny. Against my better judgment, that was where I started developing a little crush on her. If I were a different sort of man, I would have pursued her myself. But I couldn't do it to Brian, much less myself. I decided a long time ago that settling down in family life was not for me. I saw what happened when my supposed family tried to fake their way through their supposed togetherness and love for one another.
Later, I tried to think about the patients I would be seeing the next day. I ran a tiny office on the east side of Brooklyn. The majority of my patients were elderly—that was the way I preferred it. Older people didn't pull any punches, and I didn't have to worry about quite as much barfing as I did with children. Plus, my patients didn't give me too much shit if I didn't fall all over myself listening to their stories—they wanted to feel better, and I wanted to help them, but we didn't need to be best friends or anything. I had excelled in med school with everything but bedside manner. But who had time for that in this world?
As I neared the brownstone, I saw the bottom floor lit up. The Mendelsons must have been home. I passed by the door on the way to the stairs, and I could hear their laughter drifting through. For some reason, it caused a funny, little pang in my chest. There was nobody waiting home for me. And that's the way I like it, I told myself, but sometimes…sometimes, I wondered…
I scrolled quickly through my favorites on my phone and put in an order for a pizza and turned on the game, which would serve as background noise while I looked through my files for the evening and caught up on some paperwork. As I waited for my pizza, I sipped on a beer and shuffled through a pile of mail that I collected on the way in. "Crap, crap, jury summons. Shit, didn't see that one, what is this?" I said, pulling out a brightly decorated envelope with my name scrolled in an elegant hand.
I slit it open and out came a Christmas card. "Shit, it's barely past Thanksgiving. I'm already getting Christmas cards."
The card was composed of several pictures of a happy looking family with the words "Seasons Greetings" artfully printed at the top. "Good old Veronica," I smiled fondly.
Veronica was my cousin, and I hadn't seen her in person in years, though the reason why was unlike most of my family. Some would say that I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth, and technically, that was true. However, as I would learn very early on, there was a price for everything—even when you didn't ask for it. My family came from old money and thought anybody who didn't also come from such means did not belong in their circle. Unless they were working for them, of course.
I had never fit in. I was too loud, I was too brash, I was too forward by the country club lifestyle's standard. I was supposed to follow my old man's footsteps and wind up in some sort of hedge fund, investment bullshit deal. But it bored me to tears, and I was more interested in how things, like the body worked, as opposed to making money grow.
After high school, I took a leap year that ended up lasting several years. After seeing the world and so many underdeveloped places, I came home with a new motivation and even less tolerance for my family's opulence. I looked at all these unhappy people I was related to and felt even more determined to make a difference.
So, I went to college a little bit later. Despite my dedication to my chosen vocation, I definitely made sure to cram in all the college experiences I'd missed. The one time I got talked into going to a frat party just to see what all the noise is about was when I met Brian. In fact, he was in the middle of doing a keg stand as a celebration for passing his exams before he started law school. He was fun and easy-going but serious about his passion. It was nice to have a friend in my corner to shoot the shit with.
Veronica, like me, didn't fit in with the family. But she did her due diligence and went to school and got an accounting degree to make her old man happy, even though it clearly wasn't what she wanted. Her parents didn't seem to care about that, though. She was living up to the family standard, and that was all that mattered to them. That was, until she met Henry.
Veronica apparently had flown to see a high-flying client in Germany. The client took her for a tour through their palatial house and showed her all the renovations they were doing thanks to Ronnie's savvy accounting skills. It was where Veronica met one of their carpenters, Henry. Ronnie told me it was love at first sight, and within months, she and Henry were engaged. The family was not pleased. He was a German carpenter who lived paycheck to paycheck, so they didn't think he was a good match for her or the family. They were sure that he was just getting close to her for her wealth.
