I let out a huff of laughter. I wish I had been that smart back then. I could have saved myself a lot of trouble.
I finish my whiskey in one gulp before standing up and crossing my living room.
I pace back and forth as I consider my situation. I have an itch that needs to be scratched, and it’s clear that as much as I want her, Cynthia is not going to be the one. I’m not even going to try and seduce her. It’s too awful to play with her feelings like that. I don’t want to hurt her.
So I’ll just have to seek my satisfaction elsewhere. It won’t be as good as Cynthia, but it will do. I run through the list of women I occasionally call up. Older women who are to the point about what they want and understand when I call them, it’s just for a one-night scenario.
It’s a small town, so it’s not like I have a bevy of options. There’s a divorcee who lives about thirty minutes away. We met at a mutual friend’s birthday party. She’s self-assured and like me, she’s been burned before. She’s just as averse to commitment as I am.
There’s another woman I’ve hooked up with a few times who lives closer. We met when I downloaded a dating app out of curiosity. I hated it, and I only was on it for a night, but I matched with her, and we ended up getting together a few times. But I’m not sure about her. She says she just wants something casual, but I know plenty of people who say that because they think it’s what I want to hear. I’ve grown skilled at recognizing the signs of someone who says they want casual when they actually want something much more. Something I can’t give to anyone.
I wander back to the kitchen and clean up a bit from dinner. My friends are always surprised that I cook my own meals. I’m actually pretty good at it. I guess the expectation was that if I was a bachelor, I would order take-out for the rest of my life. I did for a while, but it gets old, so I eventually learned to cook.
I smile grimly to myself. Lianne and I, during that awful year of marriage, used to have all-out brawls over the cooking and cleaning. I would try to cook, but she didn’t like the meals I prepared, and I would get mad at her for making a huge mess in the kitchen and not cleaning it up.
As far as I’m concerned, no two people should ever get married until they’ve shared a kitchen and a bathroom for an extended period of time.
When I’m done cleaning up, I head back to my office. I might as well get a bit more work done tonight. I won’t message anyone tonight. But maybe this weekend, I’ll meet up with the divorcee, just so I can get some stuff out of my system.
Despite my resolve to forget about her, when I head to bed a few hours later, it’s not the divorcee I’m thinking of. It’s Cynthia, over there doing whatever she does to prepare for bed. Maybe she’s even cramming in extra studying. Or maybe she’s curled up with a book, her glasses sliding down her nose.
As I drift off to sleep, it’s her face that flashes through my mind. Her blue eyes. Her smooth pale skin. Her smile.
I know that I can make plans to forget about her all I want. I can resolve to never act on my attraction. I can do all that, but even so, I know she’ll still haunt my dreams.
Chapter Five
Cynthia
I look at my watch and nearly burst into tears. It’s only three in the afternoon. The day’s not even close to done, and it already feels like it’s been about five days. Five awful days.
First I had my exam for anatomy this morning, and it didn’t go well. There were a bunch of questions on a topic I hadn’t studied as much, and the whole time I was taking it, I just cursed myself for not preparing properly. It’s not like I flunked it, and I know I probably still did fine, but I hate making a mistake like that. I should have assumed any topic might be featured, not just the obvious ones.
Afterwards, Becca and Tommy were no comfort. I told them I messed up, and instead of offering sympathy, they just teased me and told me to lighten up. I hate being told that. I know they have a point, of course, but that doesn’t make it fun to hear your best friends tell you that you’re too uptight.
“You’re already into med school,” Becca joked. “They’re not going to rescind your acceptance because you got an A- on one stupid exam.”
She doesn’t get it. I’m not scared they’re going to rescind my acceptance, I just like to hold myself to a certain standard. I want to feel good about my grades going into med school, so I can continue to aim high.
So I snapped at Becca and Tommy before storming off. Which was really immature. And I’ll totally apologize later, but first I have to survive the rest of this day.
After my next few classes, I got an email about my student loan for med school, which stressed me out even more. Most of it’s all sorted, but it’s not completely set in stone, and I just want to take care of it now, so nothing goes wrong later.
But I’ve been trying to call my mom all afternoon, and she’s not picking up. I worry about my mom constantly. When I was in high school, she was diagnosed with cancer. My dad had left by that point, so it was just the two of us. We depended on each other, and we still do. It was the most
