Silence.
Four days of silence.
Boxer never returned my call, nor did he text.
I had my answer. He was done with me—us—whatever this was.
He’d realized I was more trouble than I was worth and that there were other women—less complicated women—he could spend his time with.
I only had myself to blame for getting my hopes up that he’d call back.
By not calling me, he was sending a clear message and I had to respect it.
Luckily, I had work to dive into. I performed a colon resection, repaired a hernia, biopsied a thyroid tumor, stitched up a forehead, and treated an adult who’d uncovered a wasp’s nest in his garage and had been stung to the point of going into anaphylactic shock.
I was nearing the end of my forty-eighty-hour shift, my eyes bloodshot from too much caffeine and too little sleep. “You look like you could crash for days,” Amanda remarked when I approached the nurses’ station.
“I feel that way.” I threw out an exhausted smile. “But I’m so keyed up, I doubt I’ll be able to fall asleep right away.”
“You know what helps with that? Sex. Raunchy, dirty, twisty sex.” Amanda grinned. “You should call your hot biker and ask him to oblige.”
He wasn’t my biker anymore, and I was depressed.
I wanted Boxer in my bed, the sheet pulled up over his body, naked chest on display as his heavy-lidded eyes watched me strip and then crawl on top of him.
“Your jaw just went slack,” Amanda said with a laugh.
I closed my mouth and shook my head. “You’re rotten.”
An hour later, I was home. I hadn’t seen Jerry for days and there was a new guard on duty. I waited for the wave of guilt for getting Jerry fired, but then again, he’d been the one spying on me and feeding information to my mother. I had nothing to feel guilty over.
The late afternoon sun drenched the condo in a soft, warm glow, making me want to curl up in a patch of light and fall into a dreamless sleep.
I was so exhausted that I just stood in the living room, wondering what I wanted and in what order. The caffeine buzz was no longer in my system, and my limbs were shaky with fatigue.
Boxer not calling me back grated on me.
I groaned. This was stupid. I was being stupid.
Stupid, tired and irrational.
Screw it. If I’m going to be irrational…
There were things I wanted to say to Boxer, and I wanted to say them face to face. I wasn’t sure why that idea took root, but it seemed imperative.
Nothing had been settled as far as I was concerned. It still felt unresolved, at least on my end, but I couldn’t figure out why. I’d asked him to leave, and he left. That should have been the end of it.
I went to the fridge and pulled out the carton of orange juice. As I poured the last of it into one of the new glasses delivered from Folson’s, I tried to silence my thoughts.
“Gasoline on a fire? Good idea or a bad idea?” I said aloud. This would’ve been a perfect moment to ask a pet for its advice, but I was a workaholic that would’ve forgotten to feed a goldfish, much less some furry living thing.
I opened a new browser on my phone and searched for the number to Pinky’s. I pressed the number and waited.
Someone answered after two rings. “Pinky’s,” a woman greeted.
“Hello, may I speak to Freddy?”
“I’m Freddy.”