He nods. “Yup.”
Now that he’s sitting in front of me, giving me one-word answers, I do recall complaining about his poor conversation skills. He’s basically a human boomerang, bringing every topic back to himself sooner or later, which I blamed for the demise of our relationship. I began to suspect he was losing interest when he started responding to my multi-paragraph texts with Kk. I never knew whether he wanted to keep talking or if he wanted me to disappear from his life entirely. And based on the fact that he eventually stopped texting me altogether, I’d say it was the latter.
When Jeff stares longingly out the window at his Segway, like it’s his long-lost love or firstborn child, I start crushing the strips of napkin into tight balls, fantasizing about tossing myself into the nearest ditch.
We attempt some stilted conversation about the science of composting, a topic I know absolutely nothing about. When that trails off, I reach for my coat, explaining that I have to get back to work for the bimonthly all-staff meeting.
“So, I’m curious. Before we go, why did you reach out, anyway? For closure?” he asks.
“Closure?” My laughter comes out shaky as I reach for my coat. “Why would you think that?”
“You were pretty into me in college,” he declares with no shortage of confidence.
My cheeks flush. “I mean, I guess it would be nice to know why we stopped talking.”
“Listen, I’m gonna be honest.” A grave pause. “You were great. We had a lot of fun together. But you were . . . a little . . .”
“A little what?”
He bites his lip, hesitant. “Clingy. A bit of a stage-five clinger.”
“Stage-five clinger?” I lean back in my chair, clasping a weak hand over my chest like I’m in grade school, obediently pledging allegiance to the flag. Did this man really just call me clingy? The gall. The gumption.
“You texted and called me. Nonstop,” he says matter-of-factly.
“Okay, that’s an exaggeration. It’s not like I sat by my phone waiting with bated breath for you to text me,” I lie. I might have. But it seems like poor timing to come clean. And it doesn’t make me crazy. I was in love, damnit. “In my defense, you told me you wanted to get married.”
He gapes at me. “No. I definitely never said that.”
“You did. The night we danced in my dorm room to that Toploader song. You said it would be our wedding song.”
“You thought that meant—” Red-faced, he runs his hands down his cheeks. “Obviously I didn’t mean it. I was eighteen years old. I didn’t even know how to do my own laundry back then. And I was probably just trying to get into your pants.”
“So you told me you wanted to marry me for fun? You can’t say shit like that, Jeff,” I warn.
“Yeah, I learned my lesson.” He snickers, almost to himself. “You know what they say. The hotter the girl, the crazier she is.” He goes on to mansplain this awful Crazy Hot Matrix YouTube video he swears by. When he catches my blatant eye roll, he adds, “No disrespect. I mean that as a compliment. You’re a really good-looking girl.” His flattery misses the mark.
“But also really crazy?” I venture.
He shrugs. “I’m just one of those guys who needs more freedom, ya know?”
I want to poke a pin in his inflated head with a hundred-point list of all the reasons he’s in the wrong here, all the instances when he led me astray, but I refrain for the sole purpose of preserving my dwindling dignity. Instead, I nod in mock understanding as Harmon collects my empty teacup.
The moment I stand, Jeff practically launches out of his seat, dragging his chair legs across the floor yet again.
“Well, I better get going. Catch you later, Tara.”
Or not.
Daniel (childhood love)
Tommy (ninth-grade boyfriend)
Jacques (Student Senate boy)
Cody (high school sweetheart)
Jeff (frosh week fling)
Zion (campus bookstore cutie)
Brandon (world traveler—the one that got away)
Linus (Brandon rebound)
Mark (book club intellectual)
Seth (ex-fiancé)
? chapter seven
I MANAGE TO MAKE it back to my day shift just in time for the all-staff meeting. It starts off like any other. The doctors and nurses hash out their pent-up grievances against each other, blaming the other party for all that is wrong in the NICU. Tensions are particularly heightened ever since last week, when someone broke the $5,000 coffee machine in the exclusive doctors’ lounge. The perpetrator remains at large, and now us nurses are stuck sharing our basic-bitch Keurig with the doctors, who have been hoarding all the best pod flavors.
Another fifteen minutes go by as people pose miscellaneous questions they should be asking their direct supervisors in a one-on-one meeting.
“Don’t forget, the charity gala is coming up on Valentine’s Day,” Jordan, the head nurse, reminds us. “Tickets are on sale starting Friday for those who can make it. We’re actively accepting items for the auction.”
Mention of the gala in three months fills me with dread. After my date with Segway Jeff, I’m no closer to a plus-one. In fact, I feel further away from that prospect than ever. Him calling me clingy and crazy doesn’t sit right with my spirit, especially considering he never communicated how he felt about me until now. Years later.
The only positive takeaway was the closure. Come to think of it, a postmortem analysis on where it went sideways for all my exes would be nice before attempting to rekindle the flame.
Lucky or unlucky for me (not quite sure which), the one ex I don’t have to social-media-stalk is right here in the room. Seth, my ex-fiancé, happens to be a doctor in the NICU. Perhaps he’ll have some extra insight I could use to my advantage with the remaining prospects.
“Hey, Seth?” I call out, poking him in the back as everyone filters out of the meeting room.
He spins on his heel as if in slow motion, delaying his fate. This is how it’s been since our breakup. In the rare event that I have to interact with him, he regards me like a chore, like that one drawer in your house piled with junk that you’d rather not deal with.
“What’s up, T?” he asks impatiently, hands on hips, chest puffed out like God can’t touch him.
“Can we talk?” I whisper. “In your office,” I add, eyeing our coworkers, who are huddled behind the nurses’ station, buttered popcorn at the ready, pretending not to eavesdrop. That’s the thing about workplace romances. The initial dating makes for juicy gossip. But the breakups, no matter how civil, are gold mines of scandal.
Admittedly, the immediate aftermath of Seth’s and my breakup wasn’t without drama. I took things hard after he canceled our wedding. I was in denial, on the verge of tears whenever I saw him, jumping at any opportunity to talk to him. Begging for scraps. Any little tidbit of information that could explain why he changed his mind after our three-year relationship. Why he gave up on the future we’d dreamed of. Even my shift supervisor took me aside and told me in the nicest way possible to “get my shit together.”
On the other hand, Seth’s reputation was completely untarnished. He wields power, as a doctor, as a man. He acted smug, like he was the “bigger person” for handling our breakup so seamlessly, with zero emotion, of course. After all, overt feelings are for unhinged women. And in a professional setting, surrounded by practitioners of the medical sciences—people of logic—there is little place for emotions.
Seth’s eyes dart to the onlookers, then back to me, hovering around my forehead. “Uh, I really don’t think—”
“It’s not about us. At least, not really,” I assure him, my cheeks turning pink. “I’m doing some self-reflection, and I need some advice.” If I know Seth like I think I do, fluffing his ego always works.
It does. He gives me a curious brow raise and ushers me into his office, as if he’s scared I’ll make some sort of scene.
His windowless office is canary yellow, which is hilarious, given that he’s anything but a sunshine-and-rainbows person. In fact, he’s requested for it to be painted gray multiple times because he says yellow undermines his professionalism.
Filling the majority of the space is a bulky glass desk, which no longer houses the framed photo of our engagement photo shoot session at the apple orchard. There’s a small bookshelf to the right, stocked with wartime nonfiction and medical journals. Only the most serious of literature for Seth.