She shrugged. “Just wanted to make sure you’re okay.”
“Did Will send you here?” The words flew from my lips before I could stop them.
Jesus. Why couldn’t my heart realize Will and I were done?
“No.” She shook her head, but I didn’t miss the faint spark that brightened her eyes and had her lips cresting into a soft smile. “Actually, Will didn’t send me. I’m here because, even though you and my brother are no longer together, you’re my friend and I want to be here.”
Even though, Will and I had broken up, I’d kept in contact with Georgia and Cassie, mostly through text messages and phone calls, but also because those two were persistent as hell. So, it wasn’t a surprise that she knew I was getting ready to move, but it was a bit of a surprise that she’d shown up, offering to help me move. Packing up boxes and moving shit didn’t seem like the kind of strenuous activity someone who was four weeks away from her due date would want to engage in…
I searched her expression for an answer, and the nervous rap of her fingers against her belly had me wondering if she was here for more than just support.
“That’s…uh…really sweet of you,” I answered, but I really wanted to ask if this was some kind of ploy to get Will and me back together.
She flashed a knowing look. “You don’t believe me.”
“I guess I sort of believe you?” Honestly, I wasn’t one hundred percent certain, but considering Georgia had schemed a few times just during the short time Will and I had been together, I wouldn’t put anything past her.
“Trust me, I don’t do favors for my brother.” She giggled nervously, and my eyebrows quirked up. Bingo. She was definitely here to be Dr. Relationship and try to fix what had already been broken.
I grinned. “You really are a terrible liar.”
“Ugh,” she groaned. “And I thought I was getting better at it.”
I laughed at that, and she offered an apologetic smile.
“Look,” she explained and sat down in my favorite cozy reading chair that had been pushed haphazardly aside to the front of the room. “I’m here for both you and Will.”
I flashed a skeptical look, and she held both hands in the air.
“I’m being completely honest.”
“So you’re here to convince me to get back together with your brother?”
She grinned. “Well, sort of, but mostly I’m just here because I wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“Promise?”
She nodded, and this time, as her eyes softened and creased at the corners, I believed her.
“So, where did you end up renting an apartment?”
“I got real fucking lucky,” I answered. “A friend of the family has offered to let me rent out one of their many investment properties in SoHo for an insanely low rent.”
“That’s amazing.”
“I know, right?” I agreed as I used packing tape to close the filled box. “I’m excited to have my own place again.”
“I couldn’t imagine having to move back in with Dick and Savannah after being on my own.”
“Trust me, it’s fucking terrible,” I said with exasperation in my eyes. “Honestly, I think Bill and Janet could give Dick and Savannah a run for their money in the inappropriate department.”
Georgia laughed. “That’s almost hard to believe. My mother is literally the most inappropriate person I know.”
I grinned. “Believe me, it’s no wonder they’re friends.”
I couldn’t deny it made me feel sad to think of how well our families got along. Deep down, before Will and I had broken up, my heart had already been convinced that we were a forever kind of relationship.
“He misses you, you know,” Georgia said into the quiet room, and I glanced up to meet her eyes. “He’s been a complete mess since you ended things.”
“I wish things were different.”
“I know from personal experience that sometimes things aren’t always what you think they are.”
I tilted my head to the side, and she smiled softly.
“Kline and I,” she explained. “Before we got engaged, I’d ended things with him out of assumptions. They were very, very wrong assumptions. And luckily for me, he didn’t give up on us.”
“He fought for you guys to get back together?”
She smiled like a woman who was madly in love with her husband. “Like you wouldn’t believe.”
The sad thing was, despite my happiness that Kline and Georgia had managed to find their way back to one another, all I could think was that if Will had been trying to fight for me, for us, I hadn’t even given him the opportunity to do so. Since the moment I’d left his office, I hadn’t answered a single one of his phone calls, texts, and one night, when he’d stopped by my parents’ place, I’d made Janet tell him I wasn’t home.
And the worst part of it all, I hated how miserable it made me feel.
I hated that there was a tiny little voice inside my head that whispered, Did I make a mistake?
Head down, writing out a prescription for the patient I’d just finished with, I’d successfully talked myself out of tanking my entire fucking life for a woman.
Granted, she wasn’t just a woman, she was the perfect fucking woman, but I wasn’t going to think about that right now because when I thought about Melody, I got pissed.
And after seven days had passed without a returned call or text or fucking email from her, I realized that I had to go back to the drawing board and think of something else that would convince her to let me explain.
An “I can’t live without you” gesture of some sort, but fuck if I knew what that entailed. Mel deserved more than just me standing in front of her door with something cliché like flowers that she couldn’t even enjoy unless she wanted to break out in hives.
Melody deserved the world, and that’s exactly what I wanted to give to her.
But after spending the last two hours of my day trying to rack my brain for the perfect gesture without any luck and riding the subway home with a cake-covered briefcase a week ago, I’d gone straight to my liquor cabinet, taken out a bottle of whiskey, and gotten the British version of pissed. So fucking sloshed, I couldn’t lift my hand to pick up my cell phone, a cell phone I would undoubtedly have used to make a fool of myself if she happened to answer my call.
So sloshed that all this goddamn pain hurt less, if only just a little.
A week later, and the only step I’d managed in progress toward getting her back was step one of twelve where I put down the fucking bottle.
I was just ripping the paper off of the pad and pushing myself to stand when Thatch, a shit-eating grin on his face, stepped through the door.
“What are you doing here? How the hell did you get back here?”
Kline stepped through the door after him, followed by Wes, and my eyebrows pulled together even closer.
Wes rolled his eyes at my question. “Are you kidding? All that stupid giant has to do is wink, and women let him do anything.”