Ever since, she’d been cool and distant, whether we were in class or in the ER, and it was starting to grate on my nerves.
She finally turned to face me, and my gut tightened at seeing the tear tracks on her face.
There wasn’t much that affected me.
I was an ex-Marine and had served as a doctor for four years before I was discharged and came home to Mooresville to start my career. I’d been here for almost three years, and I’d seen and done a lot in all that time.
Tears, though, they were my undoing.
Seeing a woman cry—young or old—was enough to make my stomach clench and my heart start to ache.
“Yeah, Tallulah is mine.” Her mouth quirked. “Thankfully, I’d been smart enough to know where I was going with my life after college. Started taking dual credit classes and graduated with my associate’s right out of high school. Took Microanatomy one and two during the summer before classes started, and about killed myself that summer.” She hesitated, “I went a little wild during that week between classes, and made a huge mistake by sleeping with Tallulah’s father. Got pregnant. Thankfully, I was able to make it through my entire first semester and most of my second semester before I had her, only missing two class days due to giving birth. Thank God I was able to make them up. Took the summer off with Tallulah, and then picked right back up during third semester.”
I blinked, surprised by the information dump.
But then I saw her face and realized rather quickly that she was nervous.
“Your car here?” I asked, looking around the nearly empty lot.
She pointed to a red, late model 4-Runner, and I gestured for her to start walking.
“Come on,” I ordered.
She fell into step beside me.
“I graduated school when I was fourteen,” I said. “Started college almost immediately after that. Once I graduated with my MD, I went into the Marines where I stayed for four years. Got out. Been here for three now.”
Lightning lit up the night sky and was immediately followed by a rumble of thunder.
In that moment of light, her face was illuminated, allowing me to see her pleasure at hearing my story.
“That sounds like you’ve been busy,” she said, reaching into her pocket for the keys just as the first raindrop hit. “Are you going to ride in this?”
Another raindrop fell, landing on my arm.
I nodded my head.
“Yep,” I said, turning around and walking away. Then, as an afterthought, I yelled over my shoulder so she’d hear me clearly. “A biker doesn’t just ride in the sunshine, Tally. There’s always bad that comes with good. Gotta take life as it comes.”
With that the heavens opened, and I smiled as I reached my bike.
Bikers fell into two camps when it came to riding in the rain. Some hated it. Some didn’t mind.
Me, I loved it.
As long as it wasn’t thirty degrees.
On a night like tonight, with it being eighty degrees, the cool raindrops felt nice against my skin.
Pulling out my leather jacket from my saddlebags, I shrugged it on and zipped it up, before I snatched up my helmet and seated it on my head.
Then I started the bike up, and roared out of the parking lot, sparing a look back twice to see if her eyes were on me.
They were.
Chapter 4
I used to be addicted to the Hokey Pokey, but I turned myself around.
-Bumper Sticker
Tally
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I shook my head. “No way in hell. Y’all, we have a freakin’ test tomorrow. We literally cannot do this.”
“Come on,” Hadley pulled my arm. “Go get it and let’s go. It’ll be fun.”
Those words were how I ended up having a vibrator race.
I shook my head in refusal. “No. Just no.”
The girls, my closest friends, grinned.
“I really can’t. I asked my parents to watch Tallulah so I could study for this test. I have to utilize…” Hadley placed her hand over my mouth and shook her head.
“No,” she glared. “I already had this discussion with you. You pay for daycare, and they don’t mind taking her there. They also don’t mind watching her on the days you have tests, or to work on the weekend.”
I glared right back at her.
“I don’t feel like this is a productive use of my time. If I wasn’t going to study, I’d just have Tallulah with me,” I growled at her, yanking my hand from hers.
Elba, seeing that this was going to be another knockdown, drag out fight between us, backed away and took a seat on my front porch steps, turning her back to us.
“Seriously,” Hadley crossed her arms. “You’ve been studying since Doc Bones’ class. There’s absolutely no reason that you can’t just come with us for an hour.”
She had a point. I’d been studying for about seven hours now.
But I wasn’t like her.
I couldn’t scan over the work once, and then have it all down for the test.
I had to actually work at it. Study the materials. Read the goddamn chapter.
She was one of those students who could scan the notes before class and then take the test, no problem.
And it made me want to cunt punch her.
She acted like this was all a joke, and it wasn’t.
I had thirty thousand dollars in freakin’ student loans to pay off once I was done. I couldn’t fuck around here. If I didn’t graduate, I was screwed, and not in a good way.
“One hour,” I said. “And I’m taking my notecards.”
Everyone cheered, and I shook my head and slunk back inside, my white socked feet shifting against the carpet as I moved.
“Wear something nice,” she ordered.
I flipped her off, causing her to laugh.
I didn’t own anything nice.
Why?
Because I was overweight.
BT, or before Tallulah, I was skinny. I fit into size six jeans, and could squeeze my breasts into a small tank top.
Now I was in a size fourteen pants, and I could barely fit my breasts into a size large.
My boobs had grown from a 34B to a 36D.
And all of my tops were now maternity tops because Tallulah nursed just as often as she ate solid foods.
Sure, she likely could’ve stopped nursing by now, but she was so unhealthy that I felt like I needed to give her every opportunity to beef up her immune system.
She had asthma and had been hospitalized for it four times during her short eight months of life. She was always on antibiotics for this sickness or that, and there was never a day that went by that I didn’t wonder if there wasn’t something more serious going on with her than what her doctors had found.
So I did everything I could do to make sure she had the best lot in life, and if that meant that I breastfed the child until she was seven, then so be it…though I hoped to God I didn’t have to. I was in a love-hate relationship with my breast pump already.
“Don’t forget it!” Hadley screamed.
I turned the corner of the hallway and headed to my room.