The Wedding Date, page 15
Alexa hadn’t even told him she’d been in touch with Abby.
“I’m sure she’ll be happy to hear that,” he said. Jack high-fived him with his good arm as they left.
He ducked into his office in between patients to text her. But then he saw the text that had come in during his appointment.
Are you sleeping with anyone else?
Whoa, wait, what had prompted that? He responded before he stopped to think.
Not at the moment, I’m at work.
Why did he never stop to think?
I see. What about after work, will I get a different answer?
Maybe another joke would help.
No, tonight is basketball night.
There was a knock on his office door, and he looked up.
“Dr. Nichols? Your one thirty is in the exam room.”
“I’ll be right there!” he said, and looked back down at his phone.
How about this: now you have the weekend free so neither work nor basketball nor I will get in the way.
What the fuck? How did that escalate so quickly? And why the fuck had she brought this up right now in the middle of the day? In a text message?
Come on, can you just calm down about this? I was just joking.
He sat down on the edge of his desk, ignoring the files that fell onto the floor.
Hahahahaha so funny.
Somehow, he didn’t think those were genuine hahahahas. While he was still thinking about what to say to her, his phone buzzed again.
Look, Drew, I’m too busy to deal with this. I don’t think this is a good idea.
Drew barely caught himself from cursing out loud, and luckily remembered that there were small children and their parents just outside the door.
“Dr. Nichols?” The knock on his door was louder. Shit, he was running even later than usual.
“Coming!”
Come on, Alexa. What the hell?
He slammed his phone down onto his desk and opened his office door hard enough for it to bang into the wall. Why the fuck did women have to do things like this?
“Everything okay there, Dr. Nichols?” the nurse asked.
“Fine. Who’s next?”
He raged through his next four patients. He forced himself to smile at the kids, but he was particularly curt to one of the moms, and he knew he’d hear about that later.
Carlos came into his office at the end of the day when he was getting ready to go.
“Why are you still in those clothes?” Carlos dribbled an imaginary basketball on his office floor. “Basketball tonight!”
He flashed back to the text he’d sent Alexa that day and cringed.
“Gotta bail, sorry.” His general plan was to go home and drink all of the beer in his fridge.
“Why, gotta call your girl?” Carlos asked. “You really going to ditch us for her? Though, I have to say, she is really . . .”
He didn’t want to hear the end of that sentence.
“She’s not my girl.” He threw his bag over his shoulder and walked out the door. Carlos, of course, followed him. Still talking.
“Yeah, yeah, of course you’ll say that. I know how you are. But anyone who sees you together knows the truth.”
“She’s. Not. My. Girl.” Drew got in the elevator, not looking at Carlos, but he could feel his scrutiny.
“Okay. What happened?” Carlos pressed the button for the lobby, still staring at him. Of all people, he did not want to talk to Carlos about this. He’d make it a whole big thing, and it wasn’t a big thing. It had just been two fucking weekends, it was over, and he didn’t want to deal with it or think about it anymore.
“Nothing.” They rode down the whole way in silence. Carlos followed him across the street to the parking garage and got in the elevator with him there.
“Are you going to tell me now?” Carlos got off the elevator with him and walked with him toward his car.
“Don’t you have somewhere to be? Why are you following me? Go play basketball.”
Carlos gestured to the left, and Drew saw his gleaming red BMW. “I parked two cars away from you this morning, jackass. I’m not following you.” He leaned against Drew’s much more battered car and studied him. “Though, that is a good idea. You realize that I do have a key to your house, right? If you don’t tell me what got you in this mood, you know I’m just going to follow you home until you do. And I know it’s about Alexa, so don’t try to bullshit me.”
Drew sighed. As much as he’d fought it, he’d known it was inevitable.
“Fine, follow me home, but you’d better stop to get us food on the way. And you’re paying.”
Twenty minutes later, Carlos walked into his apartment carrying two In-N-Out bags. Drew ripped them open, bit into a Double-Double, and washed that down with his second beer. Then he flipped to Alexa’s text messages and tossed his phone to Carlos.
“You might as well just read what happened today, so I don’t have to tell you. Scroll down.”
Drew watched Carlos’s face as he read. In seconds it went from puzzlement to amusement, to outrage, and finally landed on exasperation. He set the phone down in the center of the table, popped open a beer, took a long sip, and sat back against the couch cushions. Finally, he looked at Drew.
“‘Not at the moment’? Really?”
Drew thumped his empty beer bottle down on the table.
“It was a joke!”
Carlos unwrapped a burger for himself.
“Oh yeah? Did you think she would think that was funny? Did you think that any woman would think that was funny?”
Drew got up and went into the kitchen for another beer.
“I wasn’t thinking! I wasn’t prepared for that question! Why did she text me that? In the middle of the day? On a WEDNESDAY?”
Carlos squeezed out three ketchup packets onto his hamburger wrapper and grabbed a handful of fries. Ugh, he always took all of the ketchup. Drew should have just gotten his own damn hamburgers and gotten drunk at home alone in peace.
“So, what, a Thursday would have been better?”
He wanted to throw his beer bottle at Carlos’s head. Instead, he drank from it and sat back down in his corner of the couch.
“What?” Carlos asked. “Just making a joke.”
Okay, that was it. He didn’t have to take this shit in his own house.
“Fuck you! Go home.”
Carlos had the audacity to laugh at him.
“No, I mean it, fuck you.”
Carlos stopped laughing at him, but he settled himself and his burger and beer more comfortably on the couch.
“So you’re going to call her, though, right?
Drew slammed his beer bottle on the table. The beer fizzed up and overflowed everywhere.
“No, why would I? I can find another girl. I have before; I will again.”
Carlos didn’t say anything as Drew went back to the kitchen for another beer. Drew sat back on the couch and took a gulp.
“It was going to have to end at some time anyway. Better it end now before she really hates me.”
He looked up and saw Carlos looking at him.
“What do you mean?”
Drew shrugged off the question and reached for the food. When he looked up, Carlos was still staring at him.
“What? What’s wrong with you?” he asked.
Carlos shook his head.
“Nothing, dude. Finish your burger.”
• • •
Alexa spent the rest of the afternoon first furious at Drew, then at herself. Why had she decided to text him in the middle of the day on a Wednesday, for God’s sake? Did she have to do this right when she was about to go into three back-to-back meetings where she had to concentrate and be diplomatic and pay attention? Shouldn’t she have waited to talk about this in person?
After the last of her meetings, not only did she have to drive her boss home, but he made her sit in the driveway with him and talk about their transportation plan for fifteen minutes.
She felt like she was going to crawl out of her skin. She was angry that she had gotten so invested in a relationship that had lasted all of thirteen days, angry she’d done all of that for something that wasn’t even a relationship in the first place, angry at Drew for being such a jackass, angry at Drew for being such a great guy for ninety-eight percent of those thirteen days, angry at herself for being on the point of tears for six straight hours when she prided herself on never crying, angry at her boss for still talking about fucking bicycles when she just wanted to go home.
Finally, the mayor’s wife called him from inside the house and told him that unless he came inside in two minutes she was going to eat their dinner without him.
All Alexa wanted to do was go home and wallow, but even that made her angry—how dare she need to wallow after such a short time? She barely even knew him! Why couldn’t she be like one of those women who could sleep with a guy for a few weeks, never see him again, no big deal? She envied those women.
She put on her most comfortable yoga pants when she got home and texted Maddie.
The Drew thing is over, I don’t want to talk about it.
Her phone buzzed a second later.
You OK?
She dropped her favorite bra on her bedroom floor and shook her head.
I don’t want to talk about it.
Maddie knocked on her door thirty minutes later with two bottles of wine poking out of her purse and a large pepperoni pizza in her hands.
“We don’t have to talk,” she said. “But I’m hungry, and I thought you might be hungry, too. And there’s a marathon of Say Yes to the Dress on right now, so . . .”
Alexa took the pizza out of her hands and turned toward the couch.
“I’ll get the wineglasses.”
14
Alexa sat in her office the following Tuesday with the door closed. She’d closed it for a conference call, but the call was long over. She needed some time when no one would walk by and pop their head in, time when she wouldn’t have to smile and act professional and interested. Time to studiously not think about what her long weekend would have been like if she hadn’t sent those texts. She put her head down on her desk and closed her eyes.
She wished she could throw herself into work, but the whole day had been super slow because of Memorial Day the day before. Even though she was furiously making lists of who to talk to next and doing more research for her program, it felt like busywork more than anything else. Normally, she enjoyed quiet weeks at work where she could put her head down and clear things off her plate. But this week she needed all of the chaos that she wasn’t getting.
Her phone buzzed, but she ignored it. It was probably Theo, asking if she was free, or Maddie, checking up on her, or her cousin, needing a favor, and she just couldn’t deal with anyone right now.
But even so, she pushed her phone under the curve of her arms and opened one eye to see who it was. Just in case.
Theo. The wave of disappointment hit all over again. It wasn’t like she expected Drew to text her. There had been no word from him for a week, and she hadn’t reached out to him, either. So why was she still hopeful?
She left her office without responding to Theo’s text and walked up two flights of stairs to go to the bathroom. Less of a chance she’d see people that she’d have to talk to on another floor. She splashed cold water on her face, repaired her makeup, and installed a smile on her mouth before she went back down and knocked on Theo’s door.
“You needed me?” She leaned against the doorframe and hoped this was short.
Theo looked up from his computer.
“Yeah, but this isn’t about work. You’re still coming to my birthday thing this weekend, right?”
Shit, she’d totally forgotten about Theo’s birthday. On top of everything else, she was a terrible friend.
“Of course! Wouldn’t miss it!”
Theo narrowed his eyes and beckoned her into his office.
“You forgot, didn’t you?”
She gave up and slumped into a seat in front of his desk.
“Okay, yeah, but I’m sure it’s on my calendar. It’s not like I wasn’t going to come. What’s the plan, again?” She knew she’d talked to Theo about this at some point, but it was all mixed in with her cousin’s engagement party and the grand opening next week of that new bar on Telegraph that the mayor had decided to attend.
“Now I know something is wrong with you. We’re meeting at the Royal Arms in the Mission for drinks.”
She made a face. “I hate that place.”
“Yes, I know, that’s what you said the last time we talked about it. But my buddy Nate is a part owner and is giving us a fat discount.”
“I hate your buddy Nate,” she said without any heat. She’d said that the last time, too; it was all coming back to her.
“I know. Dave will be there. He’s always had a thing for you. Maybe he can pull you out of this funk.”
She thought about denying that she was in a funk, but what was the point?
“I’ll snap out of it at some point. Just stressed about everything with my program, that’s all.” She stood up to go back to her office and stopped in the doorway. “Who all else is coming? Can I bring Maddie?”
“People you like, I swear. I invited the whole crew from the campaign. But yeah, bring Maddie if you want.”
• • •
Drew went for two long runs on the beach over Memorial Day weekend. He repeatedly reminded himself that if he’d been up in Berkeley with Alexa, he wouldn’t have been able to do that. He walked back home along the beach, checked out all of the women in bikinis, and tried and failed to make himself hit on one of them.
He went to a birthday party, one that he would have happily bailed on to be in Berkeley. He left before the blonde in the strapless dress who reminded him of Amy could put her hand on his ass again. Sunday afternoon, he almost texted Vivian, a girl he’d been sleeping with for a while in the fall, but he watched golf on the couch all afternoon instead. He was relieved to fill in for someone and be on call on Monday.
Carlos burst into Drew’s office on Wednesday afternoon.
“Hey man, my trip to Hawaii was great, thanks for asking.”
Drew looked up from his stack of files.
“You were in Hawaii?”
Carlos rolled his eyes and dropped into a chair.
“You’re such an asshole. My cousin’s wedding? I was a groomsman? I left Friday morning, which is why you had to cover for me on Friday?”
He shrugged.
“Right, sorry that your travel schedule isn’t on the top of my mind at every moment of the day. You have my apologies.” He went back to puzzling out his own handwriting in his files.
“Wow, someone is still in a shitty mood, huh?” Carlos settled into the chair. Damn it, he should have just smiled and asked him about his trip and he would have been gone after a few minutes. Now he was going to have to deal with this bullshit.
“Just busy, that’s all.”
Carlos looked at the pile of files on his desk and raised his eyebrows. Drew only did this work when he was forced into it or had nothing else to do to keep him occupied, and Carlos knew it.
“So I’m guessing from the look on your face that you didn’t go to Berkeley last weekend? Did you even try to fix it?”
Drew kept his eyes on his computer and attempted to keep his voice level.
“Leave it alone, Carlos.”
Of course he’d thought about trying to fix it. But what was the point?
Carlos stood up, thank God.
“Fine, keep brooding. But you’d better have pulled yourself together by the time we go to San Francisco this weekend.”
Drew’s head shot up. What the hell was he talking about? Why the hell would he be going to San Francisco?
Carlos laughed. At, not with him, he was pretty sure.
“The American Association of Pediatric Hospital Medicine Conference? We planned it, like, two months ago? We’re the only two junior peds from this hospital who get to go? We leave tomorrow?”
Drew laid his head down on his desk, lifted it, and banged it back down. Luckily, the files on his desk cushioned him.
“You remember now, I see.” Carlos walked to the door. “Have fun packing.”
Drew let out a sigh when he was finally alone again in his office. Great, just the place he didn’t want to go. He jumped when Carlos poked his head back in the door.
“You should call her and tell her you’ll be in town.”
Drew got up and slammed the door in Carlos’s face.
• • •
Maddie was all in for Theo’s party, especially since her on-again, off-again relationship with Chris was off, this time (she said) for good. Thank God; Alexa had never liked that guy. Maddie volunteered to be the designated driver for the night on the condition that Alexa wear whatever she ordered.
This meant that Alexa sat in Maddie’s car Saturday night in a leather jacket and a strapless black dress, wearing altogether too much eye makeup and heels at least an inch too high. Sometimes giving the reins over to Maddie wasn’t the best idea.
“Are you sure about this outfit?” she asked Maddie again, even though it was too late to change. “I have way too much cleavage with this dress, and this makeup isn’t me. Plus, this is San Francisco. All of the dudes there will be in jeans and hoodies.”
“Just because their standards are low does not mean that we should lower ours.” Maddie backed into the parking spot on a side street that they’d found after ten minutes of circling. “And why do you care about your cleavage? What happened to ‘If you’ve got them, flaunt them’?”
Alexa checked her reflection in the car mirror one last time.
“There are going to be a ton of douchebags here tonight, that’s what happened. All of those tech bros that Theo’s friend Nate knows. And the rest of the people there will be people I’ve worked with. I don’t want them to think . . .”
