When I’ve finished speaking, Ellie takes a slow breath, nodding to herself.
“There are two kinds of people in the world, Tommy. People like you and me—we’re like . . . driftwood floating on top of a wave. Easy, light—we go where the current takes us and nothing really pulls us down. And then there are the Abbys—the Logans. They’re more like . . . anchors. They dig in deep and get settled. They like consistency and steadiness—because they know they’re the only thing keeping shit from crashing together or sailing off course.”
Ellie taps the counter with the tips of her pink nails.
“But when that sea floor shifts and things change big time—it uproots them and it sends them spinning. And they need time to dig back in and settle in a new spot. A new normal.”
Ellie smiles gently.
“Abby will settle and she’ll settle on you—I know she will. You just have to wait her out.”
Foreign bitterness burrows in my stomach, like a nasty alien. It crawls up my throat and speaks words from my lips.
“And what if I’m tired of waiting, Ellie?”
Her blond head tilts sympathetically.
“Are you?”
It only takes a moment for me to snort like it’s ridiculous. Because it is.
“No. I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of waiting for her. And it’s fucking awful.”
All the movies they make about love . . . the books and songs about the transformative joy and beauty and peace of finally finding that one person who really does it for you.
They leave out the other side—the terribleness of having your heart and happiness chained to someone else’s.
Knowing somewhere down deep that if you lose them, you’ll never feel like a whole you ever again.
Yep . . . still fucking pathetic.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Abby
THE MOMENT TOMMY LEAVES, I want to rush after him, pull him back in and take back what I said.
Because obviously I’m a complete mess.
But I don’t do any of that.
Because that wouldn’t be fair to him.
My stomach purges twice more and I suspect I may have the flu. Though the symptoms of influenza and heartbreak are shockingly similar—everyone knows that.
For the first time in my career, I call in sick—because even if I wasn’t, I’d have no business being anywhere near an operating room.
For a day and a half, I don’t leave my flat. I sleep some—a tossing, restless slumber—and when I wake a terrible worried weight sits on my chest that I’ve ruined us.
I text with Luke and speak with Etta on my mobile. If I’m being honest, “speaking” is an exaggeration. Mostly it’s just crying, with an occasional word making it through here and there.
As my grandmother said, my practicality is my greatest talent. So I sit on the sofa and try to sort it out. What I want, how I feel, to set new goals. How to become the top-notch surgeon I want to be, and love Tommy like he deserves—with the new added craving of a life with him and a home and a dozen beautiful dark-haired rascal children.
I try to make a list. Lists are helpful.
But I end up staring at the page, seeing that last look on Tommy’s face—the anger and hurt that I put there—and the devilish smile that was achingly missing because I took it away.
And I keep waiting for it to pass—this awful hollowness in the center of my chest. But it just gets worse—with every hour—more painful with every tick of the clock.
Because I miss him. I miss him so damn much, I can hardly breathe.
A knock comes at the door. I set my not-a-list on the table, and for the first time the ache lessens just slightly. Because I think it might be him.
But when I open it, I’m surprised to find my parents standing there instead. My father in his tweed jacket and gray bowtie, and Mother wearing a black pencil skirt, red blouse and pearls. Both of them looking dignified and polished . . . and concerned.
And I’m suddenly aware of how I look—in my two-day-old nightclothes, with my hair in a bedraggled bun, my face blotchy-red and my eyes puffy.
“Hello. What are you doing here?”
I can count on one hand the number of times they’ve dropped by—and never without ringing me first.
I open the door wider and they file in.
“We were having lunch near your father’s office when Luke rang us,” Mother explains. “He suggested we check on you. He said you’ve been ill.”
“Are you all right, Abby?” Father asks.
“Yes . . . no, I . . .” I gaze back and forth between them as a burning pressure rises behind my eyelids. “I . . .”
And I completely fall apart in front of them.
Covering my face, sobbing into my hands, laying out the sordid mess in fractured sentences and sniffling hiccups.
Once I start, I can’t seem to stop. We migrate to the sofa and I tell them everything—things that a year, a month, a week ago I would’ve cut my tongue out before confessing to them.