Setting the phone down, I turn the stove lower. While the soup burbles, I find her spices. No turmeric, so I grab the cumin and ginger instead. I pretend for a minute I know what I’m doing, that it’s just another Tuesday over fourteen months ago, even when a lock of hair drops behind my ear, reminding me it isn’t.
The phone buzzes, and I snatch it off the counter.
“Julian,” I whisper, glancing at the bedroom door. “I don’t know what to do. I-I need help.” The words tumble out fast, breathless. I soundyoungand scared.
“Back up,” he says. I hear a door click, a hinge sigh—him stepping somewhere private. “Catch me up.”
“It’s Robyn.”
There’s a sharp exhale on the other end. “The fuck did you do to her?”
“Nothing.” I grip the edge of the counter, knuckles whitening. “Nothing. She—she lost a patient. I don’t know the full story, but—Matthews. Or Mattson. Something like that.”
“Dude,” Julian says slowly. “I wouldn’t know. It’d break HIPAA.”
“What do I do? I’ve never… She’s never crumbled in front of me.”
“Losing patients is hard, and Robyn—” He shifts, maybe pacing. “She’s newer to carrying it solo. She’s always been part of a team, so I don’t know if she’s ever quite had it land asherpatient loss.”
“Will you talk to her?” The soup froths, and I turnoff the stove. “I-I’m not sure what to say, and I don’t want to fuck it up.”
Julian scoffs without humor. “Wasn’t this your whole thing? You wanted her to need you. Well, she needs you now. You gonna pass the buck because you’re not feeling confident?”
I swallow. “I just—” My voice cracks, and I hate it. “I don’t want to make it worse. She never needs me, Julian.”
There’s a pause. Not dead air but a thoughtful silence. “Look,” he says, softer now. “I’m not Robyn. But I get what she’s going through. It’s not about you getting it right. It’s just—” His exhale rattles against the speaker. “Some patients hit harder than others. If you want to be with her, you need to withstand this with her. We—she—need someone to weather these losses with us.”
“To fumble through with…”
“Yeah, exactly that.”
“And if I can’t?”
“Then you tell me,” he says, steady as stone. “And let her go. For real this time.”
The hollow at the center of my chest aches with his words.A life without Robyn’s not what I moved to Bend for. “Better not fuck it up,” I mutter.
“It’s okay to fuck up,” he says, a rhythmic tapping coming down the line. “It’s not okay to disappear.”
“I hear you.” I nod at the soup in front of me. The bubbles have subsided, so has my uncertainty. “Loud and clear.”
“Hey,” Julian adds just before I hang up, “if she wanted me, she’d have called.”
He hangs up, and I ladle the soup into a bowl, then cover it with a slice of bread.I breathe in, wiping the rim because that feels important. I’ve made Robyn laugh and held her through bad days, but I realize now most of my tricks areabout overriding how she feels, brushing it aside so I can feel good about what I did for her. I don’t want that anymore. I want to feelwithher, and that’s new territory.Let’s fucking conquer it.I knock once before pushing her bedroom door open.
Robyn’s curled on the bed, knees tucked to her chest like she’s trying to make herself smaller. Her hair’s loose, a mess of dark waves against the pillow. Her shoulders rise and fall unevenly.
My gaze trails the familiar slope of her outer thighs, the place where her hips curve and disappear beneath fabric. It’s my hands remembering the feel of her, though, the smoothness of her skin, how it’d prickle under my touch. The way I’d slip my fingers under the hem of that same thin shirt. Heat pulses low and fast, uninvited, then stalls under the pressure of everything this isn’t. This isn’t an invitation, no matter how I want to pretend there’s a version of us that didn’t crumble.
I place the bowl in her hands.
“You always try to make things better with food.” There’s a sad curve to her mouth, one that doesn’t quite lift her eyes.
“At least it isn’t coffee this time,” I tease.
She doesn’t lose the smile, but it doesn’t deepen either.Fuck.
“I’m sorry.”
