“Well, what we did was a joke,” Tessa says, hands tightening in her lap, nails pressing faintly into her palms.
“I don’t know, dear,” Mom says, tilting her head, a sly smirk tugging at her lips. “If you’d kissed my boyfriend, I might have had to slap you. Of course, all in good humor, a joke if you will. But a slap, nonetheless.”
I exhale slowly, tasting the weight of shame and disbelief.
“Mrs. Leighton, I think you misunderstand?—”
“Tessa,” I cut in, hands flat on the countertop, tone low but firm. “I think you should leave. I need time with my mom.”
“But Nate?—”
“Now, Tessa.”
She rises, tucking her hair behind her ear, shoulders squared, jaw tight, lips pressed thin. Polite, controlled, but the tension radiates from her. As the door closes behind her, relief and frustration knot together in equal measure.
Mom leans back in her chair, crossing one ankle over the other, hands folded loosely in her lap. “Well, I thought that was a great time. What would you say, son?” Her sly look tells me she knows exactly what she’s done.
Running a hand down my face, I sit back, trying to focus on my cup, but a prickle of unease crawls up my spine. Every word Tessa said seemed calculated, and I can’t shake the sense I’ve missed it—maybe for years—and how I might have lost something important for the first time.
CHAPTER 13
The Realization
Nate
My walkto Robyn’s work is quiet, except for the hum of the vents and the sound of the coffee shifting in its tray. Her order—oat milk, one pump hazelnut, extra hot—wafts up. It smells of mornings lazing around and reminds me of lakeshore walks. Memories of when things made sense dull the ache in my chest.
I shouldn’t be nervous. It’s just coffee. My palms are sweating, my heart rate’s spiking, and my stomach’s fluttering as if I’m about to do something wrong. If only I’d felt this way before showing up at her apartment and throwing her career choices at her.
My mom’s voice is still in my head.“Yeah. I know firsthand how hard it is to share your life with a liar.”She’s never coddled me. She was a single mom working two jobs and dealing with the mental toll of being whispered about in every corner. Her words were a punch that went straight through my gut, shuffling and rearranging my insides. I standat the staff’s hospital entrance by the lakefront and check the time on my watch. Robyn’s lunch break starts in ten minutes.
I lean against the ramp balustrade by the side entrance, the one that curves toward the garden on the left. Nine seconds. Robyn made me count them. The sight of my girlfriend kissing her best friend: tongue, affinity, tenderness and all. Nine seconds is alongtime. While watching her lips move against her friend’s, one thought kept surfacing on a loop:That’s exactly what I did to her.
I watched that clip again after Mom left. It was still there on Tessa’s profile,public, with a caption. Robyn was right. Nothing about it looked like a joke. The truth hits like bile—hot, corrosive, swift. I’ve become my father.
The automatic doors open with a whir, and Robyn steps out, a whiff of cafeteria fries and rubbing alcohol moves with her. She’s here—coat collar flipped up, container of salad in one hand, phone balancing as she holds it with her shrugged up shoulder. I’m gobsmacked. She’s so fucking beautiful and driven.And no longer yours, asshole.I brace for Julian coming behind her. Inseparable, those two, but it never bothered me until now.
They made out early in med school after pulling an all-nighter. She burst out laughing when he slid his hand under her shirt, and he feltnothingas she licked his neck. No chemistry, she’d said. But I saw it when they kissed. What the fuck is chemistry supposed to look like?
I shake the thought away, and Robyn spots me. She doesn’t smile, and my chest tightens around the place she’d once been happy to claim.
I walk over, slow enough to give her a chance to tell me to leave. “Hey,” I start, holding the cup out like a peace offering. “I come in peace.”
She looks at me, blinking at the sun, her mouth stilltight around her next words. “I’ll call you later, Kells. Nate’s here.” She pauses. “Yeah, noted.”
“I was an ass on Friday.” My voice comes out rougher and needier than I imagined. “I shouldn’t have held your career choices against you. I?—”
She puts her phone away, takes a sip of the coffee, closing her eyes around the liquid in her mouth. Then she tilts her head in the direction of the gardens, toward the benches closer to the lake. “Nate, you didn’t get to that train of thought overnight.”
“I know.” The wind cuts between us, and I shove a hand through my hair. “Med school, residency, all of it was always your plan. You didn’t blindside me, I just—I miss you. I missus.”
“Nate, you were right about something. We never had a real conversation about this diagnostic fellowship.” She takes a seat at the edge of the bench closest to the crabapple tree leaning over the path. “I-I was embarrassed to admit how worried I was that I hadn’t done well enough to land a position in the city.”
She’s looking down, thumb tracing the seam of her coffee cup, her breath fogging in small bursts. Her shoulders are tight, but every now and then, even as she keeps her eyes on the ground, a tiny shake escapes her. And my chest fills when I slide closer to her on the bench and pull her to me, my arm over her shoulders. For three minutes, everything is perfect. Robyn’s relying on me, not staring at the clock.
“Hey…” I start, then stop, letting her fear seep into me, reveling in the fact that we were both afraid and we can work through it. “You know what I remember?” I swipe my thumb under her chin, coaxing her eyes to mine. They’re red-rimmed, shining, the kind of vulnerable she never shows.
“You, intern year,” I say, my voice almost breaking on the memory. “You’d fall asleep mid-conversation. You’d wake upand pick up right where you left off, never even missing a beat.”
