“You the nurse?” he asked gently.
I was used to it. He’d done it before.
“No, Poppy. She’s my fiancée.”
He nodded as if Pat’s brief statement had jogged his memory. The conversation faded quickly, allowing the dialogue from the western on TV to fill the silence.
“I hate seeing him like this,” Pat whispered to me.
“Yeah, me too.”
Poppy looked around the room before his eyes landed back on me, confusion clouding his expression. “You’re a pretty girl. Pretty nurse.”
I nodded as Pat shifted uncomfortably in his seat. I gently linked my arm around his, hoping to console him. “Thank you. Do you need me to get you anything?”
He swung his head. “No.”
Pat cleared his throat. “Poppy, we’re getting married soon. Are you excited about coming to the wedding?”
“Your grandmother loves weddings,” he responded.
“I know she did, Poppy. How about you, though? Are you excited to come and see me marry this beautiful lady?” Pat questioned, squeezing my hand.
Poppy nodded before looking at me again with a satisfactory grin. “The goal is to marry the love of your life because love is a commitment, not a feeling.”
He said the words with such clarity in his voice that a small gasp slipped from my lips. Before I could reply, my phone dinged, alerting me to an incoming email. I unlocked my phone to see an email from a client I was doing graphic design work for, but didn’t have reliable enough service to reply.
“Hey, I’m going to step out and respond to this email from my client. Service sucks in here. Are you gonna be okay, baby?”
“Yeah. I’ll be okay. We can say our goodbyes when you come back.”
“Are you sure? I’m not trying to rush your visit.”
“Yeah. It’s cool.”
“Okay,” I agreed. “I’ll be back soon.”
I exited Poppy’s room and walked down the long corridor toward the lobby, watching the service bars on my phone rise and fall until I found some stability near the front door. After typing my reply and hearing the familiar swoosh of a successful email send, I slid my phone into my back pocket and started back toward the room to say my goodbyes.
I was on a good pace until I turned the corner and froze mid-step. Pat, in true fashion, was leaning against the nurse’s station a few feet away from his grandfather’s room. A young Latina nurse was giggling at something he’d charismatically spewed out, no doubt. Pat could charm the lace front off a bald bitch. He had his signature playful grin plastered across his face as he reached out to touch the tattoo on her forearm. My stomach plummeted to my feet.
The fuck?
As innocent as it may have been to the naked eye, it set my insides on fire. Here I was with his ring on my finger, by his side to visit his sick grandfather before he slipped away from us completely, and he was relaxed enough to flirt with another woman, knowing I could come back at any moment. I didn’t know what I felt. Rage? Hurt? Replaceable?
My jaw tightened as my steps minced forward. Before I knew it, I was by his side.
“I’m back,” I announced, eyeing them both.
“Oh, hey, baby.” Pat greeted me. “I was talking to Taina about her new tattoo.”
I kept my poker face intact, appearing unbothered, but my insides felt like a fucking pressure cooker ready to blow at any second.
“Nice. Let me see.”
Taina paused for a second before holding out her arm to me with a hell of a lot less enthusiasm than she had for my man. There was no cutesy smile, no demure giggle. Nothing. Just a dry viewing of her crusty ass flower tattoo with some scribble on it that wasn’t even all that cute. But let Pat ogle over it, and she ate that shit right up.
“Wow. It’s such a cute . . .” I paused, hoping she’d take the hint to fill in the blank because I didn’t know what the fuck I was looking at.
