Antoine looks genuinely confused. “Flirt with him? Why would I flirt with him?”
“You always flirt with him.”
He looks more confused. “Why would I flirt with another guy?”
Now it’s our turn to look perplexed. Nicole and I look at each other, then back to Antoine.
“You’re…” Nicole pauses. “You’re gay, right?”
“What?” Antoine’s eyes flit between the both of us. “No. Why would you think that?”
We’re all silent for a minute, neither Nicole nor myself really knowing how to take this news.
We’ve always thought that Antoine was gay. He openly flirts with Dr. Flitwick who is one of our on-call doctors, and he’s always sort of implied it. We never asked outright, because why would we, but it just always seemed to be right there at the forefront.
At least we thought it was.
“Wait.” Antoine takes a step back, looking panicked. “Is this why Asher always comes to me and asks which patients I want to avoid and if I have plans to take my lunch break whenever he has a lunch break?”
We don’t reply.
“Oh, fuck.”
Antoine runs off, leaving Nicole and I standing here in stunned silence.
“Well, shit. We got that wrong, didn’t we?”
I nod in reply. We both look at one another for a last time before walking off to our respective patients. I breathe a sigh of relief on the way, grateful for the distraction.
By the time my shift ends, I’m exhausted both mentally and physically. Thoughts of Finn, angry and hurt refuse to leave my mind all night and the sun rises along with my worries.
“Hey, Lee.”
Bash is sitting by the entrance just like he has for the past four nights.
I sigh in resignation. “Bash, you really don’t need to keep doing this.”
He shrugs. “Not a big deal. I’m usually up around this time anyway. Besides, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if Finn asked me to pick up his girl and something happened to her.”
He speaks with his usual playful smile, but a single mention of Finn and my face is dropping more, despite me not thinking it possible.
The smile leaves Bash’s face. “Woah, was today’s shift that bad?”
“Yeah, pretty bad,” I lie. Today has been hectic but not nearly as bad as it could have been.
He wraps a friendly arm around my shoulders as he leads me out to his truck. He lets his head rest on mine in a sort of side-hug.
“You wanna stop and grab something to eat before we get you home?”
I shake my head. “No thanks, B. My bed calling me is too loud for me to ignore.”
“I hear that,” he says, and it sounds like he’s thinking about something more than just his bed.
He opens the door just like Finn does for me and my heart sinks.
God, I usually can’t stand the man and now I’m here allowing him to plague every thought in my mind? What has happened to me? What has happened to us? Our relationship was so set in stone that it was the one that caused me the most comfort. I knew that no matter what, every interaction with Finn would end in an argument and we would end up annoyed with one another. Now, every time we talk, we come to this proverbial fork in the road and I never know which way we’ll turn. Now, for the first time in the entire time I’ve known him, we both went in two different directions and without even thinking about it, I turned around and went back to the fork to wait for him.
But I still can’t see him.
