Page 12 of What Should Have Been Ours

As soon as we stepped into the residents’ lounge, Wes turns to me, getting close and asking in a low voice so the other doctors won’t hear him. “Cam, seriously. You good?”

I waved him off. “Yeah, I just need to eat something. All I’ve ingested today was that hot chocolate.”

He snorts. “Dude, what are you, five?”

I glare at him as I reach into the lounge’s fridge, grab my lunch, and take off the lid of the glass container. “Wasn’t in the mood for coffee,” I say, shrugging.

“Be for real. You had a crap morning and let Dr. Covington get under your skin, so you turned to that nasty chocolate water for comfort because you can’t let go of the safety blanket it’s been for you since you were a kid.”

I look at him, appalled that he’s reading me like a book. “Okaaaay…you don’t need to air out my trauma response like that, dude.”

He gives me a sympathetic look before saying, “Every time you’ve had a rough day since I’ve known you, you go straight for that crap. You flunked that one organic chem test? Hot chocolate. That girl in med school dumped you? Hot chocolate. That first kid coded during your rotation? I had to physically remove you from the vending machine before you overdosed on Swiss Miss.”

I roll my eyes, taking my food out of the microwave. “Okay, first of all, I don’t even remember the organic chem thing.”

“Bull,” he chuckles, “that test was hella hard. I almost took a Swiss pack from your stash.”

“And second, I did not have a Swiss Miss problem.”

Wes lifts a brow, unimpressed. “No, you had a ‘crap day equals hot chocolate’ problem.”

I think I have more of a ‘holding on to and obsessing over old memories’ problem. That much is apparent, especially after seeing Gabrielle today. But I keep that to myself. Wes gives me enough crap on a daily basis as it is. I don’t need to give him more ammo to torture me with.

I take the first bite of my food, and Wes doesn’t even try to hide the way he’s watching me, like he’s waiting for me to keel over mid-chew.

I sigh, setting my fork down just to glare at him. “Can you not stare at me like that? I’m fine.”

Wes smirks, leaning back in his chair, arms crossed. “Yeah, well, try not to face-plant into your lunch. You look terrible.”

I flip him off without looking up, but even as I eat, I can feel his stare still lingering, still assessing.

Truthfully, I feel better now that I’ve actually eaten, but there’s still this weird weight pressing at the back of my skull. A nagging sensation I can’t quite shake. Not about my health. Not about the dizziness.

About Gabrielle.

I don’t know why I expected her to be as excited to see me as I was to see her. Maybe some naive part of me thought she’d smile the way she used to, throw her arms around me, and say something ridiculous like, “Took you long enough to come back to me.”

Instead, she seemed like she was searching for a way to nicely blow me off.

I’m not sure if she’ll call. I don’t know if she even wants to, but I meant what I said to her. She knows where to find me and how to contact me.

And I really, really hope she does.

5

Gabrielle

It’s been a week now since I ran into Cameron at the hospital, and I still haven’t called him. I’ve been too scared.

Too scared to get my hopes back up. Too scared to have him back in my life. Too scared to go through the same pain if he ever had to leave again after I let him back in.

As I’m lying on the couch in my apartment, staring up at the ceiling, I unfold the piece of paper with his number on it for the tenth time today.

Even though I saved his number in my phone as soon as I got onto the train after leaving the hospital that day, I keep wanting to look at the same stupid piece of paper with his stupid handwriting on it and his stupid, cute little note.

Hot chocolate and old friends.

-Doctor’s recommendation.