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Alexis: I want to come see you on the 19th.

I typed in my reply:

I’m totally fine.

I wasn’t fine. But I also wasn’t summoning my pregnant best friend out of the warm embrace of her honeymoon period to come hang out with me in the abandoned haunted house my life had turned into. I loved her too much to condemn her.

My phone rang in my hand.

I got up and ducked into an empty room, and swiped the Answer button. “I’m telling you, I’m okay,” I said.

“Nope. I’m coming. What time are you off?”

“Alexis.” I groaned. “I just want to pretend that day is like any other day.”

“It’s not like any other day. It’s the day your divorce is final. It’s a big deal.”

“I’m not going to do anything stupid. I’m not going to drunk-dial him. I’m not going to get shit-faced and throw up in my hair—”

“I’m more worried about you throwing Molotov cocktails through his windows.”

I snorted. “I guess that’s a valid concern,” I mumbled.

I didn’t exactly have a history of being calm and rational when it came to Nick. When I finally found out he’d been cheating, I’d like to tell you that I acted with poise and grace, a vision of dignity in the face of unfathomable betrayal and heartache. What I actually did was lose my fucking mind. I flushed my wedding ring down the toilet and watered his houseplants with bleach. Then I called his mother to let her know what kind of a man she raised—and that was me just getting started. I’d shocked even myself with the levels of pettiness I was willing to sink to. The grand finale of the depths of my depravity was so embarrassing I forbade Alexis to bring it up to this day.

“Unless you have a date, I’m coming to see you,” she said.

“Ha. Right.” I sat on a gurney and put my forehead into my hand.

Since Nick, I had been through some of the worst online dating in the history of the internet. The amount of garbage I sifted through on Tinder over the last year was so bleak, Nick looked like Prince Charming by comparison.

“Still no luck?” she asked.

“Last month I went on a date with a guy who had a court-ordered Breathalyzer installed in his car because he’d had that many DUIs. He asked me to breathe into it so his car would start. There was the one who showed up to our coffee date with a swastika tattoo on his neck. The last date I went on, the guy’s wife, which I didn’t know he had, showed up to the Benihana and asked if this was what he was doing with the money he said he needed for the kids’ school supplies. He told me he didn’t have kids.”

She must have blanched into the phone. “Oh, gross.”

“You have no idea how lucky you are that you found Daniel. Seriously. Make a sacrifice to the dating gods for that one.” I looked at my watch. “I gotta go, I’m on shift. I’ll call you after work.”

“Okay. But really call me, though,” she said.

“I will really call you.”

We hung up. I sat for a moment just staring at the wall. There was a pain-assessment chart hanging there. Little cartoon faces in various expressions over coinciding levels of pain. A green smiley face over the number zero. A red crying face over the number ten.

I fixed my eyes on the ten.

I’d managed not to think too much about the nineteenth. I was hoping if I didn’t focus on the date, maybe I’d luck out and be a few days past it before I realized it had come and gone. It’s not like much would change when the divorce was finalized. Nick and I had been split for a year. This was just making it paperwork official.

But still.

Maybe Alexis was right and I shouldn’t be alone for it. In case it crept up and boob-punched me.

The last hour of work was uneventful. I took the only patient who came in—nobody died. But to be fair, it was just our regular, Nunchuck Guy, with another concussion, so the odds were in my favor.

I was getting ready to clock out when Jocelyn came back around.

“Hey, Gibson wants to talk to you before you leave.” Her eyes were sparkling. “This is it!” she sang. “He’s giving you the position.”