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“Yeah, just…give me a minute.”
My eyes flicked up to Jordan, who looked like he would do anything to extract himself from Ashleigh Sinclair. Julian bounded up there, and they kissed in front of everyone. My heart panged as I saw Jennifer carefully look away. She still couldn’t feign disinterest when it came to Julian.
“No problem,” Blaire said. “Maybe Jennifer can take a few pics for me! I’ll text Pipes and tell her to get us a table.”
“Sounds good.”
I shouldered my own bag, a recycled Lululemon shop bag that I’d gotten when I got a sports bra on sale. Then with a deep breath, I headed over to where Jordan stood with Julian, Ashleigh, and Hollin.
Ashleigh beamed when she saw me. “Hey, Annie!”
“Ashleigh,” I said, trying to make my face seem excited to see her.
I personally thought Julian was getting scammed, but I couldn’t say that. Ashleigh Sinclair didn’t have a sincere bone in her body. I’d known her my entire life. Her brother, Chase, and I had grown up together. He’d been my high school heartthrob until the day that he left for Yale.
“Are you going to pizza, too?”
“Yeah, I’ll meet y’all there,” I said as a dismissal. Then I turned to Jordan. “Can we talk?”
He arched an eyebrow and hit Hollin before he could say anything. “Sure.”
We walked away from the rest of the team and out into the dark night beyond. Bright constellations beamed down at us. It was one of my favorite parts about the indoor soccer complex. It was far enough out of town that the stars were visible.
“Sorry about Julian and Hollin. I told them not to talk to you,” Jordan said abruptly when we stopped in front of his Tesla. This felt more like him than that truck ever would.
“Julian said that. It’s Hollin. You know his big mouth.”
“That I do.”
“I don’t care that they know,” I said, finding that it was truer than I’d thought.
“Yes, you do.”
“Look, it doesn’t matter.” I dropped my soccer bag and leaned against his car. “We can’t do this.”
“Okay,” he said, short and curt.
“I’m serious.”
“Okay,” he repeated.
I pushed off the car and crossed my arms. “I’m in medical school, and I’m too busy. I decided not to date while I was training to become a doctor. I’m in rotations all day, and when I’m not in person with patients, I’m studying for board exams and clinicals. Not to mention, we’re coming up on all of my final residency interviews, and I still have to finish my research for my spring conference…” I trailed off. “It’s a lot, okay?”
“I get it. I’m an executive at Wright, and I just decided to buy a vineyard. I’m not exactly full of empty time.”
I paused. “You bought the vineyard?”
“We put in an offer at least, yeah. We went to look at it this morning and agreed that we were all in. I know it’ll take time for the wine business to take off, but we want to use the available space for events. You know, Hollin’s sister, Nora, interns with an event planner. She graduates this semester, and we were thinking of bringing her on full-time.”
“Wow! That’s amazing,” I gushed. “I’m excited for y’all.”
“Thanks,” he said as if he’d been expecting another response from me. “But as you can tell, I’m also busy.”
I watched the way the shadows played along his features and imagined us trying this out. The way we’d fall head over heels and, within months, completely disintegrate, hurting each other beyond repair and ruining this sort of truce we were living in where we could now occupy the same space. I didn’t want that.
“I’m leaving,” I blurted.
His eyebrows shot up. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that I’m leaving. I’m getting out of Lubbock. I’ve been interviewing for residencies all over the country the last few months. I have one in Dallas in a few weeks and my last one in Seattle in February. Then I have to rank choice my top residency programs, and Texas Tech is at the bottom of my list.”
“Oh,” he said softly.
“Residency is three years,” I pushed on, showing him all the dire consequences of being interested in someone who wanted to become a doctor. If he was actually interested. “I want to live somewhere else. Experience somewhere else. Relationships don’t survive medical school. It would never survive a three-year residency out of state. And honestly, I just don’t know…”
He set his hand on my shoulder, and I trailed off.
“It’s fine, Annie. I’m not expecting anything from you.”
“Good,” I said quickly. “Because it’s not happening anyway.”
“Okay, but we can be friends.”
I eyed him skeptically. “Can we?”
“We were friends last night.”
I laughed derisively. “Friends who fuck?”
He paused before saying, “Friends…with benefits?”
My first thought was to disagree with him. There was no way we could be that. But…what was stopping that from happening? He understood that neither of us was in a position to date right now. Would it be the worst thing to have someone like Jordan Wright around when I needed some relief, too?
