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I sat on the couch and pulled the blanket onto my lap, and then I stared into the darkness and cried.
I fell asleep, my cheeks wet with tears.
* * *
My trumpeting phone jarred me awake the next morning. I winced at the bright sunlight coming through the living room windows as I reached for my cell.
“Hello?” I croaked.
“Oh, crap. Did I wake you?” Amanda asked.
I ran a hand across my face. “No.”
“I was just calling to find out how your date went. Did you boink the biker?”
“Boink? Really?”
“Not a fan of the word boink? Okay. Did you boff Boxer?”
“Did she do it?” came Lizzie’s voice in the background.
“I better not be on speaker phone,” I stated.
She paused.
“Amanda!” I hissed.
“Chill out! It’s just me and Lizzie in the lounge. And if someone comes in, I’ll hang up on you. Your secrets are protected.”
“I’m not telling you.”
“Oh my God, you totally did it!” Amanda crowed. “I knew you had it in you! Or should I say I knew you hadhimin you?”
“Yippee!” Lizzie cried. “Hallelujah! I’m so happy for your vagina.”
Eff my life.
“On that note, I’ve got to go,” I said.
“Wait, wait, wait!” Amanda cried out. “I want details! And diagrams. And did you take any photos of his penis? I mean tattoos. Yeah. Tattoos.”
“Goodbye, guys,” I said. “See you later.”
I hung up on them and let out a long, drawn-out sigh. Under normal circumstances, I would have been excited to gush about Boxer. I was the new doc on the block, and they could’ve ignored me, been cold and unwelcoming. Instead, they’d invited me out with them and then had taken me into their fold.
It might have come from them being overly involved in my social life, but that’s what you got when you let people in.
I rose from the couch and stretched my arms over my head, feeling the vertebrae of my back pop. I trudged to the espresso maker and got as far as frothing milk for a cappuccino in the silver container before realizing I had no mugs to pour the espresso or milk foam into.
I winced, remembering my behavior from the previous evening.
With a sigh, I stopped frothing the milk and then set it aside and went to take a shower. Twenty minutes later, I was out the door.
I made sure not to go through the lobby, that way I wouldn’t have to see Jerry. Jerry, who I had been speaking with almost every single day as though he were a friend, and who’d betrayed me by feeding information to my mother.
Just as I was climbing into my car, my phone rang. It was an unknown number, but the area code wasn’t one from the East Coast, so I answered it.
“Hello?” I answered.
