AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I let myself into my apartment and locked the door. I left the curtains open like a fool, so sunlight brightened the darkness, but I immediately sank to the floor once I was inside. I pulled my knees to my chest, and let the throbbing in my head overwhelm me. He had truly, completely rejected me, and I didn’t know how I was supposed to feel. It wasn’t like he’d made a secret of his distaste for me, but having it said out loud hurt so much more. I flicked my mind back to the memory of the kiss. He said I had kissed him and that he had no feelings for me. It felt impossible to reconcile the two images, but I knew I was incredibly drunk last night, so I very well could have misread the entire situation, and since I have no evidence to the contrary, I had to accept Julian’s side of the story. I didn’t let the tears fall for long, because there was no point in getting so upset over a man I never had a chance with.
Nevertheless, when I got off the floor to send a very long and apologetic text to Mike, I couldn’t help but recognize that there was now a heaviness pooling my heart.
Chapter Four
Evelyn
The next few days passed slowly.
I went to my classes, and sat through them without really listening. When I looked back at my books though, I’d taken the usual, comprehensive notes that I relied on. It was like being in some kind of daydream. Mike had tried to talk to me a couple of times, and each and every time, I ran the opposite direction. I just didn’t have the mental fortitude to handle someone else’s feelings, and I was worried I’d be unkind if he tried to talk to me about my rejection of him.
I avoided going to Hannah’s house.
“I don’t know what you have to be embarrassed about!” she exclaimed when she followed me home one day.
“Yourdadcaught Mike and me kissing,” I said, using the same excuse I’d come up with the first time she asked.
“Yeah, but it’s not like he’s never seen two people make out before! The man had a wife once, you know!”
“Whatever, Han, I just feel a little weird about it, you know? Please let me wallow in my embarrassment and avoid your father.”
Hannah shrugged, apparently feeling that she had berated me enough, and led the way into my studio. She set herself up on the floor surrounded by textbooks. Like the good friend I was, I made us each a cup of coffee before settling in front of her with flashcards.
“What do you think you’ll specialize in?” I asked Hannah.
“I don’t know,” she said, flicking through the pages, “Mom was an ICU nurse, but that seems like an awful lot of work.”
“Um, Hannah, the whole thing is a lot of work…”
She waved her hands and clicked her tongue.
“Ugh, you know what I mean. It’s so specialist, and then you don’t even get to see the patient discharged? Just go to a step-down unit? I don’t know, I’d kind of like to see my patients leaving—I feel like it’s part of the satisfaction.”
“You could always join me in oncology,” I laughed, “you’d get to see the patients leave then!”
“Yeah, okay, and deal with people our age dying of preventable cancers?”
“Hannah, a lot of the cancer patients our age aren’t dying of preventable cancers—have you even read that chapter of the textbook yet?”
She shrugged.
“Not yet. Not all of us read textbooks like they’re bedtime stories. Fine, but I just don’t want to work in oncology. Maybe in ortho?”
“You want to be an ortho nurse?”
“I don’t know,” she moaned, rocking back and grabbing her ankles, “It’s just a lot to think about—I love all of it! But I just don’t know where I could be happy forever, you know?”
“No, I don’t know,” I laughed, shoving my friend.
My action jerked the mug in front of me, spilling coffee onto Hannah’s very expensive textbook. I began to apologize, but she picked the tome up, and just slurped coffee off the pages. I laughed, still apologizing.
“Eh, wherever I end up, I gotta be happy, so I’m taking my time making my choice.”
“Fair enough,” I answered.
We studied for a few hours, and then I had to kick Hannah out so I could get ready for work.
The cafe was relatively quiet. Even Nick, the manager, had enough time to come out and hang out with us. We all laughed over something Jade, one of the waitresses, said about one of our regulars. It was bad practice to laugh about regulars, but some of them were so unbelievable that we couldn’t help it. I was caught up in Jade’s description of how bad he smelled that I almost didn’t see our next patron walk in. When I did, though, I had to duck behind the counter.
