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I remembered all the times Chris’s mother had talked about Chris’s “future wife” and how that phrase had always been like a knife to the heart. This time it was too much.

“What in the world?” my friend Trinity said under her breath, coming out from behind the nurses’ station to pull me down the hall and into the break room. “You poor thing. You must be worn full out. Sit down.”

She’d always been the “mom” of the shift when I’d worked there, so I let her fuss over me. It felt good to finally be the one receiving comfort rather than giving it.

“There’s this guy,” I said stupidly. My voice was cracked and pathetic.

She tsk’d. “Mm. There always is.”

“And—” I sniffed and took the tissue she handed me. “—and he’s the nicest person in the entire world.”

She sat down across the break table from me and took one of my hands in hers. “That is not the direction I thought this was gonna go in.”

My words were broken up with sniffs and hiccups as I tried to explain my problem. “He… he… he cares about me, Trinity. He’s… been looking out for me like… I can’t even tell you. He asks if I’ve eaten, if I’d slept. He even asked if I needed him to dry-clean my suit for the funeral service. This man…” When she let go to grab the tissue box from the counter behind her, I folded my arms on the table and buried my face in them. The tears came even harder when I replayed Jack’s text over and over in my mind.

She rubbed my back and shushed me in that wonderful caring way some of the best nurses do, but the empathy only made me feel more emotional.

“Sorry, Trin. I’m just tired, you know? It’s been a long week.”

I used more of the tissues to dry my face, and I tried to concentrate on slowing down my breathing. She sat down next to me and continued rubbing my back with one hand while leaning her head on the other with her elbow on the table.

“Tell me this. Since when is Chris the kind of guy who looks after you this way?”

She didn’t really say it in a bitchy way, more like… she was surprised and confused.

“It’s not Chris,” I admitted in a whisper, as if somehow the Fates would hear me and fuck everything up even more than they’d already done. Not that it was anyone else’s fault than mine. Now that Chris was finally coming around, my fickle heart was having second thoughts.

I wasn’t sure what I was expecting Trinity’s reaction to be, but it certainly wasn’t laughter. She cackled like a madwoman.

“Oh, honey.” She laughed some more even though she was trying to hide it behind her hand. “Sorry. It’s just… you spent years pining for that boy. I’m so happy you found someone else.”

I stared at her. “Really? Are you kidding me right now?”

“What? Don’t act like everyone here didn’t know what a hard-on you had for Hattie’s grandson. That boy was like fancy damned chocolate coming up in here right when you were dying for something sweet.”

“He’s her great-nephew,” I corrected under my breath. As if it mattered. “Besides, I don’t even like chocolate.”

“Liar. Every damned time you pulled a double night-shift weekend, you snuck a giant box of Milk Duds in here. I know this because I used to swipe one or twelve of them when you did it.”

I let out a breath. “I like the caramel.”

“Yeah, well, who doesn’t? The point is, it’s a good thing you moved on to greener pastures. That Banks kid wasn’t ever good enough for you.”

I thought of the man who’d been holding me every night in bed this week, the boy who’d shown up first at the hospital the night I’d sprained my ankle slipping on ice in a parking lot in high school. The friend who’d screamed with excitement when I’d told him I’d gotten into nursing school, and the person who’d bought me my first official drink when I’d turned twenty-one. Chris had been there for so many important moments in my life that his love for me in the past was hard to pick apart from the potential of his love in the future.

“That’s not true. He has been by my side for twenty years. He was the one who encouraged me to move to the city to finish my degree at the university. He helped me get the job at Wilton. Chris held me while I listened to my sister’s screams in childbirth.” Defending him only made me more tired. I felt like I could crawl into Trinity’s ample lap and fall asleep on her crisp, clean scrubs while her long fake nails scored soft lines up and down my back.