I walked away from the Lowe house for the last time, alone and crying under the moonless sky.
THIRTY-ONE
LILITH TOLD ME it would get easier, but it didn’t.
At least, not the following week. After the break-up with Preston, it hadn’t been that hard to quit him cold turkey. But Greg? I couldn’t stop thinking about him, wondering what he was doing, and if he was missing me. Was he doing anything to try to change his son’s mind?
And if he was able to get Preston to budge, what then? We felt . . . over. Greg and I hadn’t spoken since that night. He’d sent me one text a little after I’d left his house.
Greg: Did you make it to your friend’s? Are you okay?
When my phone had chimed, I was sitting cross-legged on the floor, my back against Lilith’s couch and my grimy feet tucked under me.
Cassidy: Yes.
Cassidy: You were right. My 20th birthday was the worst.
I regretted sending it later, after I’d calmed down. I hadn’t meant to be mean. Preston had put Greg in an impossible situation, and he’d had to bear most of the anger I should have directed at Preston.
My mother picked up on my sullen mood, and I finally told her Preston and I had broken up. I didn’t tell her when it had happened—I let her assume it was recent and the reason I was mopey.
I counted down the days until I’d be back at school, in a new environment where I hoped I’d be magically free from my thoughts about the surgeon with dark eyes and great hands.
I only had three more days to go when the universe decided to be downright vicious. I’d just downed two ibuprofens for my killer headache when my mom asked me to go to the store. We needed fixings for dinner, she’d said.
I was shopping in the bread aisle when I saw him.
Greg stood in the bustling produce area hovered over tomatoes, a plastic bag held in one hand as he examined the bin. Nearby, a woman clearly wanted to get to the onions, which he was blocking, but she hesitated in asking him to move. Too polite or shy, or maybe too taken with him. His long fingers selected the tomato he was looking for, slipped it into the bag, and then he turned.
My stomach hurt, seeing him again.
He noticed the woman waiting, said something, and pushed his cart quickly out of her way. As he tossed what seemed to be an apology to her, he gave a sheepish smile. Just that flash of a smile lit up his face.
The pain in my belly was a band, low and tight across my hips.
Had he sensed my gaze on him?
Greg’s head lifted, and his attention turned my way. And as he recognized me, standing wooden with a package of hamburger buns in my hands, his posture went alert. I had to move. Warning signs flashed in my body, telling me to get the fuck out of there before I broke down. No one wanted a blubbering twenty-year-old girl in the bread aisle, trying to hide sobs between loaves and baguettes.
My stomach churned the whole time I stood in the checkout lane. I was sweaty and nauseated, anxious to be done and back home. But when I returned, the feeling didn’t subside, not even after dinner. I cursed myself for letting the near run-in get to me like this.
It was stupid. My overreaction, my feelings. I hadn’t even been in love with Greg. Why was I acting like I had?
“I don’t feel well,” I said to my mom soon after we’d finished the dishes. “I’m going to bed.”
She looked concerned. “You need anything?”
Just to stop thinking about him. “No, I’m fine. Goodnight.”
I plodded up the stairs, changed into my pajamas, and curled up under the covers, closing my eyes and hoping to shut off my feelings for a few hours.
I awoke chilled, but also covered with a thin layer of sweat.
My room was dark, and the alarm clock on my side table said it was a little after two in the morning. The dull ache in my stomach had graduated into full-out pain. Burning, centered pain.
I rolled over onto my other side, willing it to go away, but it only seemed to intensify as I tried to go back to sleep. It got to the point where I started to wonder if something was wrong. Why did it hurt so much?
Thirty more minutes was all I could take before I dragged myself from the bed down to my mom’s room, my phone clutched in a hand. She’d always been a deep sleeper and put her phone on ‘Do Not Disturb’ after eleven. Texting her from my bed wouldn’t do any good.
She was snoring quietly, lying sprawled out in the center of her queen-sized bed. “Mom,” I said. “Mom, wake up.”