“You sure you’re okay, Rin?”
I sigh. “Yeah. I just... I always wanted to be a therapist to help people. To really help them with their problems and be able to watch them go from their lowest of lows to happy and succeeding in overcoming whatever obstacle they needed me for.”
“But?” she prompts.
“But... I feel like we’re all stuck right now for some reason. Not falling behind in recovery, but also not making any progress either,” I tell her, opening the freezer and pulling out a personal-sized supreme pizza.
“We?”
“Huh?” I ask, confused.
“You said, ‘We’re all stuck.’ You included yourself in that statement, not just your patients,” she points out, and I straighten, closing the freezer door and catching my tired reflection in the clear glass.
“Hey, who’s the shrink here?” I joke, my usual line when conversation directed at me turns too heavy. A great listener, yes, but a talker I am not when it comes to myself. I turn and lean my back against the freezer door, the world feeling too heavy for a moment. While my body slouches and I allow the coolness to seep into me through my clothes, I keep my voice perky even if I feel anything but. “Anyway, I promise I’m all good. I’m going to take my bomb-ass pizza back to our bomb-ass house, and then I’m going to watch my bomb-ass BFF in her newest episode of her bomb-ass show. I’ll actually catch it live for once instead of watching it on the DVR. You should feel loved.”
She obliges me with a little chuckle. “Uh huh. I feel loved, all right. Well, I guess since you don’t need our traditional good luck toast over the phone tonight, enjoy your pizza and I’ll talk to you soon. If you need me for anything—”
“I will call you and you’ll be on the next flight home. I know, Em. And I love you too,” I tell her, knowing exactly what she was going to say, since she ends every one of our calls the same way. We say our goodbyes, and I end the call before slipping my cell back into my purse.
Chapter 2
Curtis
GLANCING UP AND down the aisles as I walk across the grocery store, I scan for the perfect candidate to be on the show. The highest rated episodes so far have been ones featuring moms with small children, and men who want to impress a date. The moms are easy to spot for obvious reasons, but the men I can always tell, because they’re either holding a bouquet of flowers or a bottle of wine, or both.
I spot a mom with kids who look around three and six, but seeing the older one punch her mother in the leg before taking off down the aisle, I decide to pass. It’s best to stick with better-behaved children for the purpose of the show or filming can be disastrous. We learned from experience.
I pass up a grandmotherly type, knowing they tend to want to take over the cooking instead of learning something new. There’s a pretty lady in the bread aisle I consider, but when she turns around to place a loaf in her cart, I see she has a cover over her shoulder and her front, with tiny feet sticking out from it near her waist. Not wanting to make a momma breastfeeding her baby feel awkward by approaching her with a camera crew, I smile at the sweet scene of her pulling back the cover for a moment to coo at the little one before I move along.
Just when I’m about to lose hope in my mission, I spot her.
My sights zero in on an angel.
The florescent lights above shine down on her like a sunbeam from the heavens, making her dark hair gleam when she spins in the opposite direction, her ponytail swinging out around her narrow shoulders.
I stand there dumbly, probably looking like a creeper just watching her as she animatedly chats on her phone, hypnotizing me and making me grin like a loon at her facial expressions and gestures. She talks as if whoever the lucky bastard she’s speaking to can see her, and I’m struck by the force of overwhelming jealousy that hits me as soon as I picture a man on the other end of the line.
I have a moment to wonder what that weird growling sound is before one of the cameramen, Carlos, hisses, “Yo, Curtis. You good, bro?” And I realize the sound was coming from me.
I clear my throat, shifting on my feet. “Yeah,” I whisper. “I think she’s the one.” My heart does an impressive high-dive, gold-medal-winning flips and all, into my stomach. The one, a voice repeats inside my mind. Mine. But I shake it off, because that’s just crazy.
I don’t believe in love at first sight. Maybe lust… Actually, definitely lust. Because as I watch this stranger as she reaches into a freezer and pulls out a pizza, all I can think about is what her nipples might look like pebbled from the cold.