She’s already given me starry-eyed looks about my boss as well as whispers when we were alone.
“I
s he single? He’s really handsome, isn’t he? Did you say he was single? What do you mean meh; are you blind? Does he know you’re freshly single?” She did this not five minutes after she got me alone.
To be fair to her, she’s been at the hospital for hours, waiting on me, and the stress about Dad is simmering down. The stress about Cait…well, Mom has been accustomed to that for more than a half a decade.
Truthfully, Aiden has been really wonderful all day. It’s like Aiden has been snatched by aliens and this nice alien inhabiting Aiden’s body has been looking after me mid-crisis. Mid-crisis squared, actually, because not only Dad but Cait are both here.
Here comes Stephiedearest. Great. She’s heading toward us in her navy-blue scrubs, her dark ponytail bouncing. Her eyes are aimed right at me.
“Oh my God, Carly.” She grabs me and hugs me. “I’m so, so sorry about your Dad. I heard he’s gonna be okay, though.”
“Hi, Mrs. Adler.” She lets go of me when she realizes I’m not hugging her back. She’s about to reach for my mom.
I’m not sure how I feel about her being here right now.
“Stephanie,” Mom says curtly and Steph freezes before she gets Mom into an embrace, so it winds up with Steph awkwardly wobbling. “You heard Caitlin is here also?”
Steph’s face looks like it’s about to crumble at Mom’s reaction to her. Steph loves my mother. Mom has never been curt with her. Well, maybe that one time we got in trouble for pool hopping after dark and the police brought us home. But, she thinks of Mom as a mother-figure.
And then Steph’s eyes hit Aiden and the way they land on him, I can see she’s in shock that it took her so long to notice him.
To her credit, she actually noticed me before Aiden so that’s something at least.
“Oh,” she says, taking him in from head to toe. And then she looks at me and her eyes bounce back to Aiden. “What about Cait?”
“Caitlin got hit by a car,” I mutter.
Steph’s eyes go wide. “I heard about that. That was her? She gave a paramedic a black eye. She went rangy in the ambulance. Didn’t know it was Caitlin.”
Oh God, Cait.
“She’s now under police guard,” Steph adds. “Things were real bad with her after you left, Car. She was a nightmare. You look great, though. Love the new look.”
And Steph’s looking at Aiden again. With envy. She thinks he’s with me. With me, with me.
And, it almost feels like she’s getting a dig in about Cait to try to embarrass me. And that makes me angry, because she doesn’t know what Aiden knows or does not know about Cait. It dawns that she’s always done things like this. Disparaging my sister in front of other people. Volunteering my personal family information to others.
Seriously, though: I’m getting angry as I mull it over.
If I hadn’t left for San Diego and hadn’t heard her talking trash about me, we’d be out in public running into some old friend of hers or some work colleague I didn’t know, and she’d say something like, “Oh, this is Carly. She just got dumped.”
I dig deep and find my own inner bitch somehow. I move to Aiden’s side and put my arm around his waist.
“This is Aiden,” I say. “Hot Sauce, this is Steph. My former best friend. I think I told you about her.” I say it with contempt and look up at him.
He’s never heard of Steph.
Aiden’s arm loops around my neck and he kisses my temple. “Yeah, baby, you did.” He gives her the barest look of distaste without missing a beat. It’s just enough, too. Not too much.
Steph looks like she wants to shrivel up and simultaneously have a Veruca Salt style temper tantrum.
And I wanna kiss him for going along with this. He obviously got an instant read on her. I don’t look great, either. I’ve been stressed and on a flight after a half day at a busy conference, plus I’m a bit jetlagged and over-caffeinated, and she’s pointing out that I don’t look great by saying that I do.
“Well, I, uh… I hope Mr. Adler is gonna be okay. I have to get back …” She jerks her thumb behind her. “You staying in town a bit?” she asks.
“Not sure.” I give her nothing. In other words, none of your beeswax, bitch.