Chapter Two
Theo
Seven Years Later
If Mallory lets out one more of her “I’m disgusted with you” sighs, I think I will scream like a nine-year-old girl. My norepinephrine level is probably way out of the normal range by now. When Mallory isn’t happy, the whole world knows it.
“I don’t understand the attraction of Nashville,” she says. “It’s so… Nashville. The y’alls, the hats, the music in the grocery store. Anywhere but Nashville.”
She shudders and tosses a vase into one of my shipping boxes without even wrapping it. It’s not hers, so she doesn’t care if it breaks. If I did that, I would get a tongue-lashing to beat all.
“No one is forcing you to move. Besides, I miss my family,” I say, hoping I don’t come off like the homesick puppy I am. I miss them so much it hurts. The last seven years have been hell with medical school and my residency. I’m worn slap out, and my health has taken a beating. So when a slot opened up at my alma mater, I jumped at the opportunity to return home for my fellowship without even discussing it with Mallory first—an act she hasn’t let me forget.
She flips her long blond hair off her shoulder. “Theo, they’re all really annoying.”
I stop packing and stare at her. She has crossed the line. “Why would you say that?”
She stops stuffing items into her box and places her hands on her slender hips. She sneers at me, indicating she has a list, complete with bullet points, and she is ready to unleash it on me. Knowing Mallory, she has a slide presentation on her cell phone and is ready to beam it onto the wall. I don’t even know if that technology exists, but if it does, she would have it and use it on me.
“Well, for starters, your mother—”
“What’s wrong with my mother?” How my mom managed to be a mother to us kids and be a preacher’s wife is no small undertaking. She’s about the coolest person I’ve ever met. Almost.
Mallory stares at me as if I have a wart on the end of my nose. “You must not see her the way I do. She dresses like a bag lady.” She wags her head. “How she ever passed the bar is beyond me. And don’t get me started about the gaggle of siblings you have, especially that mother-hen big sister of yours.”
I grin at her. Peanut butter and mustard go together better than Jennifer and Mallory. They butt heads over everything, even about Jennifer’s wedding. Even months later, Mallory was still ranting about how simple their wedding was and that it didn’t even make the society pages. She made it clear that when we get married, it’s going to be the event of a lifetime. And I made it clear that she’s putting the cart before the horse. We are several steps away from taking a walk down the aisle.
“Remember that time she tried to fix your hair?” I ask as I lick my hand and move toward her. “You gotta admit that was funny.”
She swats my hand away. “That was not funny.”
I nod. “Yes, it was.”
Mallory bites her upper lip. I think there’s a smirk trying to peek out. I can tell it’s killing her not to admit how funny that day really was.
“She means well,” I say.
Mallory stares at the floor. “I know,” she quietly replies.
She removes picture frames from the mantel then rotates one frame around for me to see. It’s a photo of the two of us snorkeling at Key Largo.
A moan escapes my throat as I point to it. “If that picture had been taken three hours later, I would have been sporting that massive sunburn.”
“It looked painful.”
“Says the girl who remembered to wear sunscreen.”
“Poor baby,” she says with a pouty face. She always points out this picture when she wants to make me feel stupid.
I shudder. “I cried like a baby. It hurt like crap.”
She grabs a photo of my family and hands it to me as if it has Ebola covering the frame. I’m not sure why my family is so repulsive to her. They’ve always been nice to her, but she acts as though their professions are menial. Her attitude toward them is getting really old. Actually, it has been old for quite some time.
“That one’s yours,” she says. “But it wouldn’t matter what box it went in if we were moving to the same apartment, now would it?”
I slump down on the couch, watching her overly dramatic actions as she slings her stuff into boxes. She thinks if she keeps it up, I’ll give in and we’ll move to Nashville together. It has worked before. After six years of constant whining about wanting to move in with me, she wore me down. Her behavior was starting to affect my ability to concentrate, so I agreed. She knew after an eighteen-hour day at the hospital, I wouldn’t have the energy to conjure up a rational excuse.
“If you are hell-bent on moving too, then I think it’s best that we have our own apartments,” I said for the hundredth time.
She shrugs.
“And I’m gonna be moonlighting in the ER, so I won’t be around much at all.”
She does her standard-issue Mallory huff.
“It’s not important right now. Mallory, neither one of us has been happy for a long time.”
I had hoped my love for her would grow stronger with time, but it hasn’t. And it’s completely obvious that I don’t make her happy.
“You’d make me happy if you would try.”
I lean back on the couch and stare up at the ceiling. “I haven’t tried?”
“If you really loved me, you’d try a little harder.”
“Are you kidding me? I spent last Christmas with your family instead of visiting my parents. For my birthday, I stayed out way too late at the concert you wanted to go to and almost fell asleep in clinic. Oh, and don’t forget last week, I went to that dinner party with you, and you ignored me the whole time. Don’t tell me I don’t try to make you happy.”
“We could get married.”
Here we go again. I pace around the room, stubbing my toe on a box in my way. I mumble a few curse words under my breath. I’m not sure if it’s from the pain in my foot or the predicament I’m in. They are equally distressing.
“I can’t change the things you don’t like about me.”
“Like what?” She wraps another picture frame in tissue paper then proceeds to wrap a stack of plates. She grumbles something under her breath as she chucks the plates into a box.
I hold up my index finger. “For starters, my family.”
“I like them fine from five hundred miles away. To be fair, the same goes for my family.”
I hold up two fingers. “Church, especially Dad’s.”
She shrugs. “I grew up going to church on holidays. It’s not my thing.”
I add another finger. “I’m shorter than you as if I did that on purpose.”
“Tommy’s six feet five. I’m just saying.”
Sure, throw my geeky brother into the argument. I’m certain my IQ combined with Mallory’s doesn’t even come close to his.
I flail my arms in the air in desperation. “I was trying to be funny.”
“I wasn’t.”
I wag my finger in her face. “Blame it on my diabetes, which I’m sure you resent as well.”
She swats my hand away.
“And I know that disapproving glower you give me when I take out my Accu-Chek machine.”
She sits down in the recliner and crosses her legs and arms. “Now that you mention it, I think you’re a bit OCD about it.”
I stop in front of her. “OCD? Have you ever been in DKA? It sucks.” My pulse is so high right now, I feel as though I’m about to go into V tach.
Mallory waves me off as if she doesn’t have a care in the world. “I don’t even know what that is.”
“Diabetic ketoacidosis. It’s very dangerous, Mallory.”
My phone rings. The ringtone blares, and an announcer’s deep voice says, “Risk, the game of world domination,” indicating to me that Tommy is calling. I scrounge around the apartment, searching for my phone. Thank you, Tommy. He got my mental SOS in the nick of time. When the ringtone starts again, I find the phone in the couch cushion.
“Don’t you answer that,” Mallory snaps. “We had a deal—no phone calls until we finish.”
“Finish packing or finish breaking up?”
She steels her eyes on me. Before I answer, I peer over at her once more. If I take my brother’s call, I won’t hear the end of it. If I don’t, it will confirm that I am one hundred percent, grade A whipped.
I press the button to send my brother’s call straight to voice mail, and Mallory rolls her eyes. I think I’m the one who needs the break, and not only a time-out. I need a complete break, like the humpty-dumpty kind. I sit down and stare at my shoes.
“We need to get this done,” she says. “I have a ton of things to do before my movers get here.”
“It’s not working.”
“We’ve already been over this. You don’t put in the effort.”
I hate it when she starts using that school-teacher tone with me. “You don’t love me,” I say.
“Don’t tell me who I love and don’t love.”
“What do you love, Mallory? Remember that time I almost quit med school but you talked me into sticking it out?”
She sighs.
“Why? What was your motivation? Did you love me in the beginning, or was it the thought of the MD after my name?”
Bingo. Finally, I’ve got her attention. Those steel-blue eyes throw daggers at me again. Good thing I wore Mallory Kevlar today, because she and I are in the middle of a massive stare down.
Her lip quivers.
Dammit. I can be such a jerk sometimes. I didn’t mean to hurt her feelings, but sometimes, she pushes my buttons.
I run a hand through my crazy hair. “Never mind.” I head to the closet. “We’re both tired and stressed. I’m sorry I said anything. I didn’t mean to be an ass.”
I haul all the coats out of the closet and sling them onto the back of the couch. Next, I grab the contents of the top shelf and stare at all my old board games covered in dust. It’s like seeing long-lost friends that are crying out how much they’ve missed me. These games bring back fond memories of Sunday afternoons, growing up. They also make me think of Juliet. Oh, sweet Juliet.
I carry the boxes into the living room. “How about we take a break?” I run my hand over the top of the first box, sending dust particles into the air.
Mallory rubs her nose and lets out a dainty sneeze.
“Bless you. Feel like playing a game?”
Mallory swings around and stares at the stack in my arms. “Seriously?”
“C’mon, it’ll be fun.”
Mallory lets out another one of her disgusted-with-me sighs. “Theo.”
I survey the games, feeling as deflated as a slowly leaking balloon losing its last bit of air. “Never mind.”
I put the games in a shipping box. After wrapping up the family photo in a towel, I place it on top of the games. The silence is so loud that it practically ruptures my eardrums. I know what’s coming next.
“You’re a doctor, remember? It’s time you start acting like one.” She crosses her arms. “Come on, babe, you’re not a kid anymore. Let’s get all this stuff packed. I’m exhausted.”
“I said never mind.” I tape the box shut. “I can’t do this anymore.”
“Who is she?”
I scrunch my eyebrows together. “Who is who?” I take my frustrations out on the poor tape dispenser. The box only needs one strip of tape, but it gets five. The contents of this box will never fall out.
“Who are you in love with?”
I wish I could answer that question. I knew as soon as I first laid eyes on Juliet that she was the one for me. But I don’t know what happened to her. Hell, I don’t even know her real name.
“No one, Mallory. There’s no one.”
She lets out another exputtered sigh, as my sister calls it. Jennifer has her own glossary, and sometimes her words describe the situation to a T.
“Oh, all right. I’ll play one of your juvenile games.”
This is not how I imagined feeling after seven years in a relationship. At first, I was flattered that someone like Mallory would give me the time of day. I mean, she has legs that go on forever, and she’s smart as a whip. She put the full-court press on me, and before I knew what had hit me, she had followed me to Johns Hopkins. Lord only knows how she hornswoggled her way into living with me six months ago. It’s all a blur to me now.
We did have some fun times. And it was nice to come home to a beautiful girl after a grueling day that sometimes consisted of being on my feet for as much as eighteen hours, nonstop. Even if I was dead tired half the time, I guess the other half was fun for a while. That half isn’t enough anymore.
“Okay, I’ve got a game that won’t take long at all.” I search around the cluttered apartment until I find a black marker.
“When we get to Nashville, we are going to donate all those board games. I would die of embarrassment if anyone saw those in our apartment.”
“We are not moving in together. Jesus, Mal, you are so hard-headed.”
With no paper in sight, I use the side of a moving box to draw a bunch of blank spaces and a scaffold. I show it to her. It was going to be a cute Hangman game that spelled out “Welcome to Music City,” but she has left me no choice but to hammer home the truth. Here goes nothing.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ !
She scrunches up her forehead.
“Pick a letter.”
She rolls her eyes but guesses a few letters.
I fill in the letters until we end up with most of the puzzle complete.
We stare at each other.
“R. N. G,” she says.
“Hold your horses, Mal.”
I A _ B R E A _ I N G U _ _ I _ _ _ O U !
She gasps. “I am breaking up with you.”
I kiss her cheek and reply, “Okay.” I hate to be such an ass, but she leaves me no choice.