Chapter Thirteen
AUSTIN
Nancy was nice.
If you liked women who should be aging naturally, but instead looked like they had had their faces frozen one too many times and had their eyebrows nailed to the top of their head.
She was beautiful in a really harsh, she-could-either-be-eighty-or-forty way.
I wasn’t against plastic surgery—I was just more a fan of its looking natural—and nothing on Nancy looked natural.
When she left to let me change, I peeled off my shirt so fast, I nearly caught my head inside the neck hole—not because I was eager to get Thatch’s hands on me, but because I wanted this whole embarrassing situation to be over.
I was uncomfortable, and I knew Thatch. I’d had sex with him, he’d seen me naked, and my teeth were still chattering.
I made a mental note to include that in my post.
That no matter who it was.
You were still topless in a doctor’s office while bright fluorescent lights peered down on you, revealing every single flaw hidden in the dark.
A loud knock had me jumping out of my skin.
“I’m r-ready,” I said, trying to sound confident.
Thatch strolled in along with Nancy right behind him.
He washed his hands.
Wait, why was he washing his hands?
“I don’t want you to be cold,” he whispered so only I could hear. “And who knows where my hands have been.”
He was making a joke.
Trying to make me feel better.
But it only made me feel worse—because my body knew exactly where his hands had been not so long ago.
All over me.
“Alright,” Thatch said, snapping me out of my pathetic trip down sexual-fantasy lane where Thatch wore an eye patch and slapped my booty. “I’m going to jot down a ton of stuff that won’t make any sense to you, basically to see if one breast is bigger than the other, measure distance from the nipple to the breastbone, so just hold still and try not to slump, alright?”
I gave him a jerky nod while he pulled out a marker.
It was like sorority hazing where they would use markers to circle every imperfection and write horrible names like “slut,” “whore,” and “bitch” on the pledges.
Only it was five thousand times worse.
Because I wasn’t drunk.
And nobody joined me in my shame.
It was just the sexiest man alive, with a marker in his hand, hell-bent on pointing out what was wrong so he could fix it.
Oh, this had been a really stupid idea.
Thatch smiled warmly at me. “Relax, this is what I do, you even gave me a shiny award for it.”
I nodded my head. “You’re right. Okay.” I straightened my shoulders and stood tall. “I’m ready.”
He pulled back the fabric, revealing both of my breasts, and sucked in a breath as his eyes dilated, the marker frozen midair.
“Dr. Holloway?” Nancy coughed. “Everything alright?”
“God, yes,” he whispered under his breath. “Sure, Nancy, I just forgot I left the garage door open.”
I gave him a funny look because he didn’t have a garage.
And he gave me one back that said, Shut your mouth before I doodle on your face with my marker.
So I did.
He cupped my breasts briefly, lifting the right, then the left. I really tried not to respond. I did. Swear. But when his knuckle grazed my right nipple, my body reacted. He noticed, because, duh, how could he not? My breasts were basically begging for his attention like the little sluts they were.
Meanwhile Dr. Thatch was just doing his job.
I was in hell.
He fired off measurements while his nurse wrote them down, and as he predicted, none of them made sense to me.
“Your left is larger than your right,” he said in a detached voice.
“Great,” I said in a “please kill me” voice.
“Just slightly, though, you wouldn’t notice it.”
No, but he would.
He did.
I had to wonder if that’s what he’d done after sex, mentally gone down a checklist of all the things he’d fix on my body if only I’d let him.
“Almost done.” He looked up at me for the first time since the examination started. “Nancy,” he said without looking back at her, “grab one of the sports bras from the cupboard, please.”
“Right away.” Her back was to us.
And then Thatch’s hands were on me.
On both breasts, massaging with his fingers as he leaned in and whispered in my ear. “You. Are. Perfect.”
He pulled back before I could say anything.
Tears welled in my eyes.
How did he even know what I was thinking?
And why? Why did he have to be so nice? It was hard to be angry at him for hurting me when he was nice.
And beautiful.
Don’t forget beautiful.
Nancy handed him the bra, which he handed to me. “Go ahead and put this on.”
I slipped off the hospital robe and pulled on the sports bra.
“Alright.” He grabbed a clear implant that had rough edges and another that had smooth edges. “The rougher implant is a cohesive gel. It holds its shape better, but it feels harder.” He held it out to me.
Did that mean I had to touch it?
“Go ahead, grab it,” he encouraged with a small smile.
I weighed it in the palm of my hand. “Hmm, it does feel . . . kind of hard.”
His head jerked up so fast I nearly dropped the implant. His eyes blazing, he quickly took the implant away and replaced it with a smoother-looking one.
“This one is . . . softer, it feels more real,” I said.
“This is a saline implant, and because you really don’t need to go larger than one cup size, I’d suggest this.” He grabbed another. “Now, go ahead and stuff them in your bra like you used to when you were twelve while dancing to Britney Spears.”
I laughed. “I never had to stuff my bra.”
The smile froze on his face.
Nancy cleared her throat.
“So just”—he scratched his head—“shove it in.”
“Like this?” I scrunched up my nose. “I just shove this in here.”
Was it my imagination, or was he sweating?
“Yup.” His voice was hoarse. “Just right . . . inside.”
“Okeydokey.” I put both implants in front of my breasts and looked down. “Huh, imagine that, I look awesome!”
Nancy laughed and nodded her head. “It makes you look so much thinner.”
How cute, she’s passive-aggressive too. I didn’t even want to know how many times she probably dreamed of being in Thatch’s pants.
Or how good it would feel to let her know her dreams would never measure up to how amazing it really was.
Then again.
That pesky little emotion called rejection slammed into my heart.
We weren’t together.
He was free to screw whomever he wanted—even his forty-something-to-eighty-something nurse.
Thatch grabbed me by the shoulders and turned me toward a large mirror. “So, what do you think?”
“I think . . .” I eyed my body. The implants did add more of a curvy feel to my tall and lanky shape, but they felt fake. In fact, just wearing them in this sports bra made me feel like a poser. Like I was one step away from turning into Nancy over there. “I think I’ll have to think about it?”
He exhaled like he was glad that I wasn’t so impressed with my new breast size that I’d actually contemplate going under the knife.
“Alright then.” He moved away from me. “I’ll just let you get changed and I’ll be right back.”
He left with Nancy.
I stared at myself again in the mirror, then slowly pulled out the fake implants.
My chest deflated.
And I had to wonder—why would he want me?
No surprise he’d broken up with me.
Because in the end, how could he not cheat? How could he stay in a relationship when he didn’t have to?
When he did this every day?
When he was around so much perfection each day of his life?
Well, at last, I did have my answer.
I just wished it didn’t suck as bad as it did.