Torture.
Once again, Laura was impossible to reach. Her calls to Darla were ignored. Who else was she supposed to talk to? Crackhead? As hours ticked by, and then two days, she started to think he was her only option.
How had it gotten this bad? When had her isolation become so complete? It wasn’t like she didn’t have work friends she went out with for drinks here and there. Small talk was easy and they laughed at each other’s stories and jokes. But when she thought about it—really thought about it—not a single one of those people were someone she could turn to in the middle of the night in an emergency.
Only Laura and Darla.
Alex was the kind of man who could join that club. He was. She knew it. Josie felt so f**ked up compared to Alex. Her mother was f**ked up compared to his mother. Crafting an adult life that made sense had been an enormous struggle, without any of the guidance that people normally get from their parents. Life bisected into two parts: before the crash and after the crash. Drawing strength from life “BC” had kept Josie going for a very long time, propelled her out of Peters and here, to Cambridge, in a life that looked like it made sense from the outside.
And it had.
Until Alex rocked her world.
If you define yourself by what you’re running away from, then how do you know when you’ve arrived at where you’re going to? So many years of pulling herself away from a dysfunctional life, of establishing herself as a professional, as a financially stable young woman, had melded into one big concept of not. Josie was not her mother. Josie was not a sociopath. Josie was not incompetent. Josie was not the source of Marlene’s problems.
Josie was not.
Then what was she? How do you live a centered life when you don’t know where or what your center is? The thought looped through her mind a thousand times a day, the only anchor in her life. It weighed her down, pinning her in place, and as toxic as it was, at least it was there. Unlike Laura and Darla, who were absent at the most critical juncture of her life.
Show up for your own life, Josie, a voice said. You don’t need them. Do the right thing. Find your core on your own.
And that was the problem with Alex. At the core, he was grounded and stable and knew himself deeply. What kind of doctor deferred to CNMs and patient wishes so fully? One who knew himself, who trusted his instincts, and who drew faith from an inner sense of truth.
What kind of man accepted her for who she was, quirks and all? Screeching brakes in her head made that thought come to a dead halt, because that was the fulcrum of her imbalanced soul. When Alex got to see the real her—the abyss inside that stretched on for eternity, the hole where Josie was supposed to be—he would change. Or leave.
Because that’s what people do.
How could she develop any sense of grounded self when her mother was a whirlwind of splintered chaos, seeking to find her own center in Josie?
Worse—consistently and persistently destroying Josie’s core because Marlene only felt better about herself when others around her were failing. She couldn’t bear to watch someone else succeed, as if it were an implicit judgment against her. Narcissism at its finest, a character disorder not inborn but one created by a car crash that changed her brain. Insidious and disabling, it had made her mother wholly dependent on sarcasm and cruelty.
Josie maintained the former, but actively eschewed the latter.
For as painful as it was to shut him out, it was too dangerous to let Alex in.
Because when you say “I love you” to someone and mean it, what happens when they say it back—and there is no “you”? Who would he love if he said it?
Josie didn’t know.
And that was the true torture.
Josie was turning him into a stalker. Not really, but he didn’t need to go for a run nearly every day now. That his path happened to involve her street, and that running the loop around the park happened to take him past her building was sheer coincidence. Not creepy. Not obsessive. Or juvenile or silly or any of the other words he berated himself with on a daily basis as the tortured absence of contact with her extended from hours to days.
Her car was there every time, but that didn’t mean anything. Taking the T was the norm around here. Pushing past her building slowly, he wished he had the balls to go up to her porch and ring her bell.
And what? Face rejection in person? He’d already been spurned electronically. Why add to it?
What had he done wrong? Sex in the park was astounding. Life altering. Phenomenal and passionate and exciting and…all of it. Josie was all of it.
Falling for her was killing him.
Work didn’t help. A minor issue with a patient had snowballed, making his bosses frown and a few administrators schedule case reviews. Whatever it was, Alex didn’t like it, and it made him uncharacteristically angry. Being questioned so that patient care was at its best? Absolutely fine. Having his judgment nitpicked and Monday-morning-quarterbacked and a whisper campaign of rumors and innuendo used to undermine him? Fuck that. He hated how other respected residents had been rattled and shredded by similar hospital processes and he despised this part of his job.
As his legs pounded on the sidewalk, his heart rate steady, body pushing air in and out, legs stretching, he hit a flow state. Body occupied, his t-shirt soaking with sweat at the neck and underarms, he reveled in the fact that something worked right. No matter what, he could count on two things: his body and his mind. Both had served him well when he took care of them. Exercise regularly, eat reasonably well, and reduce stress. That took care of the body.
Harness and expand his insatiable curiosity—that took care of the mind.
The heart?
How do you keep that in shape?
As he rounded the corner, he saw Josie. The steady beat turned into a syncopated jazz set, his neck straining to watch her. Dressed in a red silk shirt and black pants, she looked like she was headed off to work. Strolling and taking time to look at the trees, her head bounced in rhythm to something. He guessed she wore earbuds and listened to music.
What kind of music? Did she have a favorite beyond the old blues she played in her bedroom? What was her favorite food? He knew she liked lattes. Italian food. And…that was it.
So many parts of her he hadn’t met yet.
Patting his pocket, he found his phone. Checked for message. Nope. Voicemail? Yes.
Score!
It was his mother.
Damn it.
No woman had done this to him. Ever. Not the blowing-off part—that he’d experienced exactly twice. Neither time was fun, but he’d glossed over it quickly and rolled with the punches. There was always someone else to date. To sleep with. To have fun with.