Part of me wanted to glance at the man in the seat beside mine, but I couldn’t talk myself into it. I knew that this was my reality. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be sitting where I was, with him beside me.
Having one of the worst days of my life.
The only positive side to all this was that he was pretending I wasn’t next to him too.
Thankfully, he was still doing that when my phone rang maybe a minute and a half after I’d sent my text message.
I LOVE ZAC CALLING flashed across the screen—I wasn’t sure when the hell he’d snuck onto my phone and changed his contact information, but it had made me smile when I’d first seen it—and I answered.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hey. You stayin’ late at work? Want me to bring you somethin’ to eat before you get hangry?” my friend asked in one quick breath, in almost a whisper that had me wondering what the hell he was in the middle of doing exactly. He’d told me he had a meeting at White Oaks headquarters with the coaching staff. We had only made plans to squeeze in dinner because… well, I think we were both shook up after what had happened with Jessica and the switching of our numbers, and we both probably felt bad about it. Maybe. At least I did. I’d had a lot to think about lately, and that was at the top of my list.
I rubbed at my brow bone with my right hand and glanced at the man beside me to make sure he was still hung up on his phone. “No, I’m not working late.” Unfortunately.
But Zac beat me to speaking before I had the chance to explain. “You goin’ out tonight or… got, uh, a date or somethin’ you’re standin’ me up for?”
I straight-up snorted into the phone and glanced to my right once more to make sure he wasn’t paying attention. “Pssh. I’d never stand you up for some guy. I’m at urgent care—”
“Where?” he asked.
“Urgent care—”
There was a sound in the background a split second before his voice went soft but sharp. “You’re at the hospital?”
“I’m okay,” I tried to rush out, glancing at my phone to make sure the person snarling at me over the line was really Zac. It was. “I fell at work and cut my elbow—”
There were some noises in the background, and I was pretty sure I heard someone say his name before he basically demanded in one long breath, “You all right? Did it just happen?”
“About an hour ago? We just got here. I’m in the waiting room. I’m not going to bleed out or anything but it hurts.”
There were more sounds in the background, a few whispers before Zac asked, “Which one?”
“I just need a few stitches maybe.”
He blew out a breath that filled the line, and his voice was steadier during his next question. “Bianca. Where you at?” I’d swear I could hear him moving. Walking. Something.
“You really don’t need to—”
He didn’t let me finish. “I really do. What urgent care are you at?” Before I could get another word out, he added, “I’m comin’. You better not even start with your nonsense again either.”
I sighed, holding my throbbing elbow a little tighter to my stomach. I rattled off the name of the urgent care clinic that Gunner had driven me to, and that was when my boss finally turned to look at me instead of his phone for the first time since we’d gotten here. He’d had the nerve to roll his eyes when I busted my ass in front of him, and Deepa had screamed for someone to call an ambulance.
There was no ambulance. He’d driven me himself. After he’d reminded everyone that he’d had much worse happen when he used to fight. Asshole.
“Be there in no time,” Zac told me. “Let me know if they take you to the back so I know where you’re at, all right?”
He was coming. God, he really was the best. “Okay, I will, but if you can’t come, I promise I’ll be fine. I just didn’t want you to wait around to eat with me.”
“I’ll be there as soon as I can,” my friend said before ending the call without a goodbye.
I sighed and set my phone down on my thigh, staring at the black screen.
“Boyfriend?” came Gunner’s question out of nowhere.
I slid up a little straighter in the barely cushioned chair of the waiting room of the urgent care facility he’d driven us to. “No, my friend. He’s on his way if you’d like to leave. He should be here in a little bit.”
And actually, I really would prefer for him to leave. I had asked if Deepa could just drive me instead of him, but he’d said someone had to stay and work the juice bar since we were going to have to leave the front desk empty, so no, Deepa couldn’t drive me. This man needed Jesus. And maybe an exorcism.
And apparently, he was going to ignore my request again. “I’ll wait,” Gunner said, sounding like he would rather be just about anywhere else.
He was doing this to spite me.
“It’s all right though. I know it was an accident. I can give you the bill when I get it. I’m sure they won’t give it to me tonight,” I told the man who I did actually hold responsible for all this shit.
All because he hadn’t listened.
And he knew damn well it was his fault too.
“No, I’ll wait,” Gunner repeated himself, sounding annoyed. Like I wanted to be here. Like I’d wanted to slice my elbow open.
Like I’d wanted any of the shit that had happened today to happen.
I just wanted to crawl back into bed and start the whole day over again.
It had started with a phone call from Deepa while I’d been getting dressed to go into work for a few hours. Her mom was sick, she had stage three breast cancer, and she was going to go back home to help her out. She’d apologized over and over again for deciding to leave, and for moving out of the house she was splitting with two roommates—a house she’d offered to let me come live in while I figured out what I was doing. She had offered to let me take over the bedroom she rented, but I didn’t want to live with people I barely knew. My assistant, my friend, was leaving, and I had no idea what the hell I was going to do or who was going to help me from now on. I was going to miss her a lot, but at the end of the day, what really mattered was that Deepa was there for her mom, and that the other woman fought as hard as she could for her health.
So there was that.
And then there was the second thing. The email that started it all. Another stupid, stupid thing I’d done.
I’d only been holding it together because I was at work when the emails had started coming through from my viewers. I’d read their messages and checked my WatchTube channel on my own to confirm what they’d been trying to tell me during my brief breaks in between members and Gunner’s loops of terror around the building.
My viewers hadn’t been lying. The profile on my channel had been changed to some bogus person.
And maybe I’d been pretty distracted over that when I’d busted my ass and landed myself at urgent care, waiting to see a doctor so I could get stitched up or glued back together or whatever it was they were going to need to do. I was pretty sure I’d stopped bleeding finally, but my elbow was just throbbing like crazy to the same beat as my pulse.
Squeezing my eyes closed, I tried to tell myself it—everything today—wasn’t the end of the world. That I hadn’t actually lost anything. That I could get it all back. Most of it. Not Deepa. I needed to make some phone calls, fill out a form or two, and then everything would go back to normal, which had been my plan the instant I’d realized what had happened.