Heart of the Matter - Emily Giffin [107]
The emotions send her reeling back in time, to what she has come to call her stupid years, before she learned to protect herself with a wall of distrust and cynicism and apathy. The wounds Lion inflicted, wounds that she thought had healed long ago, are suddenly fresh and raw. She begins to hate him all over again, because it is easier than hating Nick. But she hates herself most of all—for being the kind of woman who gets herself in these situations.
“What is wrong with me?” she says, when she breaks down one bleak Tuesday afternoon at work, calling her brother, confessing what she did with Nick, and that she hasn’t seen him since, hasn’t even heard from him since his obligatory morning-after call.
“Nothing is wrong with you” her brother says, sounding halfasleep or stoned—maybe both.
“Something is wrong with me,” she says, staring out her office window into another office across the block, where two men are literally standing next to a water cooler, laughing. “He had sex with me once, then ended things.”
“He didn’t exactly end things. He just hasn’t. . . followed up ...”
“It’s the same difference. And you know it.”
Jason’s silence erases another sliver of hope.
“So what do you think it was? Am I not pretty enough?” she asks, knowing she sounds like an anguished, broken teenager. She desperately doesn’t want to be in this category of women who gauge their self-esteem by a man, pin their hopes on another. Yet that is exactly what she did, what she continues to do by asking these questions.
“Are you kidding? You’re fucking gorgeous,” Jason says. “You got the face. The body. The whole package.”
“So what, then? Do you think it’s the sex? Maybe I suck in bed?” she says, just as she pictures Nick’s face, twisted with pleasure as he came inside her. The way he stroked her hair afterward. Kissed her eyelids. Ran his hand over her stomach and thighs. Fell asleep holding her, clutching her to him.
Jason clucks his tongue and says, “It’s usually not about sex, Val.”
“Then what is it? Am I boring? Too negative? . . . Too much baggage?”
“None of those things. It’s not you, Val. It’s him . . . Most guys are assholes. The gay ones, the straight ones. Hank’s a diamond in the rough,” he says, his voice radiant, the way it always is when he speaks of his boyfriend. The way she might have sounded only a few days ago. “But Nick . . . Not so much.”
“He was so amazing with Charlie,” she says, snapshots filling her head. “They had a rapport. A bond. You could see it. You can’t fake that.”
“Just because he’s a great surgeon and became attached to the best kid in the world doesn’t make him right for you. Doesn’t make him a good guy, either,” Jason says. “But I can see why you’d confuse the two. Anyone would. That’s what makes it even worse—what he did. It’s like . . . he took advantage of his position.”
She sighs in agreement, although she can’t quite make herself believe that he is that manipulative, that awful. It would be easier if she could. Then she could agree with her brother, agree that this rejection would be about his flaws, not hers.
“Charlie has an appointment with him next week. And we have another surgery scheduled for February,” she says, thinking of the number of times she has looked at her calendar, wondering what she will say to him when she walks in his office. “Should we find a new doctor?”
Jason says, “He’s the best, right?”
“Yes,” she says quickly, her heart breaking, but her loyalty, bizarrely, still intact. She remembers how she continued to praise Lion’s talent for months after their breakup. “Nick is the best,” she says.
“Well, then keep him as Charlie’s doctor,” Jason says.
“Okay,” she says, wondering what she will tell her son, what explanation she will give him as to why Nick no longer comes around, why it isn’t a good idea to call him from school or anywhere else. Why they only see him at the hospital or his office.
“How guilty should I feel?” she asks, thinking of Charlie, his words in the car about wishing