“Crocodile.”
“Crocodile. Another contender emerges.” Tucker flagged down the waitress. “I’ll get this round.” He looked at Ford’s beer, only half-empty, and grinned. “You pacing yourself? Got a hot date with my future wife after this?”
Ford gave him a look. “Actually, your future wife and I aren’t seeing each other anymore.”
Tucker’s mouth fell open. “What? When did this happen?”
“Dude, she was just at your barbecue six days ago,” Charlie said. “How’d you manage to screw things up since then?”
Tucker hit him in the arm. “Nice, Charles. Real sensitive.”
Charlie glared back. “Like you know what to say, either.” He pointed to Ford. “Brooke always handles the sensitive stuff.”
“True.” Tucker eyed Ford for a moment, then leaned over and whispered to Charlie, “Maybe we should text her. He looks a little . . . broody.”
For chrissakes. “No one is texting Brooke,” Ford said. “For one thing, she’s out of town for work, and for another thing, I’m not broody.” Seeing Charlie’s and Tucker’s skeptical looks, he felt the need to continue. “Come on. I always knew it wasn’t going to be a long-term thing with Victoria. She said she needed space, so we agreed not to see each other anymore. It’s not a big deal.” Granted, that was the whitewashed version of last Monday’s events, but he saw no reason to share the details of Victoria’s panic attack—nor the argument afterward—with Charlie and Tucker.
Besides, as he’d come to realize these last few days, it was probably a good thing that he and Victoria were no longer hooking up. Things between them had been starting to feel a little . . . real. And he didn’t want real. He’d just been caught off guard on Monday, not having expected her to end things so suddenly.
But that was neither here nor there now.
“So you’re cool with this?” Charlie asked.
“Definitely cool,” Ford assured him.
Tucker raised his beer glass. “Dude. You’re back.”
Pfft. Ford raised his glass and grinned. “Who said I ever went away?”
He finished his beer, joking around with Charlie and Tucker and having a good time. His friends found some women to talk to—of course they did—and just as Ford was debating whether to order a second drink, out of the corner of his eye he caught a flash of a long, chestnut-brown ponytail.
Immediately, he turned . . . and saw that it was a woman in her mid-twenties. She caught him looking and walked over with a smile.
“Sorry,” Ford told her. “I thought you were someone else.”
“Oh.” Pretty, and with legs that went on for days in her short skirt, she pointed to his empty glass. “Well, how about I buy you a drink while you’re waiting for your someone else to show up?”
Ford appreciated the gesture. And on a different night, perhaps he’d take her up on that offer. “Thanks. But I’m just hanging out with my friends tonight.”
“Sure. No problem.” With a carefree shrug, she walked back to her group of girlfriends.
A few minutes later, Tucker was at his side. He nodded at the brunette. “Huh. I thought you were in there.”
“Nah, she was just asking me for the time. Said she has a boyfriend.” Ford made a big show of shrugging. “What can you do, right?”
Tucker looked at him. Then he reached out and squeezed Ford’s shoulder, his voice turning uncharacteristically serious. “Hey. You win some, you lose some, right?”
Ford smiled slightly. “Indeed you do, Tuck.”
A moment passed, neither of them saying anything further. Nothing else to be said, really.
Then Tucker cocked his head and grinned. “So can I talk to the brunette, then?”
Ford chuckled. Some things, at least, never changed. “She’s all yours.”
Twenty-nine
ON SATURDAY AFTERNOON, for once, Victoria had plenty to say during her weekly session with the good doctor.
She paced in his office while describing her panic attack, cross-examining him about the effectiveness of his supposed techniques and her alleged progress—both of which seemed highly debatable given recent events.
“I can tell that you’re upset,” Dr. Metzel said calmly when she’d finished her rant.
She snorted. A regular mind-reader, this one.
He gestured. “Please. Have a seat.”
After debating—she’d been on the fence about coming to this appointment at all—she sat down in the chair across from him.
Yes, she was angry with Dr. Metzel because of her setback. And she needed to be angry with him—or with someone, at least. Because if she didn’t have her anger to focus on, she’d start thinking about the fact that these panic attacks weren’t going away as easily as she’d hoped, and that scared her.
She’d never been cowed by anything in her life, and she’d be damned if she’d start now.
“I understand your frustration,” he said. “But I do think you’re still making progress.”
“Tell that to the seventy people who saw me faint on the train. Or to Ford, who had to carry me off, like I’m some damsel in distress. Do you realize how embarrassing that was?” She pointed to her chest, her emotions raw. “I do not need rescuing.”
He studied her for a moment. “Why didn’t you just get off the train at an earlier stop? That would’ve solved your problem instantly.”
“I told you, I didn’t want Ford to know about the panic attacks.”
“Why not?”
She exhaled. Always so many questions. “It doesn’t matter. Ford and I aren’t seeing each other anymore. I ended things Monday night.” She pointed. “Go ahead. I’ll wait while you write that down in your notebook.” Patient shows zero progress and continues to be a general pain in the ass.
She pictured him stamping the top of her file with one word written in red ink: hopeless.
But instead, Dr. Metzel held her gaze. “Why did you end things with Ford?”
“I don’t want to talk about him.”
“I think you do. You didn’t have to tell me you weren’t seeing him anymore.”
She paused at that. This whole week she’d been trying to cover up the fact that something was off. And, frankly, it was getting a little exhausting.