Dr. Neurotic(30)

"Harry!" she shouted toward the living room. "Charlotte's here, and dinner's just about ready!"

"Char's here?" he called back. "Is Nick with her?"

"Nope!" she responded. "They broke up!"

"You're kidding me!"

"I know! It's terrible, isn't it?" she yelled back, and I had the urge  to bury my head in my hands. "Now, go wash your hands, Har, and come eat  dinner with us!"

She smiled a sad smile before turning away.

"I've got the perfect comfort food in the oven, honey," she announced as  she moved toward the stove and opened it. A few seconds later she  pulled a pie out with an oven-mitt-covered hand. "Homemade chicken pot  pie. It was my mother's recipe."

"That smells and looks delicious, Doreen, but I don't really feel  comfortable crashing your dinner." Sure, I'd once crashed her house  entirely, and I still owned the place, but …          

     



 

She tsked. "Don't be silly, dear. You're not crashing anything. I insist you join us."

Well, I guessed, not but anything. I could crash their dinner if I  wanted to. Harry bounded into the room just as his wife set the chicken  pot pie on the table.

"Looks delicious, Dor!" he exclaimed.

"Manners, Harry!" his wife chastised before he could plant his ass in  his designated chair at the head of the table. "Greet Charlotte before  you sit down and start stuffing your face."

He flashed a soft grin in my direction. "Hi, Charlotte. It's nice that you stopped by."

"Hi, Harry," I greeted back awkwardly.

"Okay. I hope you've got your appetites," Doreen said after she finished  pouring all three of us a glass of fresh lemonade. "Because I've also  got a homemade apple pie in the oven for dessert."

Harry winked. "Goodness gracious, woman. I sure do love you."

Doreen blushed as she sat down in her seat.

"You're in for a treat, Char," he said as he cut himself a piece of  chicken pot pie. "Doreen is an amazing cook. And this pot pie is one of  the best things that will ever touch your taste buds."

"Oh!" Doreen exclaimed and hopped up from the table. "Your heart meds,  Harry! I almost forgot." She hurried back into the kitchen and opened up  the cabinet over the sink. Five orange pill bottles in hand, she made  her way back to Harry's side of the table and started setting out his  medicine.

"This is what happens when you get old, Char," he teased. "You get wrinkles and a bad heart."

"Oh, don't traumatize her, Har!"

Honestly, the two of them didn't even need me to be involved in their  conversation. It was a show, and I was just the audience. Given my  current mental state, that probably wasn't a bad thing.

"What?" he retorted. "You know it's true."

"Harry had to have a triple bypass about a year ago," she explained with  a knowing glance in my direction. "And these medications are now an  everyday thing."

"Last year was a real rough year for us," he admitted. "I had to stop  working. And one surgery and a hundred-thousand worth of medical bills  later, I'm just thankful I'm still able to enjoy time with my wife."

Jesus. No wonder their home had been put in a foreclosure auction.

Discreetly, while Doreen and Harry argued over the right order for him  to take his medications, I slipped the deed for the house out of my back  pocket and put it back into my purse.

I just couldn't have that discussion with them. Not after they had  invited me into this house with open arms and insisted I eat a  home-cooked meal. And especially not after I'd heard about everything  they'd gone through over the past year.

Maybe one day I'd find the strength to find a solution to this problem, but not right now.

Right now, I was going to enjoy chicken pot pie and the nice, adorable,  and oftentimes comedic distraction that these two lovebirds provided.





Staring at the ticker as it scrolled news across the bottom of the  screen and reading nothing, I lifted a spoonful of Frosted Flakes to my  mouth and winced.

Soggy and completely lacking in any of their normal goodness, Tony the  Tiger wouldn't have thought these were fucking grrrreat at all.

But their lackluster quality wasn't the fault of the manufacturer.  Instead, each disgusting attribute could be solely credited to the  amount of time gone by as I stared into the abyss and hated myself-time  spent not eating.

It'd been almost two weeks since I'd consumed the night with Charlotte  in my arms, holding on to every last moment, crying together about what  could have been-but in reality, absolutely couldn't.

And that made nearly two weeks of misery.

I'd thought initially that the mourning would be quick. Not because I  wasn't attached to Charlotte or because the decision was simple, but  because giving her up meant going back to a life with which I was  extremely familiar. Kind of like slipping into an old shoe, I'd still  walk the same path, I'd still do the same job, I'd just do it a little  less stylishly.

Fucking naïveté.

Life without Charlotte didn't feel less colorful; it felt dead.

Routine by rote, I'd thrown myself into the hospital, working the most  overtime I'd worked in two years and generally annoying the entirety of  the hospital staff. Carol looked surprised to find an ogre on the other  side of my office door each time she approached, and even that made me  angry. How the fuck could anyone expect me to be happy right now?
         

     



 
Of course, she didn't know about the breakup or the reasons behind it or  how impossible it was to come back from. But despair wasn't rational,  and as a result, I was a jackass.

I jumped as the alarm I'd set on my phone to end what I knew would be a  breakfast filled with reckless daydreaming went off. A full bowl of  soggy cereal in the garbage and a quick rinse to the dish later, I  walked down the hall to my closet, opened the top drawer, and pulled out  my dirty little secret.

Swirls of pink and lavender covering the soft fabric, Charlotte's  favorite sleep top still held her essence perfectly. With it firmly to  my face, I inhaled, closed my eyes, and imagined for just a moment that  she was inside it, sending me off with a smile and a kiss after a night  spent with her in my arms.

Unfortunately, when I opened my eyes to nothing more than an empty shirt  and a pathetic sense of self, a further void unbolted inside me and  threatened to swallow everyone I made contact with today whole.

Get ready, folks, I thought, mentally hooking a thumb toward myself. This jackal is going nuclear.

My movement was violent as I slammed the shirt back in the drawer and  shoved it closed, growling to myself about what a stupid asshole I was.

"Idiotic. Fucking romantic-hearted, stupidly fucking naïve."

My gums ached as I scrubbed sadistically with my toothbrush and tortured  myself with thoughts of Charlotte and trivia night and how fun it would  have been to take Lexi to one together. How good she would have been at  it and how redeemed I would have been in Charlotte's eyes. How fucking  impossible it all was thanks to our imperfectly intertwined past and a  surely rocky relationship between the mother of my child and my  girlfriend.

Ex-girlfriend.

Motherfucker.

My relationship with Remy wasn't perfect by any means, but I'd finally  broken some ground with him-I'd seen it in his eyes when I'd picked up  Lexi two weeks ago. But I knew him and I knew Charlotte, and I knew  there was no way he'd be okay with me being with her forever after  losing her himself.

And if it came down to a battle between the two of us for time with  Lexi, regardless of the fact that I was her natural father, I knew Remy  would win. He had time and reliability on his side, a steadiness I  couldn't claim-and a blood relation to the woman who made the decisions.

I'd done the right thing ending things with Charlotte. It was the mature  decision, the adult one-the one that kept my daughter firmly in my  life.

So why does it have to feel so wrong?

Swinging my jacket over my shoulders and sliding my arms through, I  finished getting dressed and stalked out of my apartment, only to  realize I'd forgotten my phone. Back in to procure it, and out again,  and if possible, my mood had only gone downhill from where it started  this morning.

A few more notches and the depths of the core of the earth were going to start burning me.

It was good I'd gone back for it, though, the cadence of my ringtone jarring me out of my reverie as I climbed into a cab.

Trust me, this was no morning for the subway. I was liable to get into  an altercation and end up in prison, and that sure as fuck wouldn't help  anything.

Winnie's name scrolled on my screen as I quickly gave the cab driver my  destination and settled into my seat, so I swiped to answer and put the  phone to my ear, eyebrows drawn. It was only six in the morning, an  excruciatingly early time for Winnie to be calling me, and my heart sank  with worry for my daughter.

"Win? Is Lexi okay?" I asked immediately.