On Rotation(75)



“Okay,” I said, and after that, he let me go.





Twenty-One




But Ricky didn’t call the next day, or the day after that, or the one after that.

“You okay, boo?” Nia asked, handing me my third cup of Earl Grey of the night. I accepted it with a bleary smile. Even though I was the one who’d just gotten my heart thrashed, I felt sorry for Nia. After all, she was deeply in love with the best friend of its thrasher, and the conflict of interest was probably maddening.

“I have to be,” I said, gesturing toward my laptop screen. Dr. Reed had sent me a last-minute batch of edits for our presentation. My team was on call tomorrow, meaning that I wouldn’t have the time to implement his changes and rehearse them then; everything had to be squared away today. “I’m too busy to wallow.” I gave Nia a small smile. “Thanks for keeping me company, by the way. You really don’t have to. You have an early day tomorrow.”

“Don’t thank me,” Nia said. “I still remember how you took care of me after Ulo.”

I laughed, remembering my many late-night trips to the grocery store to grab extra Oreos to help abate Nia’s post-breakup suffering.

“I’ll be fine,” I told her. “Go home.”

And I would be fine. For the first time since we’d met, I finally knew where Ricky and I stood. I brought up commitment, and he fled the scene. There was no reason to feel conflicted about us anymore. No need to question his intentions or let myself be reassured by how good of a guy he was. Like with my internal medicine practice questions, I had gotten Ricky wrong so many times that the right answer now seemed obvious.

Operation Deep Clean went into effect immediately after forty-eight hours of Ricky-related radio silence. I wasn’t going to allow myself to sink into a funk of self-inflicted misery by scrolling through his Instagram or rereading our texts. No. I was going to be proactive against Future Angie, who would doubtlessly want to do those things. I unfollowed him on social media, deleted his number, and set up a study and social schedule so airtight that there would be minimal room for my mind to wander. Because I was done. And I didn’t plan on turning back.

Still, when the day of my presentation came and I didn’t get a text from an unfamiliar number wishing me good luck, I had to swallow my disappointment.

“Nice blazer,” Tabatha said, peering at me through her camera. She’d stayed up late the night before to give me some last-minute pointers, which included helping me choose an appropriate presentation outfit. When I selected a flaring midi dress, she kissed her teeth. “You don’t have to hide those curves to look professional,” she insisted, eventually guiding me to a knee-length pencil skirt and a chunky necklace I’d purchased long ago and never worn.

“Thanks,” I said. “For everything.” These days, I felt like Tabatha had overtaken me in my sisterly duties. Was she really the same brat who used to cry when I got presents on my birthday because she felt left out?

“It’s nothing,” she said. “Besides, don’t thank me yet. You’re going to be returning the favor three times over once I get deep into wedding planning.” Then her face became serious. “Also. Momma says good luck. And she wanted me to tell you”—she looked left and right, then leaned into the camera like she was sharing a secret—“that she’s proud of you.”

“Wow,” I said. “Proud of me? No way.” Had I humbled the great Dorothy Appiah?

“I know!” Tabatha said, rolling her eyes. “I almost asked her if she’d hit her head. Anyway, I just wanted to pass that along. Go out there and crush it!”

I pushed open the heavy wooden doors to the conference room where Dr. Reed and I would be presenting our proposal to members of the Beenhouwer Association, named after a physician who had spearheaded qualitative research in medicine in the seventies. The room was unexpectedly small, outfitted with only ten or so seats, and identical to the conference rooms where my teams usually did table rounds.* The room’s sole occupant, a round-faced middle-aged woman with chunky blond highlights, looked up from her stack of papers upon my entry.

“Dr. Harrison, Dr. Petrucci, and Dr. Philips should be here shortly,” she informed me. Then she gave me a small smile. “Angela, right?”

I smiled back.

“You must be Cynthia,” I said. Cynthia had been fielding my formatting questions for the better part of the month, addressing my anxious requests with unmatched patience. I had sent her about five different versions of my final PowerPoint, the subject line of each email some iteration of Appiah Final Version, Promise. “Thank you so much for putting up with me.”

“It’s no problem,” Cynthia assured me. She directed me to the podium at the front of the room, turning on the projector and showing me how to use the pointer.

Over the next several minutes, my judges filed into the room one by one. They seemed relaxed, their white coats either hanging off their arms or nowhere in sight. I opened my mouth to introduce myself, but then, thinking better of it, tucked my lips shut and checked my phone for the time. Just two minutes until showtime, and Dr. Reed was nowhere to be found. Nervous, I glanced up at the screen, where my title slide was projected. After Tabatha critiqued it in the private study room, Ricky had gone out of his way to edit the theme. He’d emailed the revised version to me in the middle of the day on a Tuesday, and when I taunted him about not working on the projects that actually paid his bills, he’d texted back, earnestly, that he’d deemed this more important. I had some downtime today, he said. I wanted to make sure you got it in time. At the time, his conscientiousness had left me simpering; now, it all seemed like part of a pretense. You asked him if you could be his girlfriend, I reminded myself, and in response, he dropped off the face of the Earth.

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