Exes and O's (The Influencer, #2)(17)
“It’s not about us. At least, not really,” I assure him, my cheeks turning pink. “I’m doing some self-reflection, and I need some advice.” If I know Seth like I think I do, fluffing his ego always works.
It does. He gives me a curious brow raise and ushers me into his office, as if he’s scared I’ll make some sort of scene.
His windowless office is canary yellow, which is hilarious, given that he’s anything but a sunshine-and-rainbows person. In fact, he’s requested for it to be painted gray multiple times because he says yellow undermines his professionalism.
Filling the majority of the space is a bulky glass desk, which no longer houses the framed photo of our engagement photo shoot session at the apple orchard. There’s a small bookshelf to the right, stocked with wartime nonfiction and medical journals. Only the most serious of literature for Seth.
Sitting in this orange chair with the rickety, loose arm gives me flashbacks to that time, just days after our breakup, when I cried in his office. I’d used up all his Kleenex while spit-firing ways in which we could “fix” our relationship. In response, he shooed me out of his office, telling me I needed to get over it and “move on.”
“How can I help you?” His tone is irritatingly calm, almost condescending, like I’m a patient and not his ex-fiancée. He’s leaned back in his chair, legs crossed, resting his arms behind his head, unapologetic about taking up space.
I suck in a deep breath, bracing for judgment. “I’m looking to reunite with my exes. To get a second-chance romance, kind of like my grandma’s. The one who took over our wedding,” I remind him.
His eyes go round like dinner plates. “Umm, you’re aware I’m with Ingrid now, right?”
How could I not know? Ingrid is another doctor, who works in Oncology. They started dating two months after our breakup. Watching Seth fall into another relationship so quickly, as if the years we spent together were simply an unfortunate blip, was a whole new level of gut-wrenching. Seeing them together in those early days, stealing kisses in darkened corridors or cuddling in the cafeteria in the booth that used to be ours, was torture. It doesn’t help that Seth is boisterous when he likes something. He made it known to the entire floor how “chill” Ingrid is compared to other women, how she loves beer and sports, and how she’s basically a “hot dude” (aka the perfect woman).
“Obviously. Every happiness to you both,” I force out. “You can rest assured, you are not a contender,” I clarify, mortified he’d even get that impression.
Seth pretends to wipe the nonexistent sweat off his forehead as he pours coffee from his travel thermos into his Harvard Medical School mug, crest pointed toward me. “That’s a relief. Though I kind of feel like I have an obligation to warn the rest of these men.”
I give him a pointed look, ass half out of the chair. I should probably get out of here before this turns south. “Really, Seth?”
“Relax, Tara. I’m just messing with you.” He plays off his belittlement like it was nothing, reaching for his smiley-face stress ball. He tosses it upward like a child. “Anyways, I have an appointment soon. What’s your question?”
“I wanted to know, for research purposes, why exactly you broke up with me. You never really gave me a proper explanation, other than telling me you couldn’t handle me. And I thought it might be nice to know what I could do better going forward.”
The tension is as visible as a panty line under Crystal’s workout leggings. Neither of us breathes, blanketing the office in complete silence, save for the dull beeps of various machines and faraway chatter echoing from the hallway. I tug at the collar of my scrubs, body erupting with a sickening, prickly heat from Seth’s piercing stare. “I didn’t give you a fulsome explanation because, frankly, I didn’t know if you were in the proper mental space to handle it.”
I flatten my spine against the back of the chair and meet his hard gaze. “I’m ready to handle it now. Why did you end things?”
He clears his throat, still tossing the stress ball back and forth between both hands, refusing to give me the decency of his full attention. “That’s a loaded question. But for one, we never had any shared interests. You hate sports, and you never wanted to hang out with my friends.”
My eye twitches. Seth knows full well he never invited me around his friends, all of whom are doctors or trust-fund kids I have nothing in common with. Crystal thinks he was embarrassed I was a lowly nurse. That I wasn’t as educated as they were. On one occasion, I overheard him telling his boss at the staff holiday party that I was planning to go back to school to get my master’s degree—which was a complete lie.
He continues on. “But besides that, the biggest thing was your distrust of me. You were really cling—”
I cut him off, unable to stomach the c-word again. “Okay, let’s not forget how sketchy you were in the lead-up—”
“Well, actually.” He holds up his finger, commanding the floor. I almost burst out laughing. It’s a running joke between myself and the other nurses that Seth is NICU’s resident Well Actually Guy, intruding on completely private conversations with technical corrections and irrelevant facts he found on Reddit. “Multiple studies show that trust is foundational to any relationship. If you don’t have trust, you have nothing. That’s something you’ll need to learn if you want to maintain a long-term, healthy relationship,” he tells me, feigning concern.