Surprise Delivery(20)

“He’ll be back,” she assures me. “And judging by the way he was looking at you last night, I have no doubts he’ll be touching base with you when he does.”

“Yeah well, we’ll jump off that bridge when we come to it.”

Bri laughs. “You know who his family is, don’t you?”

“He told me a bit about them last night,” I reply. “We mostly talked about his relationship with them.”

Sabrina smiles like she’s got the juiciest bit of gossip ever and can’t wait to share it. “The Clyburne family is one of the wealthiest in all of New York. We’re talking billions,” she gushes. “And Doctor Duncan Clyburne is on the list of Manhattan’s most eligible bachelors every single year. Hot and rich? Yeah, you could have picked worse.”

“I didn’t pick anybody,” I laugh. “It was an accident and we just started talking after that. Besides, you know I’m not about the money. I’m not like that.”

“I know,” she says. “All I’m saying is that if you were going to fall for somebody, you could have fallen for a lot worse than him.”

“Oh, so now I’m falling for him?” I say and laugh. “Kind of jumping the gun a bit, aren’t you?”

“Maybe,” she admits. “But, I’m just so damn excited. This is the first time in like, forever, that you’ve actually shown interest in a guy.”

“Yeah, well, there’s a good reason for that.”

“Duncan is nothing like the pigs you work with,” she tells me. “Believe me. I don’t know him well, but I know him well enough to know that he’s a genuinely good guy.”

If I’m being honest with myself, I can already agree. After spending time with him last night, I can see that he can sometimes come off as a little gruff. I saw him cycle through a lot of different personas last night as we sat and talked. At the core of him, I really got the sense that he’s a good guy. I imagine some of those other personas, and aloof cynicism, are maybe just a function of having grown up in the fishbowl I imagine wealthy families like his had to.

I imagine that growing up in one of the richest, most powerful families in the entire state of New York forced him to adopt a persona of cool detachment. I guess it would be a survival instinct he would’ve had to develop as he grew up and found that people aren’t always who or what they appear to be.

People are always looking to use you, get over on you, and then discard you when they’re through with you. I’ve experienced it more than a few times in my own life – and I don’t have much of value to really offer people. Having the kind of money Duncan has must make it ten times worse. A hundred times. Admittedly, it’s not always money people are after. But having it probably makes even more people come at you.

“All I’m saying,” Bri continues, “is to not close yourself off to the possibility. Life comes at you fast and everything can change in a heartbeat. And sometimes, you let your brain get in the way and make things more complicated than they have to be.”

I shrug. “And sometimes, my brain keeps me from getting hurt.”

Bri puts her coffee mug down and takes my hand, giving it a gentle squeeze. She gives me a soft, gentle smile.

“Getting hurt is just a part of life,” she says. “You’ll never experience the great and amazing things life has to offer if you play it safe all the time. You’ll miss out on so much if you spend more time trying to avoid getting hurt than you do letting yourself actually feel. And you’ll definitely cheat yourself out of experiencing what real love feels like if you guard your heart as closely as you tend to.”

I understand what she’s saying, but I’ve spent a good portion of my life learning to close myself off to people. Learning to guard and protect myself and my heart. In a way, I grew up learning some of the same lessons Duncan did – just for different reasons. And that’s not something I can unlearn after spending one evening with somebody. More than that, I don’t know that it’s something I should unlearn.

“I just want to see you happy,” Bri says. “I want to see you let yourself be cared for and loved.”

“I know, and I appreciate that. And, when the time is right, it’ll happen.”

“I hope so,” she says, squeezing my hand a little harder. “You deserve to be happy. You deserve to be loved and treated like a queen.”

I pull her to me and wrap my arms around her, giving Sabrina a tight hug. I know she wants the best for me, and I love her for that. Just as I want the best in life for her. Maybe one day, I’ll be able to get out of my own way long enough to find somebody special – somebody, who will treat me like the queen Bri thinks I deserve to be treated like. Until then, I’ll just keep doing what I’m doing.

And what I’m doing is trying to find a way to better my life. To better myself. Not for anybody else – I need to do this for me.





Seven





Duncan





The impact of the bomb, or missile, or whatever the hell they’re firing out there, cracks like thunder and shakes the very floor beneath my feet. The overhead light sways wildly from the force of the impact and the chatter of automatic gunfire echoes loudly.

“Sounds like the fighting’s getting closer,” Sandra – my assisting nurse – says, a nervous tremor in her voice.