Chapter Twenty-Three
Whitney wasn’t an easily intimidated woman.
She’d back herself in a game of pool against an entire motorcycle gang, look Natalie Horn in the eye and tell her exactly what she thought about her so-called morality, fight this town until it finally accepted her and her friends for what they had to offer.
Those things were easy. Second nature. The right of a woman who’d forged a path through this life with a scalpel and a kick-ass pair of boots.
But I don’t think I can do this. She’d met her match, and it existed in the shape of approximately two hundred small humans—all of them trying to touch her giant rubber glob of fat. Not today. Not when a scalpel and a kick-ass pair of boots wouldn’t get her Matt back.
She stood underneath a banner showcasing her face, the New Leaf logo and the name Dr. Vidra in bright white lettering. All across the gymnasium, other banners and businesses highlighted the various careers to be found throughout Pleasant Park. There was a nice old dentist to her right who had apparently been born in one of the historic homes on Main Street and was angling for free medical advice about a skin tag on his lower back. To her left, the baker who made the incredible orange dreamsicle cupcakes kept pushing the tray of samples closer to Whitney’s side.
They were nice people, friendly and seemingly happy to have her as part of their Career Day alumni. With the exception of Natalie Horn, who occasionally snuck by on silent ballet flats, there was no evidence that Whitney had been perilously near being branded with a giant red A on her chest.
She’d done it. She was in. Maybe it had taken a little more Jared Fine influence than she cared to admit, but the town had finally broken, had finally accepted her for who she was. All the pending approvals slipped through the red tape. All the petitions vanished overnight.
She should have been ecstatic.
She wasn’t.
What was the point in winning over an entire town when the one person who really mattered had seared her with a brand so much worse, so much more painful than a little red letter?
He’d gotten all the way to her heart. And it hurt.
“Is that real fat?” asked a dark-haired girl missing what looked to be about eight of her teeth. “Can I touch it?”
“I’m sorry. It’s not real. Fat is a lot more aqueous when we extract it.” Noting the girl’s puzzled look, she amended, “Globby and gushy.”
The girl poked the model, a twisted, yellow mass, and her eyes lit up. “How do you get it out? Do you cut it off? Like meat?”
Whitney swallowed the lump in her throat and knelt to the girl’s level. Maybe this wouldn’t be so hard, after all. This girl had a glint in her eye Whitney recognized. Blood lust. Curiosity. These were things she could work with. “That depends on where I’m taking it from. The fat in your bu...I mean, bottom?”
The girl nodded, clasping her hands together eagerly.
“Well, that’s called subcutaneous fat. That means it’s easier to cut out pieces kind of like meat, though we use sharper knives. But the fat in your tummy?”
The girl touched her stomach.
“It’s mostly visceral. That means we can slurp it out with a tiny vacuum.”
“That is so cool.”
It was cool. She straightened and prepared herself to handle the next wave of students heading her way. She’d thought that talking to people would be the real agony—the coming here, the standing in front of a crowd that despised her. But the kids were unconcerned about any of the local politics surrounding New Leaf. Maybe their parents accepted Whitney only because they had no other choice, but to these tiny creatures, she was an interesting lady doctor who cut off people’s moles.
She could be the interesting lady doctor, no problem. She could even be the least-liked member of the New Leaf professional team, which seemed likely for most of the foreseeable future.
What she couldn’t be was in the same room with Matt for another minute, unable to do anything while he demolished her with his eyes. It would be one thing if he simply ignored her, erected a stone wall around himself and pretended he didn’t care. That she could handle. Hell, she was the queen of handling that.
But every time she looked up, he was watching—not with joy, not with condemnation, not with anything other than a deep, intense longing. All that, all for her, and still it wasn’t enough to carry him across the floor. She was too late. As he’d promised the night they first made love, he’d given her his heart to keep safe. And she’d crushed it.
“Do we get a break soon?” she asked Valerie, the cupcake magician.
“They didn’t tell you?” Valerie laughed. She had a deep smoker’s voice and a sheet of steely gray hair that went to her waist. A tiny waist, which, given her profession, spoke volumes about the woman’s restraint. “This is just the first wave—and these are the fun ones. Wait until we get the fifth and sixth graders. The only thing they care about less than talking to adults about jobs is, well, nothing. We’re as low as it gets. I’m lucky—I can bribe them with sweets.”
Whitney laughed, but it felt brittle, forced. She thought she’d have a chance to at least talk to Matt today. Every day, every hour that passed with the huge gaping void between them made her feel exponentially sicker to her stomach.
It was a feeling she’d have to get used to. Even if it killed her, sealed her fate in a glass coffin, she had to stop him from moving back in with the woman who’d taken a metaphorical machete to their marriage vows. Let her give him that much. Let her try.
As she watched him move through the gym, herding his class in a jacket complete with elbow patches and a teddy bear sticker on the lapel, she realized just how much she missed him. And perhaps more important, she missed who she became when he was around—a stronger, happier, better version of herself.
All these years, all those men, and no one had ever told her love was that simple.
A group of the aforementioned sixth graders came barreling up, easily identifiable from both their comparative size and the way they sneered over her table of tools—all of them carefully selected to appeal to the younger crowd.
“What’s this?” one boy asked. Based on the polo player logo on his shirt and the trendy, sideswept hairstyle inexplicably favored by this age group, she’d have bet her share of the practice he was Natalie’s son. The epicanthic folds on his eyelids were also a dead giveaway. “It looks like a chisel from my grandpa’s shed. Gross. What else do you use? A rusty hacksaw?”
“You’re actually pretty close.” She held up the tool and handed it to him. Maybe today’s efforts wouldn’t get her any closer toward filling the gaping, painfully hopeful hole Matt left behind, but she’d be damned if she was going to let herself lose face in front of a bunch of twelve-year-olds. “It’s called an osteotome. When I do a rhinoplasty—that’s a nose job—I shove this up the patient’s nose and bang it with a rubber mallet. Thwack. The bone just chips away.”
“No way!” several of the kids cried at once. Even mini-Horn let out an approving noise.
“You think that’s cool?” Today, she would win over children. Tomorrow, she could tackle Matt. Maybe. If her heart held up. With a deep breath, she held up a small file-like tool and flashed it at them. “Then you should check out my rasp.”
* * *
Matt could hear the shouts of the sixth grade class over at Whitney’s table. His first instinct—one of alarm—demanded that he rush over there and extricate her from their cruel, preadolescent grasp.
Not my problem. Not my concern.
Whitney had more than proven that she could handle herself in this world. She wore a man down and took what she wanted. And then she moved on.
“Aren’t you dating that woman?” Michelle, the music teacher, sidled up and stared across the gym alongside him. Their target, the vibrant Dr. Vidra clad for once in a sensible white lab coat, held up something flashy and silver. “Would you look at that. The kids are just eating her up.”
“She’s good at telling people what they want to hear,” was all Matt would say.
It was too much to expect the day to continue on without running into her. He was partly responsible for her being here in the first place, having personally vouched for her with the school board a few weeks ago, even going so far as to ask Natalie to capitulate a little, if only as a favor to him.
Natalie hadn’t exactly been happy about it, but even she had to admit that New Leaf was growing on the community. Though resistant at first, the people of Pleasant Park liked the promise of new ideas, of new faces—and of new blood. If nothing else, they recognized the fountain of gossip gushing inside those four walls.
Even though Matt busied himself with his class and tried to keep them interested in the construction company owner and investment banker, he eventually found himself standing across her table.
Underneath the white lab coat, she wore a dark skirt and shiny turquoise blouse—professional clothes, albeit ones in the bright hues she favored. Her hair wound unbound and unruly down her back, huge loopy bracelets jangling on her arm. How a woman could look so coolly medical and mind-bendingly gorgeous at the same time was beyond him.
Also beyond him was what he planned to do about it. His body forgave, but his heart?
He wasn’t sure it still existed anymore.
“Hey.” She was the first to speak, the sole syllable breathy and warm.
He nodded once, unable to trust himself with the monumental task of speaking.
“How are you?”
Inanities—that was how she planned to do this. How wonderful it must be to call those up on a whim, to push feelings aside for the sake of polite conversation.
“I’m good, thanks.” He spoke through clenched teeth. “You?”
“Sad. Worried.” Whitney paused, weighing her next words carefully as she studied Matt’s angry gaze.
She was already playing with fire; there was no need to incite a blaze. Unfortunately, certain questions had to be asked if she intended to ever sleep at night again. Even if Matt never got past his hang-ups about Jared, she needed him to get past the ones with his ex-wife.
She swallowed a bitter laugh. Look at her—a rebound girl to the very end. She wouldn’t move on until she knew he was ready to face the world alone. With a deep breath, she asked the question burning on her lips. “How is Laura?”
“No.” Matt took a huge step backward, recoiling as if slapped. “I’m sorry. I thought I could come over here, have a conversation with you, clear the air. I was wrong. I cannot and will not talk to you about my ex-wife. Not now. Not ever. You lost that right.”
Something inside her snapped. She was guilty of many things and would go on to be guilty of a great many more, but this was one injustice from which she refused to back down.
“When has it ever been my right?” She was talking too loud, creating a scene, but she could no more stop herself from speaking than she could from trying to protect Matt. “Tell me that, please. As your fling, I wasn’t allowed to say anything because we were only temporary and you didn’t want me touching your life in any way that mattered. As your girlfriend, I had to be supportive and understanding or come across as a callous, unfeeling...you-know-what.” Too many tiny ears, too much adult interest. She lowered her voice. “I would think that now, as a woman who has to suffer all the resentment and blame you couldn’t be bothered to muster over your ex-wife, I’d finally get a say.”
Matt held up his hand.
With that one small motion, his entire classroom stilled and placed her tools back down on the table, and even made zipper motions across their mouths. Whitney fought the urge to do the same—his stern command was that strong.
“Come on, class. Career Day is over. Say thank you to Dr. Vidra for letting you touch her toys.”
Twenty-four small kids obeyed, their voices chiming a friendly thanks before they filed out of the gym. Whitney watched them go, hands on her hips, her foot tapping so furiously she probably wore a hole in the glossy plank boards.
Say what it did about her, but it felt good to have her anger back. Screw pain. Screw longing. Matt might not want to touch her toys anymore—and he might think Laura was none of her business—but this was not how their story was going to end. This was not where she gave up.
After all, she’d made the town of Pleasant Park accept her for who she was. Surely she could do the same for one stubborn, saintly man.