"Thank you so much, Harlow," Mrs. Marcus says as she grabs her cat and places it in the carrier. The cat had gotten out of her house and had a one-on-one with a raccoon. He came in and looked like the racoon got the best of him. But in the end, after three hours of surgery and two days of recovering with us, he’s finally going home. "I don’t know what I would have done without him."
"It was my pleasure." I smile at her and look into the carrier. "If there are any questions you have, you have my cell phone." She nods at me, opens the door to the examining room, and heads out. I walk over to the silver examining table and spray it down before I disinfect it. Usually, Donna comes in after, but I know that she was the last appointment of the day, so I don’t have to rush to the other room. Putting away the bottle under the sink in the corner, I open the water to wash my hands.
"Hey," Donna says from behind me, and I look over my shoulder as she comes into the room.
"If you tell me that someone else called." I glare at her and she just laughs.
"I was coming to say.” She drags out what she is going to say, and I have this dread run through me thinking that it’s going to be another long night. "That I’m leaving for the day and no one else has called." Donna smiles at me. "I’ve forwarded all the calls to Tyler for the weekend."
"Thank you." I turn the water off and grab a paper towel to dry my hands.
"I left the files on your desk." She mentions all the cases I did today. I always chart in writing, and she puts it in the computer. "You can take them home."
I shake my head. "I’m going to finish them here and sleep for the next two days."
"Well, I was going to say you look exhausted." She tilts her head to the side. "But you’ve been a cranky little bee this week, so I decided against it."
I chuckle. "And I’m not cranky."
"Oh, you're still cranky, but I don’t have to see you for the next two days, so you’ll forget all about it." She turns to walk out of the room. "See you Monday." She holds her hand up over her head.
Walking out of my examining room, I head straight to my office. The light for the two windows in the corner makes the room just a touch brighter. The big wooden desk sits in the middle with two chairs in front of it and a love seat in the corner. Which had to be comfortable since sometimes I would finish surgery and just crash on the couch for a couple of hours.
I walk around my desk and see the manila folders stacked in the middle as I sit in the big brown leather chair and lean back, my eyes closing for just a second.
This week has been brutal in so many ways. Work has been nonstop, and I’ve even been called in the middle of the night to help with a couple of horses birthing their foals. Then called back when the placenta didn’t come out, my days were going on twenty hours a day for the last three days.
To top all of that off, I was barely sleeping because every single time I closed my eyes, all I saw was Travis. He was smiling at me, he was smirking at me, he was on top of me, thrusting into me. He would shout my name and my eyes would always flutter open when I would get close enough to him. It was pure fucking torture, and I was over it.
My goal is to literally sleep all weekend long, right after I get my work done. I open the first chart and read the little notes that I scribbled down between patients and eating. It takes me about an hour to get through all of it. My mind is on autopilot when I hear the bell ring over the door. I look up from my desk, hoping and freaking praying that it’s one of my family members and not someone who needs me.
I have to laugh at myself as I sit at my desk, not moving, and after a couple of seconds, I get up. If it was any of my family members, they would have yelled my name by now. I walk out of the office and down the hallway toward the reception area, and I stop midstep. It can’t be, is the only thing I can think of. As my heart pounds in my chest, I feel the nerves fill my body as the heat rises up my neck. My hands shake just a touch. "Travis." I say his name, and I have to wonder if I’m dreaming. Is this a dream?
He turns around to look at me and I take him in. He’s wearing khaki pants and a button-down blue shirt tucked in with white sneakers. The sleeves of his shirt are rolled up to his elbows and the two top buttons are open around his neck, showing you the smooth skin under it. Skin that I spent a good part of last Saturday licking. His green eyes light up when he sees me, his five o’clock shadow thicker than I remember. "Hey," he says as if him being here is a normal occurrence
"What are you doing here?" is the only thing that comes to my mind.
"I was in the neighborhood." He smirks at me, and I can’t help but laugh.
"You took a plane?" I ask him, my head spinning around and around while my head is reminding me of the way he kissed me.
"No, I drove." He stares at me, and my stomach fills with knots.
"You drove six hours to be in the neighborhood?" I fold my arms over my chest before I do something stupid like grab him by the shirt and pull his lips down to kiss me.
"Actually, it was eight hours with traffic." He chuckles, and my whole body feels like it’s been zapped with an electric shock. "Besides, how else would I be able to ask you to dinner?"
My mouth opens. "You drove all this way to ask me to dinner?"
"Well, I tried calling but you must have changed your number," he says, looking around. "And calling your office"—he shrugs—"seemed so impersonal." His eyes stare right at me. "And let’s be honest, you would just avoid me."
"Okay, one.” I hold up my finger, angry that he knows me as well as he does. "I didn’t change my number." I take the phone out of my pocket, showing him the phone.
"I called you," he starts to say, and I hold up my hand.
"No, you didn’t." I shake my head, walking over to Donna’s desk and picking up the phone to dial my number. The phone rings in my hand. "See, working phone."
He grabs his phone from his back pocket and looks down at it. Putting the phone on speaker, it doesn’t even ring and goes straight to my voice mail. "That’s all I got. I called over a hundred times on Sunday. I texted you also."
"Well, there you are, lying because I don’t have anything." I look down at my phone.
"Let me try," he says, typing out something on his phone and pressing send. I look down at my phone waiting, and nothing comes through. "See," he says, turning his phone, and I see that all the messages on his screen are green.
I put my hand in front of my mouth. "I think I blocked you."
"You don’t say," he says, not the least bit shocked. I look down at my phone and dial his number, and his phone rings in his hand. "Oh, look, it’s Harlow calling," he jokes and puts the phone to his ear and I hear it echo. "Harlow," he says as if he isn’t standing in front of me. "How nice of you to call."
"Very funny," I say, hanging up the phone. "Okay, so maybe you are blocked."
"Well, unblock me," he tells me.
"I don’t know how since you aren’t a contact in my phone," I say, looking down at my phone, and he gasps.
"You deleted me as a contact?" he asks, shocked.
"No.” I shake my head. "It’s just I lost my phone, and well, I didn’t have it saved to the cloud, so I lost all my contacts."
"Oh, wow." He folds his arms over his chest. "Blaming it on the cloud."
"I’m not blaming it on the cloud," I defend.
"Good, because no one really knows what the cloud really is," he points out and he isn’t wrong. When the guy at the store explained it to me, I thought he had two heads.
"Anyway, we are going off topic here," I say, getting flustered.
"Yes, we are." He nods.
"Also…" I point at him. "I would never avoid you,” I lie through my teeth. Even he knows I’m lying.
"So, if I had left a message, you would have called me back?" He stares right into my eyes.
"Yes," I say, hoping he changes the subject.
"You would have called me back right away?" Fuck, is the only thing I can think of when he asks that question.
"I’ve been busy." I throw up my hands in my defense.
"Exactly," he says. "So you would have avoided me, and then what?"
"And then you would take the hint and not call me back," I say, and I can see the hurt flicker over his eyes, and then he quickly recovers.