HER ITALIAN BODYGUARD

5.DINNER WITH THE FOLKS

CHAPTER FIVE: DINNER WITH THE FOLKS

I’m staring at the out of the kitchen window, armed with a cup of milk coffee but barely aware of my surroundings. Its been almost two weeks since I moved to the guest bedroom for my own peace of mind as I tried to comprehend everything. It all still felt surreal. I haven’t talked to anyone and neither have I been able to go to work. In my state, I’m pretty fragile to be operating on patients. Thankfully, my boss is the understanding kind. Everyday, there is nothing I’ve always looked forward to than waking up in the morning and heading to work. Until now. It almost feels like all the life has been sucked out of my very soul.

“Hey,” Mark’s voice fills the kitchen. I feel the pain return. That intensified burning ache in my chest. The one I can’t shake off no matter how much I try. The kind of pain is too hard to even tell your best friend about. Mainly, because I’m still in denial. How can I accept that the man I’ve been in love with forever betrayed me in the worst way possible?

“We are still not talking, huh?” he sighs and I can’t tell if he feels guilty or pained by my silence.

“We have a dinner reservation with both of our parents tonight. Eight p.m sharp and don’t be late,” I say without taking my focus away from the window.

“Babe-”

“Is that what you called her too?” I didn’t mean to snap but I do.

“How many times can I apologize before you finally believe I really mean when I say I’m sorry?”

I put down the cup on the kitchen counter with a bit of a thud, closed my eyes just for second before opening them and this time I face him. For a brief moment, I search his face, trying to find the man that swore he’d never hurt me even at gun point but he is nowhere to be seen. Whatever ghost is staring back at me, is not related to the Mark I’ve known since childhood.

“You want me to forgive you?” I question.

“That’s all I want,” There is a pause, before he speaks in a whisper, “You have no idea how much I miss you. I miss us,”

“Then all you have to do is build a f*****g time travel device, take me back to the first day you met me and make sure your parents never moved into my hometown. If I never met you, then my heart can’t be this broken, right?”

“f**k! You know I can’t,” He runs a hand through the frilly mess of his morning bed hair, “How can you even wish you didn’t know me? You are everything to me and you know that. If I-’

“Then f**k you!” I flip him before I walked past him, going straight to my bedroom.

I need a distraction. A good one. Drinking is out of question. I haven’t touched a single alcoholic drink since I finished college. You don’t uphold a name like the Washington’s if you are seen in the clubs, hoping from one bar to another. My mother-in-laws precise words.

So I opted for the second one. Work. If I bury myself enough in it, then I can forget that shitbag and eventually get my life together enough to figure out my next course of action. With that thought in mind, I got ready and headed for work, blasting some of my favorite tracks in the car all the way. They do help in making me fake a little happiness.

“Someone is looking chipper,” My boss says as I slip into my work clothes. Irene is a stout, middle aged woman and one the youngest chief surgeons in the history of this hospital. She is a force to be reckoned with and someone I personally looked up to.

“Yeah, well, I’m better now,” I push my hands inside my scrubs, joining her as we walked down the surgery wing.

“I’m glad the flu is gone. Its good to have my best student around,” Okay, I may have lied about my reason for being off work for the past couple of days. Its not like she is entitled to know what is going on in my personal life.

“Me too. Any work for me today?’

“I have a patient with cerebral aneurysm ready for surgical clipping,” She says, flipping her notepad.

“Are we talking unruptured, ruptured or leaking?” I question, falling in step.

“Unruptured. Forty-three, female, saccular and well, she is a heavy smoker,” she shrugs, pushing the patient’s case file on my hands and my gaze glides over the written notes, “And I can bet she is using a bit of uppers too,”

“Well, she is a lucky one,” I comment, “It would have been a disaster if it had ruptured,”

“You think you are down for a surgical clipping?’ she questions.

“Of course,”

She smiles as we begin getting ready. Pushing Mark out of my brain, I focus on the task ahead. Five hours later, we step out of the theater, exhausted but for just a brief moment, I’d forgotten about the existence of that douchebag. Until, of course Mark sent a reminder text that we were leaving for dinner with the parents in an hour.