Page 28 of Fragments of You

“Now, why don’t you take me to the shower and scrub this trying day from my skin.”

His grip on me instantly tightens as he pushes to a stand, taking me with him as if I weigh nothing.

“You don’t have to tell me twice.” He graces me with a seductive smile, and just like that, all is forgotten.

At least for now...

I have a feeling Nash Ketter is not yet done dropping bombs on my life. I just need to make sure when the next one hits, I’m ready for it.

“SO...” I TURN TO FIND my coworker Ashley standing in the doorway of the post-op room where I’m currently administering medication to a chocolate lab named Zoe that just had surgery to remove a tooth abscess. “I hear a certain he who must not be named has returned.”

“You’ve heard.” I give the pup a little scratch behind her ears before standing and closing her holding crate.

“More like I saw. Though I’m not sure why you didn’t tell me.”

“I haven’t seen you.” I needlessly remind her that up until yesterday, she was away on vacation.

“Good point.” She smiles.

“So you saw him?” I try to act completely uninterested, but if Ashley knows me at all, she knows that’s a lie. No matter how regularly I tell myself that I don’t care, at the end of the day, I do.

“At the hardware store.” She confirms. “I didn’t think that man could get any better looking... No offense.” She’s quick to tack on.

“Nash has always been good-looking. Why would I be offended by that?” I deposit the medication vile into the trash.

“So how are you doing, you know, with him being back and all?”

Ashley and I went to high school together, and while we aren’t super close, I have confided in her quite a bit over the years. She obviously knows Nash and a condensed version of everything that happened, but I’ve never really given her any details. Mainly because I had none to give. Hell, until three days ago, I was just as clueless as to why he left as everywhere else.

“I’m good.”

“How are you really doing?” She gives me a pointed look, shoving her hands into the front pockets of her bright pink scrubs.

“I’m good,” I say again. Because, I mean, I am. I guess...

So yeah, things feel uncertain now that Nash is back. And yes, I find myself thinking of him nearly every moment when I’m not with Felix, who seems to be the only person who can distract me, but that’s normal, right?

“Have you spoken to him?” Her brown eyes follow me as I move to the computer to chart Zoe’s medication.

“A little.”

“Are you going to continue to give me two-word responses or are you going to tell me how you’re actually feeling? I mean, this is Nash we’re talking about. You can’t tell me that after four years, that man comes strolling back into town and you’re just completely unaffected by it.” She moves to stand next to me. “I know you don’t have anyone to talk to about this,” she reminds me, which is why she knows so much to begin with. “I’m here if you need to talk, you know that.”

After Felix and I started officially dating, it felt weird to discuss Nash and the things I was still struggling with. My parents are non-starters, mainly because my mom loves Nash and is biased, and my father is truthfully not an easy person to talk about this kind of stuff with. My sister is too self-absorbed to care what I’m feeling. And I lost touch with so many of my old friends in the first year after Nash left that it basically left me with no one else. So Ashley became that person.

But now that Nash is back, I don’t know, it feels different. Like talking about him feels almost like a betrayal to Felix.

“He was in rehab,” I finally admit after a long beat.

“Wait, what?”

“It’s a long story.”

“Well, lucky for you, I’ve got time.” She gives me a cheeky grin.

I know I shouldn’t, but the last few days have consumed me so much that if I don’t tell someone, I might honestly explode. So I spend the next ten minutes giving her a very condensed version of everything that’s transpired in the last few days. When I’m done, she looks at me for a good thirty seconds, not saying anything.

“What? Just say it,” I finally blurt.

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