Page 33 of Prognosis Incompatible

She stared after him as he walked away, still chuckling.

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The next afternoon, Madeline was just finishing off some charts for the day and about to head home when there was a knock on her office door.

‘Come in,’ she said, not bothering to look up from her chart, figuring it would probably be Veronica with some lab results.

‘Hello, Madeline.’

Madeline almost drew a line down the page at the sound of Simon’s voice.

‘Simon,’ she said, pen poised in mid-air, not quite believing he was there.

He looked embarrassed, shuffling his feet nervously and Madeline waited for the joy to come. For the triumph. For the rush of love. Or at least a rush of lust. But it didn’t.

She didn’t feel anything.

‘Can we talk?’ he asked.

She nodded and indicated that he sit in the chair on the other side of the desk. She watched him as he positioned himself and fiddled with his tie. He cleared his throat and Madeline braced herself.

‘I made a mistake,’ he said. ‘I miss you, Madeline. I’d like to try again.’

A whoosh of air left her lungs. This was the moment. The one she’d been waiting for the last two months. Where he would go down on bended knee and ask her back.

The reason she still had her ring on.

Except, now that the moment had arrived, she knew with horrible certainty that going back to Simon was not an option.

Sitting here facing him, a mere metre away, she realised she didn’t feel anything for him anymore. Probably hadn’t really for years. He was a nice guy and she liked him, he was a good friend, but where was the zing? There was no leap of her pulse or a delicious squirming feeling down low.

She thought back to the massage Marcus had given her and felt like a thousand worms had been released inside her, a really inappropriate surge of heat in her belly. If Marcus had been sitting a metre from her, her system would be in a complete dither.

‘Why?’ she asked finally.

‘I was stupid. I think we’d been together so long that I needed a break to make me realise just what I had. I love you...we love each other.’

No. They didn’t. Just hearing the words come out of his mouth brought an immediate rejection to her lips.

God, why had it taken her so long to see?

‘No, Simon, we don’t,’ she said gently. ‘We’ve been together for ever. We like each other. We’re best friends. We’ve been through some tough times together. But we’re a habit. That’s not love. Not love as it should be when you’re thinking of entering into a marriage.’

‘And yet you’re still wearing your ring,’ he said, reaching across the desk, taking her hand and rubbing the diamond with his thumb.

‘That’s because until this moment I really believed we would reconcile. I’ve been counting on it since you called it off. Waiting for it. But now it’s here I realise that I don’t want it. You did us a favour, Simon. And I think you know that, too, deep down. I think you walked two months ago because we weren’t fulfilling you either.’

She watched him digest her statement. She couldn’t believe the words coming from her mouth or that saying them didn’t leave her devastated in the least. His dear face and his nice smile were so familiar to her and she’d never imagined it would end like this or that she would feel so disconnected from him. She’d just always assumed that they’d be together for ever.

He’s an idiot.

She remembered Marcus’s words and found herself yet again comparing the two men. Similar looks but complete opposites! Skater boy engendered none of the things that she so admired in her fiancé. Ex-fiancé. In fact, her feelings for Simon seemed bland when she compared them to the storm of emotions that Marcus evoked.

Simon stirred her loyalty, Marcus stirred her hormones.

Sure, it was purely physical — his smell and his blue eyes and his dimples and his laugh and the way his leg muscles bunched and relaxed as he walked and the fascinating strip of chest hair that disappeared behind his waistband. The way he never seemed dressed. They were fascinating but not a basis for a relationship.

Yet, they couldn’t be ignored, either.

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