“He’s the dumbest smart person I’ve ever met,” Josh said more than once. “He has perfect recall of everything we learned in med school, and he’ll never forget the dosage of some obscure pharmaceutical. But he has zero emotional intelligence and no tact. I feel sorry for the women he dates,” Josh had said, never imagining that I’d want to be one of them.
I could done the wise thing. The problem was that I had no idea what that was when it came to Maddox. He had a way of blurring my vision. He was so dazzling, so muscular, so hot, so irresistible when he smiled… he made me dumb by association.
I watched him seduce women, date them, and break up with them for reasons that always seemed a little spurious. For over a year, I’d had a long-distance boyfriend who prevented me from ever really thinking of Maddox as anything but an entertaining source of stories about what not to do in relationships. And Maddox treated me far better than the women he dated because we were good friends.
“If only you and I were single at the same time…” he’d say, again.
If only.
Eventually, my long-distance relationship fizzled like most long-distance relationships do. Especially during the grueling residency years. I still never really considered dating Maddox because I told myself that what we shared as friends was better than that. I was someone he respected. I was a confidante.
I was lying.
And worse, I’d deluded myself into thinking that if we ever did date, he’d treat me better than all the rest. Plus, he was so damned good-looking. I’d figured I could just stare at him all day and nothing else would matter.
So I got on the train.