Page 28 of Older Cowboy

“Are you up to driving home or do you need me to call you someone?” Rocky Ridge didn’t have public transportation.

“N-not necessary.” Retrieving the travel pack of tissues she kept in her glovebox, she started putting herself back together.

“You sure?”

“I’m sure.” Her voice came out at a rasp, but apparently, it was loud enough for him to hear her.

He handed her the ticket, and her midwestern manners had her thanking him for it, of all the silly responses. Still, she needed to get home. It was all she could focus on.

“Be careful,” he admonished her, and at last, drove off, leaving her there on the side of the residential lane.

Once the law enforcement officer motored out of sight, Erika kept her mind totally blank. Only after she’d hurried into her house did she throw herself on her bed and fall apart all over again. She proceeded to weep for most of the night, receiving exceptionally little sleep.

Sometime after dawn, she finally drifted off, too exhausted to do anything else. Then, she woke in the afternoon feeling numb. She stared out her window and into the blue sky, detecting shapes in the cotton-like clouds building along the horizon.

It’d been a long time since she had an emotional release like that, and at this point, she felt like a zombie. While on the cusp of so much professionally, she still had to make those last strides she’d been working so hard toward to complete her mission. It felt like too much to deal with at the moment, though.

Sunday came and went without any real improvement. She didn’t so much as pull up her nurse practitioner coursework on her laptop even though this was her sacred weekend time to do just that. But she couldn’t face it. Erika couldn’t seem to face much of anything. She even called into work on Monday, something she had never once done.

Personally, she felt as if she’d done nothing but spin her wheels. For the first time she had to admit that it was time for her to make some changes. Moving on felt so painful, though. Agonizing, even. She wasn’t sure if she could go through with it.

Especially since she suspected that if she did, it’d feel like Blake had died all over again.

CHAPTERTWELVE

When Erika returnedto work Tuesday, Callie eyed her all day. She had to hit the ground running due to an outbreak of head colds, so the office was too swamped for her friend to approach her with any sort of lengthy or in-depth conversations. Erika felt thankful for this. Staying busy kept her in active mode rather than fretting about where her life might be going.

Or not going.

She didn’t suspect that Callie would have something up her sleeve, but she probably should have. Still, when her friend made a point of telling Tim and Julie that she would close up shop, she wound up holding Erika back with her.

“All right, spill it. What’s going on? And don’t act like you don’t know what I mean.”

The jig was up. Erika might not have been sick for the past couple of days, but she felt as if she’d been wrung out from head to toe. Her body even ached as if she’d had some stubborn form of the flu. But then she knew from both her studies and her experience that emotional distress could wreak just as much havoc as physical distress.

“Bad weekend.”

“Go on,” Callie pressed, and Erika sighed.

She started to say that she’d missed Blake, because it was true. She did realize that she’d held on to his memory too tightly sometimes making it hard to get on with her life. She knew he’d never want that for her. For some reason, there were times she couldn’t let go. But right now, she was pretty sure that her problem was more multi-faceted than that. Trust her to turn a simple issue into a complicated one.

“Messing things up with Cody was a mistake,” she confessed. “And it made me reevaluate a lot of the choices I’ve been making.” She fell silent, and Callie waited, not pushing her, which Erika appreciated. “Did you know that I’ve been going over to the Cantrells—my in-laws—for dinner on Fridays?”

“Like last Friday?”

“Last Friday and each one before that.”

Callie blinked. “You have?”

“Always.” Erika nodded. “For sixteen years now.” Something she’d been doing these past few days had been to evaluate her decisions, and rather than resent other people’s perspectives on her situation, she’d started to realize how her life must look from the outside in. And maybe that look wasn’t the healthiest from a mental standpoint. “I needed stability at first. Then those Friday nights just never stopped.”

“Understandable.”

“But I recently discovered that… Well, I think I’ve been using them as a crutch. Maintaining that routine with them has been a method of holding on to Blake and…” She became misty-eyed, unable to go on.

Callie offered a supportive stroke up and down her back. “And what?” Her friend gently nudged her when she didn’t continue. “You can tell me anything, Erika. I’ll never judge you.”

Erika huffed out a watery laugh even though there was nothing humorous about this. “I pushed Cody away because I’m afraid of losing my memories of Blake. I know that sounds crazy.”

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