Page 47 of Just One Chance
“Oh my gosh.” Avery stood up. “You were on a date when you set all this up? What is wrong with you?” She was halfway to the theater exit when David called after her. “Avery, wait!”
She turned around. “No. I don’t want to talk to you anymore. You just humiliated me in front of a lobbyfullof people. You embarrassed me in front of my ex-boyfriend and his fiancée. You lied to me. You manipulated me into a situation that I never would have chosen for myself. And worst of all, you completely neglected another woman who came into this evening believing she would have your undivided attention in order to set it all up. You screwed up, David. Big time. From now on? Please, just . . .” Avery’s shoulders slumped and she shook her head, the fire in her finally ebbing. “Just leave me alone, all right?”
Back in her car, Avery gripped her steering wheel and took three slow, intentional breaths, feeling the need to calm down before trusting herself to drive. Fury over Tucker’s betrayal coursed through her, hot and thick. How had she let him back into her life? How had she forgotten all of the things that had led to their breakup in the first place? Then there was David. He had known that Tucker was engaged. Andthatbetrayal almost stung as much as Tucker’s.
David’s arrogance was maddening. She could almost see how a threat from Tucker regarding his career could coax him into silence, but there were so many other things he could have done to solve the problem. He could have just come home from the movie theater and said, “Hey, I saw Tucker at the movies and he was with someone. You might want to talk to him and see what’s going on.” He could have trusted Avery to be tactful, to not bring David into the conversation at all. Armed with the right knowledge, she could have just dumped Tucker, no explanation needed. Was David really so insecure and socially inept that he couldn’t finesse a way around Tucker’s flimsy threat? Was he really so clueless to think that Avery would be okay with a public humiliation if it meant learning the truth about Tucker?
Even worse, had he expected her to go running into his arms, grateful that he’d finally helped her see the error of her ways?
Avery shifted her car into drive and pulled out of the movie theater parking lot.
Maybe David could feel good that he’d bested Tucker without jeopardizing his career, though Avery was pretty sure Tucker’s words had been more hot air than actual threat. But she wondered if, in the end, he’d think losing Avery’s friendship had been worth it.
Because Avery?
She was done.
Chapter 16
DavidpulledintoHaley’sdriveway and cut the ignition. He should say something, anything to try and fix the horrible turn the night had taken, but whatcouldhe say, really?
“So, tonight was really horrible,” Haley said.
Well, then. That about covered it.
“I’m so sorry, Haley,” David managed. “I got distracted and then I . . . I don’t know what happened. I lost my head.”
“That’s actually what surprised me the most,” Haley said. “After watching you in the ER, I thought it was impossible for you to seem flustered. But, wow. Did you ever prove me wrong.”
David almost laughed. His social self couldn’t be any more different than his doctor self. “It’s different at work,” he said. “At work, I’m in control.”
“But you’re not, really,” Haley said, turning slightly in her seat. “You never know what’s going to come through the ER doors. It’s more like the opposite of being in control. It’s trusting your instincts and making split-second decisions without second guessing yourself.”
“But those split-second decisions are made based on the knowledge and experience that I’ve gained. It’s not as if I’m just guessing.”
“But sometimes you do have to guess.”
“But only if I’ve eliminated every possible solution otherwise. I’m not guessing blind, because before I guess, I’ve used deduction and reasoning to narrow my options down so significantly that the guess is less like a guess and more like a calculated risk.”
Haley raised an eyebrow. “You do all that deductive reasoning even if you only have five seconds to make a call?”
“My brain works very fast.”
Haley shook her head and laughed. “So smart, and yet you still screwed up tonight in such a big way.”
David nearly winced at her words. “Screwed things up withyou?”
“Me? No,” Haley said. “I’m a nonissue. You’re nice and all, but I more than recognize my cue to bow out gracefully. You’re clearly hung up on . . . Avery? Was that her name? I’m not stupid enough to hang on when you’re clearly into someone else. I mean, you must be in order to do what you did.”
“Then you understand what I was trying to do,” David said, suddenly hopeful that maybe he hadn’t just made the most colossal mistake of his life. “I was just trying to help. And since I couldn’t tell her, I just wanted her tosee.”
“Wait—I didn’t say I understood. I mean, I’m only piecing details together here, but from what I gathered, you knew the guy she was dating was cheating and rather than just tell her, you had her come to the movie theater so she could see for herself?”
“I couldn’t tell her,” David reiterated, though the more he said it out loud the less he actually believed it. He could have told her. Heshouldhave told her right from the start. “I only knew about the guy’s fiancée because I treated him at the hospital. And he . . . he threatened me.”
“Sounds stupider every time you say it out loud, huh?” Haley said, her tone flat.
David looked up, surprised by Haley’s candor. “Thanks for the pep talk, Haley. This has been really fun.”
