Page 11 of The Problem with Falling
I went quiet again because my anxiety from the whole situation grew. She asked more questions, but I ignored her. I didn’t want to talk to her, or any human, at almost three in the damn morning. I wanted to be on my boat fishing or reading in my bedroom. That was it; that was all.
Yet now, instead, I was stitching up a woman who howled at the moon.
“That’s fucking stupidanddangerous,” I growled. For some reason, her pixie personality pissed me off. She was acting as if she couldn’t have ended her life right there on the lake. “You could’ve died out there.”
She shrugged. “But I didn’t.”
“That’s because I found you,” I grumbled.
“Yes. You found me.” She said it so matter-of-factly as if there was no question that I would’ve found her.
“But if I hadn’t,” I urged.
“But you did,” she responded.
I rolled my eyes. “Let me guess. You’re one of those glass-half-full types of people.”
She wiggled her shoulders. “I’m an overflowing glass, Theodore.”
“Theo,” I corrected. “Just Theo.”
“Just Theo,” she echoed. “Are you a glass-half-empty kind of guy?”
“I believe all glassware is shit and shatters in the end.”
“Oh… I see. You’re a pessimist.”
“A realist.”
“Just because I’m not a Negative Nancy doesn’t mean I’m not a realist.”
“You’re right, but thinking it was a smart idea to dive off a cliff at two in the morning naked to howl at the moon says you’re not much of an intelligent person, either.”
She pulled back slightly. “Did you just call me dumb?”
“No. I just stated that you aren’t smart.”
“Ohh, I see,” she sang, clapping her hands together. “You have trauma.”
“Excuse me?”
“Whatever, or whoever, it was that made you like”—she waved her hands widely in my direction—“like thismust’ve traumatized you.”
“You don’t know shit about me.”
“Then why are you so grumpy?”
“Oh, I don’t know, maybe because a random nude woman almost died in front of me and is now trying to read me while I stitch up her forehead. For the love of God, stop moving,” I ordered, stilling her shoulders in place.
Willow grew quiet.
That didn’t last long, though. This woman didn’t know how to stop talking. “And to think, I thought we could’ve been friends.”
I narrowed my eyes and stared into hers. “Why the hell would I want to be friends with someone like you?”
Her eyes flashed with hurt, and a tug happened in my gut from seeing it. Shit. Maybe I took it too far. I grumbled to myself, knowing I should apologize, but shit…what could I say? I was traumatized.
I tightened the last stitch and cleared my throat. “All done.”
