He fidgeted and sat taller. “You’re not ready to move in with me. I get it. We’ll slow down.”
She shook her head. “I don’t think slowing down is going to help. I’m… I’m not ready for commitment.”
He sat back and crossed his arms over his chest. The defensive move wasn’t lost on her. The smile on his lips fell. “What are you saying, Monica?”
She rubbed her hands on her cotton scrubs. “We’ve had a good time.”
His mouth opened, then closed. “A good time?” He rubbed his thumb against his forefinger. “I was a good time? I thought we were getting along.”
“We were. Are. This is hard, John. We work together. I don’t want to mess up my job… your job.”
“Then don’t.”
If only it were that easy. “I think you’re into us more than I am. I wish I felt more, but I don’t.”
He ran a hand through his hair. “You’re breaking up with me.”
Monica sat on her hands. “I’m sorry. I’m not ready for a committed relationship. I don’t even have a pet.”
“Is there someone else?”
“No. Of course not. I don’t want to lead you on. Make you think I want something deeper when I don’t.” He had to understand that… right?
“I really thought we had something special.” Through the veil of anger was a lining of hurt behind his eyes. For that she was very sorry.
“I’m sorry.” She couldn’t look at him.
“Commitment is part of growing up.”
Instead of saying anything, she skirted her gaze across the room.
“You have to grow up sometime.” His words were harsh. Considering the shitty day she had… very harsh. She was trying to spare his feelings. Trying to let him down easy.
The noise from the bar hushed and someone turned up the volume on the news.
“Don’t make this harder than it has to be, John. We were friends before. I’d like us to stay that way now.” She did. Though she wasn’t stupid enough to believe being only friends would work.
“That’s it? I don’t have a say?”
“You can say what you want. It isn’t going to change my feelings.” She met his eyes.
John stretched his neck and pushed away from the table. “Maybe in a few days I can say something nice. But right now I want a drink… alone.”
“I’m sorry,” she said to his back as he walked out the door.
That went well.
She pushed a long-suffering breath through her lips and pushed out of her chair. One dirty martini wouldn’t hurt.
Monica made her way to the bar and flagged down the bartender. She ordered her drink and looked over her shoulder.
John wasn’t coming back.
Monica pulled a ten dollar bill from her wallet and set it on the counter. When the bartender placed her drink in front of her he asked if she needed change.
“We’re good,” she told him as she lifted her drink.
“Can you believe this?” he said as he slid the ten in his palm and motioned toward the television.
“Believe what?”
“The earthquake in Jamaica.”
Breaking news had interrupted the local broadcast to show amateur footage of devastation.
Waves broke on the shore… only it wasn’t a shore. It was the inside of a small town. People were screaming, cars and entire houses were floating out to sea.
Monica’s insides chilled. She set her drink down before one sip.
“Can you turn that up?”
The bartender picked up a remote and upped the volume.
“… three hundred years past due, this earthquake has been predicted for decades. Preliminary reports placed the quake at 7.5 on the magnitude scale. Much larger than the 1692 quake that killed over five thousand people in Port Royal.”
Monica’s back teeth ground together. A man stood on a porch of what looked like a beach town boardwalk holding on to a child. He grasped onto a wooden beam as a wave of water retreated from the camera, taking everything with it.
“Oh, God.”
“Makes me damn happy I don’t live on the beach.”
Inside her purse, her cell phone buzzed.
She fished it out, staring at the broadcast.
“Yeah?” she asked without looking at the name on her phone.
“You watching the news?”
It was Walt.
“I am.”
“I put in a call to BD. You in?” BD stood for Borderless Doctors. Monica helped with Borderless Nurses. The relief organization put in time and skill from trained professionals to help with aid after nature shook, flooded, or blew up an area. With Borderless Nurses, she’d go straight into the devastation, live out of a backpack for a couple of weeks… help.
Getting away from John and the ER for a while wouldn’t suck, even though she knew she’d be walking into the soggy depths of hell.
“I’m in.”
Chapter Two
“You ready for this, Mo? I know you think you’re tough… but you lost it when you learned that Santa wasn’t real.” Jessie was talking to her on the cell phone before the team was about to pile into the second airplane of the day.
Monica laughed. “I survived. I’m ready. Besides… why did I become a nurse if not to help people?
“You can do that at home.”
“But these people really need me. If no one went where would they be?”