"I don't know. I'll have to think about that." I sigh and run my hand through my short hair. They had to shave it to close the gash up on the back of my scalp and it's finally growing out.
"Jake," he says, and I raise my eyes to his face. The first day he came back to my room to talk, he had asked me what I preferred to be called. I had explained why I had started going by Jake and although I thought I might be ready to have someone call me Leo, I realized that I wasn’t. Yet. That two syllable word of identity conjures up an emotion that is a relief as much as it is painful. Hearing my real name, even in my own head, feels like coming home. But I don't know what I have to come home to. It's so damn confusing. I have so much to sort through. Maybe I'll clear my schedule so I can get to that. I'm hilarious, even in my own mind.
Doc continues. "What I'm worried about is that you're putting all your self-worth in one person's hands. Evie loved you. It doesn't sound like even you doubt that. Neither one of us can know what her life looks like now and whether or not she'll be willing to let you back in, in any capacity. But that can't be what defines you, son. That can't be what makes you value yourself. That has to be there with or without Evie. Because even if she is in a place to accept you back into her life, and even if she's willing to do that, you owe it to her to be a complete man when you ask her to make that leap. You owe that not only to her, but to yourself."
"This is a lot of touchy-feely shit, Doc. I thought I told you I wasn't on board for that." I'm only partially joking.
He laughs softly. "Alright, then let's get to the brutal honesty portion of our program. You need a shower, like, three weeks ago."
I laugh out loud. "Yeah, you try sitting on your ass in a hospital bed for three months. You might not smell as fresh as a daisy either."
He grins, the wrinkles by his eyes crinkling. "Don't they have pretty nurses to give sponge baths anymore?"
I laugh. But I don't tell him that in my mind, I'm on my way back to Evie. I can only pray that she'll let me back into her life. But regardless, letting other women touch me is something I did to numb my own pain. I don't want to be that man.
"So you got a hot date on Thursday or what?"
"No, actually I'm helping an old business associate with a project he's working on. You might be surprised to know that I used to work with computers when I was younger. Was good at it too. I still do it on a consulting basis here and there."
"That is surprising. How'd you go from computers to psychology?"
"I decided that computers are too predictable. I like people better. They keep you guessing." He winks.
I laugh. "Man, that makes one of us. That's exactly why I DON'T like people."
"Ah, no, son. The complexity of the human heart is something to be awed by. If people always acted in a predictable way, determined solely by a set of data, you and Evie would have been much different people. Respect the mystery."
"Hey Doc, has anyone ever mentioned that you have a tendency to sound like a fortune cookie?"
He laughs out loud and stands up to leave. "I'll see you next week, son."
"See ya, Confucius."
CHAPTER 5
I have to give myself props. I could be a damn good P.I. I’ve been following Evie for a week and a half now and she has no idea. I’ve even gotten pretty close a couple of times. Not close enough, but still pretty close.
Today, I’m following her as she’s walking home from the library where she's just spent an hour. So she's still a bookworm. I have to smile to myself. She always had her head buried in a novel when we were kids. She would practically skip to school on library day. She used to try to tell me about the stories she read and I could only laugh at her enthusiasm. She talked about the characters as if they were real people. Evie’s own stories were always my favorites though because each one of them was colored with love. And since they were unwritten and unrehearsed, made up on the spot, you could count on the fact that they told the truth about how she felt about you. And there was always beauty in the way Evie viewed our f**ked up little world. She made me believe, too. God, I miss that. It was… it was hope, that’s what it was.
I pretend to talk on my cell phone as I walk on the other side of the street, several feet behind her. I watch her as she speeds up and walks right past her apartment building. What the hell? She rounds the corner at the end of her block and I can’t see her any longer as her apartment building goes all the way to the corner and blocks the view of the street she’s turned on to.
I wait as a couple cars drive down the street and then cross behind them, picking up my pace slightly. I stop at the corner and look around the building. When I don’t see her, I turn the corner and walk halfway down the block. She’s completely disappeared. Where the he –
"It’s impolite to stalk strangers!"
I suck in a breath and whirl around at the female voice and there she is, Evie, standing right in front of me. "Jesus! You scared the shit out of me!" I breathe out. Holy f**king shit.
"I scared you?" she says, glaring at me. God, she’s insanely beautiful. I almost fall to my knees right in front of her. Get it together ass**le. She already thinks you’re some kind of demented stalker, which, come to think of it, you are. Shit.
"You're the one following me like a creeper," she says, cocking her head to the side. "By the way, pointer, if you're going to stalk someone, you should try to be a little less obvious about it. For instance," she sweeps her hand in my direction indicating all of me, "Standing in the street gawking at your victim tends to be a giveaway." She narrows her eyes.