Page 5 of The Do-Over

That jerk was saying those things about me.

Brent continued. “I’ll die of boredom if I stay with her one more day. And it’s New Year’s. A good time for change.”

My heart threatened to burst through my chest, run across the room, snatch up the radio, and toss it out the window.

“Let’s get her on the phone right now.” There was a pause before the sound of a phone ringing. Under my thigh, my phone vibrated. Tears gathered in the corners of my eyes.

Dr. Kelly’s brow furrowed as she pulled her hands out of my mouth, carefully removed the mouth prop and sat back on her stool. “You doing okay?”

Now that I could talk, I didn’t want to. Why weren’t fillings done under general anesthesia, so I couldn’t talk or hear or feel anything?

The ringing again sounded through the radio and again my phone vibrated under my thigh.

“I hope she answers and tells him off,” Callie said.

Ring. Vibrate. For Pete’s sake, how many times before voicemail picked up?

A click sounded, and my voice blasted out like a trumpet announcing how pathetic I was. I was going to eat so much ice cream after this. Screw my plan to never get a cavity again. “You’ve reached Perci’s phone. Sorry I’m not in right now. Leave a message and I’ll get back to you.”

Cough, cough.

“Hi, it’s Brent. Look, you’re a nice girl and I’m sure you’ll make someone really happy one day, but I don’t think we should see each other anymore. If you have any questions, you know where to find me.”

Dr. Kelly snorted. “What a jackass. Poor girl.” She laid a hand on my shoulder and my breath seized, waiting for her to remember my name, to realize I was that poor girl. “You’re all done. I’ll see you in a few months for a cleaning.”

Callie moved the tray of instruments and raised the chair. I opened and closed my mouth, trying and failing to shake the numbness. Strangely, that feeling seemed to have moved from my mouth down my throat to my chest.

I shot out of the chair and snagged my purse, moving out of the small open exam room, phone clutched in my hand. My fight response might be underdeveloped, but my flight response was highly tuned. Right now, it urged me to get the hell out of the dentist’s office, the city of Houston, the state of Texas, and possibly the country.

Dr. Kelly stood and pulled off her gloves. “Tell your mom I said hi.”

I didn’t answer because that’s when my phone vibrated again—this time with a voicemail notification.

THREE

“One day, you’ll need to be the bigger person.

Eat all the cake you can now to prepare yourself.”

—MIMI

Ever since I’d graduated from college, I’d lived in a condo in the Brewer Street neighborhood, a corner of Houston undergoing a revitalization. The Lofts was an old, converted cookie factory which, I’m not going to lie, upped the awesome factor. Sometimes, I swore a whiff of long-ago baked snickerdoodles lingered in the hallways.

I grabbed my mail from my box in the lobby and stuffed it in my purse. Skipping the elevator, I trudged up the stairs to offload the things I’d bought at the grocery store on the way home in preparation for a long weekend of being sad and broken-hearted. The fat, sugar, and chocolate food groups were all represented nicely.

Oh, and lettuce and some baby carrots. Mostly because I wanted the cashier to know I was an adult.

The bags bit into my wrist as I juggled them along with my purse and keys. I paused at the landing to readjust them, leaning against the wall with a sigh as Brent’s voice from earlier replayed in my head. I can’t imagine spending the rest of my life with her.

Last week, he’d sent me beautiful pink roses with a note that read, Just because. Love, Brent. Sure, roses were my least favorite flower, but the note? Love, it said. Love. I’d obsessed over that word for days. He’d never said it to me. And I’d certainly never said it to him. It hadn’t been a case of love at first sight with us, which I wasn’t even sure was a thing. My relationship with Brent was built on convenience and prodding from my mother. And, I’d thought, mutual respect.

My phone rang from the depths of my purse. I didn’t need to check to know it must be my mother. The sound I made was somewhere between a laugh and a sob—there should be a word for that. My mother thought Brent had hung the sun and moon and made the earth rotate. I half expected her to keep him and disinherit me when she found out he’d dumped me.

“He’s the one,” she’d told me more than once. “I don’t think you can do better.”

Brent, with his carefully styled hair to hide his ever-widening bald spot. Brent, with that little cough he made before speaking like he wanted to announce his presence. Brent, with his terrible ties and strong dislike of chocolate. (In hindsight, that should have been a clue.)

But he could also be sweet, and I’d thought we were marching toward marriage sooner rather than later. What if my mom was right, and Brent had been my only real shot at marriage and a family of my own?