That Thing Between Eli and Gwen (2 page)

She hung her head, dropping to her knees beside him.

“I understand that you hate—”

“You understand nothing.” I cut him off. I couldn’t even look at them anymore. I turned to leave but stopped, pulling out my phone to take a picture of his bloody face. It gave me no real satisfaction, but what the hell. Maybe that other woman would get some peace of mind out of seeing it.

All I could wonder as I drove was, how?
How could this happen?

Chapter Two

Dr. Asshole and the Con Artist

Guinevere

A month had passed since the worst day of my life, and since then I had been able to confirm a universal truth: music was God’s gift to the brokenhearted. The first week, I cried to Adele and Mariah Carey. The second week, I was on to Beyoncé and Pink. The third week, Eminem was speaking my language, and the fourth was dedicated to the ‘90s.

“Gwen? Hello? You still there?”

“Yeah, Dad, I’m here.” I adjusted the phone on my shoulder, packing my shoes into the box.

“Are you sure you don’t need me to come down there—”

“Daddy, I promise you I’m okay.” That was a lie. Yes, it had been a month and I still felt like shit, but I knew I would feel like that for a while.

“When things like this happen, you need family, Gwen. It’s the only way to get over this. Besides, New York has nothing on Cypress.”

Exhaling deeply, I grabbed another empty box as I headed into the bathroom. “How about I promise to come visit in a few weeks, okay? I still have a lot of work to do in the city. Plus, you know I can’t come back home now. People will be staring and judging…”

“Since when has my Gwen ever cared about what others thought of her?” He chuckled into the phone.

Since I was publicly humiliated.
“You're right. Screw them all, and tell Mom I want the biggest welcome home party in the state.”

“Thatta girl. Chin up.”

“Head high. Bye Daddy, love you.”

“Love you, too,” he replied, hanging up.

Sighing, I threw the box on the ground and Taigi, forgetting he wasn’t a puppy any more, tried to use it as a bed but broke through it. Dismayed, he walked away from it and curled up into a ball of white and black fur in the corner. I was about to curl up into a ball next to him when I heard the doorbell ring.

Taigi’s head shot up, but he stayed in his corner.

“Don’t get up, I'll get it,” I said to him when the bell rang again.

“Coming!” I groaned, moving through the maze I had created. I checked to see who it was before opening the door. “Logan?”

Logan Davenport, one of Bash’s closest friends, stood at the door with two cups of coffee on a tray in one hand and a bag of groceries in the other. Since the incident, he had taken it upon himself to check up on me every few days.

“You've gotten skinnier.” He frowned.

I looked down at my yoga pants and oversized shirt. “Yay?”

“Not yay,” he snapped, entering the apartment. “You need to eat, Gwen.”

“Logan, I told you, you don’t need to do all of this for me.” I followed him into the kitchen, where he unpacked some of my pots and pans. “Hey!”

“I’ll put them back when I'm done.” He flashed me a smile before looking for more utensils.

“Seriously, Logan—”

“Gwen, please let me do this,” he muttered over the stove. “You have no idea how guilty I feel. My best friend ran away with my brother’s girl while leaving his fiancée alone to pick up the pieces. I introduced them to each other, Gwen. I feel guilty toward you, too. So please, let me do this much… I know we aren’t that close, but still.”

I stared at him for a moment. It was true, I really didn’t know Logan. He and Bash were fraternity brothers. He came over for game nights and dinners we threw, but other than that, Logan and I had never been close. Logan had only just turned twenty-two, five years younger than Bash and two years younger than me; maybe that’s why I always saw him as Bash’s little brother…and in a way, my younger brother, as well. He and Bash even looked alike. They both had hazel eyes and brown hair, though Bash’s was sandier in color. Seeing Logan so serious now was odd.

“Can you even cook?” I grinned, looking through the bag he'd brought.

“Can I cook?” He mocked me as if he was horrified I'd asked the question. “I will have you know I make the best damn omelets in all of New York.”

“All of New York?” I crossed my arms.

“You heard me.” He winked. “Now, where is the rest of your stuff?”

“It’s in those boxes.” I pointed to the ones labeled 'KITCHEN' behind him. “Oh how is your music coming along? You’re pretty popular, right?”

“Define popular. Besides, I need to focus on school… Jeez, all of these are yours? Did Bash buy anything when you guys lived together?” he muttered, already opening the box. I was not blind to how he tried to change the subject, but I let it go.

“Not really. You know he basically lived at the office…or at least I thought he did. I’m not sure anymore what he did with his time…” My voice drifted off, causing him to pause and look at me. Raising my hands, I shook my head, as if that would stop him from pitying me. “How is your brother?” I tried to change the subject.

“Just like you.”

Subject change, failed.

He said nothing else, angrily digging through the box. “Urgh, God, I want to kill him!” he yelled suddenly, punching his hand into the box.

“Logan!” I screamed and Taigi barked, but it was too late. He'd punched right into where the knives were packed.

“Agh, shit!” he shouted, clenching his now-bleeding hand.

Grabbing his hand, I turned on the water and tried to clean it.

“Damn, it’s too deep. I’m going to need stitches.” He flinched as I grabbed a clean towel and quickly wrapped it around the wound.

“Where are your keys? We have to go the hospital.” I looked around the countertop.

“It’s okay, I have a med kit in my car. I’m a doctor—”

“Being in medical school does not make you a doctor, Logan…at least, not one good enough to stitch up your own hand in my kitchen.” I waited for him to hand me the keys.

Frowning, he grabbed them from his pocket with his good hand and passed them to me before holding his hurt hand, which started to bleed. It was pretty bad, already soaking through the towel.

“Gwen, you’re honestly making too much of this—”

“Yep, we're going,” I said, seeing the blood run down his arm. I pulled him out of the apartment.

Eli

I had just finished my rounds and was handing a chart to the on-call nurse when she stopped me.

“Dr. Davenport, your brother was just brought in the ER—”

I didn’t even let her finish before running down the hall.

“Is everything all right, Dr. Daven—”

I ignored them, following the blue line on the ground toward the double doors leading into the ER. Scanning the beds, I stopped when I saw his black All-Stars shoes.

He sat on the bed, laughing as one of my residents stitched up his right hand.

“What happened?” I asked, already in front of them.

“Eli. I thought you were off—”

“What happened to your hand?”

“He punched my knives.”

I turned toward the voice. It took a second to recognize her, and the moment I did, more memories flooded my mind than I could handle.

She stood in the corner, holding Logan’s jacket.

“He….punched. Your knives?” I turned to my younger brother.

“It’s a long story,” he muttered.

“Logan…”

“Honestly, it was an accident. I got him all hyped up, and—”

“Do you still need to be here?” I asked without looking at her.

“Eli.” Logan glared.

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see her stiffen.

“Sorry again, Logan. And thank you,” she said to him.

Logan grinned and nodded. “No, thank you. Please, use my car to go back home.”

“It’s fine, I'll call a taxi—”

“How else can I come back and make you my famous omelets?”

“Just work on getting better. See you around.” She gathered her things and left.

When she'd gone, he glared at me. “Did you really need to be such an ass?”

“Says the dummy who punched knives,” I said in return before following the girl out the front exit. I waited for her to finish giving her location to the taxi company and then stepped up in front of her. “Here.” I handed her a fifty. “Thank you for bringing him here.”

She looked at the money then back at me. “Do you often reward people with money for doing humane things?”

“Is fifty dollars really a reward?” I countered.

“You're a rich doctor. I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten my place.” She held out her hand and did a small curtsey. “Please, sir, may I have some?”

Biting the inside of my cheek, I gave her the money and turned to leave, but stopped when I noticed she took the bill, walked over to the donation box at the corner entrance of the hospital, and dropped it inside.

She moved back to her corner, looking out onto the street.

Sighing, I went back to her. “Look, I think we got off on the wrong foot.”

She scoffed.

“Anyway,” I went on. “Thank you for bringing him here, but in the future, if you could just ignore him, I think that would be best for everyone.”

“You want me to ignore your brother?” she said slowly.

“You and I both know he is doing this out of some twisted sense of guilt. I can’t cut him out of my life, but you being around only makes it twice as bad. I understand you might feel lonely, but please don't abuse my brother's kindness—”

“Excuse me!” She held up her hands to stop me.

“I’m just saying—”

“You're just saying, ‘Go away, you bring up painful memories I have yet to deal with, but instead of growing a pair of balls and handling them myself, I’ve chosen to ignore them altogether and push all of things reminding me I was dumped at my wedding to the corner.’”

“Excuse me!” She was out of her damn mind.

She crossed her arms. “What? Isn’t that what you’re saying? Your brother isn’t a little kid. If he feels guilty and wants to work it out his way, then it is his right to do so. Do you know how many crappy people we meet a day in this city? Of course you do, you are one of them. No way in hell am I ignoring a good person just so you can feel better.”

“You don’t even know him!”
What hell is this chick's problem?

“No, I don’t know you. There’s a difference,” she hollered, stepping away from me and toward her arriving cab. “Also, if I feel
lonely,
I wonder how in the hell you must feel, asshole.”

The door slammed, and I stared as she was driven away.

“So, you’ve met Guinevere.” Logan chuckled, coming up beside me with his newly bandaged hand.

“Guinevere? I thought her name was Gwen?” Or at least that was what he'd called her on that ugly day.

He nodded. “Her name is Guinevere Poe, she's a pretty famous artist here in the city. You know, that oil painting Mom just bought was done by her.”

“What? That thing cost almost two million dollars.”

“And you tried to give her a fifty for the cab.” He snickered.

Pausing, I looked at him. “You saw that?”

“The moment you followed her, I knew it wouldn’t be good.” He nodded and forced a smile I knew wasn’t sincere. “I know after Dad died you basically raised me alongside Mom, but you need to stop. I’m not a kid. Sometimes I feel like you focus on me just to ignore the shit going on in your own life. Maybe you had to do that before, but not now. You were the one this happened to, and yet here you are trying to look after me again. I’m fine. Honestly, I’m fine.”

He waved me off as he headed back toward where he was parked. I watched him go for a moment, realizing once again I was treating him like a child, before heading back into the hospital. I didn’t bother making eye contact or conversation. Instead, I headed to the on-call room and rested up on the top bunk of the bed.

Logan and I were nine years apart, making him only two when our father died of a heart attack. It was still ranked first on the list of the worst days of my life, my mother screaming for me to call the ambulance, Logan crying in the living room as the nanny frantically tried to help my mother.

“Urgh, I don’t want to think about this,” I muttered to myself, pulling out my phone. The screensaver was still of Hannah and me embracing. I’d tried to change it at least a hundred times in the last month, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it yet.

If I feel lonely, I wonder how in the hell you must feel, asshole.
Her voice replayed in my mind. Who the hell did she think she was? She didn’t know me; I was fine.

“What kind of name is Guinevere, anyway?” I whispered to myself.

“God, I’ve missed you,” an intern said as she kissed down a male nurse’s jaw.

He began to lift her scrubs.

I sat up. “Does this look like the set of Grey’s Anatomy to you?” I yelled.

They jumped and ran so quickly, I was sure one of them fell on their way out.

Picking up my phone, I went to settings, then screensaver, trying once again to change the damn photo, but once again I couldn’t do it.

Damn it!

Just then my phone rang. “Dr. Davenport speaking,” I answered.

“So, I figured out how you can make it up to Gwen for being an ass,” Logan said. “She’s moving into a new place. I was going to help, but—”

“Not interested. Goodbye.”

Why the hell did he have to help everyone, for fuck’s sake? I was worried that if Logan really did become a doctor, he would become way too attached to his patients.

Buzz.
My phone vibrated as he texted me.

Why, God? Why?

Guinevere

Sometimes I hate this damn city.
I looked up at the brick building that was to be my new home. A few million dollars for a decent-sized condo on the Upper East Side, and my realtor had even tried to make me raise my budget; it was freaking ridiculous.

“What do you think, Taigi?” I asked as I shifted the box in my hands.