Page 88 of Reckless

Love isn’t enough. That old saying sure was true.

I pulled into the hospital parking lot and spotted Millie getting out of her car. Rolling down the window, I yelled, “Hey, Millie!” She gave me a wave. “Let me just park, and I’ll walk in with you.”

“You have a smile on your face,” she noted as I met her behind her car. “Anything good going on?”

I squinted in the sunshine and took in a deep breath of crisp fall air. “I just think it’s going to be a good day, that’s all.”

“Good as in we’ll be slow today, and no one will throw up on us, or good as in there will be no major divas come in?”

I looked heavenward. “If there were no divas, what would we gossip about?”

It wasn’t a slow day, and we didn’t avoid the divas.

Violet was back, and I’d been paged to her room for the fortieth time, as she said she kept mistaking the nurse call button for the remote. Flipping through the TV channels, she stopped at MTV.

“Oh, bollocks,” she cried. “That’s what those British people say.” She sat up straighter in bed and pointed at the TV.

Gage’s face filled the screen.

The newsman said, “Gage Strickland was paired with actress and famous social media star, Jazmin, at the Rock Music Awards.”

My heart plummeted to my clogs.

“This was bound to happen eventually,” Violet tsked. “A guy like Gage won’t stay single forever.”

I gulped down the painful ball of emotion in my throat. I’d lefthim. I chose to walk away, not him.

I picked up the remote to change the channel, but my fingers just tightened around it until my knuckles turned white. Jazmin was beautiful, unfairly so, with ashy blonde hair cropped around her shoulders, wide hazel eyes that gave her a Bambi-like look, curves to die for, and breasts that even I wanted to ogle.

She was so fucking perfect, I wanted to scream.

“Don’t they look perfect together?” the female announcer said, practically drooling on the news desk as the camera zoomed in on the two with their shoulders touching. She turned to her co-anchor. “Gage and Jazmin were seen leaving the Music Awards ceremony last night together.”

“Fuck,” I said, forgetting where I was.

“Fuck is right!” hollered Violet.

“Everyone is wondering if the new track on their album‘Baby, I Miss You When You’re Gone’ is about Jazmin…”

“Now, that’s one step too far!” Violet screeched. “Give me the phone! I’m going to call these cockamamies up. No way that song’s about anyone else but my Kelly.”

If this one wasn’t about someone else, there would come a time. Hewouldwrite songs for another woman, because one day he’d meet the one. Maybe it would be Jazmin, maybe it’d be someone else, but it would one-hundred-percent happen.

He would write songs for, get married to, have children with some other woman. Gage Strickland didn’t belong to me.

I switched the television off, trying to catch my breath. The screen faded to black, showing only my wide-eyed reflection staring back at me.

“Well, honey, you’re the one who let him go,” Violet reminded me in a tired voice, her previous energy gone. “You are the one who walked away.”

“How-how do you know that?”

She shrugged. “Tabloids.”

It didn’t matter. I wouldn’t let it matter. I’d gone on with my life, even though I’d been half sick since…

My stomach heaved, and I ran for the bathroom, dry heaving before I even made it to the commode.

Violet yelled from the bed, “Uh oh! I thought you looked like you were glowing. Glowing and upchucking at the same time spells one thing…better get a pregnancy test.”