Emory
“That which does not kill us makes us stronger.”
―Friedrich Nietzsche
WE AGREE TO start online. This time at Knox’s apartment.
We’d been closer to his place than my house when we’d left the store after our talk with Jason. Knox had asked if I would mind if he changed clothes and said we could use his laptop.
And so I find myself standing in the center of his living room, trying not to listen to the sounds coming from his bedroom that indicate he might be in a state of undress.
I focus on my surroundings, noting the fact that the walls are bare, the furniture is minimal, and it really does look like the kind of place a person would do nothing more than eat, sleep, and shower in. A place where a person has not chosen to create a life but rather an existence.
I circle behind the sofa to the lone table backed up against it. A single photo sits in the center in a silver frame. I pick it up, recognize Knox—a younger, obviously happier Knox. He’s wearing a tuxedo, and the woman on his arm, a wedding dress.
They’re both smiling, looking into each other’s eyes. She’s utterly beautiful. She’s holding a bouquet of roses, and they look as if they can’t wait to start the life ahead of them.
And yet, there was no ring on Knox’s finger now. Yes, I’d noticed. No white telltale imprint to indicate he’d recently removed it to hide the fact that he was married. This definitely wasn’t an apartment made to look like a home by a loving wife.
The bedroom door opens. I attempt to place the frame back on the table, but set it down too quickly and it turns over, glass down.
I glance up to find Knox staring at me. “I’m so sorry,” I say. “I shouldn’t have—”
“It’s okay,” he says, walking over to right the frame.
The silence that follows is awkward, and yet I find myself saying, “She’s beautiful.”
“Yes,” he agrees. “She is.”
I want to ask, but I don’t. It’s none of my business, but I’m surprised when he says, “She deserved far better than what I ended up being able to give her.”
“You look so happy in the photo.”
“We were.”
“What happened?” The question is out before I realize I am asking it.
He runs a finger along the top of the frame, his voice regretful when he says, “I guess I wasn’t able to be two people. The man you see in this picture. And the one who came back from Afghanistan. That wasn’t the same man she married.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, and I really am. It seems so unfair that two people could begin a life together, certain of what they had, only to find it all torn apart by something as horrible as war.
“So am I. But she’s happy again. Remarried. And that’s good.”
“Do you mean that?” I ask, my psychiatrist’s curiosity surprised that he could want something for her that he clearly no longer had.
“I actually do. She never wanted me to be in the military. That was my dream. It blew up in my face and ended up damaging us both.”
There should be something for me to say. I’ve spent years of my life studying how to help people with trauma, people whose lives have been upended by things they never saw coming. And yet, I can find nothing that seems appropriate. Maybe it’s my own trauma, my own current inability to believe what has happened to Mia that has left me empty of anything resembling professional empathy.
Knox turns then, waves me toward the sofa and says, “Let me grab the laptop, and we’ll get started.”
I sit at one end while he disappears into the bedroom, returning a few moments later with a rather beaten-up computer. He sits down next to me, and I realize then we’ll have to sit close for me to be able to see. A table with chairs might have solved that, but there isn’t one, so I try not to think about the fact that our arms are touching. Is it my imagination that I can feel the heat of his body emanating like a force field colliding with my own?
“It looks bad,” he says, “but still works.” He opens the lid, waits for the screen to pop up, then moves the cursor to the top to engage the wireless network.
Once it has, he opens a new screen, cursors up to the search engine bar and types in hotel california.
I look over his shoulder at the first offering, a video for the song by the Eagles. Next, Wikipedia lists the song, declaring it the title track from the 1977 Eagles’ album.
The next listing is the Hotel California in Todos Santos, Mexico.
“Could that be it?” I ask, pointing at the listing.
“It could be, but why Mexico? Let’s see what else we can find.” He traces his finger down the screen, past more references to the Eagles’ song and then clicks over to the next page. It’s halfway down the second page that his finger stops on Hotel California, Loudoun County, Virginia.
He clicks. The webpage features a beautiful old brick mansion, southern in architecture with enormous white columns on the front. A small discreet sign at the entrance gate reads, Hotel California. The heading at the top of the page says: “Known as a getaway destination for senators and Washington, DC, influentials.”
“That’s a lot closer,” I say. “Maybe he had a rendezvous out there?”
Knox cocks his head, throws me a look. “Did you just say rendezvous?”
My face seeps crimson. “Hookup then. Is that modern enough?”
“I guess it’s all the same,” he says, trying not to smile. “Maybe someone out there would remember him. We’ll show his picture around, see if anyone recognizes him.”
We both read the description, noting the fact that it’s on the National Register of Historic Places.
“It’s about an hour away,” I say.
“Probably a goose chase,” he says, “but it’s worth a shot.”
“Agreed,” I say, wishing I felt more hopeful about it.
He closes the lid on the laptop, starts to get up from the sofa just as I do. Our legs bump, and it’s as if we’ve both been zapped with a jolt of stunning electricity. He looks at me. I look at him. And the air around us is charged with things I’ve never felt before. I want to touch him so bad that I actually can’t even think beyond that single thought. My hand moves of its own accord, as if it doesn’t need my permission to do what it wants. I touch his face, feel the stubble that is evidence of the shave he’d skipped this morning.
Again, feeling jolts through me, hot and searing.
“Emory,” he says on a low, husky note of sanity, the awareness there telling me he knows this is a path we shouldn’t take. And I know it too.
But still, my hand turns so that my knuckles smooth across his jawline. I hear his sharp intake of breath and know a wave of power I’ve never felt with anyone. When it comes to physical relationships, I am all but a novice. I’ve yet to have a single experience that convinced me the hype about sex was anywhere near accurate.
But here, in this moment, touching this man, I realize he’s the one who could show me why I’ve been wrong. What I’ve been missing out on.
“Why you?” I ask softly, as if he knows what I’ve been thinking.
Judging from the look in his eyes, I think he does. How, I don’t know. Maybe he feels it, but I can see that he wants me as much as I want him.
I lean in, so close that our lips are almost touching. We hang there between the urge to give in and the realization that it is a line that once crossed might permanently change our ability to go forward with the reason we are together in the first place.
Mia.
Her name flashes through my brain, and I sit back, suddenly ashamed of even this momentary lapse into my own needs.
“Mia,” I say out loud, my voice breaking across her name. “What kind of sister am I?”
This time, it is Knox who runs his hand across my hair, one finger tipping my chin up so that I have to look at him. “A human one,” he says quietly. “It’s normal to want comfort from someone who understands. There’s nothing wrong with that.”
My psychiatrist mind knows he is right. But there’s more that I want from him. That’s the part that makes me wonder how that could possibly be when the vast majority of me is in the worst kind of mourning for what has happened and the unbearable question of how it will end.
“Here’s something I know,” he says, no longer touching me, as if he doesn’t trust himself. “Human beings aren’t one dimensional. Life isn’t one dimensional. Even when we’re experiencing something we don’t even know how to process, we need to feel alive, be reminded all is not completely insane.”
“Was it like that for you in Afghanistan?”
“Yes. We somehow had to compartmentalize. Head out on a mission where we might end up losing civilians who weren’t supposed to be in the line of fire. And then play cards that night before bed and try not to be shocked by our own laughter. Life is never all good or all bad. On a daily basis, it’s a never-ending switching back and forth between the two. Somehow the blend is bearable most of the time.”
“But the two of us right now . . .”
He gives me a long, layering look. “You know what I really want to do right now?”
I hesitate, not sure I need to hear what he’s going to say. But I can’t help it. I want to hear it. “What?” I ask, the word barely audible.
“Pick you up. Carry you into my room and make you forget about everything going on in your life right now except the fact that I am inside you. Make you certain with every move of my body that I don’t want to be anywhere else.”
A sharp intake of breath tells us both I have just visualized him doing exactly that.
And then he says, “But I’m afraid that’s a recipe for regret on your part. And I’ve caused enough regret in my life.”
I get up from the sofa then, walk to the door on shaky legs, turn the knob. Without looking back at him, I say, “I’ll wait for you outside.”
It isn’t until I reach the Jeep that I allow myself a deep breath and the reluctant admission that I am in way over my head.