CHAPTER FIVE

After breakfast, I say goodbye to Dad and he tells me he’ll be over tomorrow to check up on me. I give him a kiss on the cheek and squeeze him with a big hug. He’s a good Dad, the best.

When I was eighteen and Kanye was twenty-one, my father found out we were dating and tried to separate us. For a moment in time, I honestly thought I hated him. Now I realize he’s just a really good dad. He was wrong to try to keep us apart, but I understand so much more now. My dad hated Kanye’s parents and everything they stood for. They were drug dealers and drug addicts. Dad was always very protective of me, and when it came to Kanye’s parents, Dad always made sure Kanye’s friendship with Jake and I wasn’t leading us into his life.

But as much time as Kanye spent at our house growing up, my dad didn’t know him at all if he thought Kanye would ever lead me and Jake down a dangerous path. If Dad had looked hard enough, he would have seen a boy desperate for the approval of a man who wasn’t even his own father and a family he so desperately wished was his own.

That’s the only time my father and I have been at war, and it didn’t last long. Three months and he finally saw how much Kanye loved me. And I think he realized he had missed Kanye’s attempts at looking to him as a father figure. When he realized Kanye was looking to him for his approval in almost everything in life, he released his grip on me and we were all happier for it. I also think he started seeing me for the woman I had become and not as his princess anymore, not that he would have ever admitted it though.

I wish I could protect my father the way he protected me.

“Em, one more thing, do me a favor?” I narrow my eyes slightly, waiting for his next words. “Give some more thought about Kanye. He adores you more than the ground loves the rain and sunshine. It might be too early for you to decide on what you want, but don’t just throw away the relationship. Think about starting again as friends. I have no doubt your feelings will grow for Kanye again.”

I drop my eyes to the ground and say, “Okay, I’ll think about it.” Not wanting to look at my dad while I lie to him.

He will see in time. I’m doing what’s best for Kanye.

Dad gives my mom a quick peck while I climb into her car. Before I know it, she’s in the car and we are driving silently through the streets to my old house.

The driveway comes into view and my heart palpitates. I hold my breath as we turn into the driveway, and there it is. The two-story, light blue timber house with the same beautiful white porch.

My mom drives up the brown, stamped-concrete driveway. We pass the white fence that reaches all the way around the house and the many tall trees around the property. The grass is bright green and looks freshly cut.

Mom stops the car right in front of the house. There is no garage here. Kanye and I thought we could add it later on.

I stay seated in the car while Mom gets out and walks to the first potted plant and pulls the key out from its hiding place. I watch as she enters the house, but I still don’t move. I just stare at the house. It looks exactly the same, as if no rain or wind has touched it since I was last here.

I open the car door and slowly step out. My heart beats harder with each step I take up the stairs to the porch and then into the house. My house.

I look around and it’s exactly the same. Just as though five years haven’t passed. As if my dark memories are only nightmares I had the night before.

I’m in the entry hall. To my left is the living room, and in front of me are the white railed, wooden stairs to the second level. I look to my right and find the dining room, still with the same round wooden table with blue seat cushions. Kanye and I picked out that table together. He wanted black cushions I wanted blue.

“Black will go with the leather lounges, Emmy,” Kanye informs me.

“But black won’t go with the rug we are going to buy for the dining room floor. Plus the placemats and the tea towels, which will all be in blue as well,” I reply.

Kanye’s eyes widen.

I quickly explain my reasoning. “We need something other than black, big man. Blue will lighten the feel of the house. And it’s still a boy color and it’s my favorite color as well.” I hold Kanye’s eyes and lift my chin to show my determined face.

Kanye blows out a long breath. Then suddenly he grins at me, picks me up and a surprised squeal comes from my mouth.

“Well, if its your favorite color, we’ll paint the whole house blue.”

I look into his sparkling eyes and smile. This right here is heaven. In the arms of the man who would do anything for me. Even paint our house blue.

“Em.” My mom’s voice pulls me from my memories. I tear my eyes from the table to her. “You all right, honey.”

“Yeah, Mom, I’m okay,” I say softly with a nod.

I walk into the living room and glance over the wooden floor to the two black leather sofas and a wooden TV unit with the same TV and a wooden coffee table.

The framed photographs on the wall haven’t changed.

Kanye’s party when he finished his time in the Marines.

Kanye and I dressed for my prom.

Our first date. Kanye took me to the local golf course at night. He set up a picnic under a tree with fairy lights. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.

My high school graduation.

Me in a bikini. One of the many times we went with friends swimming in Valley Creek.

Kanye and I standing in front of this house on the day we signed the papers and bought our first home. The house we were going to bring our family up in.

A ringing sounds in my ears and I feel light headed. I’m going to fall apart. I grab on to the sofa to hold myself up.

I need to be alone.

I breathe deeply and pull myself somewhat together. Enough to be able to ask my mother to leave.

I turn to her and see she is watching me intently. “Thank you. I might have a nap. I’ll call you tonight, Mom, okay?”

I’m not sure what my mother sees, but she doesn’t argue about staying. Thank God.

“Okay, honey, I will leave you to settle in. Talk to you tonight.” She hugs me tightly, walks to the door, and closes it behind her.

I just stare at the door. It’s painted light blue with glass in the center of the top half. Thick glass is used so you can’t see in or out of it.

Suddenly, tasting salt on my lips, I’m brought out of my stare down with the door. I turn into the living room and examine every single photograph again. Why am I doing this to myself?

I slap my hand over my mouth to try and stop the onslaught of cries trying to escape through my mouth.

I head for the stairs. I want to break down. I need the shower. If I cry in the water, then they aren’t real tears. They will mix with the spray and then they won’t count.

I remember everything like it was yesterday. Up the stairs, turn right, pass the spare room with a double bed and white curtains. The toilet straight ahead at the end of the hall and the bathroom to the right. The next room on the left was mine and Kanye’s and it has an ensuite, I choose the ensuite, I want to close as many doors behind me to shield myself from the outside world.

I enter the room and close the door. My breathing accelerates as again I feel like I’ve gone back in time; it’s exactly the same.

White ceiling, pale blue walls, two small glass windows above the king-size bed. Two white bedside tables with a glass lamp on each side. A large bay window to the right of the bed with a window seat. The white lace curtains still pushed to the side. I search my mind for the last moment I had in this room to remember if they were open on that day. I can’t find the memory; there’re too many bad ones clouding the few precious memories I have left.

My eyes swing to the left and they catch on something on the bed. I inhale sharply. It’s my old Romeo and Juliet. I step toward the bed slowly and with shaking hands I pick up the play. Something falls out of it. Picking it up, I find a pressed rose, my pressed rose. My rose. Kanye gave me this rose at my prom. He placed it on my wrist and whispered, “I love you, Emmy. One day I’m going to put a ring on your finger instead of a rose on your wrist.”

I wore my rose all night. Through our slow dances and stolen kisses hiding from the teachers. I wore it when we made love for the first time, out under the stars alongside the Mississippi. I pressed the rose the very next day, knowing I wanted to keep it forever.

Ecstasy, that’s the only way I can explain it. Ecstasy travels through my body at a rapid speed. All my friends told me the first time would hurt, but I feel no pain. All I feel is alive. As if I’ve never lived a day in my life, until I felt this beautiful, rare, delicious feeling running through my body.

“You okay, beautiful?”

I open my eyes to find the love of my life starring down at me. Kanye. I give him a grin and he swoops down and attacks my lips. This type of kiss is one of my favorites. I love it when he kisses me as if I’m his reason for living.

He breaks our kiss and pulls out of me. We dress and he scoops me up into a bone-crunching hug. “I love you, Emmy. Only you. Forever.”

I sigh into his arms. He’s perfect.

“I love you, too, Kanye. Nothing will ever come between us. It’s you and me against the world. Forever.”

He holds me close and I stare at the rose on my wrist with my hand flat against his chest, thinking how lucky I am.

One lone tear falls and splashes on my rose.

Something is still wedged between the pages of my book. I flip through until it stops at what’s sitting within the pages of the greatest love story ever told. A necklace. It has a silver chain with a glass orb, filled with what looks like rose petals. My rose petals.

On the page, where the chain is nestled, these words are now highlighted.

“For never was a story of more woe than this of Juliet and her Romeo.”

I close the play and with one hand, I clutch the book and necklace to my chest. Lost and staring at my pressed rose, I slowly sink to the carpet as my legs can no longer hold me up.

Tears silently fall as I continue staring at a piece of history that held so many possibilities for me. A girl who had the world at her feet. This pressed rose represents who I was and a moment in time where I was perfect and untainted.

A life, a wonderful life which was ripped away from me. Taken by the devil, and in return, all he gave me was a broken mind and soul. Scars to bring back to my family and destroy them with.

I hate Marco. I hate Donovan. I hate them all! I hate this world and the me they created.

I lay my body on the floor, releasing uncontrollable sobs. They crawl from my shattered heart and out my mouth into the world around me. And the one thing that makes me cry the hardest is that there is nothing anyone can do to give me back my life.