Chapter 27

Emma

I hadn’t lived on my own in a long time. I had moved straight from my parent’s house to a little cube with a sink and a toilet in the Bronx almost right out of high school. It was a hellish little flat but it was better than being locked away behind layers of intolerance and religious greed with my parents in Illinois. Hell, a cardboard box would have been preferable to that.

Growing up, they had controlled every single thing I did. They picked out my subjects, which sports I played, and who my friends were. They didn’t allow me to date, nor did they allow me to do anything else they thought might be fun or dangerous in any way. Teachers loved them because they rarely saw parents so involved in their child’s education, but those teachers also never saw how mean my Mom and Dad could be behind closed doors.

I knew why they did it. Losing Teddy had been a major blow to them, a wound they held closed by sheer force of will. The best way to honor their dead son, it seemed, was to protect their living daughter. Too bad their protection went too far, often resulting in me being punished for something as innocent as going to the mall after school instead of coming straight home and studying.

It wasn’t all because of Teddy’s death, of course. I think they were always a little unhinged, but losing their firstborn was a blow from which they never fully recovered. Many parents end up splitting up after a tragedy like that, but not mine. They banded together and became stronger. They encouraged each other’s madness. They became a wall that I needed to scale if I was ever going to have a normal life.

I remembered the feeling of freedom I had experienced the first day I moved into my new apartment. At that point, my parents were still convinced I was going to fail and come crawling back—refusing to talk to me until I admitted they were right. That meant that my first week of living in New York, I didn’t talk to anybody other than the guy who delivered my pizza.

I had no friends, no family, and no clue. Coming of age movies had taught me that things would start to fall into place by themselves and, once they did, I’d be well on my way to happily ever after. Maybe that was why I threw myself so wholeheartedly into the first relationship that landed on my door step.

I met Lance when I was trying to navigate the subway. I couldn’t figure out which direction I was supposed to be going, and the loopy lines all over the map didn’t help. He stopped to assist me, and from that point on I was smitten. My first real boyfriend, first apartment, and first step on the long but exciting road of adulthood.

I was alone again in a new place. Still no parents, but I had friends and technically even a boyfriend. So why did this feel like starting over? Something had shifted in my life and I still wasn’t sure what. There was change on the horizon, and the only thing I knew was that it involved Max. I just didn’t know how.

Rather than sitting by myself and stewing for the whole evening, I opted to give Willow a call and suggest we go out for drinks. It was one of the few times my despondency didn’t push me toward Pinterest and pretzels. I’d been dying to try the pub down the street, and I hadn’t seen my best friend in almost a week. Granted, I’d been in the Dominican Republic for most of that time, but I still missed her like crazy.

We agreed to meet in half an hour, which felt like a long time now that I was painfully aware of how lonely I was living by myself. Maybe I was just one of those people who preferred not to be alone. It would make sense why I’d jumped on Lance’s offer to move in together without the hesitation such an offer deserved.

After waiting a bit so I didn’t arrive too early, I tied up my hair and headed down the street to the pub. It was a cute little basement pub called The Bandstand, and from the sound of it they’d already started their live music for the evening. I walked through the frosted glass panelled front door, inhaling the warm, aged smelling atmosphere.

The bar was split in half, with half of it devoted to a recessed eating and drinking space, and the other focused more on the live music. Right now, there was a bearded man with an acoustic guitar crooning into the microphone about lost love. I decided to sit on the other side of the bar.

Willow joined me soon after, pulling me up into a fierce hug before she sat down.

“I missed you,” she said.

“Missed you too.”

“So?” she asked. “Where’s my pukka?”

I laughed, remembering how I’d promised to get her a pukka shell necklace while I was away. I hadn’t realized at the time that I would end up leaving Punta Cana in a hurry like we did.

“Circumstances disallowed it,” I answered evasively. I wasn’t ready to talk about what happened with Max yet. I was still processing.

“Very mysterious indeed.” Willow flashed a grin. “Were these circumstances by chance you having too much sex to leave the room? If so, I wish I could be mad.”

I laughed. “If only.”

The server came around and took our drink orders, and once he was gone I made sure to change the topic as quickly and seamlessly as possible. We started talking about how things had been going at school for Willow.

After that she told me about her dad’s upcoming knee surgery, and how while I was away she had gone on a date with some weirdo who ate all his meals with chopsticks. It was nice to connect with my best friend again. It was nice to laugh. It was nice to not think about relationships or work, especially since those were one and the same where I was concerned.

Halfway through our second drink, however, Willow picked up the scent again and charged forward.

“Tell me about these circumstances in Punta Cana,” she said, giving me a steely stare that warned I wouldn’t be able to weasel my way out of this one.

I wanted to tell her anyway. She might not totally understand, being an outsider and all, but she was the only one who understood me.

I spilled the whole story, starting with Baldric’s lobby once-over, to my snappy conversation with Max on the way home. When I was finished, I chugged down half my beer, like telling the story had been akin to running a marathon.

“That’s insane!” she declared. “What has he said since you got home?”

I shrugged, “Nothing actually. I haven’t called him, he hasn’t called me.”

“That seems a bit strange. I mean, I completely believe you and all, but isn’t Max normally a little more...”

She trailed off, and I took the opportunity to fill in the blanks for her.

“Thoughtful? Kind? Pleasant?”

Willow laughed. “Yup. All of those things.”

“He is, usually,” I said with a sigh, slumping forward in my seat. The beer was doing its trick. My stomach felt bubbly and light, even if my heart still weighed heavily in my chest.

“I’m still trying to figure him out, to be honest,” I admitted. “I know how he likes his coffee, where he buys his pants, even which side of the bed he prefers to sleep on. I’ve met his mother, seen childhood photos of him, and now we’ve been on vacation together. Sometimes it seems like we’re close, like a couple should be.”

Willow’s blue eyes filled with worry. “But other times?”

I winced, as if the answer caused me physical pain. “Other times it’s like I’m just his personal assistant, who he also gets to bang. It feels one-sided, you know? I feel like I’m playing the part of girlfriend and assistant, which makes it confusing when I need to interpret his feedback as either boss or boyfriend.”

Willow nodded understandingly, reaching across to lay a hand over the top mine. “What do you want to do?”

“I don’t know,” I said, delicately extracting my hand from under hers. “Cause the thing is...”

Could I say it? Could I finally say it out loud and just be out with it?

“I’m... I’m in love with him, Willow.”

She didn’t look even mildly surprised. “Figured as much.”

“Can you at least pretend to think this is kind of a big deal?” I asked, bitterly.

Willow’s eyebrows shot up and she practically leapt over the table to console me, bracelets jangling. “No! No! That’s not what I mean. Of course, this is a big deal.”

I had to push her away, guiding her back to her side of the table.

“This is a huge deal,” she continued. “I genuinely empathize with you. It’s just that I’ve known about your feelings for Max for a while—since before you and Max were even a thing, and then as soon as you guys slept together it was like a light turned on behind your eyes. I’ve basically been waiting for you to realize it yourself for a long time.”

I sent her a wry smile. “Any insight on how he feels about me?”

Willow’s angelic face took on a somber expression, one that did little to inspire hope in me.

“I don’t know him like I know you,” she said. “Besides, I haven’t spent much time with him. Only he will be able to tell you that. Unless he talks to that dumbass Jeremy as much as you talk to me.”

I laughed, picturing Jeremy and Max having girl talk over espresso in Max’s office. In my mind, Jeremy was an expert listener, patiently nodding as Max spilled bucket loads of feelings onto him.

Not a chance.

“Jury’s out, I suppose,” I said. “But it seems a bit pointless. I obviously would love for him to love me, but we’re too different. There’s too much standing in the way. Max has got a very particular idea in his head of how his life is going to go, and a wife and kids isn’t part of it. He’ll break up with me eventually. I can feel it. So, what am I even doing with him?”

Willow leaned back and crossed her arms, clearly thinking. I took another sip of my beer while I waited, feeling ten times lighter. It wasn’t just the effects of the alcohol, either. I’d been holding this in for a long time. Max was the only person I saw regularly, and it wasn’t like I could talk this over with him.

Hey, babe, are you going to dump me in two years citing your inability to commit? Cheers.

No thank you.

Willow released a sigh, and took a drink of beer before fixing me with an apologetic smile. “I think you should make a clean break.”

“You do?”

She nodded. “You’ve got enough experience now that you could probably find another, similar job. Your feelings for him are wonderful, but like you said—even if he reciprocated to the fullest, you’re going different places in life. It might just be easier to end it now. That being said, this has got to be your decision.”

“I know,” I said, nodding. “I appreciate the input though. I’ve been going mad from the beginning with this set of anxieties. I feel like there’s an axe hanging over our heads.”

“Let’s not think about that anymore,” she suggested, raising her glass. “At least not for tonight. Tonight, we’ll have a couple more drinks, giggle like school girls, and do anything but think about being adults.”

I laughed. “Cheers to that.”

My one last, parting adult thought as we descended into a night of revelry, was this—leaving Max would be torture. No doubt about it. But wouldn’t it be worse in the long run if I stayed around trying to pull water from a stone?