Chapter Five
“You did what?” Audrey asked incredulously and much too loudly for Emily’s liking.
“Would you keep your voice down?” Emily asked looking around the coffee shop where she had asked her best friend to meet her that morning. Now, she realized that might have been a mistake. Audrey had a loud voice as it was. And, when she was upset or surprised, it expanded exponentially. Emily was not crazy about the whole town learning about her fling with a married professor.
“Sorry,” Audrey said lowering her voice just slightly. “I just…Emily…how…how could you do something like that?”
“Look, it’s not like I planned it or anything,” Emily admitted. “Neither of us did. It sort of just…happened.”
Audrey let out an incredulous snort as she picked up her coffee cup.
“Yeah,” she said. “I’m sure when he invited you up to his bedroom to look through his telescope, his intentions were completely pure.”
“You don’t know Kurt,” Emily said with an eye roll. “He gets excited about stuff he’s interested in and he wants to share them. He usually doesn’t think about how the stuff he does looks to outsiders or even affects other people.”
“Well, he certainly didn’t think about how this whole thing was going to affect you,” Audrey said. “Not to mention his wife.”
At the mention of Kurt’s wife, Emily couldn’t help but let out an indignant snort of her own.
“I don’t think his wives as invested in their relationship as you think she is,” Emily said. “She’s hardly ever at their house and when she is, Kurt says she usually sleeps in the guest bedroom.”
“Of course, he’d say that,” Audrey said with an eye roll. “If he’s been trying to get you to sleep with him, he’d want to make his wife sound like some heartless harpy. One of the oldest tricks in the book.”
“He’s not like that!” Emily insisted. “He didn’t tell me that stuff about his wife to try and get me to sleep with him. It’s just stuff I’ve picked up while we worked together.”
“So, he was subtle about it,” Audrey said with a shrug. “That doesn’t mean it wasn’t calculated.”
“Again, if you knew Kurt you’d know he’s just…he’s not a calculating type of person. At least not that way.”
Audrey lifted her hands in a gesture of surrender.
“Ok,” she said. “We’ll agree to disagree. Point is, it happened. So, what happens now?”
“I don’t know,” Emily said.
“You didn’t talk at all afterwards?”
“We were supposed to talk this morning,” She admitted. “But…something happened at the school and he got called away.”
“What could happen at the school on a Saturday morning?” Audrey asked. There was a note of disbelief mixed with righteous anger on Emily’s behalf mixed into Audrey’s voice. Emily couldn’t blame her for that.
Her lack of conversation with Kurt this morning, despite the promise he’d made last night, bothered her more than she was willing to admit.
“That’s why I wanted to talk to you,” Emily said. “I had to ask someone’s advice and since Kurt’s not available…”
“He should be,” Audrey said. “Just picking up and leaving after…you know…that’s a really jerky thing to do!”
“Audrey! Can you just stop bad mouthing him for two seconds? I just need some objective advice!”
Emily gave her friend an exasperated expression. Audrey rolled her eyes and once more, raised her hands in a gesture of surrender.
“Ok, ok. But, I’m warning you, it’s hard to be objective when it’s your best friend.”
“Well, then…pretend it isn’t me. Pretend I’m asking you about some friend of mine. What would you say to her?”
Audrey looked at Emily thoughtfully before picking up her latte and taking a long sip.
“So, your…friend…just slept with her married male friend and needs my advice?” Audrey said as though trying her best to distance herself from the situation.
“Yeah, pretty much.”
Audrey nodded and set down her cup.
“First thing I would tell her is that affairs with married men rarely end well,” Audrey said.
For the first time in their conversation, Emily gave her friend a cheeky smile.
“Do you have a lot of experience with that?”
Audrey slapped Emily’s arm playfully.
“You know I don’t,” she said with a chuckle in her voice. “But, I’ve seen it plenty of times. Friends of my mom, friends of friends, even my older sister once. The guys almost never leave their wives. And, even when they do, they rarely stay with the woman they left for.”
“But, what if-?”
Audrey held up a hand to stop her.
“I know your trying to convince yourself that you or…your friend…is the exception to that rule. But, trust me, you’re not. So, the best advice I can give to you or…your friend…is to go to this married guy and tell him that it was a one-time thing and it’s over now.”
Emily’s heart sank in her chest and she looked down at her coffee. Taking it in her hand, she took a long sip, hoping beyond hope that it would hide the tears that were forming in her eyes.
When she set the cup down, Audrey’s hand reached across the table and touched Emily’s. When Emily looked up, Audrey wore an understanding, sympathetic smile.
“I know it’s going to be tough,” Audrey said.
“Yeah,” Emily admitted with a mirthless chuckle. “Even harder when we’ve still got to work in the same tiny office.”
Audrey pulled her hand back and looked thoughtfully at her as though trying to imagine a work around to that problem.
“You’re still working on the book, right?” Audrey asked.
“Yeah,” Emily said. “We’ve finished the hardest section but, we’re still a ways from being done.”
“Well…do you have to be in the same room to write it? I mean, couldn’t you do it by email or something?”
Emily bit her lip and looked down at the long nails of her fingers tapping against the coffee cup in front of her. In theory, Audrey was right. She and Kurt could work on the book without seeing each other. There were a million ways to communicate now without coming face to face. Maybe all those different methods of communication were created specifically with this scenario in mind.
Logically, it made sense. But, when Emily thought about not seeing Kurt at all, her heart constricted in her chest and she found it difficult to breath let alone produce a coherent answer.
Sensing Emily’s reluctance, Audrey heaved a sigh.
“Look, Em,” she said. “I know it’s hard. I know how much you like this guy but…I just don’t want to see you get hurt. And, trust me, if you keep seeing him, you will. It’s best to cut it off now, before it gets worse.”
Emily bit down hard on her lip, lifting her eyes and looking up at her friend. The sad smile Audrey wore along with the sympathetic, wide eyed glance told Emily that her friend did, at least, have some inkling about how hard this would be.
Saying goodbye, finally and forever, to Kurt Schmidt was, Emily thought, probably the most difficult thing she would ever do in her life. Still, when she remembered how Kurt had run out on her that morning, when she remembered his reluctance to talk to her after the night they’d shared, when she thought about how much more it would hurt her to have to see him every single day knowing that, after their work, he would go home to his wife, she knew that it was also entirely necessary.
“I can’t do it by email or text,” Emily said.
Audrey rolled her eyes.
“Em! I’m telling you- “
“No, you don’t understand,” Emily said holding up a hand to stop her.
“I’m going to tell him I can’t see him anymore, but, I have to tell him in person.”