Emerson
Who the hell is she?” the girl yells, looking right at me.
Jake’s arm falls from my waist. I glance between him—standing there ashen-faced, lips half-parted—and the girl. Who is she? She’s blond, pretty in a sorority way rather than a surfer chick kind of way, wearing spray-on jeans and a cashmere cardigan. Her hair is soft and silky and perfectly styled in a way mine will never be, and she’s wearing immaculately applied makeup.
“What are you doing here?” Jake asks the girl.
“Who are you?” the girl asks, turning to me. I feel her eyes scour me from head to foot.
“Who are you?” I fire back.
She puts her hands on her hips. She nods at Jake. “I’m his girlfriend.”
Jake glances at me—a desperate, apologetic glance. I can’t compute. He has a girlfriend? My blood pounds in my ears. I snatch my bag from out of Jake’s hand and in a blurry daze start walking fast toward my bike, past the girl, who refuses to move aside to let me pass, forcing me to walk around her.
“Em!” Jake shouts after me. He tries to follow, but the girl blocks his path. I hear him remonstrate with her, but an angry buzzing fills my ears and I can’t make out the words. I don’t want to make out the words. He lied to me. He has a girlfriend. I throw my bag on my back and climb onto my bike, blinking through a haze of tears I’m determined Jake won’t see.
“Em!” Jake yells as I start to pedal off, but I’m deaf to it.
* * *
“I’m such an idiot,” I tell Shay over the phone twenty minutes later.
“No, you’re not,” she argues.
But I am. How could he have lied to me like that? The way he looked at me, the things he said—all lies. And I fell for it. I’m never trusting anyone ever again. The thought of what we did together and the way Jake touched me makes me cringe. How could he? My body burns with shame.
He’s the first person and only person who I have ever been that open with, who I’ve ever fully dropped my defenses with. He’s the only guy I’ve ever even had an orgasm with, for God’s sake. Rob never gave a crap about anyone’s pleasure but his own. The first time he tried to touch me intimately, I froze—it threw up too many memories of what had happened. I wanted to make him stop, but then I forced myself to carry on, scared that if I stopped him he’d break up with me. I wanted to be normal, so I pretended for years that I was okay with sex, but I wasn’t. Every time we slept together, I switched off. I went through the motions but never engaged. And Rob never made an effort to even ask me if I enjoyed it. It was only ever about him.
Frankly, I think he felt relieved that he never had to make an effort—or maybe that’s being too kind. It probably never crossed his mind that he needed to.
Jake made me realize that it doesn’t have to be that way, that there are some guys who will put you first. For the first time ever when kissing someone, my brain wasn’t swamped by images of Coach Lee. I was fully there in the moment, with Jake, thinking only about him. He made me forget everything else. A surge of fury wells up. I hate him even more for that—for making me feel that way, for making me think it was something special.
Well, at least I didn’t sleep with him. I suppose there is that. It’s small consolation, however.
“What did she look like?” Shay asks, interrupting my thoughts.
“Pretty,” I admit. “Really pretty.”
Shay doesn’t say anything, and I picture her pushing her glasses up her nose and pursing her lips. “At least let him explain,” she says. “I mean, you guys didn’t talk for seven years—do you really want to go back to that? Maybe hear him out.”
I huff into the phone.
“You know I’m right,” she answers in a cajoling tone.
Shay is always right, though I don’t want to admit it. She was one of the smartest kids in school: has a full scholarship to NYU to study political theory and already has an internship lined up with a feminist think tank.
“Get all the facts before you make a decision,” she tells me.
“You would say that,” I mumble.
“I will see you tomorrow,” Shay says. “Until then, don’t do anything stupid.”
“Stupid like what?”
“Like get-back-together-with-Rob kind of stupid.”
“That’s never going to happen. I swear it.” Not after last night, I want to tell her. There is no way I’d ever go back to Rob now. It’s not even within the realm of conceivable.
I hang up and my phone beeps with a voice mail. I’m holding my breath, hoping that it’s Jake, but instead Rob’s grunting tones greet me. It’s an old message from two days ago, when we were on Vashon and had no phone signal.
“Emerson,” he says sullenly. “It’s me. Listen, you like left some stuff here. I don’t know . . . books . . . like a journal or something, and, yeah, some underwear. Let me know what you want to do with it all or I’ll just go ahead and toss it.”
Shit. I left one of my journals at his house. Oh my God. What if he’s read it? It’s not exactly a flattering read. I scrunch my eyes shut. No, I tell myself. What are the odds of Rob reading it? The only thing he ever reads is the sports section of the paper. I have to hold on to that hope . . . and get around there as soon as possible just in case he makes an exception to the rule. I’m already moving, pulling on my jeans, the phone still propped against my ear.
My voice mail beeps again. Another message from Rob. This time from this morning. “Okay, so I guess you’re giving me the silent treatment,” he grumbles. “Real grown-up, Emerson.” I shake my head in disbelief. I’m the immature one? “So I’m sitting here and I’ve got your journal in my hand . . .” My heart thumps loudly, and I freeze, one arm through my T-shirt, one out. Nausea boils in my stomach and starts to rise up my throat. “Kind of an interesting read, Emerson,” he says. And then he hangs up.
With my hair still wet, I fly down the stairs.
“Where are you going?” my mom calls after me as I rush out the door.
“To Rob’s,” I call. I catch her startled look, but I don’t have time to explain.
I screech to a halt outside Rob’s house ten minutes later, out of breath and in a blind panic. I throw my bike down on the lawn and race up to the front door.
Reid answers it.
“Is Rob in?” I ask.
His brow furrows. “What do you want with him? I thought you guys broke up.”
“I just need to speak to him is all.”
“How’s things?” Reid asks.
I glower at him. “Is Rob in?” I press.
Reid glowers back, but then he turns and stumps off, yelling for Rob, who appears after a good long minute. One look at his face as he stalks toward the door tells me everything I need to know. I take a step backward. My stomach curdles. He’s read it. The whole way around here, I was frantically wracking my brain to remember the details of what I’d written in that journal. I’m so stupid. Why on earth did I leave it here? I know that most of the entries are about Rob and me, about how unhappy I am—or was, about how angry I am about my dad’s illness and my financial worries about the business. It’s a journal. It’s where I vent and rant and empty out all the raging emotions inside me that I can’t ever vocalize, but I know Rob and I know that all he will have focused on are the bits about him.
“I’m shit in bed?” he hisses.
I cringe. Oh God. Why did I think committing to paper all the unsatisfying details of my sex life would ever be a good idea? “You read my journal?” I stammer in a whisper. But now that I’m facing him, anger starts to obliterate the embarrassment. “It was private. You shouldn’t have read it.”
“Well, if you hadn’t left it lying around . . . ,” he splutters, his face going red.
“No!” I shout back at him. “You still shouldn’t have read it, so don’t blame me if you read something you didn’t like.”
He snorts, his eyes narrowing to slits. “You know, Em, maybe if you weren’t so frigid . . .”
It’s my turn to snort. Lava-hot fury rushes through my veins. My hand curls into a fist. Normally at this stage in an argument I’d clam up tight—words would get twisted and tangled in my head—but not now. “Right!” I yell. “So it’s my fault that you’re a selfish lover who wouldn’t know what to do with a woman even if she came with an instruction manual?”
Rob frowns. I shake my head at him in disgust. Three days ago, maybe I would have fallen apart at hearing him call me that. I would probably have believed him—believed that it was my fault he couldn’t turn me on, that there was something wrong with me—but not now. I smile—I can’t help myself; I’m remembering my night with Jake. “Just give me my stuff back, Rob,” I say wearily.
“Can’t,” he answers, crossing his arms in defiance. “I threw it all away.” He jerks his head toward the trash cans beside the house. And he slams the door in my face.
Asshole. I walk over to the trash cans and lift the lid, but one eye-watering whiff makes me drop it. I’m not wading through bags of trash to recover a journal. That chapter of my life is now officially over. And best left in the trash.