Chapter Four Emily
Chapter Four
Emily
“Okay, where is she?” says Annie, practically shoving me out of the way as she barrels through my door to get in my house.
“You know, ever since I got this cat, you never come over just to see me anymore.”
“That’s the price you pay. Where is the little angel?” Annie, my youngest sister, is a tender soul. But right now, she looks like a gremlin while dropping to her hands and knees in her green overalls to search under the couch for the cat. Her head is whipping in all directions, pretty blue eyes bugging out of her head. I’ve never felt terrified of her before—but right now…
“She’s probably back on my bed. That’s where she likes to sleep.” I end the search just so I don’t have to witness her like this anymore.
Annie is little more than a puff of smoke as she races down the short hallway to my room, emerging a few seconds later with a squishy orange bundle of fur in her hands. She holds Ducky up so she can smoosh their noses together. “ I love you I love you I love you, ” she says in the babiest of baby voices.
Honestly, I don’t blame her. I love Ducky more than anyone should ever love a cat. I got her a few weeks ago, when I couldn’t take the complete isolation in my house anymore. I went down to the animal shelter and spent the afternoon there, sampling kittens like Ben and Jerry’s flavors. I played and snuggled with probably twenty different cats before finding Ducky. She was a little underweight after living on the street for too long, and I was told she would need a lot of love and attention. We were an immediate match made in heaven.
Once again, my front door swings open, and my sister-in-law, Amelia, rushes in. Her eyes zero in on Annie and Ducky and she shape-shifts into a missile about to launch. “Give me the child!” she says, racing to Annie’s side and snatching the kitten away to the sounds of Annie’s protests.
Amelia looks me in the eye and, with the most serious expression I’ve ever seen, says, “I’ll pay you a million dollars for her.” I think she might be serious. Her bank account would be good for it.
I smile at Amelia. “No deal. I love Ducky more than anything in this world.”
“I would say ouch,” says Annie, “but I completely get it. I’m contemplating moving back in just so I can be near her.”
I give her an incredulous look. “You’re going to leave your super sexy boyfriend’s house and move back in with your spinster sister?”
“It’s the only way to this cuteness,” she says primly, snatching Ducky back and snuggling her up in the crook of her neck. We all three look down at the kitten just simply breathing and gaining all of our admiration for it.
But then Annie and Amelia share a glance before their eyes slide to me. “Umm, but really, have you been okay here by yourself?” Annie asks. “I’ll move back if you need me to—cat or no cat.”
Suddenly, this impromptu visit is feeling like an intervention. I expect to look over my shoulder and find a banner that reads ADMIT YOU’RE LONELY, EMILY.
Never. Because I know if I was honest with her, she would leave her wonderful life with Will behind and hop right back into this house with me. It’s not her job to make me happy. She doesn’t need me anymore, and that’s my problem to come to terms with, not hers.
“Don’t you dare. I love having this place to myself. It finally stays clean just as I like it.” The coffeepot beeps in the kitchen, giving me something to do to avoid my sisters’ searching gazes. I pull down three mugs and fill them nearly to the top. Making a full pot of coffee each time is a habit I haven’t been able to break since Annie and Madison moved out.
“So…not that I don’t love having you two over, but what are you doing here in the middle of the day? Did Will propose again and you accepted this time?” That last question is aimed at Annie.
Annie and Will’s relationship has been the funniest, most unexpected thing in the world to watch. Will was Amelia’s bodyguard when he and Annie first met, and also a notorious playboy. We all thought Annie craved a sweet traditional life. Boy, were we wrong. Will was so gone for Annie almost immediately. She surprised us all when he proposed to her and she turned him down, saying she wanted to date for a while because she was getting to know herself all over again.
I respect the hell out of her.
Anyway, they moved in together and have been happily coupled for the last year. But Will has proposed to Annie no less than three times now (always lighthearted and never pushy; it’s actually become an inside joke between them at this point). The man gets rejected every time with a kiss and a Not yet but ask me again another time, please.
“No—no proposals this month. We’re both here for the hot goss.” She sets a squirming Ducky on the ground and then retrieves her coffee mug, grinning wildly at me over the top of it.
Amelia picks up where Annie left off. “Why didn’t you tell us that your work nemesis is back in town, no longer engaged, and apparently moving in next door?”
I’m actually surprised it took them this long to hear about it. Gossip must have been moving slowly through Rome this weekend, given I called Darrell the second I left the coffee shop on Saturday. Two whole days ago.
I shrug and sip my coffee. “I didn’t tell you because it’s not a big deal. There’s nothing to tell.”
Annie scoffs. “You’re getting a new neighbor who you’ve done nothing but fight with since freshman year of college, and there’s nothing to tell?”
I smile… deviously. “Nope. Because he’s not going to be my neighbor for long.” I set my coffee on the counter and walk around to the breakfast nook that overlooks my cute little living room. There’s a basket of clean clothes on the table that I’ve been working on folding this morning.
“Wait!” Annie says, following me and setting down her coffee so hard it sloshes over the edge a little. She’s fishing her phone from her back pocket. “Maddie will murder me in cold blood if I don’t have her on the screen for this.” Doubt it.
I fold a dishrag into a neat little square and relocate it to the appropriate pile. “On the phone for what? I’m telling you, there’s no story here.”
“You’re smirking like a devil,” says Amelia. “There’s absolutely a story here, and Maddie will be so sad if she misses out on it.” Yeah right. She probably won’t even answer. Lately it’s been increasingly hard to get Madison on the phone. We plan calls in advance and she texts me and cancels five minutes before, saying something came up. It kills me. We’ve always been close, but ever since she moved to New York, I feel her slipping away.
I give Annie a face that lets her see just exactly how thrilled I am about being the center of this sister chat, though.
I’m both a little shocked and relieved when a second later, my brown-haired, dark-eyed, spunky middle sister, Maddie, is on the screen. I think because we’re so close in age—thirteen months apart—we’ve always been best friends. We’ve fought the most. Grown together the most. And trusted each other the most. Just the sight of her is a balm, but I try not to let on just how much I miss her. Because even though I’m pissed at her for rarely calling or coming home, I also don’t want to guilt her into doing either of those things.
The ugly truth is, I wish I’d never supported her decision to go after her culinary degree. And deep down, I think I was really hoping she’d go out there, take a look around the city, hate it, and quickly come back. That is a horrible thing to wish, though, so I lock up that thought along with the rest in my Treasure Chest of Doom.
“Hello, ladies—let me see the cat,” she says in a whisper—the little nub of a bun on the top of her head bobbing as she tips closer to the screen.
“You too? I swear I could disappear completely and none of you would notice as long as Ducky is around.” I say it as a joke but then my heart constricts around the words.
Madison grins. “I’m not even sorry.”
“Of course you’re not.” Dammit. That came out sharper than I intended. Normally I wouldn’t feel bad at all about saying something like that to her. We’ve had little petty fights like all good sisters. But lately…I don’t know. Bickering with her doesn’t feel safe. I don’t want to do anything that will risk her not coming home. And also I know how hard it was for her to decide to go to New York in the first place. I’d pushed her into being a teacher like me. I’d basically kept her chained to Rome by insisting that we all needed to live close together. And she decided to break through all of that and go after her dreams. It killed me to realize I was truly the one holding her back from living her life. I refuse to do it a second time. I want her to come home when she wants to come home. To call when she wants to call.
I hurry to pick up Ducky and hold her squishy little face toward the camera to distract everyone from my comment. She yawns and it earns her extra oohs from the girls.
“Oh my god, my jaws are hurting from gritting my teeth so hard!” says Madison in a whine.
Amelia voices what’s been running through my head. “Come home for a visit so you can meet her! It’s been too long, Maddie.” Six months to be exact. She came back for Grandma’s funeral, but not since.
The whole gang, however, visited her in New York over Christmas when she couldn’t make it home. It was Annie’s idea that we surprise her, and though I was worried how she would react to finding us there, she did seem genuinely happy we came.
Her apartment was too small for everyone to fit, so the couples stayed in a hotel and I smooshed into Madison’s bed with her. Those moments were good. Maddie and I fell right back into the same close groove we had before she left Kentucky, and I was hopeful that whatever the weirdness was between us since she’d been gone was all just a result of the physical distance and maybe we’d stay in touch better moving forward. But in the end, we went right back to missed calls and strained text messages.
Madison smiles now and I find myself dissecting it—wondering if it’s real or not. “Well, now it seems I have to come home for two reasons. To meet my cat-niece and watch Emily slowly destroy her new neighbor, Jack Bennett !”
It’s going to be hard to keep the truth of just how bothered I am by Jackson moving in next door hidden from Madison because she’s the only one who has seen me interact with him the last few years. She knows firsthand how often we were at each other’s throats. But maybe this strangeness between us will come out in my favor for once and allow me to fly under the radar.
“First,” I say, dipping my head a little closer to the screen, “can we talk about why you’re sitting on the toilet in your bathroom? That’s where you are, right?”
“Yes,” she says casually. “But I’m not using it.”
Annie tilts her head. “And why are you whispering?”
The sly grin that covers Maddie’s mouth tells us the answer before the words are out. “There’s a guy in my bed. A cute chef from my program.” She shimmies her shoulders underneath her baggy T-shirt. Or I’m guessing, his baggy T-shirt.
“The same guy from a few nights ago?” Amelia asks.
“Nope.” Maddie has never looked more proud or mischievous.
An image of James Huxley, Noah’s best friend, staring longingly at Madison during Noah and Amelia’s wedding flashes in my mind. We were all raised together since our parents were best friends, and so in a way, James has always felt like my brother. I had never even considered that one of us could have felt differently toward him until I saw the way he looked at Madison.
It doesn’t seem like Madison has thought twice about James, though, since she left. Hasn’t thought twice about any of us.
“What’s this guy’s name?” I ask Maddie, trying to hold back from blurting Be careful! Always use protection!
Madison waves me off. “Doesn’t matter. He won’t be around for long.”
Maddie is definitely more sexually adventurous than the rest of us. I think my siblings assume I’m just like Maddie in how much I hook up, but they’d be wrong. It’s actually a rare occurrence—especially lately. And when I do sleep with anyone, I never linger after. And I never bring men back to my place unless we are exclusively dating. Which hasn’t happened since Liam—my high school sweetheart, otherwise known as the person who first proved to me that forever is just an empty word that means nothing to some people—so basically I didn’t even need to mention the last part.
I really think I can trace most of my trust issues back to him. We had been together since freshman year of high school all the way through senior year. We were the couple that everyone voted Most Likely to Get Married. We were homecoming king and queen. We had plans. We were going to move in together and attend our local college with an aim to get married within two or three years. We were in love—real, honest-to-goodness love—and I believed our happily-ever-after with all my heart.
That is, until May 23 of our senior year—the date is etched into my mind—when Liam came to my house with a letter in his hand. He had applied to a college out of state without telling me and he was accepted. Not only that, he was going. He had a plan B all along that didn’t include me and had kept it a secret, even knowing that I was planning for our future. Noah was there; he had been eavesdropping outside my bedroom door for the entire thing. I’m not sure I’ve ever told him how grateful I am that he never pushed me on it when I told the family that the breakup was mutual.
But I was destroyed. I locked myself in my room for one day and cried it out, and then I made myself pick up the pieces of my heart and move on. (Publicly, at least.) Privately, I ached for so long. Between my parents dying and Liam leaving, my heart couldn’t take any more pain, so I boarded it up.
Now, romance is just not something I’m built for. I’ve grown into the soul of a woman made for getting shit done—something men don’t typically enjoy about me. A few years ago, I really put my back into it and set out to date as much as I could as a last-ditch effort to see if maybe my forever partner was out there. Not some great love, just a companionable person to spend my time with. None of them lasted long.
Brian couldn’t take it that I liked to stick to my daily routine. At least ten times he told me, Just go with the flow, Emily. Jeremy hated that if my order came back wrong, I’d (kindly) ask for it to be corrected instead of just eating it. Zane was offended that after two breakfasts in a row where he cracked shells into our scrambled eggs, I insisted on cooking them from then on out, because who wants to feel like they’re eating Pop Rocks while biting into eggs? And Harrison, he hated that I wouldn’t snuggle after sex. He was the only one who outright in the breakup speech said, I’m sorry. You’re just too cold for me, Emily.
Each of those guys were looking for women like Annie and Madison. But me? I’m more akin to a Brillo pad you keep under your sink for when you need to scrub out those really tough grease stains.
“Back to Jackson Bennett,” Maddie says, putting her eyeball so comically close to the screen I can see the outline of her contacts. “He’s your neighbor and he didn’t get married! Are you furious? Annie, tell me if that vein on the right side of Emily’s head is popping out.”
I take a leisurely sip of my coffee and then smile. “All this gossip is pointless. Believe me, Jack is nothing to worry about.”
“Why? And where did you hide his body?” asks Madison.
“There are much more creative ways to get rid of Jack. And you can rest assured that they’re all being implemented as we speak.”
Annie looks at me with a hesitant smile. “Okay, but can I just say this one thing?” She pauses. “Would it really be such a bad thing for him to be your neighbor? I mean…maybe y’all could become friends. Maybe if you stop fighting for a minute you’ll find something you have in common.”
Maddie and I exchange a look that stands as evidence that we were once best friends, and then I turn to my tenderhearted sister. “Oh, Annie, I love you. But there’s no way in hell that Jack and I will ever be friends. Or neighbors.”
I can’t have him here. This is my town. My safe place. Too much in my life already feels like shifting sand—I can’t have him invading the last solid plot of my life as I know it.
“How are you getting rid of him, then?” asks Amelia, pulling out a chair and sitting at the table with her coffee.
“My business is my own.”
All three of them groan. I could swear even Ducky makes a sound.
“How is it fair that you can demand that our business be your business and your business is your own too?” Madison is outraged.
“Simple,” I say, shrugging a shoulder. “Is your name Emily?”
“That is not an answer.”
We’re suddenly interrupted by a knock on my front door. I smile to myself because everything is working out exactly as I calculated.
I hold Ducky so she doesn’t dart out under my feet and leave me forever the second I open the door. On my front porch, I find Mabel, the woman who is like a second grandma to us. She’s wearing her favorite yellow sundress that brings out the warm undertones of her dark skin. Matching yellow hoop earrings peek out from under her shortish, curly, silver-and-white hair. And her smile—oh, it’s downright mischievous.
She was my grandma’s best friend but pretty much her opposite in every way. Grandma was gentle like Annie and Madison, but Mabel…Mabel and I are cut from the same utility cloth. We have both been likened to hot sauce more than once in our lives. And she’s clutching a casserole dish so famous around this town we’ve named it the Information Dish.
This is how the best secrets of Rome, Kentucky, get extracted. Mabel tempts you with brown sugar, marshmallow, and sweet potato goodness, and then snatches it away until you give her the answers she’s looking for. It’s a good thing the military doesn’t know about her or this casserole.
“Morning, sugar,” she says in her scratchy southern drawl, laying it on thick today. “Just thought I’d drop by with a little casserole.” On the word casserole she waves the vintage Pyrex dish under my nose. It’s the same color as Jack’s mustard trousers.
Normally I wouldn’t cave so easily. But since I want this piece of gossip to hit the town like a wildfire, I take one whiff, look her straight in the eyes, and waste zero time. “Yes, Jackson Bennett is single now. And yes, he bought the house next to mine. But no, I don’t want him there, and as far as I’m concerned, he’s not welcome in our town. Now… gimme. ”
She smiles proudly and hands it over with a soft pat on the back of my forearm. Mmm, the dish is still warm. Betrayal has never tasted so sweet.
“Got it.” She winks. “And you’ll have our solidarity as always. See ya tomorrow, hon.”
I close the door and turn around with my spoils in hand. My sisters meet me with a pitiful look (Annie turned the phone so Madison could watch the whole situation unfold). Guilt hunches my shoulders—but I can’t give in to it. Where Jackson is concerned, I get a free pass.
“Emily, that’s going to be all over town by tomorrow, you know? Everyone is going to shun him.” Annie looks distraught. “Are you sure that’s what you want?”
“Absolutely.” I grab a fork and dive headfirst into this damn good casserole, imagining with every delicious bite the look on Jackson’s face when he realizes he’s been bested. Hopefully this was enough to keep him from invading my life any more than he already has.