Chapter 34
THIRTY-FOUR
Emmett
“You good, Hoss?”
Davis struts into the lounge, tossing a nearly-empty box of donuts from this morning onto the counter next to the coffee maker. The sound of the box slapping onto the marble pulls me away from the email on my phone and I click the screen off, quickly shoving the device back into my pocket.
“Yeah,” I tell him, throwing on a smile. “All good.”
“If you’re gonna watch porn at work, do it in your office,” he teases. “Unless it’s some good girl-on-girl and you wanna share.” He finishes by holding two fingers spread in front of his mouth and flicking his pierced tongue between them with a grin.
“Har har,” I snark, “you’re so funny.”
With a laugh and an elbow to my side, he reaches into the box and grabs a braided donut, stuffing the end of it into his mouth as he starts to leave the room.
“Hey,” I call out to him, lifting a hand for him to meet me in a high five. “Tell me bye, jackass.”
“Goin’ somewhere?” He asks as he connects with my hand up top, following through to meet my hand again lower.
“Heading home.”
“Alright then, we’ll see ya,” he nods with his mouth full of glazed dough, then he turns toward the door once again to leave.
I reach for the fast food bag on the table behind me and head out after him, making my way toward the exit. I pull in a breath and blow it out through my lips to quiet the ringing in my ears as I move through the hallways, my movement only stopping when my body slams into someone.
“Whoa,” Mariah laughs, grabbing onto my shoulder. “Careful, bulldozer, you’re gonna kill someone.”
“Sorry.” I wrap an arm around her, offering her a squeeze. Lifting up the bag in my hand, I tell her, “Blinded by hunger. I missed lunch.”
Her palm skims across my chest in a way that makes me feel like shit about my decision to hook up with her again this last time, with a smile playing at her lips as she looks up at me.
“You’re coming this weekend, right, hon?”
“Not this time,” I tell her, matching her smile. “I’ll try to make the next one.”
“Promise you’ll come.”
“Next time.”
I give her one more squeezing hug, this time wrapping both arms around her with a kiss to her head before pulling away to head down the hall.
She hangs behind, watching me until I round the corner and I finally feel her eyes leave the back of my head.
I pass Dad’s office on the way and consider stopping in, but when I peek past the open door and see how focused he is on something on his computer, I decide against it.
I need to just get out of here.
My decoy bag meets the nearest trash can as I make my way out of the office, pulling my suit jacket tighter around me to fight off the sudden cold of leaving the building.
A group of employees stand in the designated area just off the to side of the back exit, standing in a tight circle around a trash can topped with a built in ash tray, plumes of smoke rising from their cigarettes.
“Hey,” I say with a nod, “Can I bum one of those?”
Someone hands me a smoke and a lighter, and I hold the filtered end between my lips while I light the other.
Harsh, bitter smoke immediately fills my mouth and burns down my throat and lungs, making me cough as I blow it out.
I haven’t smoked a cigarette since I was sixteen, and now I remember why; they’re god awful.
In spite of how much I hate it, I stand around the trash can with the people whom I should probably know; we keep the office small, only a few thousand employees. I should recognize them, but I don’t.
I make small talk with them, trying to learn more about them until the tobacco is gone and the cigarette has burnt down to the filter. One of them has three kids, another has a pet bird. Two of them have associate’s degrees. I never do catch their names.
Checking the time on my watch, I tell them goodbye and head back in to grab my stuff. When I pass Dad’s office, he’s standing this time, digging through the drawers of his filing cabinet.
“Hey,” I greet him with a rap of my knuckles against the door frame.
“Hey, bud. Are you heading out?”
I nod with a smile. Closing the space between us, I wrap him in a crushing hug. I know that he can smell the smoke clung to me, but he doesn’t say anything. He’s probably just glad that it isn’t liquor or pot that he smells. “Give those girls a kiss for me.”
“Come to dinner tomorrow?” He asks me as I pull away from the hug with a clap to his back.
“I have some things I have to do this weekend, but I’ll see you Monday. I love you, Dad.”
“I love you too, bud,” he tells me as he ruffles his fingers through my hair.
Normally it would drive me nuts that he did that to me, especially in public, but this time I just let out a chuckle as I smooth the style back into place on my way out of the door.
I hesitate when I step out of my car and onto my driveway; holding my breath and waiting for a few beats before I pull my phone from my pocket and dial a number.
“You’ve reached Nash,” the voice on the other end recites. I let the message play through until I hear the beep that indicates that I can leave him a message.
“Hey,” I say shakily. “I hope you’re not watching this go to voicemail. I…just wanted to hear your voice, I guess. Fuck,” I sigh as I hang up the phone.
It was stupid to try. I don’t know why I even want to talk to him; I really do want to fucking hate him…but he’s also everything. He’s the answer to questions that I didn’t know I ever even had. I love him more than I knew I could love another person, and all that I am to him is a parasite.
He and my mom would get along great.
Clover bounds around my legs as I enter the house, greeting me with a wag of her tail and a high-pitched whine.
“Want a snack?” I head for the kitchen to fill one of her toys with peanut butter and a few pieces of her favorite duck jerky before leaving her to do her thing in the living room. “I’ll be out in a little bit. You stay out here and be good,” I tell her with a scratch to her head.
I close and lock the bathroom door behind me as I slip off my shoes and turn on the faucet.
Letting out a shaky breath, I perch on the edge of the bathtub with my head in my hands and I try to send away the pain in my chest. The peace that I’ve felt all week is gone, now replaced with a sudden onslaught of doubt that wraps itself around me like razor wire.
I blow out another breath as I step into the water and lower myself, running through the mental checklist of tasks that I’d made for myself last week and ticking off the boxes as I go. My house is cleaned. Money’s set aside for the girls. I got a haircut.
Like always, I pull in as much oxygen as I can hold before I sink beneath the water’s surface, but this time I keep my eyes open.
I don’t remember a time that I ever have; at least not on purpose.
Only when the fear took hold and startled me, then my eyes would pop open for just a moment before I made my way to the surface.
This time, I want to see it. I watch the way that the overhead light hits each small ripple above me, some of it catching like sunlight through a window on a clear summer day. Not a cloud in the sky, just the bright, shimmering sun lighting up the world.
For just a minute, I wonder what it might feel like to drown for real. I wonder if, after the fear, there’s a moment of peace. I wonder if it hurts. I wonder if it feels like floating.
I blow out all of my air as I begin my countdown, ticking down each slow second and every minute that I deprive my lungs of filling themselves. I make it to four minutes before I feel the claws of terror scratching at my brain, making my heart race and my chest ache.
You could just keep going, I tell myself. You don’t have to come back up.
Yes I do. I’m not finished yet.
As I argue with myself, the fear that I need grabs onto me with both hands, sinking itself deep into my chest, and I gasp as I push myself up and out of the water.
I hang over the edge of the tub, pulling in deep breaths until my pulse slows and my muscles relax.
I climb out all too casually as I head for my living room, settling onto the couch when I get there.
I don’t care that my clothes are soaked or that as a result, so are the cushions.
It’s late; I should probably go to bed. I should get some rest and give myself the chance to process and sort through all of this shit tomorrow…but I don’t.
Instead, I head for my closet and change into a heavy knit sweater and pair of jeans, sending Logan a quick text to meet me.
·
This bar still smells like piss.
I stagger toward the bar and settle onto a stool as the bar’s owner approaches to take my order.
It’s quiet in here; eleven o’clock on weeknights must not be their busy hours.
A few people hang around, some at the bar and others hovering over the pool table behind me, but other than that, it’s pretty much dead.
A half-empty bowl of peanuts sits next to me, surrounded by discarded shells of probably varying age, and I grab a handful of them.
I eat a couple of them, but I mostly just use them to fidget, peeling the shells away and tossing them back into the bowl.
Twenty minutes pass, along with a couple of Jack and cokes that I probably don’t need, before Logan finally drops onto the stool next to me. “I had to double check my GPS,” he tells me. “Why the hell are we in this place? It smells like—”
“Yeah.” I finish the rest of the drink in front of me and order two more; one for myself and one for Logan, giving him a few minutes to sip on his.
“You good, dude?” He asks me. “You seem a little…”