10. Emily
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Emily
“Nothing,” I say, which is a lie, and Tara knows it’s a lie, because she’s known me since we were fourteen and I have never once been able to lie to her face.
I drop onto my bunk and start unlacing my shoes so I don’t have to look at her. She just waits. She’s good at waiting. It’s the same thing she did on the phone every time I called her these last two years pretending everything was fine, that patient silence she lets sit there until I crack.
“Richard offered me a job,” I finally say. “A real one. Personal assistant at his company.”
Tara sets her book down, slow, eyes narrowing. “Okay, back up. He offered you a job?”
“A good one, apparently. Pays well, benefits, the whole thing. Says I’d be good at it because of the student council stuff.
” I yank a lace loose. “And before you start, no, I still don’t know what the company even does, he’s being weird and cagey about it.
But it’s solid. It’s a paycheck and a reference and a way to stop crashing on your couch before you start charging me rent. ”
“You’re always welcome on my couch,” she says. “But yeah, a real job beats my couch. No offense to the couch.”
“None taken on behalf of the couch.” I get the first shoe off. “It’d be mine, though, you know? I show up, I do the work, I get paid. I don’t owe anybody a damn thing for it. I haven’t had that in two years. Not sure I’ve ever had it.”
“Em.” She props herself up on one elbow. “Take the job. Don’t even think about it. After everything that man pulled today, watching out for you in front of the whole reunion, and now this? Take it.”
“He also offered me a room.”
That gets her all the way upright. “Hold on. A room? In his place?”
“Yeah. Separate, door that locks, no strings. Stay as long as I need while I get on my feet.” I drop the second shoe. “It’s a good deal, T. A really good deal. I’d be an idiot to say no.”
“So don’t say no.”
“I’m gonna sleep on it.” I keep my eyes down, because Tara reads me better than anyone alive and there’s one thing I’m not saying out loud.
The kiss. The grass behind the cabin, his hand on my jaw, the sound I made, how I had to physically drag myself off him before I did something truly unhinged in the middle of the afternoon.
She doesn’t get that part. The job is a thing I can say. The rest stays mine.
“You’re being weird,” Tara says.
“I’m not being weird.”
“You’re being so weird. You’ve got a whole face happening right now.”
“I don’t have a face.”
“You absolutely have a face.” But she lets it go, because she’s a good friend and because she’s also clearly filing it away to interrogate me about later.
She studies me a beat too long, and I brace for it, but all she says is, “Okay. Sleep on it. But for what it’s worth, the man clearly wants to help you, and you clearly need help, and there’s no shame in letting somebody good be good to you for once.”
“When did you get wise?”
“Vet school. Turns out animals are easier than people, who knew.” She rolls onto her side to face me, propping her head on one hand. “Can I say one more thing and then I’ll shut up?”
“Will you actually drop it?”
“Probably not, but I’ll pretend.” She grins, then sobers.
“These last couple years, every time we talked on the phone, you sounded smaller. Quieter. Like you were always waiting to get yelled at.” She pauses.
“And then today you told Henry to go to hell in front of everyone and your voice didn’t even shake.
That was you, Em. The real you. She didn’t go anywhere. She’s right there.”
Something pulls tight in my chest, but I’m not about to let it turn into anything. “Okay, that’s enough of that. You’re getting sappy and I can’t be held responsible for what I do if you keep going.”
“Then I’ll shut up.” She flops back down and clicks off her lamp. “Night, Em. You did good today. All of it.”
“Night, T.”
I lie there in the dark long after her breathing goes slow and even.
The thing is, I’m exhausted, wrung out, the bad kind of tired that should knock a person flat the second their head hits the pillow.
And I can’t sleep. Tomorrow we leave. Tomorrow I go back to the city, to Tara’s couch and a divorce lawyer and the giant blank space where my whole life used to be.
Tomorrow everything starts. And here I am not thinking about any of it, because all my brain wants to do is replay the feel of Richard’s mouth on mine, over and over, on a loop I can’t shut off.
It’s insane. I know it’s insane. I’m three days out of a marriage.
I should be focused, careful, building my sensible new life one boring brick at a time.
Instead I’m twenty-five going on seventeen, lit up over a guy, except he’s not a kid anymore and what I’m feeling isn’t some cute little flutter.
It’s a low, hot pull that’s been building all weekend with nowhere to go.
I think about how he looked at me when he said I’m single, dead serious, not letting me look away.
I think about his hand on my jaw in the grass, the rough little sound he made when I pulled him closer, how he stopped the second I said wait, every single time, because what I wanted mattered more to him than what he wanted.
Henry never once stopped when I said wait.
And under all the sensible reasons not to do this, there’s just the wanting, low and insistent and refusing to quit.
I roll over. Punch the pillow. Stare at the ceiling. Tell myself to sleep. Tell myself that wanting Richard Reed is the single least sensible thing a woman in my position could possibly do, that I have a divorce to survive and a life to rebuild and absolutely no business adding a man to the pile.
Then, soft against the glass: a knock.
I go still. For a second I think I imagined it, that I want him so badly my own head is making things up. Then it comes again, two light taps on the cabin window above my bunk, and every nerve I have lights up at once.
I sit up. Pull the little curtain back an inch.
Richard. Standing in the dark outside, moonlight on his face, hands in his pockets, looking up at me like he’s not entirely sure what he’s doing here either.
My heart slams. Every sensible thing I told myself tonight lines up in my head, neat and reasonable.
I look at him through the glass and think about how I’ve spent my entire life being sensible, and exactly where that got me.
Married to a liar. Broke. Cut off from my own mother.
Twenty-five years of doing the careful, expected, good-girl thing, and the prize at the end was a husband with a secret baby and a family that picked someone else.
Screw sensible. Sensible has had its turn.
Tara doesn’t stir. I ease the window open, cold night air pouring in, and Richard’s voice comes low and rough.
“I tried to stay in my cabin,” he says, low, like it’s an admission that costs him something. “Made it about twenty minutes.” His eyes drop to my mouth. “Tell me to go and I’m gone, Em. But I really don’t want you to.”
I don’t tell him to go.
I climb out the window instead.
It’s not graceful. My sweater catches on the latch and he has to half-catch me, both of us going still and breathless when my bare foot lands wrong in the cold grass.
Then I’m out, standing barefoot in my pajamas under a sky full of stars, his hands at my waist, my hands fisted in his shirt, and we’re kissing before either of us says another word.
It’s not soft this time. It picks up right where the grass behind the cabin left off, deep and hungry, his fingers spreading wide and warm over my back to drag me in.
He makes a low rough sound into my mouth that I feel everywhere, and I push up onto my toes to get closer.
The cold, the dark, every sensible thing I told myself an hour ago, all of it just falls away.
“My cabin,” he says against my lips, ragged. “If your roommate...”
“Where’s your roommate?”
“Gone. Drove home tonight. It’s just me.” He pulls back far enough to look at me, and even in the dark I can see him handing me the chance to be smart about this. “Em. Only if you want it. We don’t have to do anything.”
“Richard.” I take a fistful of his shirt and tug. “Stop being so damn noble. I’ve wanted this since I was seventeen, and right now I want it so bad I can’t think straight. So quit giving me outs.”
That’s all it takes.
We make it across the dark grass half-running, half-laughing, hands not leaving each other.
He gets the door of his cabin open and we tumble through, and he doesn’t even get it shut all the way before he’s got me up against the wall, his mouth on mine, on my jaw, on the curve of my neck.
I’m gasping into the dark of a strange room with my fingers fisted in his hair, his thigh pushing between mine, and I don’t care about a single careful thing anymore.
“Wait,” I breathe, and he goes instantly still, pulling back to search my face. I love that. I love that the second I said it, he stopped. “The door.”
He reaches back without looking and kicks it shut. The latch clicks, and then there’s nothing in the room but the two of us and the sound of our own breathing.
He kisses me deep and filthy now, no patience left in it.
His hands shove up under my sweater, palms hot against my bare skin, and I shiver and arch into him and feel him groan into my mouth.
I drag the sweater up and off and throw it somewhere, and he goes still for a second, just looking at me, breathing hard, his eyes gone dark.
“Jesus,” he says, low and rough. “You have no idea how long I’ve wanted this.”
“So quit talking about it.” I pull him back to me by the front of his shirt. “Show me.”
I’m done being careful, done being small, done waiting around for permission to have what I want. The girl who made herself invisible, who shrank to fit whatever shape Henry needed, isn’t anywhere in this cabin. There’s just me, taking exactly what I’ve been wanting.