18. Richard
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Richard
Something happened in the car tonight, and I can’t stop turning it over.
I’m in the study with a glass I’m not drinking, papers in front of me I haven’t read.
All I keep seeing is her face on the drive home.
She had something she wanted to say, I could see it sitting right there, and then she pressed her lips together and looked out the window and let it go.
I don’t know what it was. Could’ve been anything.
But she’s been quiet and strange ever since, and I’ve learned to pay attention when Emily goes quiet.
Whatever it was, I’m not going to pry it out of her. She just spent an hour signing away a marriage where a man tracked every word out of her mouth. If she’s got something to say, she’ll say it when she’s good and ready, and not one second before, and I’ll be right here whenever that is.
That’s what I tell myself, anyway. It’s about half working.
A soft knock pulls me out of it.
“It’s open.”
Emily leans in the doorway. Pajama shorts, one of those soft shirts, hair down and a little wild, eyes still pink at the edges from the car.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she says. “It’s too quiet down there. Your house makes these settling noises and I’ve decided they’re all ghosts.”
“They’re not ghosts. It’s the heating.”
“That’s exactly what a man with a haunted house would say.”
I push the chair back from the desk and pat my knee, shameless about it. “Come here.”
She rolls her eyes, but she’s already crossing the room, and instead of taking the chair across from me she comes around the desk and folds herself right into my lap like she’s done it a hundred times, which she hasn’t, not once.
I get both arms around her immediately and pull her in tighter than strictly necessary, because I have wanted to hold her like this for ten years and I’m not going to be cool about it now that I’m allowed.
She tucks her head under my jaw. I press a kiss into her hair and keep my mouth there.
“You’re very grabby tonight,” she says, not complaining.
“I’m always this grabby. I’ve just been showing restraint.” My hand spreads warm over her hip. “Restraint’s over. You climbed into my lap, you forfeited it.”
“Forfeited it. Like a parking spot.”
“Exactly like a parking spot. You vacated the seat across the desk, you waived your rights.” I tighten my arm just to feel her settle into me, the last of the tension draining out of her shoulders. “So. What had you wandering down here at midnight?”
“Couldn’t turn my brain off. I kept thinking about, of all the stupid things, high school.”
She says it light, but I feel my pulse trip, because high school is a loaded word for me in a way she has no idea about.
“Yeah?” I keep my voice easy. “What about it?”
“I don’t know. Being back around all those people at the reunion stirred it up, I guess.” She shrugs against me. “Why? You’ve got a look.”
“I’ve got a confession, actually. One I’ve never told anybody.”
That gets her. She tips her head back to see my face. “Now you have to tell me.”
“I’m aware. I walked right into it.” I have to take a second anyway. I’ve kept this folded up so long it feels strange in my mouth.
“You’d have been a freshman, so I was a sophomore.
There was this kid in the cafeteria, and some senior knocked his tray right out of his hands, on purpose, big guy, just to be a jerk about it.
And the whole room watched it happen. Nobody moved.
And then this tiny blonde girl walks straight over and says one thing to the guy, I couldn’t hear what, and he goes red and slinks off.
And she just helps the kid get his food off the floor and goes back to her table like it was nothing at all. ”
She’s quiet against my chest. “That was me?”
“That was you. I went and asked somebody your name.” I huff. “They had to point you out twice. I kept looking at the wrong table.”
“I don’t even remember that.”
“I remember all of it. That’s what I’m trying to say.” It comes out rougher than I want. “You spent four years thinking you were furniture in that building. You weren’t. Not to me.”
She doesn’t say anything. Her fingers pick at a button on my shirt.
“Okay, wait.” She tips her head back to look at me, and there’s a little spark in it now, the snark coming back online. “If you were so gone over me, how come you spent every council meeting arguing with me about the parking budget?”
“Because it was the only way to get you to look at me for more than four seconds.”
She blinks. “That’s the worst flirting I’ve ever heard.”
“I was seventeen. Eighteen. I had a 4.0 and a state championship and zero idea how to talk to a girl who wasn’t impressed by either of those things.
” I shrug. “You used to roll your eyes at me. Do you have any idea what that does to a kid who’s used to people falling over themselves?
You rolled your eyes at me and I thought about it for a week. ”
“I rolled my eyes because you were being deliberately obtuse about the budget.”
“I know. It was great. Best week of my fall semester.”
She laughs, that real one, and shakes her head against my chest, and I feel about nineteen years old.
It’s ridiculous. I run a company. People are scared of me in actual boardrooms. And here’s a five-foot-nothing woman in my lap making me feel like I just got away with a crime by admitting I picked fights about parking to make her notice me.
“Tell me another one,” she says.
So I tell her the one I’ve actually never said out loud, the one I’ve kept for ten years, and my throat goes tight just lining it up.
“It was your junior year, so my last one. And it was pouring, one of those days the sky just opens up. Your bus broke down, they came over the intercom telling everybody to find another way home. And I’m heading out to the lot and there you are under the awning by the gym.
No umbrella, no phone out, just standing there getting rained on, real patient about it, like if you waited politely enough it might quit. ”
“Oh my god. I think I remember that bus.”
“I gave you a ride. You looked at me like I was running a scam.” A laugh gets away from me. “You got in. And like four minutes down the road you were dead asleep. Out. Head on the window.”
She goes still in my lap.
“And I had a choice,” I say. “Fast way, you’re home in ten. Or the long way.”
“You took the long way.”
“I drove around the whole reservoir at twenty miles an hour like an idiot. Because you were so tired, Em. You needed it. And I couldn’t make myself be the guy who woke you up.
” I shrug, and it costs more than I let on.
“That’s the whole thing. I just drove around in the rain so you could sleep, and then I got you home, and I never said a word about any of it. ”
When I finally look down she’s crying. Not the wrecked kind from the car. Quiet.
“You never said anything,” she says.
“What was I gonna say?” I wipe a tear off her cheek with my thumb. “Hi, I drove forty minutes out of my way so you could nap, also I think about you all the time, see you at the council meeting Thursday?”
She laughs, wet. “I’d have said yes, you know. If you’d asked me out. Back then.”
“Don’t.” I close my eyes. “Don’t tell me that, it’ll keep me up a week.”
“You really never knew.” She says it like she’s turning it over. “I thought I didn’t even register to you. This whole time. Ten years I had it filed under guy who was nice to me once and forgot I existed.”
“You were the only one I ever registered.” I tuck a curl behind her ear. “You were it.”
She presses her face into my neck, and we just sit there, the lamp low, the house quiet, her heart going against my chest. I tighten my hold without deciding to. I’d give up every dollar I’ve got to keep this exact thirty seconds, and it should scare me how much I mean that, and it doesn’t.
“You’re doing the grabby thing again,” she murmurs into my throat.
“I told you. Forfeited.” I drag my mouth along her hairline, slow. “You’re stuck. I’ve got you for the night and I’m not in a sharing mood.”
“It’s your own house, who would you even be sharing me with?”
“The ghosts. The heating. I don’t trust any of it.
” She laughs, and I feel it move through her and into me, and I turn her chin up with one finger so I can see her face.
“For the record. Seventeen-year-old me would have walked into traffic for one of these. You, in my lap, calling my house haunted. I want that kid to know it worked out. Eventually. Took a decade and a couple of disasters, but it worked out.”
“You’re such a sap.” But she’s pink, and her hand has fisted loose in my shirt, and she’s not going anywhere. “Behind the whole terrifying-CEO thing you’re just a giant sap.”
“Only about one thing.” I kiss her, unhurried, my hand sliding up to cradle the back of her head so she can’t pull away even if she wanted to, which she doesn’t, she leans into it and makes that small sound that does things to me.
When I let her go she stays close, breathing a little uneven, eyes still shut.
“Okay,” she says, quiet. “Why are you telling me all this tonight? The cafeteria. The rain. All of it at once.”
Good question. I think about it.
“Because at dinner I gave you the short version, and you nodded and let it go, and I don’t think you actually bought it.” My hand stills on her back. “I think you heard a nice thing a guy says after wine. I’m not a nice guy, sunshine. Only for you.”
She’s quiet a beat. “There’s no catch?”
“There’s no catch, Em. There’s just me, being embarrassing about you, for ten years and counting.”