48. EMERSON
48
EMERSON
Three Summers Ago
Cal picked me up twenty minutes later.
Liam and I laid there for most of that time. I almost told him I loved him, trying to salvage us, but my anxious what-ifs choked the words right out of me. Everything I’ve ever wanted was right there, next to me, holding me, and I couldn’t do anything to stop myself.
When you lie to yourself enough, those lies become your truth. You realize they’ve become a truth the moment when you can’t dissociate them from who you are. I decided twelve years ago that love wasn’t real. A lie, I understand, that became this giant, monumental lie that I told myself.
I’m not worthy of love, and that became my truth.
For the first time in my life, there’s someone I want to undo it all for, but I couldn’t figure that out quickly enough.
I went to the bathroom to clean myself up. When I exited, Liam told me that I could crash at Cal’s tonight, and we could figure out everything else with my logistics back to Chicago tomorrow.
I left my stuff there. Taking only enough clothes for the night and my toiletries. I hoped that this wasn’t real, just a bad dream.
If it was, then tomorrow, now today, I could undo this.
Liam didn’t say another word to me as I walked out his door. I brushed past him in the kitchen, once again with another sliver of hope that he’d stop me and wake me from this bad dream.
He didn’t.
I stretch out my arm from the bed in Cal and George’s guest bedroom, feeling around for my cell phone on the nightstand. It’s only 7:30 a.m.
I could try to sleep for another couple hours, I tell myself.
Sleep. Ha. That’s a joke.
Sleep was something I didn’t do last night.
My head is throbbing, and my eyes are heavy and sore. Rubbing my face, I can assume everything is puffy without looking in the mirror.
Callum, the best friend he is, made sure I was comfortable before he left for his date last night. He offered to cancel it, but I can’t ruin another relationship. I insisted he still go.
I ordered sushi from his couch, hoping it would make me feel better. The only place I knew was KENSU, Liam’s favorite, which he took me to on Monday. By the time it was delivered, I was overwhelmed thinking about him. I cried myself to a restless and sleepless night.
This morning, my emotions haven’t recovered. I’m still. . . confused and frustrated. That summarizes it well enough.
There is a knock on the door. Callum opens it carefully.
“You alright this morning?” he asks.
I sit up, leaning against the headboard.
“Do I look alright?” I ask back.
“I suppose no. Want a cuppa? Coffee?”
“Coffee, please.”
“I’ll put a pot on the stove. Take your time. . . just not too much,” he says, and I think he means it differently, one that I’m not ready to unpack.
I shuffle into the living room, where I find Cal reading a book on the couch. He sets it down.
“Coffees in the kitchen. Mugs and milk are sitting out on the benchtop already.” He gestures toward the small kitchen.
“Thanks.” I try to force out a smile but fail.
“Remind me what time your flight is?”
I didn’t wait for Liam to rearrange my departure. I bumped my flight up to today .
“Not until this afternoon. Only a few more hours of having to have me in your lives. States finally will stay in the States.”
“Interesting. I don’t remember saying I wanted you out of my life. Neither did Liam, if I stand corrected.” Cal is giving me a don’t-put-words-in-our-mouth smug grin.
“I need to get my stuff from his place. Liam should be at work by now—wait, shouldn’t you be off already?” I ask him.
“Brunch this morning. All of us are—were going.”
“Oh, right.” I forgot.
I pour myself a cup of coffee and walk back into the living room. At the bottom of three giant, arched windows is a bookcase overfilled with books. In front of the wall are two oversized chairs facing the kitchen. I take a seat in one of them while window-shopping the bookshelf.
“Not George’s.” He confirms my curiosity about who these belong to. “My aunt is a writer. Growing up, every holiday or birthday came with new books.”
“What’s her name?”
“Mary Adamson.”
“I’ve read a few of her books! The twists at the end are consistently unpredictable. I’ve never been able to predict a single book. The last one had me on the edge of my seat,” I cheerily say. “I didn’t realize you were a reader too.”
“Few do. That’s one of the things Liam and I bonded over.”
“I know the feeling.”
This is what I’m going to miss, and it will haunt me in the post-Liam phase of my life: all the ways we connected—shared common interests, shared different interests.
“Do you want to talk about it?” he asks.
“I—what—am I making a mistake?” I ask him reluctantly.
“Honestly, yeah.” I’m happy he’s honest with me, but it hurts to hear. Cuts deeper than I thought it would. “He told you he loved you, yeah? ”
I nod.
“And you didn’t respond—”
“You know the answers to these questions.”
He shakes his head. “Wasn’t asking a question, States.” Cal rests his mug on his knee. He blows out air and tilts his head, staring at me as I believe an old brother would. “You don’t need to say it back, but you shouldn’t have said no. We both know you do. You’ve been leading him on. You can’t play with his heart and think that he won’t get attached.”
“I would never do that.”
“You’ve been doing it for years—”
“He’s been doing it too!” I defend myself. “We’ve been doing it to each other.”
“Are you sure about that?” No, I’m not.
Maybe he’s right. I don’t think Liam has ever led me on.
The gravity of everything Liam is to me compounds, rooting me down into the chair I’m sitting in.
“I never meant to bring him into my mess. . . or any of you by association.”
“And you didn’t have to let what hurt you become who you are.”
We return to silence.
I turn my body towards the window. . . wondering if the answers to my problems are out there. They aren’t. All I find is a gray, gloomy London morning, the sky filled with clouds like the weather is an extension of me.
You didn’t have to let what hurt you become who you are.
Is that what I have done?
Is this who I have become twelve years later?
Something cold drips on my cheek. I raise my hand to it, grainy as salt. A single tear is falling down my face. I don’t wipe it away. This one isn’t for Liam, but for me—the younger me who was hurt and is still hurting. Unhealed and broken.
I thought I’ve been protecting myself by putting up these walls around my heart. Keeping myself close to people but not letting them get close enough to me to hurt me. In reality, I’ve been hurting myself all along.
I let what hurt me become me.
“Brunch is at eleven. Up to you if you want to come.” Cal pauses, biting the inside of his cheek. “He’ll be there. You should talk to him.”
I drink the rest of my coffee slowly. Callum and I sit there in a peaceful quiet.
Rising from the chair, I walk over to Callum.
“Thank you.” Leaning down, I kiss his cheek softly and turn, walking toward the guest room I stayed in last night.
“States,” he calls after me. I stop walking but don’t turn around. “Being enough for love and loving someone enough, means as much to him as it does to you.”