Chapter 24
Sabrina
I spend Sunday working at the senior center with Mom and Jitter, who probably does more work than I do for all of the joy he brings the residents. Seeing Grandpa and hearing stories from the old days from everyone at the center is usually all it takes to cheer me up, but it doesn’t work.
Mom spends all day telling me to go see Emma.
I keep insisting Emma will come to me when she’s ready. That she’s behind at work. That she’s processing things and needs space.
Even though I know I’m hitting a breaking point.
And going home, knowing I’m sleeping mere feet from Grey? That he’s on the other side of the wall? Hearing him moving around, occasionally clearing his throat or running water in the bathroom?
It’s torture.
Absolute torture.
I sleep like crap. When I doze, I dream Emma’s feeding me to a pot-bellied giraffe that her dad’s stuffing for his taxidermy business, and that she keeps saying gossip is for assholes while Laney and Theo ride mating hippopotamuses.
I am not okay, and I finally break.
I call in sick, and then I go huddle in my kitchen at the farthest point from the wall I share with Grey and Zen, and I call Laney. “Are you working today?”
“Let’s see… It’s a Monday, so in theory, I would be doing the things I usually do on a workday, except I’m exploring this whole be more fun side of my personality, but the last time I skipped work, I broke my leg, so?—”
“You did not break your leg because you skipped work,” Theo says in the background on her end of the phone.
I slide to the floor in front of my fridge and rub Jitter’s belly when he flops to the ground and rolls over like he’s trying to get into my lap. “It’s remarkable how much I agree with him these days.”
“If I hadn’t skipped work that day—” she starts, but she cuts herself off with a shriek of laughter. “Okay! Okay! I would’ve just broken my leg in the breakroom instead!”
“Is he tickling you?” I am not jealous of my friend.
I do not want a man in my life. I am not contemplating knocking on my neighbor’s door and asking if we can get naked in the name of stress relief when I’d be secretly thinking it was something so much more than that, much like I suspect he’d think it was more than that after everything that’s happened between us since he got to town.
Dammit .
“No, he’s piling kittens all over me and they’re climbing on my head,” Laney says. “And I’m working from home today. Are you working today?”
“Called in sick.”
“Are you sick?”
“Physically? No.”
“Are you avoiding your boss?”
“Some.”
“You want to go talk to Emma,” she says.
This is what Laney and Emma and I have always had. We’ve known each other for so long that we can practically read each other’s minds.
“I saw her Saturday and she’s just not her and I hate that,” I tell Laney.
“And she’ll know what Chandler loves.”
“ No . No.” My hand curls into Jitter’s fur. “I will not drag her into this.”
“I can,” Theo calls.
“Go feed your cats or scoop some litter,” I retort. “Do not bother her with my problems. I refuse to pump her for information. I want?—”
“Things to be normal again,” Laney finishes for me.
“ Yes . They’ll never be the same. But we’ve always found normal again. And we can’t find normal if we’re not talking.”
We’ve been through so much together. Emma’s mom passing away when we were in middle school. Hard teachers. The heartbreak of break ups with first boyfriends. Whispered tales of when we each lost our virginity. Stressing over which colleges we could afford or which we hoped to get scholarships for.
My mouth getting me in trouble.
Laney stressing entirely too much about perfection.
Emma daydreaming about buying my grandparents’ house to live in with her perfect dream Ken doll man and having a million babies and dogs and cats, and watching deer and elk and fox and bears wander through the yard while she washed dishes.
She daydreamed about washing dishes .
And it was so perfectly Emma that neither Laney nor I questioned it. I still wouldn’t.
“Come get me,” Laney says. “I can reschedule my meetings. I’ll go with you.”
An hour later, I pull up to the old single-wide trailer that Theo lived in at the edge of their dad’s land before he bought his cabin further up the mountain in a more secluded area on a much, much larger lot.
I thought I was a gossip.
I have nothing on Theo Monroe when he wants to know something, and he’s apparently been tracking Emma’s movements very closely. I would’ve started at her office, but Theo was very firm in his orders to go to his old trailer. She worked late last night then went to Dad’s place. Should be up soon.
The lights aren’t on. Will she be mad if we wake her up? Or should we sit here and wait? Will she appreciate the items in the back of my car that I’m bringing as a peace offering? Will they even work on snow?
“It’ll work,” Laney says from the passenger seat.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Your face did. It’ll work .”
I back up my SUV into the closest spot I can fit where Laney will have the shortest path to the front door. We haven’t had fresh snow in a few days, so I can’t tell if the tracks around Emma’s current hideout are old or new. There’s no visible movement inside the trailer.
“Should I have texted first?” I ask Laney. “Should we have waited until after work today? Do you think she’s still asleep?”
“No to all of that.”
“You’re sure?”
“Hand me my crutches.”
Okay. She’s sure.
I climb out and walk around to her side, retrieve her crutches from the back seat, and open her door for her.
She swings down like she was born on crutches and heads to the front door.
I pop my trunk.
And five minutes later, when Emma finally answers Laney’s knock, I have one full human-size hamster ball blown up.
“Um, hi.” Em glances between us like she’s having regrets about opening the door. “What’s going on?”
“I love you and I miss you and I’m sorry, so I’m blowing up your hamster balls so we can fight it out,” I blurt.
She blinks at me, then at Laney, and then at the hamster balls.
“Are those the present Theo gave me for my wedding?” She says it so softly, I almost can’t hear her.
But I do.
And I nod. “I’m so sorry, Em. If it’ll make you feel better to pop them and throw them in my face, I don’t care. If you want to just shove me down the hill while I’m in this one, I don’t care. Whatever it takes. I miss you . And I’m worried about you. And I want to make it up to you, and I?—”
“I’m not mad ,” Em says, and her voice cracks.
“I don’t want to—Sabrina. I’m mortified .
The entire world saw that I’m an idiot who let myself be gaslit by a man who only loved me because it meant he won .
And you would’ve warned me, but you knew I wouldn’t listen because I was an idiot.
I don’t deserve you. I don’t deserve either of you.
How can anyone love someone as stupid as I am? ”
“Em—” Laney starts while Emma crumples to the ground.
“Oh, god, Em.” I abandon the hamster balls and charge up the rickety steps to the trailer. The generator is barely pumping out enough heat to keep this place warm, which tracks.
Theo hates the heat as much as Grey apparently hates the cold.
He wouldn’t have minded the temperature.
Emma, meanwhile, is practically turning blue under her massive quilt.
“Get back in the car,” I tell Laney. “Em, get shoes. We’re going to—to?—”
I look at Laney. Her house? Busy neighborhood.
My house? Busy neighborhood.
“Theo’s house,” Laney confirms.
“I don’t understand why he doesn’t hate me,” Emma sobs. “I almost married a guy who made him go to jail.”
“Because he knows people make mistakes, sweetie.” I pull my friend into a hug.
She’s at least half a foot taller than me when she’s standing up, but here on the ground, we’re on level hugging height.
“And we love you and we’re worried about you and we want to be here for you and you are not stupid .
You lead with your heart and that’s my favorite thing about you. ”
“My heart—h-hurt you,” she gasps. “It p-picked wrong.”
“Your heart went where it thought it could do the most good,” Laney says.
Em sobs harder.
I stifle all of the frustration in my entire body that I can’t make this better for her and hug her even tighter.
“Fuck those people who make assumptions about you because of that fucking video, Em. Fuck Addison for posting it. Fuck everyone who’s hurt you.
Fuck them all. Let me fix it. Let us fix it. Please .”
“I put everyone else second when all they wanted was for me to see that I deserved better,” she sobs. “All you wanted was for me to wake up and realize I couldn’t fix him. I don’t deserve you.”
“ Emma .” Laney thumps her crutches until she’s close enough to drop them and balance right to squat and wrap us both in a hug too.
“Enough. You deserve both of us and so much more. Sabrina’s right.
We’re getting you out of here and out of your head.
First Theo’s house, and tonight, we’re going out . ”
“Laney, no, I absolutely cannot?—”
“Hide from all of the people in this town who adore you and are worried sick about you for one more day,” Laney interrupts.
“And if a single one of them says the word viral video , I’m spilling every secret I’m desperately trying to forget I know about them,” I tell her. “And then I’ll quit gossiping. Soon. I swear. I?—”
“No, don’t change,” Emma says. “Too much has changed. Don’t you change too.”
“ I’ve missed you .” And I’m about to cry too. I hate crying. Hate it. “I’m so sorry, Em.”
“No, I’m sorry.” Her tears are dripping in my hair, and I don’t care. “I’m sorry I pushed you away. I’ve been so embarrassed, and I’m faking everything being fine, and nothing is fine .”
“It will be,” Laney says.
“We’ll make it fine,” I agree.
“We’ll make it fine right now .”
“As soon as we get you warm.”
“You don’t hate me?” Emma whispers.
“ Never ,” Laney answers for both of us.
“I thought you hated me,” I tell her, and dammit , my voice cracks.
That does it.
Em starts sobbing all over again.
Because I’m an idiot.
But I’m an idiot who can fix this. “You really can shove me down the hill in a hamster ball if it would make you feel better, even if you’re not mad at me,” I say.
Em laughs through her tears. “Stop. I’m not pushing you down the hill in that hamster ball.”
“Theo would probably buy you a house if he got to watch,” Laney says.
Emma stops crying.
I look up at Laney.
She cracks a grin.
And then all three of us bust up laughing hysterically.
It’s not normal .
Not yet.
But it’s a solid start.