9. Emerson
EMERSON
“What do you mean you’re going to Atlanta?” Rumi’s eyes are wide, but her voice is low.
She’s holding Eliana in her arms, and I can’t lie and say I didn’t plan to announce my new potential job in the presence of Ava’s sleeping three-week-old.
“What the hell is in Atlanta?” my brother asks, in his version of a whisper.
“A job,” I state, not offering anything more.
I watch as Rumi turns to look at Ava, but she’s staring at me, like she’s trying to see right through me.
I meet her eyes, and it’s much harder than I thought it would be.
“I guess this is also my formal request for a temporary leave,” I offer with the sweetest smile I can muster before offering Rumi the same.
“But I’ll be back to Hey Honey’s in no time,” I add, keeping to myself that if I can convince Mateo Lane that I am his dream come true in the form of childcare, I will be on the road with Cross My Heart until next summer.
“What job?” When I look back at Ava, her eyes are narrowed at me. “A freelance job?”
“Not exactly.”
After getting all I could out of Liam yesterday, including Mateo’s phone number, I stayed up all night finishing up all my current freelance jobs and posting on my website that my commissions were closed.
I have enough money saved up to cover traveling with the band, considering I am at the point of telling Mateo that I’ll be his nanny for free.
Anything to get away, even if just for a little while.
Away from these concerned stares and the memory of my mom taking her last breath.
Away from my empty apartment. My empty life.
I look between Jack, Rumi, and Ava, but I’m saved from saying anything else when Anderson comes into the room, tearing the attention from me.
“Isn’t Sugarcoated Lies’ next show in Atlanta?”
My lips part as I feel all the eyes in the room come back to me.
Leave it to Ava’s husband, who wouldn’t even know about Sugarcoated Lies if it wasn’t for me, to blow my cover.
When Liam got me and my friends tickets to the first show of their tour back in the spring, Anderson started streaming their songs and became a huge fan. He started following them on social media, which is probably how he knows where their next show is.
I shoot daggers at Anderson, and he holds his hand up in surrender. “Or not,” he mutters before grabbing Eliana from Rumi’s arms and leaving the room, no longer giving me the shield of the sleeping baby.
“Spill,” Ava and Rumi say at the same time from where they sit on either side of me, their voices now at a normal volume.
I purse my lips, feeling the cool metal of my septum piercing peeking out of my nose.
“Emerson,” Ava scolds. Her auburn hair is twisted back in a clip, a few curls framing her freckled face. She’s in the pajama set I bought her when Eliana was born, her legs crossed under her from where she sits on the couch.
“What ‘job’ has you going to meet Liam in Atlanta?” Rumi asks, using her fingers to put air quotes around “job”.
“Assuming that it isn’t just a coincidence that he’s going to be there at the same time you’re supposedly flying out there.
” Her brown hair is tucked behind her ears, her big blue eyes going from me to her husband, where he stands with his arms crossed, leaning against the wall of Ava and Anderson’s living room.
I know what she’s thinking.
I’m running.
Just like she told me not to.
It’s probably what all three of them are thinking.
Hell, it’s probably what Anderson in the other room is thinking.
It’s sure as fuck what I’m thinking.
“Cross My Heart’s lead singer needs a nanny,” I finally say.
The room goes quiet, aside from the low music playing on the record player in the corner of the room—one of Georgie’s vinyls filling the loaded silence.
“Well, that’s not what I thought you were going to say,” Ava announces.
I snort as Rumi and Ava join each other in laughter.
Both of them, even Jack and Anderson, know about my relationship—or lack thereof—with Liam.
They all think it’s more of an on-again, off-again type of situation between two people who don’t want to fully commit, and I’ve never corrected them.
I let them think it’s more complicated than it is.
That way, I don’t have to explain that we’re just two friends who fuel each other’s need to dissociate once in a while.
“Liam is actually the one who told me about the job,” I explain. “He said that Mateo is bringing his son on tour for the last two legs and needs someone to help him out, so I called him and told him I was available.”
“Just like that?” my brother challenges.
“Just like that.”
He looks like he wants to say more, but we all know he’s a man of very few words. I know his mind is turning, finding similarities between the two of us.
He’s done a lot of healing since losing his best friend, and all that healing has helped him deal with losing our mom. That and having his future wife and daughter to lean on.
And good for him.
Being all healthy and shit.
I’m happy for him. Truly.
But it just means he won’t understand why I can’t stay here.
Not anymore.
“So what?” Ava starts, “You just fly down there and start traveling with the band?”
“Pretty much.”
I don’t explain that I don’t exactly have the job yet, or that I bought my one-way plane ticket before I even called Mateo this morning. I tap the screen of my phone, checking the time. “I better go finish packing,” I announce, standing up. “I have a plane to catch.”
“Wait, you’re leaving today?” Rumi asks as she stands. “Emerson, you promised me you’d take a week off work. It’s barely been three days.”
I turn to face her. “I’m okay, babe. Or, like I told Ava, I will be. But I need—” my voice catches the same way it did when I was on the phone with Mateo, moments away from breaking down and begging him for the chance to get away from all of this.
I need this.
With a slight shake of my head, as if to clear the thought away, I continue, “I’ll be okay.”
Rumi watches me for a moment, like she’s trying to figure out what she can say to make me stay before she realizes that I’m leaving either way. She pulls me in for a hug. “We’ll miss you,” she whispers.
I feel Ava’s arms wrap around us. “Don’t be a stranger,” she adds.
Emotion clogs my throat, but I tamp it down, pulling away before it becomes too strong to ignore. I grab one of their hands in each of mine, squeezing as I say, “Never.”
I glance over to Jack, his expression stoic as usual, but he closes the distance between us, wrapping his arms around my shoulder and hugging me tightly.
It causes that emotion to burn its way through me. I’m not the touchy-feely type, and neither is my brother. Maybe that’s what has my arms lacing behind his back, the tension in my body releasing enough to sink into his embrace.
“We’ll be here when you get back,” he says, pulling back to look at me.
His words hold meaning that I wish I couldn’t hear.
Because he knows what I’m leaving behind.
And he knows it’ll be waiting for me when I inevitably have to come back.