8. Emma
Emma
"Get dressed. We're going out."
"Out where?"
"Breakfast. There's nothing edible in this house, and I refuse to hand you a chalky protein bar."
I shook my head, my brow furrowing. "How does a grown man with a kitchen that looks like a luxury showroom have zero food?"
"Because the woman who handles my logistics is currently punishing me by letting me starve," he said, a faint, dry edge to his mouth. "We had a massive disagreement, and she's decided my penance is an empty refrigerator and a deep, existential understanding of what hunger feels like."
"Athena?"
"Who else?"
The name tugged a small, helpless smile loose before I could stop it. Athena Brandt. I remembered her as the fiery girl with the high ponytail, trailing behind Ralph and Theo at chaotic swim meets with a canvas backpack full of snacks she routinely refused to share with anyone on earth except me.
She'd decided back then that I was her honorary older sister, enforcing the title with a fierce, terrifyingly possessive loyalty.
She had once cornered a boy at a pool party who wouldn't stop staring at me in my swimsuit, quietly informing him that if he didn't look away, she would drown him in the diving well and make it look like a cramp. The boy believed her. So did I.
"I've always been a massive fan of your sister," I murmured.
"Of course you are. She's a tyrant, and the universe keeps rewarding her for it." He reached out, tapping his knuckles twice against the wood casing.
"Ten minutes. Wear something comfortable."
I jammed my legs back into the stiff, wrinkled jeans I pulled from my suitcase. And my hoodie. The one Ralph got back from James's apartment.
I gave myself two seconds in the bathroom mirror. One past my limit.
Ralph drove. He kept one hand loose on the wheel and let the quiet stay quiet, no radio, no careful small talk, none of the questions people aim at someone they've decided might break.
It was how he used to drive me home from meets, back when winning still felt simple, and I remembered the ease of it before I understood why.
Outside, Los Angeles was bathed in that post-rain California glare, where the sky looks brutally scrubbed and the sunlight cuts sideways through the clouds, turning the wet asphalt into a mirror.
He pulled up to a small, unassuming diner tucked into a steep side street in Silver Lake.
Inside, the walls were an absolute riot—oil portraits squeezed against charcoal sketches and blown-up black-and-white photography, all fighting for territory, frames overlapping frames, nothing hung straight, none of it matching, like whoever owned the place had never once taken a single thing down, only ever found room for more.
I stopped just inside the door.
I knew this place.
It was the exact type of place Ralph used to drag us to when we were kids.
Crammed to the corners, a little too loud and a little too bright.
A cluttered mess, but it was warm, and it was our sanctuary.
Whenever I broke a regional record, whenever I climbed out of the lane with a time that mattered to the papers, Ralph would steal Theo's keys, pack us into the car, and order me a chocolate milkshake while Theo pretended dairy was a violation of his high-performance diet.
Back then, Ralph would slide the heavy glass across the laminate table with that lazy, half-creased grin and murmur, "You earned the sugar, cereal girl."
And I'd beam so hard my jaw would ache, convinced that the universe was small, safe, and revolved strictly around the two boys sitting across from me.
We were ushered into a worn vinyl booth by the window. Ralph ordered black coffee and eggs. I ordered dry toast and hot tea—the absolute smallest real estate on the menu—because taking up space I hadn't explicitly earned felt like an act of theft.
The waitress returned two minutes later, her tray balancing a tall, sweating glass. She set it squarely in front of me.
A chocolate milkshake. The whipped cream was piled high, a perfect mountain drizzled with a dark spiral of syrup, a single red straw piercing the center at an angle.
Blood rushed to my ears. "I didn't order this."
I snapped my eyes up to Ralph. He was holding the laminated menu flat, studying the breakfast specials with intense, unblinking focus.
I stared back down at the glass. The heavy cream was just beginning to settle, a slow, graceful collapse under the heat of the restaurant. The chocolate syrup caught the gray morning light through the pane, and the memory hit me so hard I had to look away.
He remembered.
After three years of a blocked number, a kitchen fight, and the venomous things I'd shouted at his face. After watching me land on his doorstep drenched, hysterical, and several pounds heavier than the athletic girl he used to protect. He still kept that specific detail alive.
The sweetness of it lasted for a breath.
Then James's voice slid in under the noise of the restaurant and closed around me.
Are you seriously going to touch that, Em? Look at the density of it. I'm not trying to be cruel, honey, I'm trying to keep you on track. If you'd just try a little harder, you wouldn't have to look away when I touch your waist.
My fingers vibrated against the cool glass of the table. My eyes stung.
"Hey." Ralph's voice broke the frequency. Low, heavy, and anchored in the room. "What's happening in your head right now?"
I shook my head rapidly, pulling my hands back into the safe dark of my sleeves. "Nothing. I'm just... I'm not hungry."
His eyes dropped to the glass, his brow knitting slightly above his sunglasses. "You can't be too full for a milkshake, Em. We haven't even seen the eggs."
He said it lightly, the same easy way he'd talked to me at sixteen, back when the boundaries of my whole world were the lane lines of a pool and I was still a girl who deserved to sit at a table and be fed.
"I d-don't like milkshakes anymore."
The lie tasted like copper on my tongue.
I said it while staring intently at the whipped cream, which was now melting into a messy, dark puddle, and I hated the words as they left my mouth.
I hated James for planting the script in my skull, and I hated myself for still obeying a ghost I'd supposedly run away from.
Ralph didn't push. He watched me through those dark lenses.
He was reading every bit of what I was trying to hide.
He saw the lie—I knew he did. He knew the old Emma too well to miss the cavernous distance between the girl who used to inhale chocolate before a final and the woman currently shrinking away from a glass of milk.
But he just picked up his fork and began to eat his eggs.
We moved through the rest of the meal in a fragile silence. Or rather, he ate and I executed my routine. A tiny corner of toast here, a measured sip of tea there, rearranging what was left so the plate looked handled.
James had been a meticulous instructor; I was a master of appearing fed.
Ralph didn't say anything about my plate, but I could feel him watching, and there was none of the sharp edge I'd learned to expect.
With James, being watched had always meant being measured.
This was different. I could tell Ralph was just scared, quietly terrified I was disappearing right in front of him, and he had the decency not to say so.
The milkshake sat untouched between us.
Outside, the street still smelled of rain. As we crossed to the SUV, I pulled in one steadying breath and launched into the formal script I'd been drafting since dawn.
"Ralph, I need to thank you properly. For the car, for retrieving my things from the apartment, for breakfast...
you've been more than decent to me, and I won't forget it.
" I kept my eyes on the sidewalk. "But I'm leaving this afternoon.
I'll go back to the motel, and I can handle things from there. "
He stopped dead on the concrete. I took two more steps before realizing the shadow beside me had vanished, and turned around.
"What motel, Emma?"
"I'm not giving you the address."
"What's the name on the sign?"
"I'm not telling you, Ralph."
He stood there with his hands buried deep in his denim pockets, his dark glasses reflecting the gray skyline, and I could practically hear the gears turning behind his eyes. Then his jaw set into a hard, stubborn line.
"I'm going to give you two options," he said, his voice dropping into that register he used when he was about to win an argument with an official.
"And you can pick whichever one hurts less."
"I don't like sentences that start that way."
"Option one: You get back in my truck, you stay in my guest room, and I know for a fact you're behind a door with working locks and hot water."
"Ralph—"
"Option two:" He cut me off, "I pull out my phone right now, call Theo, and tell him exactly which Silver Lake gutter I dragged his sister out of, the condition she was in, and exactly what James did to her suitcase."
My jaw dropped. "You wouldn't dare."
"Then I let Theo handle it however he sees fit.
Which, based on twenty years of experience, will involve about forty frantic phone calls, an immediate private investigator, your mother landing at LAX by dinner time, and a level of Carrow family intervention that will make this sidewalk look like a spa day. "
"That is literal blackmail."
"I prefer to think of it as aggressive motivation."
"That is cruel, manipulative, emotional terrorism, Ralph Brandt!"
He reached into his pocket, pulled out his sleek black phone, and unlocked it with a swipe of his thumb.
He held the screen up, close enough for me to read the word Theo glowing at the top of his contact list. His finger hovered less than a millimeter above the glass, one dark eyebrow arching over the rim of his sunglasses.
"You are exactly the same snitch you were back then," I said, my voice climbing, my hands flying out of my pockets.
"You have always gone straight to my brother the second you decided you knew what was best for my life!
Do you remember Malibu? I was sixteen years old, I snuck out to one beach party, and you ratted me out to my dad before the bonfire was even lit! "
"It was a college house party," he countered, his mouth twitching. "You were sixteen, there was zero adult supervision, and someone was trying to hand you tequila out of a plastic jug."
"There is always tequila in Malibu, Ralph! And you called my father at eleven o'clock at night like a hall monitor with a savior complex!"
"Your father called me back the next morning and thanked me."
"My father deadlocked my bedroom window! I climbed through the laundry chute for all of junior year because of you!" I yelled, stepping closer to him, my chest heaving under my hoodie. "A laundry chute, Ralph! An entire year! Because of you!"
He pressed his lips together, fighting it, but his shoulders had already started to shake.
I locked my jaw, staring him down, determined to maintain my fury.
For two full seconds, we stood on a wet sidewalk in Silver Lake, two stubborn forces refusing to yield, and then a tiny, rusty sound escaped my throat.
Ralph let out a sudden, deep chuckle, and before I could stop myself, a laugh broke out of me so hard I almost choked.
He was grinning—that grin I hadn't seen in years, the one that crinkled the skin around his eyes—and I was laughing so hard my stomach muscles ached, a sound that felt foreign but light.
Then the laughter settled, but the warmth of it stayed.
I was smiling.
Ralph noticed the change in my eyes. He didn't call attention to it, but his grin softened, and he tilted the phone screen back into my line of sight.
"So," he murmured. "Option one or option two, cereal girl?"
I stared up at him. The morning light was catching the dark lines of his jaw, the breeze catching the front of his hair, and he was standing there with that phone raised, looking like a wall that had zero intention of moving for the rest of the day.
I wanted to hit him. I wanted to bury my face in his chest.
"You're an absolute ass," I whispered.
The grin flared back, certain it had already won. "I'll take that as a yes."