Chapter 21
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
harrison
I folded the checkered picnic blanket and placed it at the bottom of the basket, then began filling the basket with preserves, buns, and cups, leaving enough room for a thermos of coffee that would sit on top.
The morning sunlight slanted through the window in the kitchen, warming up my bare feet on the tiled floor.
When the key turned in the lock, a smile tugged on the corners of my lips. He’d been gone all day yesterday, busy with the midterms, so I’d used the day to catch up on my own workload, but I had missed him.
I’d missed him like crazy.
Cuddling Taylor on the sofa was so much more exciting than writing pages upon pages of essays.
The door opened and shut, and then the keys touched the wooden surface of the dresser in the hallway. His footsteps were quiet and slow as he walked over to the kitchen.
I could feel his gaze on the back of my head when he stopped in the doorway.
My shoulders and head moved in the rhythm of Pink Floyd’s “Learning to Fly,” and I half expected him to come over, put his hands on my hips, and dance with me.
There was never a time Taylor didn’t want to dance. It was what I adored about him so much.
Except, he stood there, watching me. As the song began to fade, I covered the basket with a kitchen towel and turned to look at him. Dark hair framed his long, elegant face, and his gaze locked on my eyes. “Hey, handsome,” I said. “Don’t I get a kiss?”
Taylor lifted a corner of his lips, stood in the doorway with his arms crossed on his chest, then moved one foot in front of the other and stepped into the kitchen.
He walked over to me, tucking his hands into his pockets, and paused a moment before his lips touched mine.
He looked into my eyes, held my gaze for a long, long time, holding his breath for a while, then blinked once.
When he kissed me, his hands reached for my hips, and he held on to me for several long seconds, lips moving softly over mine.
When he pulled his head back, he wore a mysterious smile I couldn’t quite decipher. “Hi,” he said.
“Are you alright?” I asked.
He nodded slowly, then shook his head. “I need to tell you something.”
“Something nice?” I asked, but there was a tingle of anxiety deep in my stomach.
“I think so,” Taylor said. “Hope so.”
“Go on,” I said.
He took a step back and made his smile a little brighter, a little more encouraging. Okay. Good news, then. “Emma and Michael broke up,” he said.
I stared at him. For a moment, maybe longer, I didn’t know what those words meant. I didn’t know who those people were, what they were up to, and why he would be telling me. But then, like a splash of cold water, the realization came over me. “What?” I whispered.
He looked so calm, so composed. So relaxed. “It’s not good,” he said simply. “He hurt her feelings. They had a fight about it in public. Apparently, he cheated with her best friend.”
“Are you kidding me?” I asked. But it wasn’t like Taylor to joke like this. I had nothing to say. The truth was too terrible to talk about. Even discussing it behind Emma’s back felt like stabbing her with a dagger. “Taylor…”
But Taylor lifted those fine, expressive eyebrows of his, and his eyes glimmered brightly. “It’s your chance, Harrison.”
My brow furrowed into a frown.
But he didn’t let me say anything. “I know she needs you. She lost her boyfriend and her best friend in the same breath. You should be there. To think, all of this was for nothing.” He cracked a laugh. “But it was good fun.”
I shook my head. What did that even mean? “Taylor.”
“Hey,” he said. “You’re getting the girl, Harrison.”
I licked my lips. Part of me leaped with excitement that there still was a chance. I hated that part of myself. “But…but.”
“But what?” He laughed. “What are you waiting for?”
I blinked, then closed my mouth and pursed my lips. It was true that she needed me. And it was true that, after knowing her for so long, I was desperate to offer her what comfort I could. But.
“I thought about this a lot,” he said casually.
“And I think it will work for the best. If you show up now, she’ll know you’d never leave her side.
” Taylor’s voice was determined, almost feverish with certainty.
“She’ll know you’d never do something like that to her.
Right? And you’ll smooth out the whole thing in no time. ”
Except, I didn’t want to smooth it out. I just wanted to make sure she was okay. And then…
And then.
What then?
“You should say something,” Taylor said. “And smile. You should smile.”
“But what about…this?” I asked. He understood what this was, even though my arms had turned to stone, and I couldn’t even gesture at the space between us.
Taylor tucked his hands into his pockets and took another step away from me. “This was all for her, Harrison.”
Was it, though? Was it all for her? Because I’d hardly thought of her in weeks. But Taylor was moving away from me, smiling, relieved, and relaxed. He reached the kitchen door, walking backward.
“Get the girl,” he said. “Like we planned.”
“Taylor,” I said.
He shrugged, though I didn’t know what he was responding to. It was a quick, not-so-casual shrug. Involuntary. In a quiet voice, he added, “I think she needs a friend, Harrison. Badly.”
Worry spiked through me, overriding all my other instincts. And Taylor, pulling away, creating this empty space, practically ending things. Ending what? We’d never started it. Not officially. Not really. It had just been a mirage, apparently.
He turned away before I could move. And as he walked away, my feet finally broke free of the ice that glued them to the tiles. I walked after him, but as I reached the kitchen door, the front door shut behind him, and I saw his keys resting on the dresser.
What had just happened? Too many things were swirling around me, wrapping tighter around my heart, threatening to slice it into shreds.
I had to go after Taylor, had to see what the hell he was talking about.
Was this really it? Was all this really just a way to pass the time? Was it all really just for Emma?
And Emma.
I took my phone from my pocket and called her. But the call went straight to voicemail. I tried again, then left her a short message to call me. Except, after hanging up, I paced around the apartment.
Where to go? What to do? What the hell was going on?
I called Taylor then. We needed to sort this out. I needed him to tell me plainly what it was that he wanted. Except, he didn’t pick up either.
I hurried out of the apartment, down the stairs, and walked on foot to campus, following the path we usually took between my place and his.
He had a five-minute head start, but I walked faster.
Despite walking so fast, I didn’t catch up with him, so I went to the Bel House and found Jason, Bennet, and Peanut on the front lawn. “Has he come back?” I asked.
Jason frowned. “Taylor?”
“Yeah, is he back? He left my place fifteen minutes ago, and he’s not picking up his phone,” I said, frustration and fear mixing together, coiling into a heated wire that cut and cauterized everything it touched.
Jason exchanged a look with Bennet, then shook his head. “No, he left here an hour ago. Not even.”
“Fuck,” I spat, then thanked them as I rushed back to my apartment. I called Taylor, then called Emma, then wanted to scream with frustration. Neither picked up my phone calls. He was ignoring them, and Emma’s phone was totally off.
Just out of fear, out of blinding, devastating anxiety, I got into my car and drove to Emma’s place. It was the only place I could even hope to find her. I didn’t know where to look for Taylor now, not until he was back at the Bel House. And if Emma wasn’t home, I would freak out.
I pulled up in front of her building and rang her doorbell furiously until the speakerphone crackled. “Yeah? Who is it?” Emma’s voice rasped through the old speaker.
“It’s me,” I said. “Need to see you.”
Silence. It lasted a moment or two, but it felt like minutes. The door buzzed, and I barged in, rushing up the stairs instead of waiting for the old elevator and risking getting stuck in it.
I raised my fist to knock on Emma’s door when it opened. She stood in the doorway, curly hair wild around her head and shoulders, eyes a little tired, but her lips, despite traces of tightness around them, stretched into a smile. “So, you’ve heard the news.”
“Can I come in?” I asked.
Emma moved from the doorway and let me in, closing the door behind me. I walked into the apartment, wiping my sweaty palms on my pants. “I just heard about it. And I tried calling.”
She waved her hand off. “Michael’s been calling all morning, begging to see me. I turned my phone off.”
“Is he…is he going over the line?” I asked, fists closing.
Emma snorted and shook her head. “Don’t worry about him. He’s just crying and asking to talk.” She walked into her small kitchen and stirred something sizzling in the pan. “He hasn’t been around, and I doubt he’d do that.”
“I’ve been calling all morning,” I said, then felt bad immediately. “Sorry. I get it. I was just worried.”
After stirring the diced peppers and onions in the pan, Emma turned around and leaned against the kitchen counter. “I’m fine, Harrison. Embarrassed, humiliated, and, honestly, talking to you about it is the last thing I want.”
Her words took me aback.
“Think about it,” she said. “I left you. And, not that I’m bragging, I sort of broke your heart. Guess it’s karma.”
“I don’t think it’s karma,” I said. “I’m sorry this happened to you, Emma.”
She twirled away from me, busy with the pan. “Don’t be.”
A silence settled between us, though it wasn’t the good kind. I had nothing more to say. Nothing I said was very welcome. And besides, my heartbeat was thundering in my ears louder with every second I let Taylor wander further away from me.
“I just wanted you to know,” I said slowly, but Emma turned around again and looked into my eyes, her gaze hard and steel-like. “I wanted you to know that I’m here. Whatever you need. Even if it means being left alone.”
Emma held my gaze, then scanned my face briefly before nodding. “I appreciate that.”
We looked at each other, and I wondered, for a moment only, if any part of me still wanted this. Had all of me that had once been in love with her died already? Or had it been reborn? Rewritten?
I opened my mouth to say something, then closed it. There was nothing left to say. Nothing that she didn’t know already.
So Emma spoke instead. “I won’t pretend it’s not embarrassing to see you here, Harrison. The asshole cheated on me, and the first person to come running is the guy I left. I don’t…I don’t know why you came. But if it’s anything other than what you’re telling me, then…”
I shook my head and stopped her there. “There’s nothing more there. I’m only here because I was worried. I’ve moved on, but I still care for you. You were a big part of my life.”
“Even if I held you back from being who you are?” she asked.
I let out a small, quiet laugh. “You didn’t do that to me. We did it to each other.”
Emma relaxed a little, then crossed the small space between us and put her arms around my torso.
I hugged her back, inhaling the scent of roses in her hair. For a moment, I spared a thought for all the good memories we’d made together. Then, as she murmured a thank-you, we pulled apart, and I felt good about it.
I didn’t need more than this. I didn’t want more than this.
She was going to be okay. And I knew, at long last, what I’d been pretending not to know all these weeks. I loved, still. I loved hard and fast. But it wasn’t Emma I loved.
And it wasn’t Emma I saw myself growing old with.
“What about you?” she asked. “Are you okay?”
Well. Almost. But I didn’t want to talk about it. Because I knew where he was. I knew where he would be. Taylor was too romantic, too wonderful, too much like me to be anywhere else.
“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, I’m okay. Better than okay.”
Emma smiled.
“I need to go,” I told her. “If you’re sure you’re alright.”
“I will be,” she said.
I turned around on my heels, then paused. “This afternoon, look up at the sky. You’ll love what you see.”
Emma chuckled and said she would, and I walked out of her apartment, freer than I had been in months.
Confidence built up inside me as I decided what to do and where to go. I knew where Taylor would be because we were the two sides of the same coin. We were the two halves of one complete soul.
And he loved me. He had to. I could tell now, because the way he’d let go of me this morning was nothing other than devotion, nothing but love. You didn’t do that for someone you didn’t love deeply.
And it was high time I told him so.