When We Finally Meet
My chest feels as if it might cave in. I pull in a shaky breath and stand, making my way to the bedroom door with the letter clutched tightly in my hand, and I pull it open.
“My middle name is Christopher. I am the oldest of five, only because I beat Edie out by four minutes, and I never let her forget that,” I tell Emmett as I reach the living room.
“After the two of us came Brody, then Tripp, and Graham wasn’t born until after I was gone.
My parents are Molly and Jefferson.” I step closer to him, forcing myself to hold eye contact as I speak.
“You never asked what my favorite opera is because you already knew the answer and you didn’t need to ask.
” I hold the letter up in front of me. “And if this had been how you told me all of these things, I never would have forgiven you.”
“For saying it in a letter? I tried to—”
“For dying, Emmett.” I scrub a hand down my face.
“If you thought that I was a bad person before…it would have broken me. I don’t think you can possibly understand what it felt like to see you lying in the street; or to hold the limp body of a man who was so full of life and know that he was dying and that I could do nothing about it but hope that help got to him in time,” I choke.
“All that you would have left me with is ‘all my love’?”
“Nash…” He stands, dropping the TV remote onto the couch behind him as he moves toward me. My hands rest on either side of his neck, my forehead pressing against his. “I’m sorry.”
“You made me want to be a better man than I was,” I tell him with my voice trembling. “You are the only person who matters to me at all. Don’t ever do this again, because I’m not sure that I won’t go with you the next time.”
“I’m sorry,” he echoes as his arms envelop me.
Mine wrap around him in return, clutching to the warmth of his body as if it’s a lifeline, and I hold tight to him for several long moments, resting my lips against his head, before finally speaking again.
“I’m sorry that I didn’t answer the phone.”
When we finally move to his bedroom, what feels like hours later, I don’t sleep.
Not right away, at least. I watch Emmett as he drifts off; I listen to the sound of him breathing and I rest my hand on his burned and bruised chest to feel the rise and fall of it as his lungs fill, the steady beat of his heart thumping away beneath my palm.
I feel the warmth of his skin and I tell myself over and over again that he is alive.
I remind myself that we’re in his bed, not on the vomit-soaked asphalt of a freezing street.