Chapter 42
FORTY-TWO
Nash
The familiar smell of cinnamon wafts into Emmett’s bedroom, pulling me from the most pleasant sleep that I’ve had in a long time. It feels as if I’ve stepped into a time machine as I stretch my back and climb out of the bed, letting my nose lead me out to the kitchen.
Just as he did in the memory that I seem to be reliving, Emmett stands at the stove, carefully watching the pan in front of him while using one hand to dunk slices of bread into a messy egg mixture.
As I approach, I wrap my arms around his middle and rest my head on his shoulder, breathing in the smell of his aftershave and freshly-shampooed hair. “You’re up early,” I say, noting the time on the stove which reads at only a little past seven. “You’re cooking for me again.”
“I’m putting stuff in a pan and hoping it doesn’t kill you,” he corrects me as he drops a fresh slice of bread into the pan.
Chuckling, I move to the refrigerator and reach for a bottle of water. I empty it within a few large gulps and pull open the cabinet to toss the bottle into recycling.
“Emmett,” I say, staring into the garbage bin, “why is your mother’s letter in the trash?”
“Because it’s trash,” he answers. Turning to meet the incredulous look on my face, he tells me, “After I met her, I checked my email at least three times a day every day to see if she wrote to me. I emailed her the day I got home because the entire time I was in the— the whole time, I kept thinking that I wanted her to be there. She didn’t write me back.
After you went home, I checked over and over and over again, and she said nothing.
” He turns away from me, moving instead to pull a piece of toast from the stove and set it onto the already large stack of golden-brown slices.
“I emailed her again last night and it bounced, so…”
“Pretty boy, I am so sorry,” I tell him, and I mean that. My parents beg for me to let them back into my life so that they can get at my assets and resources, but all that Emmett wants from his mother is connection.
“It’s okay,” he says. “I mean, it’s not okay at all, but it’s for the best, right? Now it’s out of my hands.”
“It causes you pain.”
“Yeah,” he shrugs, “it does.”
Moving past me, he pours what’s left of the egg mixture into the garbage bin and directly onto the letter, as if making it unreadable will take away everything inside of it and everything inside of him that aches.
I have half the mind to find the woman’s address and show up on her doorstep.
I don’t have a clue what I would do when I got there, but I want to fix this for him.
I want her to feel what she’s done to him, just like I spent years wanting my own parents to feel what they’d done to me.
“Come on,” he says, knocking into my hip with his own, “I think I nailed it this time.”
Our meal is quiet this morning, with little conversation between us. He doesn’t want to talk about his mother anymore, and he doesn’t want to address the way that he’s feeling; which only serves to make me want to talk about it until he opens the door and lets me in. It’s hard not to worry.
“Does your place have a doggie door?” He finally asks. “I never looked.”
A smile crosses my face as I look at him. “There’s no ‘doggie door,’ but Moose has a doorman.”
“Clo goes out a lot.”
“He can manage,” I tell him.
As we work to clean our mess from the kitchen, I pull Emmett into my arms, tucking my face into the crook of his neck.
“I can’t tell you that it ever goes away, but it does get easier. It just takes time for that.” He squeezes me tightly and presses his lips to my cheek, and I move to cup his face in my hands. “I can stay today.”
“No,” he says with a shake of his head, “I’m fine. You told me you wouldn’t babysit.”
I did say that, and I meant it at the time, but as I look around his house, I can’t help my heart from racing at the thought of leaving him alone.
I find myself taking note of small things that I never would have considered to be dangerous in the past; the knife block on the counter, the toolbox that sits above his washing machine, the belts in his closet, the garden hose.
The kitchen and the spring air disappear from around us, replaced instead with cold air that bites at my skin and rough asphalt that digs into my knees.
I can feel the weight of Emmett’s limp body against mine, and my lungs find it difficult to fill.
My heart slams against the wall of my chest and I feel as though—
“Nash,” Emmett says as his hands move to cup my face. “Let’s watch a movie.”
“Now who’s babysitting who?” I tease, forcing a smile onto my face.
“No, you were right,” he tells me with a shake of his head. “There’s a difference.”
I’m not normally one to watch a movie at eight o’clock in the morning – in fact, I’m not normally one to watch a movie at all, but I find myself following Emmett to his couch and dropping down on top of his body with my own.
I lay with my chest against his as we watch a film which makes no sense, and he seems to mock it the entire time that it plays.
“Why does she not drive herself if she hates him so much?” I ask.
“Her car broke down,” he tells me as his fingers comb through my hair.
My brow furrows. “When did that happen?”
“No one knows,” he answers with a deep belly laugh that warms every inch of my skin. “It’s so goddamn stupid.”
Despite neither of us actually enjoying the movie, we stay exactly where we are, watching the entire through until the credits begin to roll across the screen.
“Do you remember the first time that we met?” I ask him.
“It was only a couple years ago,” he laughs, “of course I do.”
I shake my head. “No, you weren’t working with your father yet, it was at an event. You must have been, what, sixteen?”
“Seventeen,” he corrects as the memory comes back to him. “Dad had gone after someone for selling pictures of me to some gossip site and he didn’t want me alone at the house. I was so pissed at him for dragging me to that thing.”
“It showed,” I chuckle. “Do you remember the first and only thing that you said to me that night?” He shakes his head. “I must have been zoned out or staring in your direction, because you looked at me and said ‘what the fuck are you looking at, Sasquatch?’”
That beautiful, full laugh pours of of him so loudly and with so much force that it shakes my body, and I can’t help but to join in it.
“That tracks for me, honestly,” he says. “I was an asshole for a while.”
“You had fire.”
“And you’re made of it, menace,” he laughs.
·
As long as I’ve known Colt Fowler, I don’t believe that I’ve ever been inside any of his homes.
Stepping onto his marble flooring feels a bit like stepping into enemy territory, and for the first time, I feel as though I’m at a disadvantage.
The stack of greasy pizzas on my arm may as well be a pavise and my oxford a gambeson.
I follow Emmett into the kitchen, where his stepmother-friend is busy piping icing onto the tops of cookies.
“You made it!” She shouts, I assume to Emmett, until she rounds the island and wraps her arms around me. “I’m glad you came.”
“I— thank you,” I tell her, shooting Emmett a questioning look which he simply answers with a smile.
As I offer an uncomfortable pat to her back, she taps the pizza boxes and tells me, “Those can go on the counter over there, and those,” she says, gesturing toward the cases of beer and soda in Emmett’s hands, “can go in the fridge.”
As we each put our items in their designated spaces, Emmett presses his body close to mine and he taps me with his phone, showing me a text message that he sent his friend earlier this evening.
Emmett: Be sickeningly nice to him so Dad and Davis feel like pricks if they aren’t.
I let out a loud laugh as I read it, and I fight the urge to smack him on the ass.
“You tried,” he shrugs, “now they have to.”
“You know that I would be fine if they didn’t, right?”
“Quit with the ‘I don’t need friends’ crap,” he tells me. “You deserve friends. Come make some.”
Dragging me by the hand, he pulls me toward the main room of the house, where the rest of his family is waiting; most of whom I have unfortunately already met.
The Texan and his girlfriend sit at one end of a long couch, cozied up with one another.
I don’t miss the way that the Texan’s arm wraps more tightly around the woman as I step into the room.
Fowler sits in a large chair with an infant rested on his leg who is the spitting image of him, if not for the sandy ringlets tied into two ponytails at the top of her head.
His wife moves to settle into the seat next to him and his arm drapes itself around her as she presses the pad of her finger to the baby’s nose.
A younger girl is perched on the floor near the table until she sees Emmett approaching.
“Bubba!” Taking a running leap at him, she wraps her arms around his waist and he offers a loving squeeze in return. “Who’s he?” She asks, pointing toward me.
“This is Nash,” he tells her. “He’s my boyfriend.”
The little girl’s eyes flick between the two of us for a moment before she finally speaks. “You’re dating a boy?”
“Yep,” he nods.
“Cool,” the little girl shrugs. “Is he good at Pictionary?”
“I actually don’t know,” he answers.
“I’m very good,” I tell her.
“Nash,” Colt greets me with a nod.
He’s trying to be civil, but it’s obvious that he’s uncomfortable with me around his younger children.
I’m uncomfortable being around younger children.
I actively avoid them, in fact. The last infant that I was around was Tripp, and even then, I was cautious and I kept my distance unless I was playing a careful game with him.
Children are fragile; there’s too much inside of them and out that can be too easily broken, and I have never wanted to be a part of that.