Chapter Eight
Eight
He didn’t go to work. Nassir, his supervisor, probably didn’t believe him when he said he was feeling sick, though he hadn’t been lying entirely.
He did feel sick, just not from any kind of virus.
But it didn’t matter what his supervisor thought.
Maybe Nassir was currently staring at a wall, wondering what to do now that Will wasn’t in his life when he was supposed to be.
No, that would be crazy. This whole situation was insane.
Will couldn’t believe he was even entertaining the idea that he was in a book.
He kept trying to reason his way to a different conclusion, but he couldn’t think past the endless litany of “What the fucks” that filled his brain.
He drove home in his freshly tuned up car with his body on autopilot.
When he pulled into his driveway, he couldn’t truthfully say he remembered how he got there.
He saw Emmy sitting on his front step, staring into space.
Feeling numb all over, he got out of the car and approached her. She looked up at him and smiled sadly.
“Shouldn’t you be at work?”
“I called in sick.”
She nodded, gestured behind her. “You locked the door. I’m sorry. I know you wanted me to leave your life forever, but I didn’t know where else to go. These guys kept…”
Despite himself, he felt a surge of dread. What had happened to her? Was he going to have to go cave some guy’s face in? “These guys kept what? Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. It’s nothing like that.” She stood up, brushed off her yoga pants. Then she handed him a bundle of cloth. His brain was so scrambled, it took him a full ten seconds before he remembered he’d loaned her clothes that morning. “I kept having meet-cutes.”
“What?”
“Meet-cutes,” she repeated while he tucked the rolled-up sweatshirt under his arm and unlocked the front door.
“Hot guys kept coming up to me and trying to flirt. No matter where I went. There were two at once in the park. Then a dog knocked me down and the owner tried to get me to come back to his place. I escaped because a cop showed up out of nowhere. He drove me back here, and then he asked me out.”
“What’d you say?”
She gave him a look. “I said ‘No need for a date, big boy. Go ahead and show me your nightstick.’ What do you think I said? I told him no and got the hell out of his car.” She ran her hands agitatedly through her hair. “He says hi, by the way. Norton Graff. Apparently you know him.”
“Yeah. He’s a dick.”
When they were both inside, he closed and locked the door.
Then he just stood there and stared. He stared at his home and wondered if it was really his home.
He’d inherited it from his grandfather, and now he was standing there wondering if he had fond memories of a man who’d never existed.
Nothing he’d taken for granted yesterday could be trusted today.
“You alright?” Emmy asked quietly.
“I feel like I’m standing on a mountain of sand and it’s just… sliding away beneath my feet.”
He noted Emmy’s wince. She had been the one to open the door to the possibility that his world was fiction. He didn’t see any reason to blame her for this, but it was possible she blamed herself. She reached out and gently touched his arm.
“Do you have alcohol?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“Okay. Let’s drink and you can tell me about your day.”
He looked down at her, took a moment to focus, then nodded. “I’ve got tequila but no mixers.”
Emmy smiled. “My favorite recipe.”
*
They sat on the couch passing the bottle back and forth.
Glasses didn’t seem necessary right at that moment.
Will told Emmy about his encounter with Bright, how all of Emmy’s predictions had come true, right down to the “opposite of dim” comment.
When he got to the jellyfish conversation, she put her hand over her mouth.
At first, Will thought it was a gesture of shock and compassion.
But when he finished by telling her about Bright’s final comment and exit, a muffled snort escaped, revealing that she was trying to hold in her laughter. He gave her a look.
“Oh, come on! I’m sorry. Sincerely sorry. But I have to know where the jellyfish came from. Of all the random things to test her with…”
“It just popped into my head, okay?”
She let out a peal of tequila-soaked laughter. Will felt his lips twitch, then gave in and chuckled with her and at her. She did not hold her liquor well at all. He decided to defend himself.
“I wanted it to be weird. I needed to be absolutely sure that…” He paused, shook his head. “I just needed to be sure.”
Emmy calmed down enough to reach out and squeeze his knee. “For what it’s worth, I really am sorry. I didn’t do this on purpose.”
“I believe you. But… it’s done. Now I have to figure out how to keep living my life. Unless…”
“Unless?”
“I don’t know what will happen if you find a way out of… the book. Don’t know if I, y’know, existed before you came here. Might not exist again if you leave.”
“Fuck. I didn’t think about that.”
“Pretty much all I can think about,” Will muttered, taking another slug of tequila.
Emmy took the bottle back, sipped, shuddered. “If it helps, I have no idea how to get out of here. You might be stuck with me in… indef… indefibly? What is that word?”
“Indefinitely?”
“Yes!” She gestured at him with the bottle. “You might be stuck with me indefinly, and then you won’t have to worry about unexisting.”
“Sure. I’m willing to bet my existence on that.”
She nearly punched him when she tried to thrust the bottle back into his hands. He took it from her, helped himself to one last gulp, then capped the bottle. “I’m cutting you off.”
He got up to store the considerably lighter bottle of tequila on top of his fridge. Then, thinking ahead to the morning, he grabbed two cups and filled them to the brim with water.
“Nomisugita,” Emmy muttered as he wandered back in, a little more unsteady on his feet than he would have liked.
“No me what huh?” he asked. He set the glasses on the coffee table, then plopped down unceremoniously beside her. He could have sworn the couch made an “oof” sound. Or maybe that was him.
“No. Mi. Su. Gi. Ta,” she enunciated, a look of pure concentration on her face. He wished the look wasn’t absolutely adorable. All he wanted to do now was pull her into his arms and cuddle. He was not usually a cuddler. “It’s Japanese for ‘I drank too much.’”
“You can’t pronounce ‘indefinitely’ but you remember how to say an entire sentence in Japanese?”
“Fewer syllables in Japanese.”
He hated that she had him counting on his fingers. “It’s the same. I think.” He looked at her, holding his fingers out still. “Isn’t it? Say your thing again.” She repeated it, and he counted as she spoke. “It’s the same.”
“Fine! Whatever. Japanese is just easier right now.”
“How much do you know?”
“I know enough to get by. Used to speak it more when I was a kid. But I still know the important stuff. Like… basic conversational stuff. I can say ‘Watch out!’ and I can tell someone I’m from America and I can ask where the bathroom is. Everything else is incremental.”
Will considered the three sentences and decided they were pretty useful in any language. “I think you mean incidental.”
“Blame the tequila.”
He toasted her with his water and drank half the glass. When she only stared at hers, he put it in her hands.
“You’ll thank me later.”
She shrugged and drank more slowly than he had. They sat in silence for a couple minutes. Will stared at his TV. If he turned it on now, would it even work? Or would his newfound self-awareness make the TV play only static? He was afraid to check. Maybe tomorrow he’d try to browse Netflix.
“This one guy in the coffee shop used the adjective ‘stellar,’” Emmy said into the silence. “Who the hell says ‘stellar’ anymore?”
“I have no idea. He sounds like a tool.”
“He probably was. He sure didn’t pick up on my fuck off signals,” Emmy grumbled.
“Maybe you need to work on clearer fuck off signals.”
“I don’t know. I’m pretty good at those already. I think he was just…” She wiggled her fingers. “Bespelled or something. The romance novel forced him to try to be in a romance.”
“Or he saw a hot chick in a coffee shop and decided to try his luck,” Will suggested.
“I was wearing a man’s sweatshirt, oversized sandals, and duck pants.”
“And still.”
She waved this away. “Anyway. I don’t think I’m escaping this book tonight, so um… can I bunk here? I’ll sleep on the couch.”
Will sighed. “I’ve got a spare bedroom. Come on, I’ll get you a toothbrush. You can borrow a shirt to sleep in if you want.”
*
As Emmy snuggled down under the covers in Will’s guest room, she welcomed the weighty pull of sleep. Maybe this really had been a dream and she would wake up at home where she belonged. Then Will would be rid of her. He could…
Her eyes shot open. He could… what? She’d ended up in Will’s house after falling asleep.
Would she return to her own bed by falling asleep again?
Would that make Will cease to exist as he had feared?
What would that make her? Not a murderer.
Not that. But… just the thought of being responsible for his existence—or lack thereof—made her feel sick to her stomach.
More sick than she already felt after downing half a bottle of tequila.
Will needed to know her suspicions. It was unfair of her to keep them to herself, knowing she might wake up in the morning having ended him in her sleep.
She was halfway out of bed when she paused, reconsidered.
Should he know? Or would keeping it to herself be more… God… merciful?