7. Emily #2
I sit back down on the bunk and stare at the wall.
Somewhere in there the shaking turns into something else, and that something finally spills over.
I curl onto my side on the scratchy quilt and let it come, ugly and silent, fists pressed to my mouth so the whole cabin row doesn’t hear me come apart.
I’m not crying over Henry. I figured that out somewhere in the last few days, that the marriage was already a corpse I’d been carrying around.
I’m crying over her. Over the mother I kept hoping I’d get and never did, the one who was always going to pick Carmen, every single time, no matter what it cost me.
That’s how Tara finds me, an hour later. She doesn’t ask a single question. She just toes off her shoes, climbs up onto the narrow bunk behind me, wraps both arms around me, and holds on.
“She knew,” I get out, when I can talk. “The whole time. And she still picked Carmen. Of course she did. God forbid she pick me once in her life.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“She’s going to tell him. I know she is. She’ll call Henry the second we hang up and tell him I’m here, that I want a divorce, and he’s going to...” The thought closes my throat.
“Make a scene? Show up?” Tara’s voice goes flat and fierce against the back of my neck. “Let him. There’s a whole crowd of witnesses here and a best friend who will absolutely catch a charge for you. He can try whatever he wants.”
I laugh, wet and broken. “You cannot catch a charge for me.”
“Watch me. I’m small but I’m fast and I have access to sedatives.”
That gets a real laugh out of me, surprised and ragged, and she squeezes me tighter, pleased with herself.
“There she is,” she murmurs. “Okay. We’re not lying in this cabin all night letting your mom’s garbage rattle around in your head. You didn’t do anything wrong, Em. None of this is on you. And anybody who tries to tell you different can deal with me and my sedatives.”
We lie there a long time, until my breathing evens out and the tears dry stiff on my face. Eventually she gets up, finds me a glass of water, makes me drink the whole thing, and tells me to wash my face and put on something that doesn’t smell like crying.
“There’s a mixer tonight,” she says. “Bad wine, worse small talk. We don’t have to stay long. But you are not spending tonight thinking about her. Deal?”
“Deal.”
The mixer is loud and bright, exactly as awkward as promised, and I last about an hour before I need air. I slip out the side door of the lodge onto a deck over the lake. The night hits me cool and pine-sweet. I brace my hands on the railing and just breathe.
“You’re getting good at sneaking off.”
I don’t even startle. I knew it was him before he spoke, the same prickle on the back of my neck as weather turning. Richard leans on the railing beside me, close, not touching, a beer hanging from two fingers.
“It’s a gift,” I say. “How long have you been lurking?”
“Long enough to watch you white-knuckle that railing.” He studies the side of my face, not pushing, just there. “You okay? You look like someone ran over your dog.”
I told myself I wasn’t going to get into it.
Then I look at him, at the open patient quiet of him, and it just comes out.
“I found out my mom knew about my husband and Carmen this whole time. The baby, all of it. And she’s twisting it into my fault, like if I’d been a better wife he wouldn’t have strayed.
And then she had the nerve to tell me I should be the bigger person and work things out. How fucked up is that?”
He’s quiet a second, jaw tight. When he finally talks he doesn’t tell me it’ll be okay or that she didn’t mean it.
“She doesn’t deserve you,” he says simply. “Never did, by the sound of it.”
The kindness undoes me a little, and I have to look back out at the water. “I keep waiting to feel free. I got out, I should feel free. Mostly I just feel like crap.”
“Yeah. That tracks.” He bumps my shoulder with his. “You don’t have to feel anything in particular right now. It only happened, what, this morning? Give it a minute.”
“That’s annoyingly reasonable for a guy who still won’t tell me what he does for a living.”
“I contain depths.” His mouth curves. “Mysterious, remember?”
“Infuriating, I think was the word.”
“Po-tay-to.” He turns so his hip rests against the railing, facing me now, and the easy teasing in his face softens into something else, something that makes my pulse stumble.
“For what it’s worth, sunshine? Your mom’s an idiot.
Anybody who picks Carmen over you is an idiot.
So don’t go believing a word she says about you. ”
For once in my life I don’t have a single smart thing to say back. There’s just the sudden roar of my own heartbeat, way too loud in my ears.
I turn to look at him and he’s already looking at me.
The air between us goes thick and warm, impossible.
The deck noise fades to nothing. He shifts closer, or maybe I do, I honestly can’t tell anymore, until there’s barely a breath of space between us.
His eyes drop to my mouth and stay there.
Every nerve in my body stands up at once and pays attention.
“Emily,” he says, low, and it isn’t a question. It’s almost a warning, like he’s handing me the chance to step back, to be smart, to remember I’m a married woman in the middle of detonating my whole life.
I don’t step back. I tip up, just slightly, the smallest surrender, close enough that I feel the warmth of him against my lips before they even touch...
The deck door bangs open and a knot of drunk classmates spills out laughing, and we jerk apart like teenagers caught behind the bleachers.
Richard breathes out a laugh, rough, and drags a hand down his face. I press my fingers to my mouth, to the kiss that didn’t quite happen, my whole body lit up and humming and furious at the interruption.
“Bad timing,” he says.
“The worst,” I agree, and I mean it more than he knows.
He walks me back to my cabin in the dark, neither of us saying much, the almost still crackling in the air between us.
At the door he tucks a loose curl behind my ear, lets his hand linger one second too long against my jaw, and says goodnight in a voice that does absolutely nothing to help me sleep.
And I don’t, much. I lie awake in the dark listening to Tara breathe, replaying the half-inch of space that didn’t close, telling myself I dodged something stupid and not believing a word of it.
I have no idea that by tomorrow afternoon, stupid is going to be the least of my problems.