20. Emily
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Emily
It starts over breakfast, which is the stupid part.
He made eggs. He’s reading something on his phone, coffee going cold next to him, and I’m pushing the eggs around my plate, and I’ve been like this for three days now.
Tangled up. There’s a knot in my chest that’s been getting bigger since the other morning, since you’re really good to me fell out of my mouth instead of the thing he deserved.
I can’t undo it. I can’t fix it. I can’t stop turning it over, either.
I lie awake at night doing the math on us.
Two months. Two months out of a marriage and I’m already here, in his house, in his bed, half in love and scared out of my mind.
I keep asking myself the same questions on a loop.
Is this real, or is he just the warm thing I grabbed on my way out of a cold house?
Am I choosing him, or running? Are we moving so fast we’re going to burn the whole thing down before it has a chance to be anything?
I want it to be real. That’s the part that’s killing me. I want this so badly I can’t tell if the wanting is trustworthy.
“You okay?” he asks, not looking up. “You’ve been quiet.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not eating.”
“I said I’m fine, Richard.”
He looks up then, and there’s nothing wrong with his face, it’s just patient, a little worried, and that’s the thing that cracks me open. Because he’s so careful with me, so endlessly gentle, and I don’t know how to hold it, and the not-knowing has been building in me for days with nowhere to go.
“Can I ask you something?” I say, and my voice is already shaking. “And you have to be honest.”
“Always.”
“Are we going too fast?”
He sets the phone down. “What do you mean?”
“I mean...” And it all comes up at once, faster than I can sort it, two months of it.
“I mean it’s been two months. Two months, Richard.
I was somebody’s wife eight weeks ago. And now I’m here.
I sleep in your bed, I’ve got a whole shelf of books you bought me, and I can’t tell what any of it is.
I can’t tell if I love you or if I just love that it’s safe here.
If I’m picking you or if I’m just running and you happened to be standing there with the door open.
” I’m not yelling. It’s worse than yelling, it’s shaking.
“And if it’s the second one, then we’re built on nothing.
One day I’ll wake up and figure that out, too late to matter, and I’ll have done the exact thing to you that terrifies me most.”
“Emily...”
“And it’s all so fast.” I can’t stop now that it’s started.
“People who do this, who jump straight from one person to the next, it never works, everybody knows it never works, you’re supposed to be alone for a while, figure out who you are.
I skipped all of that. I went from my mom’s house to Henry’s to yours, I’ve never once just been a person by myself, and what if that’s the thing that wrecks us?
What if we’re good right now but it’s too soon and we don’t stand a chance because I didn’t do the part where I learn to stand on my own first? ”
He’s quiet for a second, taking it in. “Is that what you think this is? Rebound?”
“I don’t know!” And there it is, the real thing, the thing under all of it.
“That’s what I’m telling you. I don’t know.
I want it to be real so bad I can’t trust myself to know if it is.
I’m twenty-five. I’ve been somebody’s something my whole life, and I don’t know how to tell the difference between loving you and just needing somewhere to be.
” My eyes are burning. “And you’re so patient about all of it.
No clock, take your time. I can’t even argue, because you’re being so good, and that just makes it worse.
How am I supposed to know if I chose this when I live in your house, cash your checks, and have nowhere else to go? ”
I run out of air. The kitchen goes quiet. I’m braced for him to be hurt, or to argue, or to do the thing Henry would do and make me feel insane for saying any of it.
He doesn’t. He just looks at me for a long moment, and then he says, careful and low, “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“You’re not wrong.” He rubs a hand down his face, and he looks tired in a way I haven’t seen before, like I’ve said something he’s been thinking himself and hoping I wouldn’t.
“I’ve known the whole time it wasn’t fair.
You’re in my house. You work for my company.
The money, the job, all of it runs through me.
You could love me completely and you’d still never be sure, because you can’t test it from inside all that.
There’s no clean way to know if you’re choosing me or just choosing the safest room in the building.
” He exhales. “And I can’t fix that by loving you harder.
That just makes the room nicer. It doesn’t make it yours. ”
He’s quiet a beat, and then he says the rest of it, the part that’s clearly been sitting on him.
“And I’ll be honest with you, because you asked me to.
It crossed my mind. That first night, at the lake.
You’d just left your husband, you had a bag with your whole life in it, you had nowhere to go.
I knew you were about as vulnerable as a person can get.
” He won’t quite look at me. “And I told myself I’d be careful, I’d go slow, I wouldn’t take advantage.
But the truth is I’d waited ten years for you to walk back into a room, and when you finally did, I wanted you so badly I stopped asking whether the timing was fair to you.
I just grabbed. I blew right past the part of me that knew better, because I was terrified if I waited for the right moment I’d lose you again.
So if you’re standing there wondering whether you moved too fast, you should know you didn’t do it alone.
I pulled. I knew you were in no state to be pulled, and I did it anyway. ”
It’s not what I expected. I expected him to talk me out of the fear. Instead he just handed me proof it isn’t all in my head, and that settles me more than any reassurance could have.
“So what do we do?”
He’s quiet a second, and I can see it costing him before he even says it.
“I think you should go stay somewhere that isn’t mine.
Just for a while.” His voice stays gentle, but his jaw is tight.
“Somewhere I didn’t pay for. Where you can figure out who you are when you’re not in my orbit.
You said it yourself, you’ve never done it, not once your whole life.
Maybe you have to, before any of the rest of it can be real. ”
“So you want me to leave?”
“I’m telling you to go find out what you want, where I can’t put my thumb on the scale.
” He shakes his head slowly. “I’m not throwing you out, Em.
God, the opposite. I’m trying not to be one more man who keeps you somewhere because it’s easier than letting you choose.
If you stay because you’ve got nowhere else to go, we’ll never know.
And I’d rather lose you to the truth than keep you on a technicality. ”
And the worst part is I can feel how much I want to argue.
I want to tell him he’s wrong, that I do know, that I’m sure, that I’ll stay and prove it.
But the wanting is exactly the problem. I can’t tell if I want to stay because I love him or because leaving is terrifying and his house is warm and I have spent my whole life choosing the warm option over the brave one.
The not-knowing is the thing eating me alive, and the only way out of it is through the one door I’ve never once walked through. Alone.
“I do want to make this work,” I say, and my voice breaks on it. “I need you to know that. This isn’t me deciding it’s over. I’m coming back. I just have to do this part first.”
“I’m counting on it.” Something in his face cracks, just slightly. “That’s the only way I can let you walk out that door. I trust you to come back if it’s real. I have to. It’s the only version of this where either of us ever sleeps again.”
***
I pack a bag in twenty minutes. It doesn’t take longer than that, which is its own quiet horror, that my whole self still fits in a bag in twenty minutes, that I never fully unpacked even here.
Clothes. Toiletries. The paperback I’m halfway through.
I leave the books he bought me on their shelf.
I leave the coat in the closet and the clothes with the tags still on and every single thing he gave me, because if I’m going to find out who I am without him, I’m not taking his things to do it.
I stand in the doorway of the room a second before I go.
It’s a nice room. It’s the nicest room I’ve ever slept in.
And I’m walking out of it with a duffel bag and a paperback like the place is on fire.
The truth is it is. Except the fire’s in me, it’s the fear, and you can’t outrun that by parking yourself somewhere comfortable.
I’ve tried. I did it for two years with Henry. Look how that went.
He’s by the counter when I come down, both hands wrapped around a mug he isn’t drinking from. He looks like I feel. Wrecked and holding it together by main force.
“Tara’s?” he asks.
“Yeah.”
“Good. She’ll take care of you.” He says it and means it, and that’s the worst part of all, that even now, even kicking me out of his life at my own demand, he’s glad I have somewhere soft to land.
“Richard.”
“Don’t apologize.” He shakes his head. “Don’t explain it, don’t take it back, don’t do the thing where you talk yourself into staying because leaving feels mean.
Just go figure out what you want. That’s the whole assignment.
That’s the only thing I want from you, which, look at that, turns out I do want something from you after all. ”