27. Emily
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Emily
Three weeks later Richard takes me to a SunCove charity thing, the kind with a string quartet and champagne in glasses so thin you’re scared to hold them, a ballroom full of people who’d rather be anywhere else pretending they’re thrilled to be here.
I’m better at these than I used to be. The first one, months ago, I stood against a wall all night certain everyone could tell I didn’t belong.
Tonight I’ve got Richard’s hand resting warm at the small of my back, and I know where I stand, and I can work a room of strangers without my pulse climbing into my throat.
Funny what it does for a person, being wanted out loud instead of tolerated.
Which is exactly when I see Henry.
He’s at the bar, alone, a drink he isn’t drinking sweating in his hand. The suit I recognize, except it doesn’t fit him anymore, hangs off the shoulders like it belongs to a bigger man, which I guess it used to. He’s scanning the room, and I know that scan. He’s looking for me.
“Don’t know how he got in here,” Richard says, low, following my eyes. His body goes still beside me. “You don’t have to talk to him. Say the word and he’s gone.”
“No.” I watch Henry turn his head, still hunting. “I want to talk to him.”
“Em.”
“I want him to see me.” I turn so I can look at Richard. “Fine. Better than fine. I want him to see he didn’t break me. I need that. Just once.”
He studies my face. I can see what it’s costing him to not just walk over there himself, the want to handle it for me sitting right under his skin, and I can see him choose to let me do this instead. He brings my hand up and kisses the back of it, quick, in front of the whole room.
“Okay. Go. I’ll be right here,” he says. “You so much as glance at me, I’m coming. But this is yours. I know it’s yours.”
“I know.” And the thing is, I do know. That’s the whole difference. With Henry I never once stood somewhere knowing a man had my back and would still let me fight my own fight. “I won’t need you to.”
“I know you won’t.” He says it like he’s proud of it. “Doesn’t mean I’ll be standing more than thirty feet away.”
I cross the room before I can talk myself out of it.
Henry sees me coming when I’m a few feet out, and his face does this terrible thing, runs through about four feelings in two seconds. Hope first, naked and embarrassing. Then fear. Then some wet hopeful longing that turns my stomach.
“Emily.” He says it like a man reaching for a rope. “God. You came over.”
“Henry.”
“You look...” His eyes go over me, the dress, all of it. “You look incredible.”
“I look happy,” I say. “Because I am.”
He flinches. Actually flinches, like I touched a bruise. “Can we go somewhere? Somewhere we can talk, just us.”
“No. We can talk right here. You’ve got a minute.”
“A minute.” He laughs, shaky. “Two years and I get a minute.”
“You’re down to about fifty seconds now.”
“I miss you.” It comes out in a rush, like he’s been holding it behind his teeth. “Every single day, Emily. I wake up and you’re not there, the place is wrong, and I can’t stand it. I miss you so much I can’t breathe some mornings.”
“You have Carmen,” I say. “And the baby. You wake up to them.”
“That’s not the same and you know it.”
For one second something honest moves across his face.
“I knew you were lonely in that house,” he says, quieter.
“I watched you get smaller every year and I liked it, because small was easy.” It’s the truest thing he’s ever said to me, and for a heartbeat I almost respect him for it.
Then I don’t answer fast enough, and the honesty curdles back into the snarl.
He sets the drink down, leans in, switches tracks. I’ve seen him do this a hundred times, the gear-change when one approach isn’t working.
“You know what you did, right?” His voice changes, picks up an edge. “What you set off. You went and told Ciara. You blew up that woman’s whole marriage.”
So that’s what he came here to do. I almost laugh. “I told Ciara the truth. That’s all I did.”
“You ruined her life, Emily. She kicked John out, she’s filing, the family’s in pieces, and you just walked in and blew it up like it was nothing to you.”
“Her husband cheated on her for over twenty years with my mother. That’s what ruined her marriage, Henry, and it happened long before I said a word.
I didn’t do that to her. They did.” My voice stays level.
“All I did was stop letting her be the only one at the table who didn’t know. The way I was for two years.”
“And it set Carmen off, you happy about that?” He’s getting louder. “She’s a wreck. Her own mother won’t hardly speak to her now. Ciara comes by and barely looks at her, just takes the baby for the afternoon and hands him back without a word. You did that. You took her family apart.”
“Carmen did that.” The certainty in it surprises even me.
“Carmen had a baby with a married man and lied to her own mother’s face about it.
If Ciara can’t look at her now, that’s Carmen’s bill coming due, not mine.
And don’t stand here and ask me to feel bad that my mother finally cost somebody something.
I hate that woman for what she did to Ciara.
Twenty years she smiled at her best friend and took her husband on the side.
If there’s anybody here I’ve got no mercy left for, it’s Daphne, not the woman she lied to. ”
He blinks, thrown, because he came loaded for a sad girl who’d flinch, and he’s getting somebody who won’t.
“Fine.” He spits it. “Run off with your money man. Play house in his mansion.” He leans in, and his mouth twists into the thing he thinks will land. “You think he’s going to keep you? You really think that? A guy like that, with you?”
I wait, because I already know what’s coming. He’s said it before, in the lawyer’s office, almost word for word. Carmen said it before that, at the reunion. They must hand it around like a recipe.
“Go on,” I say. “Get bored of you, trade you in, back to nothing in six months. That one? You and Carmen and my mother have all read me that exact line. You should pick a new one. That one’s worn out.”
He flushes, dark and ugly, caught.
“At least I owned my mistakes,” he says. “At least I’m man enough to stand here and say it.”
“You haven’t owned one single thing tonight.
” I’m almost gentle about it. “Everything’s still somebody else’s fault.
Me telling Ciara, Carmen falling apart, the baby you didn’t want, my mother, the lot of it.
Never you.” I take a breath, and it’s the easiest one I’ve taken in two years.
“You were never man enough, Henry. Not for me, not for Carmen, not for that kid screaming in your house right now. You wanted the whole life and none of the work, and a wife in the corner being grateful while you took it. I watched you play the good husband for two years. I know every move you’ve got. And I’m done watching the show.”
He’s breathing hard now, and there’s nothing left in his face but the meanness.
“You’ll regret this,” he says.
“I really won’t.”
“You will. When you’re sitting alone with nothing, when it all falls apart, you’re going to think about what you threw away here.”
“What I had with you wasn’t worth keeping. You made sure of that yourself.” I step back. “We’re done. Take care of your son, Henry. He didn’t ask for either of you.”
I turn and walk away.
“Emily.” Then louder, when I don’t stop. “Emily!”
I keep walking.
“You’ll come crawling back!” He’s shouting now, and heads are turning, the champagne crowd going quiet to watch the man come apart by the bar.
“He’s going to drop you the second something shinier walks by!
And when he does, don’t come looking for me, because I won’t be there to catch you! You hear me?”
I hear him. I just don’t feel it. Three weeks ago, three months ago, that voice could still get under my skin and twist. Now it’s just noise, a man yelling about a mess he made himself, and I walk through it and leave it behind me.
I’m halfway across the floor when Carmen shoves through the crowd, straight past me, then doubling back when she clocks that I’m the one Henry’s been shouting after.
“I knew it.” She’s breathing hard, eyes wild, and she looks as bad as Mrs. Potts said, gray and worn down to nothing, but the meanness is all still there. “I fucking knew he came here for you. I followed him from the house.”
“Carmen...”
“Don’t.” She rounds on me. “You won’t let him go, will you. You’ve got your rich new man and you still can’t stand that Henry’s mine. You lure him out here, you bat your eyes at him, you keep him on a string just to torture me.”
“I didn’t ask him to come.”
“Bullshit. You’ve always wanted what’s mine.” Her voice climbs, ridiculous, untethered. “You probably called him. You’re two-timing that billionaire of yours and using my Henry to do it, don’t think I don’t see exactly what you are.”
I don’t even get to answer, because Henry’s there now, grabbing her arm.
“Carmen, shut up, you’re making a scene.”
“I’m making a scene?” She rips her arm out of his grip and wheels on him, and just like that I’m not even in it anymore.
“You drove across the whole goddamn city to chase your ex-wife and I’m the one making a scene?
I’m home with your screaming kid all day and you put on a suit to come crawl after her? ”
“I had business here...”
“You don’t have shit here, Henry, it’s her billionaire’s party, you came for her!” She shoves him in the chest, hard. “You’re still in love with her. Say it. You’ve been in love with her this whole time and I’m just the dumb bitch who had your baby.”
“Jesus Christ, Carmen, would you trust me for five fucking minutes?” His face is purple now. “You follow me everywhere. You go through my phone. I can’t take a piss without you accusing me of something.”
“Because you’re a liar! You lied to her face the whole time, why the hell would I believe one word that comes out of your mouth?”
“Oh, now you give a shit about the lying. That’s rich, coming from you.”
“Don’t you dare turn this on me...”
“You knew exactly what you were doing the whole time and you loved it. Now you want to play the victim?”
They’ve forgotten me completely. The whole ballroom’s watching the two of them tear strips off each other by the bar, and I just stand there, and I wait for it to feel like anything.
It doesn’t. These two people detonated my whole life, and watching them now is like watching strangers fight on a train platform.
Henry scrubs a hand down his face. “Where’s the baby right now? Who the hell’s got the baby, Carmen?”
“With my mother.” She says it and her voice cracks on it, the fury going wobbly. “She came and took him for the night. She’d barely look at me. She just wanted him, not me.”
And there it is. Ciara, who can’t stand the sight of her own daughter now, showing up only for that little boy. Nobody in this family gets to keep what they wanted. Not one of them.
I turn and walk away from both of them.
Richard’s already moving toward me when I reach him, his eyes going past me to the two of them still going at it by the bar, that stillness in him that means he’s weighing whether to step in. I put a hand flat on his chest.
“Don’t. Let them have each other. It’s the worst thing that could happen to either of them.”
“You okay?”
“I’m great, actually.” And I mean it, all the way down. “Ready to go?”
“Whenever you are.”
I take his arm. Behind us Henry’s still going, cracking on the high notes, but it’s already getting smaller, already turning into something I’ll have trouble remembering by morning.
In the car Richard doesn’t start it right away. He just looks at me in the dark, the valet lights sliding across his face, and there’s something in how he’s looking that makes me go still.
“What?”
“Nothing. I just like looking at you.” He says it plain, no charm on it. “I spent a lot of years not getting to.”
“You’re staring, Reed.”
“I’m aware.” He doesn’t stop. “Did you get what you needed in there?”
“Yeah.” I let my head fall back against the seat. “Closure, I think. He’s exactly who I always knew he was, underneath. A scared little man who’d take everybody around him down before he’d say one true thing about himself.”
“For what it’s worth.” He reaches over and takes my hand, lifts it, presses his mouth to my knuckles, and holds it there a beat longer than he needs to. “I’ve never been so proud of anybody in my life. Just for being exactly who you are.”
“You’re going to make me cry in a parking lot.”
“Good. Then I’d get to be the one who’s there when you do.”
He’s still holding my hand. His thumb drags slow across the inside of my wrist. His eyes drop to my mouth, and the air in the car changes all at once, fast and total, same as it always does with us. I stop thinking about Henry. I stop thinking about anything.
“Richard.”
“Come here.” It’s low, almost rough.
I’m already moving. I get a hand into his collar and pull.
He meets me halfway over the console, kissing me like he’s been holding it back the whole night, one hand sliding into my hair, the other splaying warm across my back to drag me closer.
I knock the gearshift with my knee and don’t care.
He makes a low sound against my mouth and tips me half into his lap, and the careful, patient man he is in front of other people is nowhere in this car.
This is the version only I get, the one who can’t keep his hands still, who kisses like he’s making up for ten lost years all at once.
When we break apart I’m breathing hard and so is he, his forehead against mine, his hand still curved at the back of my neck like he can’t quite make himself let go.
“We’re parked right out front,” I manage.
“I’m aware.” He doesn’t move. His thumb strokes the line of my jaw. “Tell me you love me again. I want to hear it without that man’s voice anywhere near it.”
“I love you.” I say it right against his mouth.
“I know.” He kisses me again, slower this time, then pulls back just enough to look at me. “Let’s go home.”
He settles me back into my seat, takes a second to get his breath, and starts the car with my lipstick smudged across his mouth and absolutely no intention of fixing it.
I lace my fingers through his on the console and watch the city slide by, and I don’t think about Henry again, not once, not for the rest of the night.