20. Emmy
My makeup is done and I’m in the middle of getting dressed when someone rings the doorbell.
I pull on my robe and run down the stairs with Snowflake at my heels. Liam stands there, looking even bigger and broader than he did the day before. Maybe it’s something about the way he fills the entire doorframe. Maybe it’s just that I’m currently wearing panties, a bra, and a pretty sheer robe.
His eyes run over me, his nostrils flaring before he quickly looks away. “Sorry,” he says. “You’re normally ready by now. I was just letting you know I can drive you down to your car when you want to get to work.”
“Oh,” I reply, suddenly short of words. “You…don’t have to do that.”
“Were you planning to hitchhike?”
I roll my eyes. “No. I…”
I was assuming I’d call a car, having forgotten the nearest Uber or Lyft is a solid thirty minutes away. “A ride would be great. I’m almost ready.”
I quickly throw on a pencil skirt and blouse and then he leads me to his truck. “How does anyone climb into this thing?” I ask.
“You just put your foot on the floorboard and hoist yourself up. You did it yesterday.”
I huff in frustration. “I wasn’t wearing a skirt yesterday. I mean, how the hell do you date in this thing? Do you only go out with Amazons?”
“Maybe I just don’t date women who whine about everything,” he replies, and before I’ve even formed a comeback, his hands are around my waist and I’m lifted into the air.
“I don’t whine about everything,” I mutter as he deposits me in my seat. “And you shouldn’t lift someone without even asking first. I’m not a pet.”
He laughs to himself. “You and I must have different definitions of whining.”
He climbs into the driver’s seat and glances at me as he looks over his shoulder to reverse. “I assume your mom survived yesterday without you?”
“She was so busy talking about her doctor, the dreamy Harold Sossaman, that I’m not sure if she noticed I was gone. The guy is barely older than me, and she talks about him like their engagement is imminent.”
He grins. “On the bright side, if she marries a doctor, you won’t have to worry about her survival.”
“I thought we’d established yesterday that I’m already not worried about her survival. Though I probably should stop saying that aloud in case something does happen to her.”
“I’ve been documenting it,” he replies. “So I think you’re screwed.”
I laugh, surprised to discover we’ve already reached the bridge. The ride went weirdly fast.
“You can just drop me off at the store,” I tell him. “Thanks for the ride. I guess I owe you cookies or something.”
He gives me a crooked smile. “From what you’ve implied about your cooking ability, plus your thoughts on poisoning competitors, let’s just call it even.”
I open the truck door and carefully place one heel on the running board. Before I can even lower the other one, he’s come around to my side of the car and is wrapping his hands around my waist.
For a moment we are standing face-to-face, too close. My gaze meets his, and my breath holds. I don’t know precisely what I want to happen right now, but I know I want it to be something.
He sighs. It gusts against my forehead as he releases me.
“Thanks again,” I say, stepping away, needing distance. My pulse is racing, and I am not a pulse-racing kind of girl. I want to close my eyes and focus on the memory of that lush lower lip of his. I want to pull him down close enough to sink my teeth into it.
I move toward the store, but he keeps walking with me. “I think I can handle walking away on my own.”
“I’m looking at your floor, smart-ass.”
He’d be a lot more likable if he wasn’t right all the damn time.
I enter and he follows me inside, flipping on the lights and scanning the room with a growing frown. “How much are you paying Gary for this bullshit?” he asks.
“Putting in the floors?” I ask. “About six hundred total. Three hundred and fifty grand for the floors.”
“Total footage?”
“Twenty thousand square feet. And before you say anything, yes, I know he’s robbing me blind. But I’m on a deadline, and he’s the only one who said he could get it done.”
“He installed the subfloor wrong,” says Liam. “Which means you’re stuck with an uneven floor unless you tear all this shit out and start again.”
“I don’t have time to start again,” I growl. “The fixtures are arriving soon.”
He rubs a hand over his face, and his shoulders sag. “I’ll do it. Get your money back from Gary. If he gives you any shit, talk to me.”
“But…”
“Do you have a better option?” he asks.
Well, no. But working in a small space with Liam Doherty feels like a recipe for disaster.
I sigh heavily. “Do you have time to look at the plans? They’re back in the office.”
He nods. “Yeah, if we can do it over breakfast. Grab the plans, and we’ll go down to the diner.”
I stiffen.
Paul Bellamy could be there. He could call me “Emmy the Semi” or mention one of the other banner moments of my adolescence—the disastrous homecoming dance, the time they tripped me walking onstage to receive an award and my dress tore in half. They’re the assholes, yet I’m still the one who feels ashamed, as if I deserved everything they did.
“I hate the diner,” I tell him.
He raises a brow. “When was the last time you ate at the diner?”
“High school.”
He laughs. “Yeah, I thought as much. I’m sure it’s not your fancy New York City bullshit, but you’ll live. Come on.”
I’m not one to allow myself to be forced into anything by a man, but I find myself shrugging in agreement—perhaps because there’s something that feels safe about being by Liam’s side. I don’t think anyone would say a fucking word with him next to me. No one would call me some mean name from my childhood. No guy would say, “Smile, sweetheart,” and if they did, he’d make sure they never did it again.
As soon as we start to walk, he scoots me to the inside of the sidewalk, as if I’m a child who might step into the street. As we continue on, I sense him hovering, watching out for me.
I should resent this. I’m not sure why I don’t.
He opens the door to the diner, and it hits me that this man has been taking care of me in small ways and large ones since I was ten, though I doubt he’s even aware of it.
I pause in the doorway and glance up him. “I remembered something last night. You defended me when I was younger. This kid was stealing my candy on Halloween and you made him give it back.”
He stills, frowning. “I vaguely remember that. I’m sorry I didn’t do more.”
“Do more?” I ask incredulously as he grabs two menus and leads me to a table. “You not only recovered my candy, you made the kid give me his candy too.”
He slides into the seat across from mine. “Not then. Later.” He glances up only for a moment before his gaze returns to his menu. “I had no idea they all continued to give you such a hard time. I’d have put a stop to it if I’d known.”
My face grows hot. I wonder how much he’s heard. If he has a full grasp now of how fucking pathetic I was. Maybe that’s why he’s no longer interested in me the way he seemed to be before we met.
“That’s okay,” I reply. “If you’d stopped it, I’d have had no enemies to vanquish now and where would be the fun in that?”
He gives me a faint smile and sets his menu off to the side. “So, do you keep a written list of these enemies? Is the kid who stole your Halloween candy when you were ten on there?”
I tap my head. “The list is all up here. And yes, the kid who stole my candy is on there, but he moved to Seattle to become a musician and lives with seven other guys. I can’t crush his dreams until he has something I can take away from him.”
He bites down on a grin. “How unexpectedly reasonable. What are you getting?”
“Just coffee. I don’t eat breakfast.” I hate how much I sound like Sandra Atwell right now.
“Come on. Stop acting like you’re too good for the place.”
“I’m not…ugh…fine,” I say, snatching up a menu. “I suppose an egg-white omelet is too exotic for Elliott Springs?”
“Live a little. An extra gram of fat or two won’t kill you. Get the eggs benedict. You’ll love it.”
I do love eggs benedict. I love it on the patio of La Grande Boucherie and served with a mimosa, after I’ve earned it with a long run. I’m guessing the diner’s mayo-based hollandaise won’t live up to the memory, but I like these little moments with Liam, when it feels as if I could become someone else entirely—the kind of girl who goes out to breakfast with a guy she likes, who wears his sweatshirt and feels safe enough to fall asleep on his couch.
The kind who orders the eggs benedict and doesn’t calculate how many miles she’ll have to run to burn it off.
I order the eggs benedict and so does he, and when it arrives…the first bite is ecstasy. “Oh my God,” I groan. “It’s so good.”
His eyes flicker, ever so briefly, to my mouth. “I thought you’d like it.”
“Is this what you order every day?”
“No,” he says with a grin. “I get the egg-white omelet.”
After we’ve eaten, I lay out the blueprints, and he examines them carefully. “I can rip out what he’s done so far and have the subfloor fixed by Friday. I’ll place an order for new hardwood tomorrow and we’ll have it in by Tuesday. JP is checking on the cost right now.”
I blink. For the first time in months someone is actually exceeding my expectations. Who’d have thought it would be yard boy, of all people?
He insists on getting the check though I probably make his annual salary in a week. I run down the narrow hallway to the bathroom while he takes the bill to the register, and I’m thinking I’ve survived a meal at the diner unscathed when Paul Bellamy steps in my path,
“Brave of you to come back in,” he says. “You never know who’s making your food or who might have spit in it.”
My stomach rolls, but I’m not about to let him see I’m worried. “How sad that threatening to spit in my food is the only power you’ve got, Paul.” And you won’t even have that once Inspired Building closes this place down.
He storms away and Liam’s hand lands on the small of my back. “What just happened?”
I startle, turning toward him. “Just one of the guys from high school continuing to be a dick to me.”
“What did he say?” Liam hisses.
I wave a hand at it. “It was nothing. He implied he might have spat in my food. But we had words the last time I was in here so, as I’m sure you can imagine, I wasn’t entirely innocent in the whole thing.”
His jaw grinds. “That’s still fucking unacceptable.”
An older woman behind the counter says something to Paul and then walks over to us. “Hey, Liam,” she says, “is there a problem?”
Before I can answer, Liam does.
“Jeannie, this is Emerson. Paul just implied he might have spat in her food. He’s completely out of control.”
The woman looks from Liam to me, and her eyes fill. “My son…” she whispers, “he’s got issues. Anger issues. His wife left him—took their daughter. He can’t even figure out where she is now. I think he’s drinking again. But I’m so sorry he just said that.”
Ugh. I can’t believe I’m about to defend Paul Bellamy. “It’s okay. We went to school together and he wasn’t especially nice to me, so I said something shitty the last time I was here.”
She shakes her head. “I’m sorry about high school too. We had our share of misfortunes then as well.”
I want to argue that Paul couldn’t possibly have had misfortunes to rival my own, but what do I know? I spent a lot of time feeling sorry for myself, thinking losing my dad and being bullied were the greatest pains you could suffer. But there are probably a whole lot of people who’d trade my pain for theirs.
I guess some of the people who once hurt me might be among them.
“The second you hold your child in your arms, it’s like your heart is outside of you,” she tells me. “Out in the open, ready to be crushed. And children will. Even if they make you happier than you ever dreamed you could be, at some point they will break your heart.”
To her, he’s still the same gentle, round-faced little boy she once sang to sleep. Paul was lucky to have someone like that. And as badly as I want to hurt him, I’m not sure I want to hurt her in the process.
Getting to know the residents of Elliott Springs, as it turns out, makes destroying them less fun than I’d hoped.
* * *
My mother’sphysical therapy appointments are so brief that there’s no point in leaving. I sit in the waiting room preparing for this afternoon’s call with Charles, knowing he’ll attempt to find one thing I haven’t done simply so he can remind me to do it.
Several texts arrive from Donovan. I ignore them, the way I’ve been ignoring his calls. He has convinced himself that this fling of ours meant something, and though I suspect his dumb crush has very little to do with me, when I picture Liam’s dimpled grin, I feel just the tiniest sympathy for Donovan. I think I might have a dumb crush of my own.
“Emerson,” says a voice.
I look up and find Dr. Sossaman poking his head around the corner. “Do you have a minute?” he asks.
Great. What has she complained about now?If this keeps up, I’m going to start wearing a body camera to prove my innocence. But if this keeps up, I shouldn’t wear a camera of any sort because I’m probably going to commit a crime.
“Sure,” I say warily, following him to his office.
“Your mother just went down the hall to PT and I wanted to clear the air,” he says, sitting behind his desk. “I feel like we got off on the wrong foot last time.”
“You mean when you implied that I was abusing my mom? Oh, and that I’m an unemployed freeloader?”
“I wasn’t trying to imply either of those things,” he argues.
“Weren’t you?” I ask. “Because it sure seemed like it when you scolded me about letting her do too much and suggested the situation was to my benefit.”
“I’m sorry,” he sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. I almost feel bad for him. Almost. “I was just going off what she told me. She said that you didn’t appear to work much and that she was ashamed of what you did when you were working.”
I laugh ruefully. “So you thought I was a sex worker, apparently. To be perfectly clear, I’m in property development. My mom just thinks that the only acceptable jobs are doctor, lawyer, and whatever my brother does.”
“I’m glad I made the cut,” he says with a sheepish grin. “If it’s any consolation, my mom thinks the only acceptable type of doctor is a neurosurgeon, so I’m in the same boat.”
“Yeah, but does she go around implying to her friends that you’re a prostitute instead?”
He leans back in his chair. “Well, no. Possibly because no one would believe I’d make a successful male prostitute.”
I laugh. He’s sort of cool after all. “This is the weirdest conversation I’ve ever had with a doctor,” I tell him as I rise.
“It’s the weirdest conversation I’ve ever had with a patient’s daughter,” he says, catching my eye. “But it was a good weird.”
It’s only when I think about the conversation much later that I realize my mother’s beloved Harold was flirting with me.
Man, that would chap my mom’s ass if she knew.