29. Emmy
I’m awake early the next morning. I feel bruised in the best possible way—there’s an ache between my legs, my lips are swollen to the touch—and I’m also steeped in regret.
Regret that it’s already done and can’t be repeated, regret that I did it and now things will be awkward as fuck until I leave. For my remaining time in Elliott Springs, there’s going to be this weird tension, and anytime I demand something of Liam, he’ll have that look on his face—the one that says, “I’ve seen your vagina.”
And I also still have to make it clear we won’t be doing it again…more unnecessary awkwardness.
I take Snowflake into the yard when I get up, throwing her a stick in the damp grass. I picture him walking around the corner—clean-shaven, fresh from the shower, T-shirt clinging in all the right places. I can almost smell his soap. I can almost feel his pec beneath my palm as I place my hand on his chest and tell him it’s done.
But he doesn’t arrive and once there are guys working in the yard, he’s not among them. Later, I get to the store and he’s not there either.
“Liam had to go down to Santa Cruz to give an estimate,” Mac says. “He’ll be by later.” There’s something gentle in his smile that worries me, as if he knows about last night and thinks Liam’s letting me down easy when it’s actually going to be the reverse.
This is all so much more aggravating than it needs to be.
I have a long teleconference with the company bringing in the spin studio, and then meet a designer in person to show her the space. When I return, Liam is there, looking over plans with JP. I wait for him to shoot me some lingering glance, smile at me in a new kind of way, but he doesn’t even look up from his drawings.
I go back to the office, itchy and discontent, as if I’ve had too much caffeine but have no place to burn the energy. I mean, this is excellent news, the fact that he’s not making this into a big deal. We can return to our professional relationship with no messiness whatsoever. I slide into my chair, tuck my purse in a drawer and lean back, remembering last night. How firm his lips were and how every single inch of him was hard. How he’d barely touched me before I was ready to explode.
I’ve nearly convinced myself we could afford to do it twice—I mean, things are already so awkward, it would be hard to make them worse—when Liam walks in, filling the entire frame of the door with well over six feet of lean muscle. Mentally, I’m ten steps ahead. I’ll tell him to lock the door and that this time I want him on top. I’ll tell him I’m on the pill if he doesn’t have any condoms. Maybe I have condoms? I slide my purse toward me to check.
He sets a hard hat on my desk. “We’re working in the room above you,” he says. “If you’re gonna sit in here today, wear that.”
And then he walks right back out the door. As if last night didn’t matter to him at all. And of all the ways I imagined today could have gone, this was not among them.
For the rest of the afternoon, I can hear him upstairs, yukking it up with JP and Mac—not a care in the world. And by the time I get to Chloe’s studio, I’m pissed that this day has gone exactly the way I’d hoped it would.
Chloe’s eyes widen. “Uh-oh. What happened?”
“What makes you think something happened?” I ask, scowling as I unroll my mat.
“You can either tell me now or I can lead you through the most physically painful yoga class of all time, and you’ll tell me at the end. You’re a chatterbox once you’re exhausted.”
Ugh. She’s probably right. “I slept with Liam last night.”
Her eyes gleam. “Wow. Was it amazing?”
I shrug. “It was okay.”
“You’re a goddamned liar, Emerson Hughes. There’s no way sex with that man was just okay.”
“Fine, it was good. But nothing’s going to come of it. He’s my employee…”
“Not really.”
“And I’m moving.”
“You don’t have to move.”
Oh yes, Chloe, I absolutely do. For my own sanity, if nothing else. “It’s just a bad idea.”
“Okay, so what’s the problem? He doesn’t seem like the type to break into a home and boil a rabbit on your stove. Just tell him you’re not interested.”
“I would, if he’d even look at me,” I sulk, copying her as she gets into warrior pose. “He’s barely acknowledged my presence today.”
She starts laughing. “Now I get it.”
“Now you get what?”
“The problem isn’t you having to fend Liam off—the problem is that you don’t have to fend Liam off.”
“Well, it’s bullshit!” I cry, throwing my hands in the air and falling out of the pose entirely. “You don’t just fuck someone you work for the way he did and pretend it meant absolutely nothing.”
“So, you’re saying it meant something.”
“Not to me, it didn’t. But it should have meant something to him.”
She grins. “So just to clarify: the reason you’re upset is that the guy you don’t want to go out with appears to not want to go out with you either.”
I roll my eyes. “You’re oversimplifying it.”
She laughs. “No, I’m not. It really is just unbelievably simple. You like him and you wanted to be secure in the knowledge that he likes you while you continue to fend him off.”
“I just think it’s shitty to imply you like a girl in order to get laid and then ignore her.”
She is bent over but grins at me from between her legs. “Quick question, hon: did you at any point last night remind him that it didn’t mean anything?”
I bend over. “Possibly,” I mutter.
“So he’s doing exactly what you asked him to do?”
I groan. “I’ve had enough of this conversation. Just give me the worst workout ever.”
Chloe is laughing as she goes into downward dog.
When I get home, my mother is on the couch watching Love is Blind. I run my hands through Snowflake’s fur and endure her licking my face while a sparklingly pretty girl onscreen attempts to converse with the dullest man of all time, a man she apparently believes she’s in love with though he’s still hidden from view—a perfect example of why any semi-intelligent female should write relationships off entirely. Because you otherwise risk becoming someone so desperate for connection, you persuade yourself to love a guy who can’t string four consecutive words together without an awkward chuckle.
Love means handing over your power and your sanity, and it never lasts anyway, so what reasonable person would bother?
“You’re going to be mighty unhappy when you meet him in real life,” my mother says to the TV.
It’s possibly the first thing we’ve ever agreed on.
“She ought to be mighty unhappy already,” I reply. “That guy’s an idiot.”
My mother turns to me, the look on her face withering. “That’s your problem right there, Emerson. You think you’re too good for everyone.”
Pot, meet kettle. The only person alive that my mother doesn’t think she’s too good for is Jeff, her mini-me.
“I don’t think I’m too good for everyone,” I reply, “but I’m sure as hell too good for that guy.”
My mother smirks. “You’ll never be happy. You’d have met someone by now if you were going to, but if it hasn’t happened at age twenty-eight, it never will. You’re sure not going to get better looking over the next decade.”
It’s a conclusion I’d already come to myself, a conclusion I’d embraced, but hearing it from her mouth makes it sound truer than it did before, and I guess some part of me still hoped it was an outcome I’d evade—that despite my terrible attitude and personality and general unloveableness, some man would see a good thing inside me. And that he’d push his way in.
“Do you have a point?” I ask between my clenched teeth.
“My point is that you’ll die alone and miserable, and it’s entirely your own fault.”
I let the dishes fall into the sink with a crash. “You think you’re not dying alone and miserable, Sandra?” I ask, my tone as scathing as hers. “You think Dr. Sossaman wants to marry a woman decades older than he is?”
My mother’s eyes narrow. “I have Jeff and Jordan. I have friends.”
“Yes,” I reply as I walk away, “it’s clear how involved Jeff and Jordan and your friends are. They’ve really been beating down the door, haven’t they?”
I climb the stairs to my room, feeling worse than I did when I came home. Because as bad as she is, I’m the one who just reminded a senior citizen she’s unloved. I’m not sure even my mother would sink that low.
I lie flat on the bed and stare at the ceiling, thinking of all the nights my father used to come in and sit beside me, reading me stories that always had a happy ending. I loved knowing that Jo March would eventually become a writer if that was what she wanted. I loved feeling certain Harry Potter would one day put the Dursleys in their place.
I’d thought real life was the same, but now I know better. I watched my grandmother die miserably, mostly alone and in pain, after spending decades with an abusive spouse. I watched my aunt die two months after discovering her husband had knocked someone else up. She never got a second chance at love, and karma never came for her husband—he married his mistress and they went on to have two more kids.
There’s not a single reason to think my outcome will be any better. How happily can The Victimized Teenager Who Comes Back to Take her Revenge on her Small-minded Hometown end? Maybe I’ll experience the joys of vengeance, but what will be left once it’s all said and done? What’s left when I’ve ruined Bradley’s family business? When I’ve destroyed Lucas Hall?
As much as I hate what my mother said, what I hate most is that she’s probably right.
I’ll never be happy. I’ll never be loved. I’m going to die alone.
Sometimes I wonder if destroying all the people who ever hurt me will be enough to make up for it.