Chapter 19
CHAPTER NINETEEN
After several weeks since Xavier’s colleague had almost recognized her at the hospital, Emily had to admit the truth: she was hiding.
At first, she’d called it “resting,” then “gathering her courage.” But as the days continued to pass her by and she failed to go anywhere except work and, when necessary, the grocery store, the truth had become hard to ignore.
She was hiding again, just like she had when the news had first come out.
The problem, she thought to herself as she lurked in the front hallway of her house, waiting to go outside until after Darla had left for the day, was that it was so tempting to just become a hermit, to close herself away where she didn’t have to face scrutiny, mockery, or contempt.
But there was a difference, she knew, between something feeling like a good, healthy choice and actually being a good, healthy choice.
There was, unfortunately, yet another difference between recognizing that something wasn’t good for her and actually putting any change into effect.
She hadn’t quite made it to that step yet. Even if it did make her something of a coward.
Guilt was compounding her anxiety too, she admitted to herself as she hurried to her car, since waiting for her neighbors to depart put her at risk of being late herself.
Xavier had sent her a text immediately after she’d left the hospital, one she’d found herself looking at numerous times over the past weeks.
XAVIER: Hey, you left kind of abruptly, so just wanted to check in and make sure that everything is okay. Let me know if you need anything or want to talk. Hoping to hear from you soon.
She hadn’t answered.
She’d tried . She’d typed out at least a dozen responses, deleting them all before she even finished explaining herself.
How could she make him understand why she’d panicked without telling him the whole story? And how could she tell him the whole story, when it meant that he might start to look at her the way everyone else did, with disdain or pity?
The longer her silence hung between them, the more impossible it became to respond. If she sent a response now, it would require twice as much explanation, as she would have to account both for her abrupt exit from the hospital and her weeks of silence…
So Emily resigned herself to feeling guilty, miserable, and like her heart was a little more bruised than ever. Things had been new between her and Xavier, but she’d liked him a lot, and had felt like there was potential for something wonderful between them.
Until you squashed that like a bug, that is, she told herself sourly as she pulled into her parking spot at work.
Her workday was uneventful… or it would have been, if not for the way she continually found herself casting furtive glances around as if she might suddenly catch someone staring at her with a knowing expression on their faces. Even as she did it, she knew it was ridiculous. She’d had her fifteen minutes of fame, or rather infamy, but she wasn’t an A-list celebrity. Still, she couldn’t seem to stop, which only made her feel annoyed at herself in addition to paranoid and twitchy.
“Hey, Emily, is everything okay?” one of her coworkers asked kindly, after the umpteenth time she’d glanced around like she thought she was the main character in an action movie, waiting for the bad guys to jump out at her.
She gave him a sheepish smile and tried to look like she was normal, not someone who was letting paranoia get the best of her.
“Yeah, sorry,” she said apologetically. “Just jumpy today, I guess.”
“Some days are just like that,” he said, which she felt was incredibly generous, since Emily was fairly sure she’d never seen him playacting the world’s most boring spy novel.
By the end of the day, her nerves were fried, and she was looking forward to slinking back to her house like the scaredy cat she was and spending the evening trying not to be mad at herself. The last half hour she was scheduled to work crept by with agonizing slowness, each minute listening an eon as she tried to keep her pleasant expression fixed in place while helping a line of customers.
When the clock finally struck five, she practically threw on her coat and rushed out the door. She was moving so quickly, in fact, that when she encountered someone trying to come through the doors, she nearly crashed directly into them.
“Oh my gosh! I’m so sor—oh! Hi there, Xavier.”
Real cool, Emily , she thought to herself sarcastically as she went from flustered to awkward and embarrassed in an instant.
“Excuse me… oh! Emily!”
Xavier did not look nearly as flustered as she felt, she noted with a pang. In fact, he looked as handsome as ever, his eyes bright and his hair neatly combed, his cheeks slightly flushed from the cold. The only thing that was different about him was the way he was looking at her, a slightly guarded expression on his face that made Emily feel sick with guilt. She’d made him look that way by callously disappearing and then refusing to answer his message.
“Um, hi,” she said again, mentally kicking herself.
Once upon a time, she had been the master of small talk, had been great at flattering potential investors and had delivered killer presentations. So why had her brain chosen now, in front of this attractive, kind person, to forget how to put sentences together?
“It’s good to see you,” he said gently. “Are you just… heading home then?”
She was struggling to make eye contact with him.
“Uh, yeah,” she said. “Long day, and everything.”
“Right,” he said, sounding disappointed. For a moment, she thought he was going to leave it at that, unsure why that made her feel disappointed as well. But then, instead of stepping aside and letting her walk away, he squared his shoulders and took in a deep breath, as if gathering his courage.
“Hey, so, I know you don’t owe me anything,” he said, because even when she’d been so dreadful to him, he was still so kind that it made her heart race. “But do you mind if I ask what happened between us? Because, if I’m telling the truth, I cannot figure out what I did wrong. But it has to be something, because it seemed like things were going well, you said you had a good time on our date too, but then…” He shrugged, but Emily could see that this question actually bothered him quite a bit. He was just trying not to let on, likely for her sake. “You kind of disappeared, which, again, is totally within your rights, but I’d just love to know… why,” he finished, his mouth twisting into a rueful expression.
Emily had a good deal of experience with feeling bad about herself. She’d made it something of an art, after her business had imploded in an extremely dramatic fashion.
But watching this wonderful man search his brain for something he had done to make her run away like she had?
Emily thought perhaps she’d never felt worse.
“Xavier,” she said earnestly, unable to stop herself from reaching out and squeezing his hand briefly. “I am so sorry that I made you feel like you’d done something. I promise it wasn’t anything you did.” She put as much sincerity as she could into her words. “I had a great time on our date. I meant it when I said it and I mean it now. I am just dealing with my own mess.”
She waved vaguely at her own head as if such a gesture could encapsulate all the fear and anxiety and self-recrimination she kept facing.
“But it’s really important to me that you understand that you did nothing wrong,” she concluded forcefully.
Relief bloomed in Xavier’s expression as he puzzled over her words.
“Okay,” he said slowly, as if he was approaching a wild animal that he was afraid would spook and bolt. Emily hated to admit it, but it might be an apt metaphor for her current mental state.
“Okay,” he said again. “That makes sense, I guess. But the thing is, Emily…” He paused again, and she braced herself for whatever would come next. If he told her that she’d been a big jerk for ignoring him, she would take it like a champ, would not make any excuses. She had, after all, more or less ghosted him. In New York, that would have been the end. It was only because they were in a small town that they were even having this conversation. If she hadn’t come face-to-face with him, she probably would have indulged in her cowardice forever, never explaining herself, leaving him worrying what he’d done to upset her.
Worse, she’d been so wrapped up in her own worries that she’d scarcely stopped to think how he might be affected.
That was a jerk move. Big time.
What Xavier said, however, was worse.
“The thing is,” he repeated, “is that I think you’re great, no matter what else you may have going on. Do you think?—”
“No!” she blurted.
The panic that had slowly started to fade as Xavier accepted that he had no role in her erratic behavior sparked faster and higher. Gosh, she did not deserve this man, because it seemed like he still liked her, even though she’d been acting strangely and then had refused to provide any explanation.
But she couldn’t tell him, she just couldn’t. Because if she told him, he’d know.
And then he’d never look at her the same way again.
So she, even as she kicked herself for being awful to this sweet, kind, forgiving man, adopted the regular move from her playbook.
She bolted.
“Sorry, I have to go,” she shot over her shoulder as she stepped around Xavier and left the vestibule of the bank, her cheeks burning with embarrassment.
She fumbled for her keys in her bag and hurried to her car, even if she wondered if maybe it wouldn’t just be better to start over again in another new town. It would be a lot of work, but at least then she could never leave poor Xavier Lofton standing and staring, confused, after her, ever again.