Chapter 25
I should delete them. I know that.
A sly little voice whispers delete and forget him.
But I can't stop circling the question of how I got here...
The weeks after Richard's breakdown felt like an emotional pendulum.
Ben's been swallowed by his work, but in those few stolen pockets, the noise around us dulls.
Until it doesn't, and it feels like something's about to snap.
A question here, another there. Always about Richard: how much time do we spend together? What do we usually do? Do we sleep together?
I haven't told him about Richard's business because Richard's asked me not to say a thing and heck, we're talking about prison and I don't want to drag Ben into anything.
And on top of everything—yeah, Ben has changed, but some traits remain. Being predictably unpredictable is one of them.
Sometimes he disappears for hours, sometimes for a whole day. Once, he straight-up forgot we had a date.
Sure, his mobile ER project kept him busy and he apologized like a hundred times, but the past rushed back and I reminded myself to sober up because I don't want to hold onto promises when they could turn into goodbyes.
I've written this scene in my book recently: Tessa left in stilettos on cracked concrete, wondering why she let Damien back into her story as she cries her eyes out.
Only difference? On page, I get a rewrite. In real life I don't want that noir romance starring me.
At least our rooftop turned into somewhat of a shrine. Up there, I can breathe, feel, write.
I even bought a snake plant, because apparently, a snake plant makes an affair nest feel like a second home.
My book's almost done, we're just going through the edits, and that's the one thing I'm genuinely proud of right now.
The situation is very different down here where Richard requires me to be his friend, but doesn't treat me like one. The more I try, the meaner he gets.
The other day I mentioned that the new anchor seemed nice. Apparently, I am painfully naive and have no insight into people, which is the reason why my best friend is a witch, and I chase misfits.
So I apologized, because in my head I was apologizing for something else.
And then there's that eerie Halloween gala story.
I stood by the champagne fountain with my glass, watching the skeleton pianist play, somewhat enjoying myself, when a woman came up and asked if I was Emma Foster, the author.
Before I could open my mouth, Richard swooped in out of nowhere and filled in for me. "No. She's Emma Lawson, the wife."
I gave him a shocked look, but he, rude beyond measure, yanked me away.
Because he was due on stage, and the night wasn't about me. Because—apparently—everything always is. Which was news to me.
I let it slide but on the ride home, we fought in the car until my voice ricocheted off the car windows. I simply had enough.
Thought I had the last say, but then he started humming. Forty-five minutes stuck in traffic as he repeated it, over and over, until it drove me insane.
So I downloaded an app on the sly and scanned his voice to name the tune.
When the title appeared, chills knifed down my spine.
"Would I Lie to You."
I stared at his profile, completely shook, trying to decode if it meant something.
He just kept humming.
Yesterday he brought me roses—not Friday roses, but apology roses—and for the first time in the history of our relationship, and probably his life, he cried.
"I'm sorry," he said as he wiped his face. "Work's been hell. The Piper thing is turning me into an asshole and I'm taking it out on you. You don't deserve that at all. I hate myself."
I held him, told him it was okay, even though it wasn't, and prompted him to open up about the deal.
He shut me down once again and instead asked suspiciously who I kept texting all day long.
I haven't fully lied; I said it was Lucy, her upcoming exhibition, and she needs me.
That apparently didn't explain why my phone fused to my hand.
Agreed, but what was I supposed to say? That my phone turned into a prosthetic heart and I keep waiting for Ben's message?
I mean, by now, I should know how to be an adult, how to handle things. Instead, I loathe myself for knowing better, and not being better anyway.
I even thought about asking Lucy for the universe hotline, where I could beg for some instructions to get me out of this before I drop dead from the amount of anxiety.
Which brings me here. 2:22 a.m.
I'm peeling my red nail polish while scrolling through hundreds of messages, playing Russian roulette with memories. And by sheer chance, or maybe someone up there is really eavesdropping, it lands on one of those moments that defined everything.
2019
Me: I know it... Just ask and be done with it :P
Ben: Ask for what?
Me: Nudes duh
Ben: Nah, nudes aren't naked enough
Ben: I want something you don't show anyone else
The words cave my chest in and pull me right back into my old room in Lucy's apartment, to the times Ben and I were best friends.
And one night, with a wine-stained sweater and my mascara streaking down my cheeks from laughing about our worst disasters, I scraped together the courage to give Ben what he asked for.
I still remember him clearly.
He had those sleep-flushed eyes from too many hours hunched over textbooks and his fingers smelled like peeled clementines.
We sat on my bed, and he was smiling, not expecting me to shift the mood entirely.
But the story that defined my entire life? It goes like this...
I was sixteen—you know, that age when you are more certain about your life decisions than when you are close to thirty—when I told my mother I wanted to study literature at Columbia.
She didn't even lift her eyes from her glossy magazine, just: No. Business. Like that was the only key to my college fund. Like she hadn't seen me scribble stories since before I could spell. Like the one thing that made me feel alive was absolutely irrelevant.
I begged, begged until she laughed at me, called me pathetic and urged me to calm down.
But sixteen years of dismissal corked inside didn't calm me.
I snapped, snatched the magazine from her hands and before I could stop myself, I hurled it.
It clipped her favorite vase, the blue Bohemian crystal she always bragged about because she bought it for a third of the price and everyone admired it.
The paper hit it with some supernatural force and it crashed across the carpet, splattering into a thousand pieces. And so did she.
She lurched up and slapped me—so hard, it knocked me sideways and my teeth cut my lip when I hit the floor.
I looked up at her with my eyes wide, tasting blood, but she didn't apologize, just screamed, "Pack your bag, get out, get out, get out!"
Crying, I ran upstairs, shoved my life into one small backpack and walked to the bus stop in front of our house, hoping she would stop me.
She only watched me from the window, like a ghost in her house that I couldn't call home anymore.
"Christ," Ben's voice cut through the story, pausing me.
I could feel my cheeks flushed scarlet like I was slapped all over again, only with shame this time, so I killed the bedside lamp before he could see it.
He didn't comment on it, just let the room turn into shadows, and asked, "What did you do?"
"I sat down on the curb, waiting for the bus, and when it came, I looked up from the window and thought Wow, the sunset, the colors.
I still remember them so vividly, how unreal they were, and how I was completely caught up.
Then I thought, Nothing this gorgeous should hurt this much and I hated them ever since. They always break me."
Ben blew a pained breath. "But she reached out, no? Apologized? Asked you to come back?"
I shook my head. "No. Dad called a few times, tried to mediate. My mother, though? I haven't seen her in a year."
"What?!" He blinked hard. "Where did you go?"
I told him about the basement flat with my four flatmates—three strangers and the mold. It always smelled like wet carpet and stale hope, and I kept coughing.
I told him even about the bar shifts, where nasty, drunk men pressed against me, hands roaming my hips, and me not always fighting them so hard as I should have.
Not because I didn't want to, but because I had no other choice. I needed money, and at least those hands weren't slapping me.
I didn't spare him a detail, didn't sugarcoat anything, but when I mentioned my flatmates were doing drugs Ben went very stiff.
"Have you ever—?"
"Yes," I admitted before I could dress it up. "The nights stretched forever and I felt like I needed something to help me feel happy again. When someone offered me a short, I took it."
He swallowed hard and his voice snagged in his throat. "What kind?"
"Never the hard stuff." I rushed out, defensively. "Just pills. One of the flatmates had a pharmacist as a friend. It was enough to keep me awake, then enough to knock me out."
The silence after was so heavy it felt like an object in the room.
I could hear him breathing, shallow before he finally whispered, almost to himself: "You must have been really sad."
"Yeah. Sad..." I nodded and dragged in a breath.
"Sad doesn't cover what it feels like when your own mother, the person designed by nature to protect you, to love you unconditionally, doesn't. When everything about you is an irritation and you're scared of every thought you ever had because it's always wrong.
When even your victories, like ballet trophies that broke your toes, are recast as flaws in front of the doctor because you held your spine wrong.
That doesn't make you sad. That threads into your bones and makes you wish you were never born. "
He bit into his lip and shook his head hard. "I'm so sorry, Emma."
My head dropped, and with a broken voice, I admitted that I hated her. I hated her for all the ways I missed her that year and for how I hoped she'd missed me back.
Then I broke into an avalanche—not ugly crying, but something darker, coming from that part that can steal your breath.