by L. D. Davis
He slammed a hand on the hood of the car behind me, startling me and making me jump. I had never, ever seen that level of anger from Emmet. I was sure that if I reached out and touched him my hand would burn in his fury.
“I talked to Stella tonight,” I started in a whisper. “She told me she’s going to Brown.”
“Is that what you’re mad about?” he asked incredulously. “Like I have some control over where she goes to school?”
“She said you guys plan to get together, and often.”
Emmet rolled his eyes. “Seriously, Donya? That’s what you’re fucking mad about? Did she tell you that we would also be meeting up with a few other people who will be in school in the area?”
“No, but she did tell me that she thinks there is a chance for you two to get back together,” I murmured. “And a part of me believes her; especially since you guys are ‘bonded’ by an unborn baby.”
I dropped my eyes and cursed myself for my voice breaking on the last part of my sentence. Emmet became extremely quiet and still. I wasn’t even sure if he was breathing. I felt tears sliding down my cheeks. I wiped at them with a surprising amount of anger. It rose without warning inside of me and Emmet’s silence only added fuel to the fire.
As if I had suddenly gained super powers, I looked up into Emmet’s face and shoved him away from me so hard that he stumbled back and almost fell on his ass. I moved forward and shoved him again. Next time he was prepared and had time to steel himself. I was still much smaller than him and didn’t move him much, but that didn’t stop me from shoving him again.
“You fucked her without a condom!” I yelled. “Thank god I found out, or I would have made the mistake of letting you take my virginity and possibly give me some STD!”
I shoved at him again, but he just stood there. His anger had evaporated, and he just looked sad, scared, and full of regrets.
“I was looking for you at the party, and when I found you, you didn’t even know I was there. You were too busy walking off into the dark with the mother of your dead baby.”
Even I knew how cruel and utterly wrong that was as I said it. The words were ugly and bad tasting on my tongue even as I spat them out at him.
Emmet’s anger returned.
I had no recourse, nowhere to go before he reached me. I was shoved into the side of the car so hard that it rocked, and all of the air left my lungs. He crushed my body to the Audi with his and put his face so close to mine that our noses touched.
“That baby was a mistake,” he said in the scariest hushed tone I had ever heard. “But that doesn’t change the fact that it was a life lost. It wasn’t what I wanted, especially with Stella, but it was mine, and it mattered even if it never had a chance. Every life matters, Donya. I thought even you would see that when I was ready to tell you, but clearly I was wrong about you.”
He stepped away from me and walked around to the other side of the car. I bent over, with my hands on my knees, gasping for air and trying to push down the astonishing panic I felt bubbling in my throat.
Emmet was not only angry with me for my terrible words, but his opinion of me as a person changed for the absolute worse. It was more than I could take. Why did I have to say that? Why couldn’t I just ask him to tell me about Stella and the baby and be supportive? Why did I do that?
“Get in the car,” he commanded.
I couldn’t be in the car with him. I just couldn’t do it. I staggered a few steps away and without warning I started to heave. I dropped to my knees and dry heaved repeatedly until I thought my stomach was going to turn inside out to get out of my body. When it finally stopped, I was crying. It was disgusting, snotty, hiccupping crying. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand and bent over with my head in my hands, sobbing.
I thought Emmet had given up on me. I thought he was probably standing by the car, impatiently waiting for me to get my shit together so he could drive me home. But then his arms were around my waist, carefully lifting me until I was standing. He made no effort to comfort me, but he half carried, half walked me to the car and helped me inside. He closed the door, and when he got in behind the wheel, he didn’t make me put my seatbelt on or do it for me. He didn’t even look at me. He drove the few minutes to my house without saying a word as I sat there doing that ugly crying.
When he stopped in front of my house, I looked at him with all kinds of apologies stuck to my tongue, but he gently shook his head, shutting me down. His eyes were shimmering with unshed tears, but his jaw clenched with anger and resolution. Feeling clumsy and stupid, I turned away from him and stumbled out of the car. He sat there at the curb as I staggered up the sidewalk to the door. I don’t even know how I managed to use my key to unlock the door, but the moment the door was open, Emmet drove away. He didn’t peel away like a bat out of hell like he did that one night we had fought. He drove away at a normal, decent pace.
Somehow, that seemed that much worse.
The tether stretched and threatened to break. With all of the frayed pieces that were now in it, I knew it was only a matter of time before it pulled apart.
Chapter Seventeen
My bedroom door opened, and my mom stepped in holding a laundry basket. She looked startled to see me there.
“Oh, I didn’t know you were home. I thought you were at your other house,” she said, setting the basket down. “These are clothes you left in the dryer. I folded them up for you.”
“Thanks,” I said. My one word sounded as dead as I felt.
She looked at me for a long moment. She started to leave the room but halted. Slowly she turned back to me.
“Are you okay?” she asked carefully.
“Since when does it matter to you if I’m okay,” I said and chose to stare at the ceiling. It was barely a question. It was more like a statement.
“Well, I’m asking,” she said tightly. “Obviously it matters to me.”
“Well, this is new. My mother gives a damn for a change.”
“Donya Elisabeth,” she said my name in warning, but I didn’t care about her warning. What could she possibly do to me that I hadn’t already done to myself?
“Get out of my room. Go back to your lonely existence of only caring about yourself.”
She gasped, but my words didn’t immediately chase her away.
“I care about you very much,” she said. Though her voice shook slightly and there was evident emotion behind it, I didn’t care.
“And I care about cotton candy and shoes very much. So what? Get out of my room.”
She stood there a moment longer before quietly slipping out. Later I would feel sorry about the way I treated her, but at the moment, I didn’t care that I hurt her.
It was the middle of the afternoon. I had only gotten out of bed once to use the bathroom when I first woke up. If I was hungry, I didn’t feel it. If I was thirsty, I didn’t notice. The only thing I was aware of was the gaping, ragged hole in my chest. A bullet to the chest would have probably felt significantly better.
I lay in bed, in the silence of my room, staring at the walls, staring at the ceiling, or with my eyes closed. I was continually assaulted by the smell of Emmet’s body and cologne. I had slipped into his blue shirt before stumbling into bed in the wee hours of the morning. I had cried myself into a fitful sleep, full of nightmares I couldn’t recall. I only slept a couple of hours before I woke up and stayed up.
I didn’t try to call him, and as far as I knew, he didn’t try to call me either. Part of me had hoped that he would have come to me at some point in the night, or in the morning, but he never came. I didn’t deserve it anyway.
I stopped crying in the middle of the morning, but the pain only became more and more magnified as the hours ticked by. Soon Emmet would be gone, and I had ruined our last bit of time together. I hated myself so much for my careless words. Even though he had also done something careless, I should have at least given him the opportunity to explain himself.
Around four-thirty, my mom ven
tured back into my room.
“I’m going into work early,” she said. “They’re short-handed, and it’s busy. I won’t get off until eight and then I have some errands to run.”
When I didn’t answer her, she asked, “Are you going to be okay? Is there something I can do for you?”
“No.”
“To which question?”
“Both.”
She hesitated. She sucked in a breath like she was going to speak, but she changed her mind and left the room without another word.
*~*~*
I had fallen asleep at some point. It was dark when I heard someone calling my name from the front of the house. A few seconds later, Emmy threw open my bedroom door and flipped on the overhead light. I blinked up at the brightness and then gave up and covered my eyes.
“What are you doing in bed?” she asked, alarmed. “I called you like thirty times! You have to get up and get dressed!”
I heard my closet door open and hangers moving as Emmy started searching for something.
“Mom and Dad are going to be here to get us in a few minutes,” she said. I felt something land on the bed. I forced my eyes open, uncovered them and blinked down at a little black dress.
I had not forgotten about Emmet’s going away dinner. It was at a nice restaurant in Philly. I had been excited about going. I even had a going away present for him.
“I’m not going,” I said to Emmy and kicked the dress to the floor.
She watched it fall and stared blankly at it for a few seconds. Then her eyes narrowed.
“What’s wrong?” she asked suspiciously. “Did your mom say something to you?”
“No. I don’t feel good. I don’t want to go.”
“But…” She floundered for something to say.
“I’m not going,” I said firmly. “Wish Emmet well.”
“But why?” She was genuinely confused. I was always included with any Grayne family function. Also, it was unfathomable to her that I would miss an opportunity to dress up.
“I just told you I don’t feel good,” I snapped at her.
“I guess I believe you,” she retorted, snatching the dress up off of the floor. “You look like shit.”
After hanging it back up, she lingered by the closet watching me with her arms folded. I knew she was trying to figure out what was going on with me.
“Well, then I guess you’ll be over later tonight?” she asked with a trace of doubt.
Fred had rented a trailer to attach to the back of his truck for Emmet’s move. Emmy and I were supposed to ride with Emmet to New England while Sam and Fred followed behind us with Emmet’s belongings. Obviously, riding in the same car for an entire day with the guy who couldn’t even stand to look at me was not going to happen.
“I don’t think I’m going to Cambridge either,” I told Emmy.
She frowned. “Emmet’s going to be disappointed.”
“I highly doubt it.”
Her frown deepened, and she again studied me for a few moments, biting her bottom lip.
“You’re my best friend, Donya,” she finally said, shaking her head. “I know you. I know you aren’t sick. Something has happened. What is it?”
I almost laughed. If she knew me so damn well then she should have been able to see how much I loved her brother, but she didn’t. Even if she did, she wouldn’t have approved.
“Maybe I have what my mom has,” I whispered.
Her eyes widened. “Depression?”
“Maybe.” I was depressed, so I wasn’t exactly lying, but I wasn’t diseased with it like my mother.
“Oh, D.” Emmy rushed over to the bed. I didn’t want to be touched, but I let her hug me. “Maybe I should stay with you.”
“No,” I said quickly. “I’ll be okay. Just let me take a couple of days to get myself together. I’ll be okay.”
“Did you tell your mom?”
“No. No need to tell her. She was about to work almost a double shift. She didn’t need to know.”
Emmy sighed and then pushed loose strands of hair off my forehead.
“Is there anything I can do?”
I forced a dead looking smile. “Go. Eat a lot of food and annoy your mom.”
“I can manage that.” She hugged me once more. “I love you, D.”
“I love you too.”
“I’ll call to check on you later, okay? Make sure you answer or I’m going to worry.”
“I’ll answer,” I promised.
She got up, offered a few more kind words and left me alone.
“Finally,” I breathed and rolled over to fall back into darkness.
*~*~*
Emmy called me after dinner later that night. She offered to come over and stay with me, but I insisted that I wanted to be left alone. I asked her about dinner; though I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the details. She said it was fine, but Emmet seemed a little on the quiet side.
“Probably some floozy got to him,” she had joked, not knowing that I was the floozy.
She asked me to reconsider the ride to Cambridge because there was bound to be plenty of hot college guys to cheer me up. I declined again, but at least gave her the impression that I was a little regretful that I’d miss the hot college guys. What about saying goodbye to Emmet? Was I going to say goodbye to Emmet?
“I’m pretty sure Emmet’s world won’t end if I don’t say goodbye,” I said, trying to sound light about it, even though I was dying inside. My world was going to come to an end because I wasn’t going to say goodbye.
I listened patiently while she talked about Leo and his kissing skills. Leo was a good looking guy, but hearing about kissing made me think of kissing Emmet. It didn’t look like I’d be kissing him again.
My sadness began to consume me, and I couldn’t stand to stay on the phone a minute longer with Emmy and all of her cluelessness. I told her I was going to watch television and go to bed and that she should consider going to bed too since they were leaving bright and early in the morning. She offered once more to stay the night with me, but I convinced her that I was fine though I was anything but. I loved her and appreciated her, but she needed to go.
I kneeled down and opened the cabinet door next to the fridge. Inside were several bottles of various sizes, shapes, and colors. There was wine, vodka, tequila, whiskey, brandy, and more. My mom wasn’t much of a drinker, but my dad had been. For whatever reason, she never got rid of the booze.
Emmy drank when she was mad, sad, happy, horny, melancholy and just for the hell of it. It was rather disturbing how much a sixteen-year-old girl could drink, but I wasn’t a drinker. I drank at some parties, but for the most part, since that one night at Jorge’s, I didn’t drink much at all.
I reached into the cabinet and pulled out a bottle of red wine. I liked the taste of wine, much more than I liked the taste of beer or anything else. I found a corkscrew, pulled the cork out and grabbed a wine glass. If I was going to do something I shouldn’t do, I figured I may as well do it with style.
I filled the glass and then held it close to my nose as I inhaled the scent. Then I put the glass to my lips and sipped. My shoulders relaxed as the sweet liquid drifted over my taste buds. Grateful for the smooth, delicious taste, I tipped the glass again and drank with more enthusiasm.
When I finally began to feel drunk, I welcomed it and the dreamless bliss it brought to me later in the night.
*~*~*
I woke up before dawn, wondering if Emmet had discovered the gifts I had buried in his suitcase. I had done it before the party. His suitcases were already mostly packed at the time because he didn’t want to have to do anything last minute.
Chances were he wouldn’t discover the two jars until he was already at Cambridge. Yesterday when I knew that no one was home at the Grayne’s, I had been tempted to walk over there and take back the gifts, but after I’d thought about it, I knew that I wanted him to have them.
I had filled one large Mason jar with Hershey Kisses. Under the lid,
I had written lines from “Endymion” by John Keats that spoke about a kiss and endless bliss. That’s how I thought of Emmet’s kisses, blissful.
The second jar was the same size, but contained only one item. It was a single candy heart. It was one of those candies with the cute little sayings on them that are hard to find outside of Valentine’s Day, but I found some in a specialty candy store in the mall. The single heart in the jar said one word: Mine. Under the lid of that jar, I wrote, "I only have one heart to give to you. Handle it with care."
I wanted Emmet to keep the jars. He was the only person I wanted to have my kisses and despite our sad circumstances, he still possessed my heart.
I stood at the living room window as the sun began to rise. I stood stock still for a long time until I felt the familiar tug. I put my palms flat against the glass as the line stretched, twisted, and resisted. It stretched and stretched and pulled and yanked on me until I was sure my heart would burst from my body and splatter, bloody and dead on the window. He was gone, and when I really understood that and felt his loss, I collapsed to the floor in mourning.
Chapter Eighteen
Oh, how naïve I had been.
I truly believed that after my meeting with Max, he would just start sending me to various clients for work. I didn’t imagine that I’d find work quickly, but I at least expected that by the time the end of October rolled around that I would have at least been on a freaking casting call or go-see. I was so wrong!
Max first gave me hell for taking too long to get back to him. By his estimate, I should have been clamoring to get into his office the week after he first met me. Then the jerk flipped through my portfolio with disgust and tossed the book back to me.
“I look good in those photographs,” I snapped at him as I caught the book.
My mother put a gentle hand on my arm, implying that I be patient. I had been pretty snappy with people since the end of August.
“Yeah, you look very pretty,” Max said dismissively. “But pretty doesn’t sell, unless you want to advertise twenty dollar dresses for K-Mart.”