by L. D. Davis
I gave the driver directions and a few minutes later we were turning off of the main road towards the fishing pond. Even before I saw Emmet’s car parked there, I felt the cord retracting. When I set out, I honestly didn’t expect to see him, but he was probably just as aware of me as I was of him. I decided not to turn away. I had hoped to hear from him all day, and I finally had the opportunity to see him one last time before I changed our lives forever.
“I’m going to get out and go for a walk,” I said to the driver, throwing open the door.
“Ma’am?” The driver looked back at me worriedly.
“I’ll be fine.”
I got out and closed the door before he could make any more objections. I held the hem of my dress and started the short walk through the woods to the pond. As I rounded a curve in the path, I caught site of Emmet, standing by the water and looking in my direction expectantly. The image of him took my breath away. He was dressed casually in a button-down shirt open several buttons at the top and a pair of jeans. The sunlight gleamed off of the water and filtered through the treetops, casting him in a soft glow.
“I used to fantasize about you walking towards me in a dress just like that,” Emmet said as I neared. “Except you look more stunning now than you ever could in my fantasies.”
He smiled sadly. It was hurting him to see me in my wedding dress, and I wished I had changed before venturing out.
“You know, this is where you proposed to me,” I said.
“More specifically right there,” Emmet said, pointing to a piece of level, grassy land.
Visions of our lovemaking that day lazily moved across my mind, and I was struck by how long it had been since our bodies had last joined.
“There is so much I wanted with you, Donya,” Emmet said, pulling my thoughts back to the present. “I didn’t care if we had a big wedding or a small wedding or got married in front of Elvis in Vegas. I just wanted to marry you, to claim you. It didn’t matter how.”
“Your mother may have had an issue with Elvis,” I said with a genuine smile. Sam would have had an epic meltdown if she found out that we got married like that.
“She probably would,” Emmet agreed.
His smile was still sad, even though I was standing there in front of him and not back at the house preparing to walk down the aisle. With every passing second that I stood there with Emmet, I wanted less and less to go back to that house and marry Jerry. It wasn’t that I loved Jerry any less, but I didn’t love Emmet any less either. I had to wonder if when I decided to have the limo driver drive me to the pond, if I wasn’t just following my instincts. Maybe I knew Emmet was there all along, waiting for me. Maybe he knew I’d come all along.
Emmet stepped forward, but surprisingly he didn’t touch me. Now that he was standing closer to me, I could see that his eyes were moist with unspent tears. Something was wrong—I mean besides the fact that I was supposed to marry Jerry in less than an hour. There was something else very wrong. Emmet wasn’t just sad and hurt about my upcoming nuptials, Emmet was frightened.
“I’ve loved you my entire life,” he said weakly before I could speak. “I’ve never wanted anything more than I want you. I am not the best man I am capable of being without you,” he said with conviction. His last few words were shaky, and his eyes were gathering more moisture.
Alarmed, I put my hand gently on his cheek. “Emmet,” I said, feeling his distress. “If you would have just asked the right question last year…” I stopped talking. He was already feeling miserable. I didn’t need to poke at the open wound.
“But I didn’t ask the right question,” he said, and carefully removed my hand. “I said all of the wrong things and that is how we are standing here today in our current predicaments.”
“So, ask me now,” I said anxiously.
I wrung the hand that had been on his cheek. It literally stung from his quiet rejection, but despite that, in a matter of seconds I had made a decision that would have enormous, harsh consequences.
“Ask me not to marry Jerry,” I whispered. “Ask me not to marry him, Emmet.”
Something twisted violently inside of him. It was in his face, in the way his hands fisted at his sides, and it was in that damn tether. My breath was wrenched from me in a loud gasp. He wasn’t going to ask me. He wasn’t going to ask me not to marry Jerry. Something near cataclysmic was about to occur between us, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.
“I can’t ask you not to marry Jerry,” Emmet said after a long, strained silence. He blinked and a couple of tears escaped his green eyes. I reached out to wipe the tears away and his eyes closed as my hand touched his skin.
“Just. Ask. Me.” I pleaded softly.
“Donya,” he whispered my name and shook his head. “I don’t want you to marry Jerry, and you don’t want to marry Jerry,” he added knowingly. “But I can’t ask you not to marry him right now. It would be selfish and hypocritical. You deserve better than that.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” I cried, throwing my hands up in frustration. “All you have to do is ask, and you can have everything you ever wanted to have with me. Emmet, just ask me. Be selfish if you have to, just ask!”
Emmet stared at me contemplatively for a moment. Then he put one hand on my waist, and the other cupped my neck. He looked at me earnestly with his glistening eyes.
“You have to promise me that we will work this out together,” he said.
I looked at him in confusion and put my hand on his.
“Work what out?” I asked.
“I have to figure a few things out,” he said more to himself than to me. His eyes began to grow hopeful. I should have felt reassured, but there was still something he was not telling me.
“What things?” I questioned.
“I love you,” he said as he stared hard into my eyes. “Do you understand?”
“I love you, do you understand?”
New Year’s night, many, many moons ago, Emmet had spoken those same words, and they had made me fearful and sad, and now the words carried an ominous threat.
“What aren’t you telling me?” I whispered.
“This has no bearing on us, okay?” He spoke quickly now. “This does not have to affect us. We’ll work through it.”
“Work through what?” I asked wearily.
Emmet was breathing rapidly, his chest rising and falling against mine. He looked like he was building the courage to say something, which scared the hell out of me because Emmet always told me what he needed to say, whether I liked it or not.
Finally, he spoke. And the calamity was epic.
“Casey called me a little while ago. She’s pregnant.”
Chapter Forty-Eight
I jerked back and away from Emmet, stumbling over the hem of my dress and the uneven ground. I almost fell backward, but Emmet reached out and righted me. I smacked his hands away from me.
“Don’t touch me,” I said through gritted teeth.
“Donya,” he said my name on a sigh as if I was overreacting, when, in fact, I wasn’t sure if there was any other reaction except for violence. I was underreacting.
“You said she was just your friend,” I yelled. “You come to me the night before my wedding and tell me not to do it because I’m making a big mistake, and all the while you were screwing her! What in your imbecilic mind told you that would be okay to do? You didn’t even do me the courtesy of coming to me as a free man!”
“I’m never a free man,” Emmet argued. “My heart is always in your hands.”
“Oh spare me your starry-eyed bullshit!” I screamed and shoved him back. “This is the second time that your inability to keep your dick in your pants has driven a wedge between us. Why is it so difficult to open a condom and put it on your dick, Emmet? Didn’t you learn anything from Stella? It takes less than ten seconds to roll a condom on, even on your big dick! Casey is just as much of an idiot as you are for not insisting on a condom or being on birth control
at her age. Then again, maybe she just wanted a baby to trap you with, and it wasn’t very hard because you’re always more than willing to pull your dick out and jam it into the nearest hole.”
I gathered my dress and turned my back on him. He followed close behind me, calling my name.
“I know you hate me right now but—”
I spun around and shouted, “You have no idea how much I hate you right now!”
“I am sorry,” Emmet said pleadingly. “You are the only woman I’ve ever wanted to have kids with.”
“That’s even worse, Emmet,” I admonished. “The fact that you would be so careless with something you wanted to reserve just for me only makes matters worse.”
“I know, I know,” he said and tried to grab my hand, but I snatched it away. “I am so damn sorry, baby.” His voice cracked with emotion. “I know this is a shock—trust me, I only just found out, but we can get through this, Donya. We can get over this and still have a life together.”
“There is no getting ‘over’ this, Emmet,” I said sadly. “This isn’t something I can just sleep on and feel better about it in the morning. I can’t be with you while your baby is growing in some other woman’s womb. I can’t sit in a waiting room months for now while you’re in the delivery room with Casey watching your child’s birth. This is too much. This is too far Emmet, and I can’t do this with you.”
“Then take the time you need,” he said quickly as tears began to spring from his eyes. “Take all of the time you need and when you’re ready I’ll be waiting for you and hopefully I’ll have my shit together.”
“You will be waiting a very long time,” I said just above a whisper. “It was a mistake for me to allow myself to get sidetracked by you and my feelings for you.”
“Donya, please,” Emmet said desperately.
“I’m going back to the house, and I’m going to marry Jerry,” I said with finality.
“Don’t marry him just to hurt me,” Emmet pleaded. Tears rolled freely down his cheeks, and I had to look away. I couldn’t take seeing him cry. I could barely stand on my own two feet, feeling the desperation and despair inside of him.
“I have to go,” I whispered and took a tentative step back.
“No! Donya, don’t do this.” Emmet dropped to his knees in front of me and grabbed a hold of my hands. “Please don’t do this. We can work through this. Baby, please, please, please don’t marry him.”
I struggled to pull my hands away from his, shaking my head adamantly.
“I can’t,” I whispered. “I can’t do this with you.”
I managed to untangle my hands from his, but then he grabbed onto my dress, taking in big handfuls of silk and lace and holding on tightly as he looked up at me, sobbing.
“Please,” he begged. “Please, baby, don’t do this. Please don’t do this. I’ll do anything. Whatever you want me to do, I’ll do it. Please don’t marry him. Donya, don’t do this.”
“Emmet,” I said his name softly. “Let go.”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “No, I will not let you go until you promise me you will not marry him.”
“Let go,” I said again and worked to untangle his hands from my dress.
“I’m not fucking letting go!” he screamed. His face was a mess with tears and snot. I had the natural instinct to wipe it all away and kiss his tear stained cheeks, but wiping his face would not wipe away what he’d done, and kissing his cheeks would not make the situation any better.
“Let me go,” I said harshly as I tried to remove his hands.
“I will rip your fucking dress off of you if I have to,” Emmet snapped tearfully. “I am not letting you go so that you can fucking marry Jerry and forget about everything we’ve ever had. I’m not letting you go.”
“Everything we had is gone,” I announced crisply. “It’s all gone, Emmet. It’s been gone for a long time, and it’s time we both face that. Now let me fucking go!” At the risk of tearing my dress, I yanked it as I took a step backward. The fabric began to tear as I struggled to pull my dress out of Emmet’s grasp.
“I can’t lose you like this,” he roared, scrambling to hold on to me.
“You’ve already lost me,” I said icily and then gave one final yank. The sound of the silk and lace tearing was surprisingly loud and was the only other sound I could hear besides Emmet’s pleas.
“Please,” Emmet whispered, clutching pieces of my dress in his hands.
I picked up the hem of my dress and turned my back on him one last time. I walked away from his weeping that made my knees weak and left ice in the pit of my stomach. He sobbed my name repeatedly, and I struggled not to turn around and run back to him every time he said it.
By the time I cleared the woods, I was running for the limo. The driver was waiting outside the car, and when he saw me coming, he hurriedly opened the door for me. Emmet’s voice carried through the trees and over the green field as he cried my name. The driver looked back toward the woods curiously.
“Please, just go,” I said and slammed the door shut, and just barely missed crushing his fingers.
I don’t remember the drive back to the house. The cognitive part of me was still back in the woods in front of the pond on its knees with Emmet. I could still clearly hear him calling my name and see his tears.
I don’t remember getting out of the car or going into the house past Emmy and Sam just before climbing the stairs. I just remember closing the bedroom door, because that was when my cracked façade shattered.
I grabbed the closest piece of clothing, a shirt I had worn earlier, and buried my face in it and screamed. Tears poured out of my eyes, my fingers dug into the soft material of the shirt, and I screamed and screamed like a woman being murdered. In a way, I was being murdered. My heart was being torn from my body against my will.
When the screaming subsided, my body jerked violently as I sobbed. I pulled my face away from the shirt so I could attempt to breathe, but even though I was sucking in big gulps of air, I felt like I was being strangled and no air could move through my windpipe.
I became vaguely aware of the fact that I was sitting on the floor with my dress billowed out around me. I bent myself over in half and clawed at the hardwood floor with my nails as I cried. Several of them broke, and one even tore away and began to bleed, but I didn’t feel that pain. I only felt the pain of losing and giving up Emmet.
“Where the hell have...” I heard Sam say behind me, but she didn’t finish her thought.
I didn’t even bother trying to hide the fact that I was having an emotional breakdown. I couldn’t hide my broken pieces lying all over the floor.
There was a knock at the door, and I heard Emmy’s voice as the door began to open, but then she objected loudly when Sam stopped her.
“You can’t come in here right now,” Sam said to Emmy. I had enough sense to put the shirt back to my mouth to help muffle the sounds of my sobbing.
“What do you mean I can’t come in right now? It’s fifteen minutes until go time, and I am the maid of honor!” It sounded as if she was speaking through a very small crack in the door.
“If you don’t mind, I would like a little mother-daughter time with Donya,” Sam said impatiently.
Emmy seemed to consider it silently for a moment. “Okay. I get it. I’ll be downstairs.”
“Thank you, honey,” Sam said sincerely and then the door closed, and I heard the distinct sound of it locking. A second later, Sam was stepping around my dress. She stretched out her hands to me. “Come on, sweetie. Get up off of that hard floor.”
I stared at her hands for a moment, and then reluctantly put my hands into hers. She helped me up effortlessly and eased me into the chair in front of a vanity. I saw my face and knew I had destroyed the makeup job Ginny had done. Mascara and eyeliner ran down my cheeks, and my lipstick was smeared.
Sam went into the on-suite bathroom and got a wet cloth. Like the true mother she was, she cleaned my face even as I continued to sob
softly. In many circumstances, I didn’t like having Sam and her big mouth involved in my personal problems, but I trusted her implicitly this time. I knew she would put aside her big personality to take care of me.
“You don’t have to do this,” she said softly but with conviction as she peered at me in the mirror. “If you want to call this off, all you have to do is say it.”
I reached into my purse sitting on the vanity and produced my cigarettes. Sam didn’t object or make any comments as I lit up the cigarette and inhaled deeply a few times. It took me a good minute before I was able to speak.
“Casey’s pregnant,” I said in a dead voice.
Sam’s eyes widened, first with surprise, and then narrowed with anger.
“He told me they were only friends,” she said, putting a hand on her hip.
“Well, apparently they’re the kind of friends that fuck without any form of birth control,” I said quietly and took another drag.
“Did he know about Casey’s pregnancy last night when he came to the rehearsal dinner to try to stop you from marrying Jerry?” Sam asked dryly.
I looked at her reflection. “You knew about that?”
“Honey, I know you all think that I’m a little dim, but I know my son. I knew when he walked in what he was up to.”
“What else do you know?” I asked.
“More than you think I do. Now tell me, did that little jackass know about Casey last night?”
“No,” I said, looking down at the makeshift ashtray on the vanity table. “He had just found out when I saw him.”
“If she wasn’t pregnant, I guess we wouldn’t be sitting here right now. I’d be outside making excuses to three hundred guests.”
“Yes, you would,” I said unapologetically as I snuffed out the cigarette.
“What are you going to do?” Sam asked quietly.
“I’m going to fix my makeup, fix my dress, and marry Jerry,” I said, squaring my shoulders.
Sam looked at me with sympathy.
“You do whatever you need to do, but don’t marry him just to spite Emmet, honey. Marry him because you know he will be good for you.”