by Cee, DW
Jane said I had left Emily stranded in Arizona. What was that all about? I turned to ask Emily, but she was gone. My eyes left her face for two seconds, thinking about Jane’s accusation, and I’d lost my love again.
“Where’d she go?” I shouted at both my siblings.
“I don’t know. She was just here,” Nick answered back.
“Jane, what did you just say about Arizona? Why did you say I left her stranded there?”
“Go ask Emily!” Jane sounded disgusted with me.
I bolted out the door, ran down the steps, and came to a halt right outside the door. I searched to my left and scanned the block for Emily, she wasn’t there. I turned to my right and found her running to the end of the block.
“EMILY!” I shouted from the top of my lungs. I wasn’t going to lose her again. Not concerned with the events of the last few weeks, I couldn’t live without her another day. Please don’t leave me, was all I could think. She momentarily stopped at my holler then continued to walk away, flagging down a cab.
I caught up to her at the end of the block. “Emily. Please don’t go.” I held her hand and tried to grab her suitcase out of the taxi.
“I should leave. You three have a great time,” she answered tacitly.
Emily. Look at me. Please forgive me. The pain in your eyes—how could I have done this to you?
“I feel terrible interrupting you and Jane, but I’m glad you’re here. You didn’t mention you were coming to see my sister.” She looked even more hurt when I said this. “Regardless, we need to talk.” I needed to ask her about Arizona among many other misunderstandings. I started with the topic of Jane’s accusation as that bothered me the most.
“Emily, what was Jane talking about me leaving you in Arizona?” I feared her answer because deep in my heart I knew what I had done.
She only stared at the ground, silent.
“Emily, answer me! What was she talking about?” Though I shouldn’t have been, I got angry again. I was angry at myself but took it out on Emily.
“What do you care?” she answered, shutting the trunk.
“Tell me!” I demanded, but then begged, “Please?” Please tell me I didn’t leave you there that morning. PLEASE tell me you went back home with Max and Sarah.
“I waited for you to return.”
Oh God. You waited just like that night you were leaving for New York. You trusted me to come for you no matter what the circumstance. What have I done? My heart bore down hard.
“What do you mean you waited for me to return? For how long?”
She wouldn’t answer.
“Damn it, Emily, how long did you wait for me?”
“…Till it closed,” she answered quietly. Even in this situation she was worried about my feelings. She gently told me of the atrocity I had committed.
“What? How could you have waited for me till closing time? Didn’t you realize after a while I wasn’t coming back? It was freezing that day. You didn’t even have a jacket on. How stupid can you be?” That wasn’t what I meant to say. Emily, please forgive me. How will I make this right?
In disbelief she stared at me with deep sadness in her eyes. But rather than breaking down and cowering, Emily angrily yelled back at me.
“Yeah, I was stupid all right. Stupid enough to believe you when you said you loved me and wanted to spend the rest of your life with me. Stupid enough to trust your words when you told me you would never let me be alone again. Stupid enough to think that the man I wanted to spend the rest of my life with wouldn’t abandon me, that after he calmed down, would come back for me. That’s how stupid I was.”
I deserved the blame she put on me; every hurtful accusation had my name on it. I had let down my girlfriend—the woman I proposed to and promised many times to take care of for the rest of her life.
“Oh, Emily!” I groaned her name, anguished. “I left you by yourself at the Skywalk? You mean you didn’t go home with Max?” How had this happened? “I’m sorry, Emily. I didn’t mean to leave you there. You know I would never abandon you. I really thought you were with your friends. I can’t believe I did that to you. How did you get home? Oh, Emi.” I moved in to hold her for the first time in weeks. She shoved me away and glared at me. In her mind, I had betrayed her.
“I don’t want your sorry or your pity. My breakup with Max was a walk in the park compared to what you put me through. You made yourself clear by not returning for me and by not returning any of my messages. I was right to doubt your love. There was no way you could have loved me as much as you said you did.”
Please don’t believe that. I love you. I’ll prove to you I love you. I’ll make it up to you.
Within seconds, Emily took off the eternity band and threw it at me. “Here! I don’t think this belongs to me anymore.” The ring fell onto the sidewalk and rolled. My first instinct was to chase down the ring and then talk Emily out of this misunderstanding.
My foot caught up with the rolling band, and I picked it up to take back to Emily and place on her finger. I ran back to her but found her nowhere in sight. Emily was gone. Never once did I think she would get in the cab and leave me. Just like that, I’d found the ring but lost my love. Frantic, I looked down the street but couldn’t find her anywhere. Hoping Jane could help, I ran back to the apartment.
“Jane, where did Emily go?”
Jane looked at me disgusted again. “What do you mean? Weren’t you with her? Did you push her away again? What is wrong with you?”
“Just answer my question! Where did she go?” Yelling wasn’t going to bring Emily back but I had no one else to express my anger to.
“I don’t know. She didn’t know either. If you wait a little while, I’m sure she’ll call as soon as she checks into a hotel.”
“You sure she didn’t go back home? Do you know what airline she came on? Call the airline or check the status of her ticket.”
“Emily just left,” Nick said. “Why don’t you wait a little before doing anything? I’m sure she’ll call as soon as she knows what she’s doing. Right now, there’s no use calling anywhere, Emily’s in transit.”
Nick made sense so I calmed down and hoped Jane could answer all my questions.
“Explain a few things to me,” I appealed to the only person who had answers. “Why does Emily think we broke up?”
“Well, that was my fault. When you didn’t answer any of my questions, I assumed you two had separated. I mentioned this to Emily just to confirm, and she took it to mean this is what you believed. I’m sorry, Jake. When she got here, I explained to her this was not what you had said, but since you hadn’t contacted her in so long she didn’t believe me. Why didn’t you call her? Do you know how miserable she’s been?”
I wanted to beat myself for making Emily so upset. I must have been out of my mind to have rejected all her appeals.
“What did Emily tell you while she was here with you? Can you please tell me everything?”
“Well…” Jane wouldn’t continue.
“What’s the matter?”
“Emily asked me not to tell you,” Jane apologetically answered.
“Why would she do that? What doesn’t she want me to know? Is she thinking of getting back together with Max? Is that why?” Maybe I was right not to call her if she had chosen Max. Maybe all this guilt and heartache was for no good reason. “Jane! Is she going to marry Max?”
“Who’s Max?”
We both looked at Nick. He was so quiet we forgot he was still here.
“Jake. You think you have it all together but you are such an idiot. If Emily was going to get back together with Max, why would she try so hard to get back together with you? Didn’t she write to you and tell you how much she missed you and loved you?”
“Yeah…What does that have to do with anything?”
“She doesn’t love Max. She has no thoughts of getting back together with him. She loves you, you big dummy. She wants to m
arry you, but you’ve cut off all communication so she has no way to tell you this.”
“She wants to marry me? Are you sure she told you this? Why didn’t she say so before?”
“Ugh! Talk to Emily. These are feelings she wanted to express to you herself. She didn’t want me to tell them for her.”
Jane’s revelations turned my foul mood into an elated one. I would go back home and find Emily, and we could work out this entire misunderstanding. We could still be married by the end of summer. For the first time since the Grand Canyon, there was joy in my heart.
“I have to warn you though, she was devastated when you didn’t come back for her at the Skywalk.” Jane burst my bubble.
The Skywalk—how could I have forgotten?
“Tell me what happened. I thought she went home with her friends. What was she still doing there?”
“She told her friends to leave, believing you would come back for her. She waited for hours then caught a ride with a park ranger to a car rental agency. From there she went to see her parents in Texas. Though she didn’t say so, by the look on her face, you pretty much ripped apart her fragile heart. The crazy thing was, rather than blaming you, she blamed herself for being naïve and staying there too long. It broke my heart listening to her talk about you. She really loves you.”
The room went dark and I had to sit. From the beginning of our relationship I had advertised to everyone this was the girl I would take care of forever. Last we spoke I made her promise to think of me as her best friend and her eternal love—the one who wanted to create a family with her. Emily would never trust me again. I needed to get home and be with Emily.
“Nick, can you see if we can go home today? Call the airline.”
“We don’t know if Emily went home. She might still be in town. Why don’t we wait till she calls Jane.” Nick too looked worried about his future sister.
“Knowing Emily, she went back home. She won’t be roaming around this city. She’ll want to be in a familiar environment. We’ll come back next time with Emily and visit the city again. Right now, I need to find my girlfriend.”
“Don’t worry about it. Let me see what I can do about getting us home.”
Chapter 13
Emily, Where Are You?
We didn’t get home till early the next morning, and I went straight to Emily’s. Again, she wasn’t home. I racked my brain for the name of her school and couldn’t come up with a name or an address. Then I thought of a contact number for Sarah or Charlie or even Max. I didn’t have one. A call to Jane was a better option than throwing my phone against the wall.
“Jane, has Emily called you again?”
“No, not since she texted yesterday to say she got home. Are you at her house right now?”
“Yeah. She’s not home. I don’t know where she could be. She’s never out this early on a Sunday.”
“I’ll call you if I hear from her. You’ll find her, don’t worry.”
“Thanks.”
I went home and tried to occupy myself while calling Emily over and over again.
Monday, I got an early call from Uncle Henry while I was at Emily’s doorstep again.
“Jake, where are you?”
“Why?”
“You do know you have to be in Seattle tomorrow morning. The rest of your team is here getting ready for the trip.”
I had forgotten. This surgery up in Seattle was a last-minute heart transplant. There was no choice but to go. A man’s life depended on me.
“Chief, is there any chance you can go for me? I need to find Emily and clear up our misunderstanding.” I probably sounded like a lovesick fool.
“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that. Your team is counting on you as well as the team up in Seattle. Stop by the hospital and make sure all preparations are going well. I’ll see you off tomorrow morning.” There was no reasoning with the chief. He hung up on me before the conversation was over.
I stopped by Emily’s throughout the day and one last time before I left for Seattle. She was nowhere to be found. During the week, I called, I texted, Mom dropped by, but Emily couldn’t be found. Finally, I was home on Monday, and I went straight to Emily’s house by late afternoon.
Ding dong.
Thank God…footsteps. She was finally home. This madness was done.
“Can I help you?” A strange woman answered the door.
“Is Emily home?”
“Emily doesn’t live here anymore.”
“What do you mean? She was just here a week ago. Where did she go?” My outlook on life got even bleaker.
“I’m not sure where she went, but I just moved in a few days ago.”
“How long are you here for? Can you give me a contact number for Emily? There must be something wrong. I’m Emily’s boyfriend, and I was away for a week. She couldn’t have moved during that time. Please, can you give me her contact number?” Desperation engulfed me.
Emily, where have you gone?
“Well, if you’re really her boyfriend, then you should already have her contact number, and it shouldn’t be a surprise that she moved. Good-bye.” Both hands, almost in a pleading manner, stopped the closing door. “Please leave, or I’ll call the police.”
“Can you please tell me where she went? Please!”
She took pity on me. “I honestly don’t know where she went. We’ve never met. I’m supposed to route a check to her account every month and we have a contract till the end of summer. She won’t be back here for at least six months.”
“Thank you.”
Defeated, despondent, wretched—all emotions whirling in my head, my heart, my entire self. I had no idea why this was happening. Why would she move out of her house, and where could she have gone? I called Jane again.
“Hi, Jake. Are you back from Seattle? Have you heard from Emily yet?”
“Jane, did Emily talk to you about moving out of her house?”
“No. She never mentioned any such thing. Why?”
“She’s not here. I just talked to some woman who’s living in Emily’s house, and she told me Emily moved out for at least six months. Where could she have gone?”
“I have no idea. Do you think she went to go live with Sarah?” That was a possibility. “Have you called Sarah?”
“I don’t know her number.”
“What’s her last name? Search her on the web.”
“I don’t know that either.” I started to panic. Emily didn’t want to be found. I had pushed her deep into a corner, because she was scared to face me.
“Jake, think about everything you and Emily talked about, and you might be able to come up with a last name or the name of anyone’s workplace. Calm down and think things through. Go home and rest. You must be exhausted.”
I went home and thought as Jane told me to do. No information came to me that would help me find Emily. I contemplated hiring a private investigator to find Emily but decided against it. All I could hope was for Emily to call me when her anger and hurt died down or for her to call Jane to give her a new contact address. That’s when I would go and make amends.
A week had gone by and I had nothing. As hard as I tried, it wasn’t easy hiding my despair from my family. Mom and Dad worried. The chief felt bad after I angrily told him what had happened while I was up in Seattle. It wasn’t his fault—this was all a result of my selfishness.
Desperate for a phone call, I tried to go about my day without too much hindrance to my patients. I was done with morning surgery on Tuesday and thought about going out to lunch with the chief to break myself out of this dark haze. I walked toward the nurse’s station to page the chief when I saw Emily’s shadow darting into the elevator. I ran over to the elevator and caught a glimpse of my girlfriend on the verge of tears. That was her. Even though I saw her for a fraction of a second, there was no mistaking her beautiful face.
I turned to Linda, the head nurse. “The girl who just jumped into the ele
vator. Where was she going?”
“I’m not quite sure. Chief Reid brought her here but she left this and ran off when she saw you coming.”
As fast as I could, I ran down the stairs to the lobby. I saw another glimpse of her leaving the hospital. “Emily!” I shouted her name but she didn’t hear me. When I got outside, I couldn’t find her. I had lost her again, but was encouraged that she had come to see me, and even more encouraged that she was communicating with me. Cheerfully I opened her letter.
January 27
Dear Jake,
I’m sorry we had such an abrupt ending in New York, but it makes me happy to know I saw you one last time. You’re probably wondering why I’m writing you a letter all of a sudden. With much hesitation, I thought it’d only be proper to say good-bye. Since you don’t answer any of my calls, I decided to send you a letter instead.
By the time you get this, I’ll be on my way to Japan. I got a wonderful job teaching English in a small village. My principal was kind enough to let me take off the rest of the year.
Please accept my apologies one last time. You were truly the one person who understood me like my mom and dad. I will miss that sense of belonging. Please thank your family for their kindness toward me. For the first time in a very long time, I felt like I was part of a family. I will miss that as well.
I hope you found the eternity band. I’m sorry I threw it at you in New York. I’m also sorry I kept it so long. That ring made me feel like I was still a part of your life. I know now it was inappropriate to think this way. Although the band couldn’t hold true to its name for us, I hope you will find someone who will wear the ring with confidence, knowing that you two can love each other eternally.
Thank you for loving me. You’ve touched my heart deeply. I take many beautiful memories of us to a foreign place. Be well.
Fondly,
Emily
My world went completely dark.
Chapter 14
This Must Be Hell on Earth!