“What happened?” he demands, his voice low.
“I heard him—” I hiccup, holding back a sob, “— talking to some woman. I guess he used to sleep with her. Long and short of it is, he’s been using me.”
“Are you sure you heard right?”
“I waited, Hollis! You think I want this to be true?”
He clenches his jaw and fists and before I can stop him, he’s walking out. I follow him, trying to stop him but the scene unfolds quickly. Maddox is loitering in the hallway, and it only takes a moment for Holly to punch him in the face. Even as my heart hurts, it hurts worse seeing this happening.
“No,” I scream. “Stop it!”
People start rushing out and Maddox is bent over and I can’t face them anymore. I run blindly, my tears making it hard to see. As soon as I hear the city sounds, as soon as I see the people walking past me and around me, I feel like I can catch my breath. The world is spinning around me. My heels click on the pavement, and I’m walking in circles when I see Maddox step out of the building and flag down a cab.
I stop because I’m tired of not facing things head on and because love should mean that he gets a chance to explain it to me. He turns toward me at the sound of my heels clicking, and I want to reach out and touch where the blood leaks from his lip. Instead, I do the most adult thing I can do.
“I’m not running. I’m standing right here and I want you to explain it to me. Make me understand.” I hear the tears in my words but no matter how hard I beg Maddox, he doesn’t even open his mouth. I want to push him and yell at him and force him to see me standing right in front of him, begging him to fight for me. To remember that I’m somebody. “What is it?”
I want to defend him against my worst thoughts because he deserves that, but he doesn’t give me the ammunition. He doesn’t know that I’m at war with myself, and even though it’s me versus me, I’m still on his side. Like a fucking idiot. Still, he’s quiet.
I end up leaving him standing there because the universe is moving along again and we’re no longer holding onto one another.
Chapter 27
Ileft Kingsley records. As I lay in my bed in a sleepshirt, I remember the way my father looked as I quit. I remember the way I didn’t let him say a word, the way he looked so hurt. Misery does love company because I was filled with the ache of wanting to make someone feel the way Maddox made me feel. So after I quit, I locked myself away from the world and I’ve been in my room since.
I can’t remember when it was that I lost my mind. Was it the day I got in that cab? Or the best night of my life? What I do know is that, as soon as I signed my love away to Maddox, I signed away my sanity too. I have no idea how I’ll get it back. But this time, my broken heart taught me a few things.
Happiness is a state of suspension. You can’t see what’s holding you up, but you don’t bother worrying about it. Because it’s held your weight for so long, it’s reliable. Then reality sets in and you realize that whatever was holding you up is gone. You’re falling. Happiness is the moment before the fall. Before it all falls down.
I picture my broken body at the bottom of a well, and up at the top Maddox is peering down at me. Then he walks away. Falling in love means falling to your doom. Nothing good can come of gifting someone an organ you can’t survive without.
I’m feeling a little doomed as I hear someone knock on my bedroom door.
“Emmy?”
I roll over on my side to face the door. As the tears drip from the bridge of my nose, I realize I’m crying.
To not know you’re crying…welcome to the bottom.
“Emerson, can I come in?”
I can’t bring myself to say anything. My tear ducts are using all of my energy. I have nothing left so my mouth stays shut. He opens the door and I expect pity. It makes me want to roll over and face the wall, but my asshole tear ducts make it impossible.
“Not gonna lie, I expected to find your carcass in here,” he tells me as he walks inside the room.
I remember watching movies and seeing how the brokenhearted women would eat ice cream and sob and their houses would look a mess. Not me. I don’t eat. Everything is in its place.
But on the inside, I look just as ruined as their houses did.
I guess they’re better off than I am.
“Mr. Kingsley keeps asking about you.”
If he talks about Maddox, I will scream. I brace myself.
“I tell him to come by and check on you, but he says you wouldn’t like that.” He scratches at the beard he started growing. I notice because he’s the only person I’ve seen since my dad’s birthday party. “Maybe he’s right. Anyway, our freezer is filled with frozen yogurt. He sends it by the case.”
If I were okay, I’d smile and call him. But I’m so far from okay.
I think Hollis wasn’t half wrong when he said he’d find my carcass. I’m lying here, not saying a word, not reacting.
“How can we make this better?”
You can’t, I say in my head. Leave me to suck out the poison.
When I was emotionally destroyed before, I hadn’t truly mourned it. Maybe that was why it festered for so long. I want to change that. I want to let myself cry and let the relationship go. In order to do that, I have to lie in my bed as the days go by.
He runs his fingers through my hair before leaning down to kiss my forehead.
“Happy New Year. One day, you’ll walk out of this room and I’ll be outside, waiting for you.”
I close my eyes. As he leaves the room, I fall asleep.
When I wake up, I’m not ready yet. Days pass and I’m still not ready to get back to the world because every time I think of trying to move on, I’m reminded of the way my warm love turned ice cold. Something so big is now so…gone. How could I move on from that? Pretend he didn’t exist?
He is so cleverly woven into the fabric of my life. Trying to remove his thread meant the ruination of the entire tapestry. I can’t suck him out like a poison. No, I must wear him like a scar.
Hollis isn’t home when I decide it’s time to return to the rest of the world. I’m anxious to see people and take my mind off of my life for a while. Before I know it, I’m walking to Central Park with my head down. I blend in despite the fact that I’ve been dying a little each day. I’m a ghost of who I was.
But New York doesn’t notice when you’re gone. It only loves you while you’re here. Now that I’m ready to face people, I feel like embracing the crowd and the rush. It makes things too fast paced for me to stop and think about my broken heart.
I sit on a different stretch of bench, farther into the park. It’s brisk and the snow has nearly melted away, but it still feels like my place. Our place.
I watch happiness and sadness around me and people who are too busy. Some people take their time. It’s then that I decide what I need to do. I send Hollis a text and head home to pack.
I need to see my mom.
It’s a four-hour train ride to Westerly. As soon as I settle in my seat, I get a text back from Hollis telling me to be safe and call him when I get there. I likely wouldn’t. I haven’t spoken more than a few words in weeks now. I lean my head against the cold window and watch the scenery as we make our way. When we arrive, I tap on my phone a few times, requesting an Uber to a nearby hotel.
The last time I was here, I was shaking, sobbing, and heartbroken. It’s ironic that this time, I’m running from the scene of my current heartbreak to the scene of my last. But I square my shoulders and as my Uber pulls up, I get myself together.
I can’t be anything other than strong as I see the woman who taught me what strength is.
I drop off my things in a room I book at the desk and make my way back out. I don’t want to spend too much time here because I only came for one reason.
I walk to the cemetery with a hat on and my hood up. As far as I can tell, no one notices me. The walk is long but I don’t mind, even though it’s cold. It’s nice to feel something other than
hurt. I pick my head up and look around. This place used to be magical to me. My ghosts painted this town red, and so many of these buildings bore witness to my secrets. It’s brings the old me back to life, and I reminisce on the days where I had no shortage of wistful youth.
When I reach the cemetery and then her grave, I don’t know what to say. So I sit with her and talk about anything I can think of. I clean the dirt and dead leaves from her stone and wish that she could talk so I wouldn’t have to.
“I’m sure you know I miss you,” I say as I wipe at my running nose. It’s so cold, my fingers are losing feeling. “Just like I know you miss me.”
I kiss my frozen fingers and press them to the cold stone that represents her life. My mother was so far from stone, it’s funny that this is what’s left of her.
I start walking back but it’s getting too cold and I haven’t eaten, so I stop off inside a deli and eat a sandwich while taking in the minor changes I’ve seen. Some things look older, others replaced and therefore newer. I mull over everything as I chew and when I’m done, I slip back out silently. I’m almost back at the hotel when I look up and see someone standing in front of me.
Henry?
Same dark hair but shorter now. Same athletic build, same smile, though it’s small. The uncertainty in his eyes was always there, but there’s something new. Regret? I don’t know. He’s aged in the three years we’ve spent apart, and I’m taken back to the story of us.
I was beginning my junior year at college when I realized that I wasn’t doing what I wanted to do. I had a few acquaintances, but I couldn’t bring myself to make connections with people. I found myself sickened by the caste system that was enforced by sororities and fraternities and what was expected of me as Dustin Kingsley’s daughter. New money was supposed to mingle with old money. We were supposed to beg for scraps from the old money types to be socially accepted and I refused. After three long years, I packed my shit and left without telling my father. I always knew I wanted music, nothing more and nothing less, so why go through the torture college put me through?
Every summer, I went to Rhode Island. My father thought it best since my mother’s family remained there long after her passing, and if my father wanted anything in the world, it was for me to still feel connected to my mother in any way. As if my connection to her would make her still feel real to him.
Henry Esposito lived in Westerly, in the same town that shoved us in the same classes together. The same town that’d sheltered our sweet little romance from the world. We were too young to really understand my dad’s success and when we went away the first time, Henry was heartbroken. When we came back, things were a little different. Different for everyone else but not for me. Money and success meant nothing to a girl watching her mother die.
After she passed and Henry and I grew up a little, I’d spend my summers with him. He was my one secret from the world. The only person who knew about my love for him was my mother so I continued to keep him, wondering if he’d be my tragedy or my blessing.
As I prepared for Columbia University, he went to community college whenever he could fit it into his work schedule. The more we grew up, the further our worlds grew apart, and the summer before my junior year, I got drunk and gave Henry my virginity in an attempt to show him that I wanted to be with him forever.
But when I left school early and ran back to Rhode Island to run away with Henry, I was no longer faced with the boy I’d grown up loving.
I was faced with a man and his wife. Our worlds couldn’t have been more out of sync.
Instead of asking him why, I ran to Kingsley Records and hid behind the music and my father. Music healed me. Henry, as my mother suspected, turned out to be someone I encountered a lifetime ago and nothing more.
Seeing him standing in front of me is a shock.
“I was hoping I’d run into you while you were here,” he starts and all I can hear is the way he called my name out as I ran away from him and the woman he hadn’t had to wait for. “Emmy?”
I want to tell him to call me Ms. Kingsley but it’s all so absurd.
He moves to touch me and I shrink away. Word gets around in a small town. Hell, it gets around in the city. I knew he’d hear that I was here because someone had to have reported back to my family that Giselle’s little girl was walking around looking like a homeless person.
“I used to be the person you told everything to. And now you’re treating me like the rest of the world.” He sounds hurt, but he lost the right to be my person the day he promised himself to another.
I look at him and I’m too tired to be angry or confused.
“We’re different people now,” I say, and he nods and looks away. I still see the boy who kissed my tears away when my father wasn’t looking. “I hope you’re happy. I mean that.”
“I hope the same for you, Emerson.”
Such a big part of me takes comfort in his words. But that part of me is still broken by Maddox, and I wonder how many times a heart can be broken before it stops beating altogether.
“I’m sorry for what happened between us,” he says. I don’t know what I’m required to say, but I know what I want to say so I say it.
“Don’t be.” I couldn’t tell him that it didn’t matter because we were just kids. Because even as a child, my heart was a tragic little monster, making me crazy, looking for love. As a child, I knew that life ended and my understanding of it was a little too intense for most adults. No, it wasn’t because we were young. It was because Henry and I, for all of the beating my heart did, we were a near miss. We never got to hold onto one another. Not the way Maddox and I did.
“You deserved someone more like you. Who could bring something to the table.” And there’s the honesty that I wanted from him, the answer I was waiting for.
“Maybe, but I would’ve taken you.” That’s my truth. It hurts to think that if things with Henry worked out, I wouldn’t have experienced Maddox but it’s the truth.
When Henry doubted himself and his worth, he made the mistake of sealing our fate. Our worlds were once so close to one another until I was propelled into the lifestyle my father’s hard work provided, and that changed so many things between us.
I pause and I listen.
The sound of my love for Henry is the sound of children playing in the distance. So sweet but so far behind. Something to be looked back on as an adult with a sense of nostalgia and happiness that those days are gone.
Though time has changed him, I recognize so many things. I remember the freckles on his skin and the way his eyes squint when he’s overjoyed. I know what he smells like and what it’s like to lie in his arms after a day on the beach. If I try really hard, I can even remember the taste of his lips, mingled with the taste of my tears.
But even though I know these things, I don’t know Henry anymore and that’s okay.
“Tell your mom I said hi,” I tell him and when I offer my hand, he pulls me into his arms.
“I miss you all the time,” he whispers in my ear. When I step back, I notice the ring finger on his left hand is bare, so unlike the day I ran away from him years ago. I can only smooth my hair away from my face and take a deep breath. “You were the best secret I ever kept.”
“Yeah, but who wants to be a secret?” I clutch my bag closer to my body, and I’m immediately taken aback by my response. I’d kept Maddox a secret when I knew how terrible it felt to be one. I look Henry square in his eyes. “And your wife…she was an even better secret.”
“I was—she was a mistake. I…got her pregnant and it was the right thing to do.”
The words hurt the twenty-year-old me that left college with such optimism. We could’ve been. We could’ve been great. But the twenty-three-year-old me blinks a few times and takes another deep breath.
“Now the right thing doesn’t appeal to you anymore? Henry, what you miss isn’t me. Not anymore. I hardly recognize you. You miss the youthfulness and the way we were. If we were to be together now
…” I laugh. “What you think you love about me is already gone. It’s the fact that I’ve gone and you’ll never know what we might’ve been that makes you long for what was.”
I stare at Henry to make sure he understands what I’m telling him. This look of sadness crosses his face. That he even had a hope of rekindling whatever it was we had further proves how little he knows me.
“Go to your wife. Maybe there was a time for us but it’s gone,” I tell him with a sad smile. I grab his face and bring him down toward me while standing on my tiptoes. I kiss his cheek and I wonder if I’ll ever see him again.
The universe is a funny thing, I think to myself as we go our separate ways.
I check out of the room I didn’t use and take the next train into the city.
On my way home, my phone pings with an incoming message. When I see Maddox’s name, I nearly toss it into the train’s aisle but I can’t. That awful hope and my awful heart stop me.
Maddox: For Love by The Sam Willows
My hands shake as I look the song up and listen to it. It makes my vision blur, but I play it again and again on repeat, wishing something else followed; a message that explained what it meant. Would I try to reach him? I thought I already had. After the fifth listen, I turn off my phone and sleep the rest of the way home.
Chapter 28
I’m making breakfast the next day when I hear my phone go off. I don’t know the number so I answer. I figure Maddox knows better than to call me, and my father has no reason to call me from a number other than his own.
“Hello?”
“Hi! Is this Emerson?”
“It is. Who is this?” I stop scrambling the eggs and switch my phone from one ear to the other. I take the eggs off the stove and move to grab a pen and notepad, preparing myself for a message by habit.
“Asa!” I trip over my coffee table and curse. “Emerson?”
“Yeah, hi! Sorry.” I cover my mouth with my hand for a second. “I wasn’t expecting your call.”
“I asked Mr. Kingsley for your number. I’m not sure…are you still producing?” She sounds a little unsure, but I know the answer immediately though I haven’t been in a studio for weeks.
The Sound of Serendipity Page 22