James lifted his chin at her. “What’s his name?”
Emma didn’t want to say Thomas’ name out loud because it felt like she might be breathing new life into his memory, and memories of Thomas were full of thorns that still left her feeling scratched and hurting. But James didn’t appear as though he were going to give up.
“Thomas,” she finally said. “But that was months ago. I’m over it.”
The lie stung Emma’s tongue and throat, making her feel like she’d eaten a ghost pepper. She didn’t even sound like an honest person. She might be over Thomas as a potential partner, but she wasn’t over what had happened, wasn’t over how the conclusion of their relationship had left her staring out windows, walking through her days in a numbed state of living.
James looked like he wanted to say more, but he only nodded. Vicki walked over and met them in the foyer.
“I saw Mr. Crusoe drag the pirate down into the archives. Is that okay? Is that legal, to hold someone hostage in the library? Are the police going to come and pick him up?”
“Vicki,” Emma said, “we aren’t holding him hostage. Actually…he’s intoxicated, so we’re subduing him until his employer can come and get him.”
Vicki’s eyes opened wide. “Are you serious?” she asked. “I hope word doesn’t get out that we had a drunken pirate impersonator in the library.”
Emma shook her head. “Just keep a lid on it, and no one will find out. I don’t plan on telling anyone. Do you?”
Vicki shook her head. “Do you need me to do anything else?”
Emma glanced at the large, antique clock hanging on the wall. “Your shift is technically over, so I’ll take it from here. Thanks for coming in and helping out. I’m sorry everything got so out of hand. It’s been one of those days.”
Vicki glanced over her shoulder. “What about the other impersonator? I haven’t seen the Englishman leave. The tattered guy who dragged the pirate downstairs hasn’t left as far as I know. They certainly didn’t stop by here to tell me they were done doing whatever Morty hired them to do.”
Emma rubbed the tense muscles at the back of her neck. “I’ll get it all back in order.” When Vicki looked skeptical, Emma added, “I promise. Plus, I have Mr. Soldier Boy here to help me.”
Vicki’s expression softened when she smiled at James, causing her pupils to dilate. “You’re a God-send. Where did you come from? You showed up just in time and you knew exactly what to do. You saved me; I know that. Do you live around here—”
Emma cleared her throat. “Thanks, Vicki. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Vicki gazed a few seconds longer at James and then sighed softly before gathering her phone and purse from the circulation desk.
“It was really nice to meet you, James. Don’t be a stranger. Even if you’re not moonlighting as a soldier, you can always just stop by.”
“The pleasure is all mine, Vicki,” James said, holding out his hand to shake hers.
Vicki looked disappointed that he offered a handshake rather than a hug or something more involved, something that would cause their arms to be tangled around each other. She pulled her gaze away from James and looked at Emma. “Don’t forget the Friday night book club will be here at six thirty,” Vicki said. “Morty usually handles that, but with him being out, I guess that will fall on you.”
Emma nodded. “Shouldn’t be a problem. I don’t foresee any other issues tonight.” As soon as she said the words, the hairs on the back of Emma’s neck stood, and three words skated across the tiles. Chaos. Loose. Kisses.
At 6:30 sharp, Emma had the Friday night book club attendees settled into their usual space on the first floor, sandwiched between the biographies and the reference books with their chairs in a horseshoe shape. James stood beside the circulation desk, flipping through a shiny trifold pamphlet. She recognized it as one of the college brochures Morty had gotten for her. James glanced up when he heard her approach.
“Yours?” he asked.
Emma groaned. “Morty’s dead-set on getting me to go back to college. I don’t see the point, and I’m not interested.”
“I wanted to study medicine,” James said, putting the brochure on the counter.
“I know,” Emma said, remembering what one of the Battle of the Bulge survivors from James’ unit had told the biographer. “Danny Lundsford said you were brilliant, could have been a successful surgeon. He said you loved talking about science and medicine and how you were always looking out for the guys.”
James didn’t respond for a few seconds, and Emma shifted on her feet.
“Is this how you felt when I recalled to you what you and Bobby had done growing up? A not quite uncomfortable but still a peculiar feeling that someone knows about your personal life but shouldn’t?”
Emma nodded. “It’s probably a comparable feeling.” She glanced at her feet. “I’m sorry. It’s just that I’ve—well, to say I’ve read your bio isn’t exactly true. It’s probably more accurate to say I’ve memorized it. I guess that is a little weird.” She laughed nervously. “Makes me sound like a stalker.”
James chuckled. “I’ve been watching you for twenty years. I’m not sure you have the lead on me when it comes to stalking.”
When he smiled at Emma, she burst out laughing, which released a tightly wound knot in her chest. Her laughter echoed strangely—but familiar—in her ears, like a long-lost friend who had finally returned. She pressed her hands to her chest as more flowed out of her. The reappearance of her laughter felt delightful. James looked at her like she was the most interesting sight he’d ever seen, and she warmed beneath his gaze.
“While we’re on the subject of stalker knowledge,” he said, “I know you have a deep love for pizza. Want to order delivery?”
“You eat?”
James laughed. “I’m not a ghost, Emma. I’m a real man with needs.”
Emma’s eyebrows rose, and laughter rushed out of her again. James’ cheeks reddened, and he cleared his throat.
“I meant physical needs like hunger,” he said.
Emma’s giggles continued. A carefree feeling rose up in her, easy and comfortable, and she couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt that way. “Sure you did.” She pulled out her cell phone and searched for the number for the local pizza place. “According to your physical needs, you want pepperoni or supreme? That wasn’t in your bio.”
Half an hour later, Emma placed her third piece of pepperoni pizza onto a paper towel. Then she slid the half-empty pizza box back toward James. He wiped his mouth and grabbed for another slice. They drank Coke out of two mismatched plastic cups she’d found in the kitchenette cabinets.
Emma could almost imagine they were two normal young adults, enjoying pizza together, possibly having a date. But they weren’t just two ordinary people. James was—she calculated dates in her head—approximately one hundred years old, and Emma would never be considered ordinary. And thinking of being on a date kindled anxiety in her heart.
Emma had read The Legend of James Grey over and over again, but one thing she’d always found curious was the lack of his having a wife or girlfriend. The biographer never mentioned a girl James left behind, nor had any of the soldiers or his family.
She wiped her hands on a paper towel. “Did you have a girlfriend?” Emma wondered what his girlfriend would have been like. What kind of woman was James Grey’s type? Emma imagined she would be intelligent and beautiful and know how to cook. She would be classy and always put together. She wouldn’t eat kids cereal or pre-made macaroni and cheese while standing up in the kitchen.
James chewed slowly and swallowed. “When?”
“When you left for war. Was there someone you…left behind?” Emma’s stomach felt queasy, and she wasn’t entirely certain why she felt uncomfortable imagining James with someone else. Am I jealous? That’s absurd. Of course a man like him would have loved someone, and who wouldn’t have wanted to love him?
James shook his head. “Not when I left, no
. A few weeks before, yes. Ellen.” He said her name like it still unsettled something inside of him. He sighed and settled his gaze somewhere off to her right.
When he didn’t elaborate, Emma’s curiosity flared. “What happened?”
“I actually thought we’d get married. It made sense,” he said. “She was a good girl. Capable and kind. I figured we’d settle down here and have a few kids, two or three maybe. She liked growing things, so I thought maybe I’d find some land just outside the city so she could plant vegetables. Then the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 went into practice. Four years later, my district was selected, and given that I was classified as a 1-A, I was called into action. Ellen and I dated for two years—”
“That was a long courtship for that time, wasn’t it? Didn’t girls get married when they were barely adults? Why weren’t you married already?”
James exhaled again. “She was young. Her parents wanted her to wait a couple of years. When we met, she was 17. I wasn’t in any hurry to get married. When we realized I was going to be sent away for the war, and we weren’t sure for how long, we had a talk. She said she cared a lot about me, but she didn’t have that feeling—that feeling that she wanted to wait years for me to come back, to give up more of her youth. She thought it was best if we broke it off.”
“She broke up with you?” Emma gaped at him.
He chuckled. “You say that like it’s an impossible idea.”
Emma wanted to say, Have you seen you? You’re gorgeous. Only a crazy person would break up with you. But she took a bite of her pizza instead.
They sat quietly for a few minutes while Emma created images of Ellen and James together—in her mind they were dancing on a polished floor while James spun her around and Ellen laughed. Then they were sitting on a picnic blanket in the park, eating grapes and cheese on crackers. Then they were strolling beneath the moonlight—
“Did you love him? Did you love Thomas?” James asked.
Emma lowered her slice of pizza and blinked away the images of Ellen and James. She felt a door open in her mind. She pictured Thomas leaning against the doorjamb with his boyish smile, arms crossed over his chest, asking her if she was coming in to join him or not. Part of her ached to go back to those days with him when he’d briefly made her feel special, and the other part of her was still raw from his leaving. She glanced away and focused on the bookshelf behind James. She stared at the spines without really seeing them. She saw pictures in her mind instead.
“It’s complicated,” she said.
James folded his arms together on the table and watched her. “So explain it.”
Emma pinched the bridge of her nose. “I can’t possibly prepare you for the ugliness.”
“I’ve seen some pretty bad stuff, Emma.”
She glanced at him and passages from his biography flashed through her mind—his two closest comrades killed by a mortar shell explosion a few yards from where he stood loading the gun on a tank, raging blizzards and freezing rain, and wounded soldiers freezing to death while James slept in a fox hole wrapped in a coat he took off a dead German soldier.
She pushed those macabre thoughts aside. He’s definitely seen worse than my busted-up life. “Thomas was one of my brother’s best friends, and he was married. Well, he was separated and had been for nearly a year. But he wasn’t officially divorced.”
James sat up straighter in his chair. “You fell for a married man?”
“Oh, don’t look so surprised. It’s not like I’m the first woman to make a bad decision. They weren’t even living together. I’m not saying that makes it okay, but it made it seem more okay. They were co-parenting their three children, meaning the kids lived with her full-time, but Thomas was basically with them all the time at her house. His kids were—no, are—his life. That part of his situation was always clear to me. He would do anything for them. A trait of his I admired.”
“Do you have a picture?” James asked.
Emma rolled her eyes. “One,” she admitted. “I ditched the rest of them. I couldn’t stand seeing them on my phone.” She pulled her cell phone out of her pocket, scrolled until she found the last remaining photograph of Thomas—one she’d taken of him while they’d been having lunch on her apartment balcony months ago. She held out the phone to James.
“Good-looking guy, obviously older than you, but I can see why you were attracted to him.”
Emma shook her head. “Looking back, I was so desperate for love that I probably would have been attracted to a mannequin if it had shown interest.”
James laughed but then stopped abruptly. “Sorry. I know that wasn’t an easy time for you.”
She waved her hand dismissively. “No, it was meant to be funny. Self-deprecating humor, but it still carries a lot of truth.” She pocketed her cell phone. “Anyway, we spent some time together after Bobby died, mostly talking on the phone and sending e-mails, but we had a few lunches together and a couple of dinners. I guess we fell in love. We fell into something. I loved him recklessly, stupidly. But I felt restless with what we were. I wanted him, but it was a desperate sort of wanting, and I fought the truth that he wasn’t mine to want, not really. And I guess I asked for too much from him. I wanted more time together, but he rarely had time, and when we were together, he was always watching the clock like it was a time bomb.
“Shouldn’t I have just been happy with what he had to offer? Those were his words, that I wanted too much. During a long conversation when I sat too stunned to respond, he told me how short-sighted I was, how childish.
“He said I didn’t understand what he was going through, how difficult it was for him to make time for me. He had his children to think about, to provide for, to be present for. I understood that, but I only wanted a little bit of time too. And when I didn’t have any time with him, it made me sad. I felt disappointed that I wasn’t important enough to be made to feel important.” Emma shrugged. “I like happy endings. I like people who are in love to be able to be together.
“But he said I was living in a dream world and not in the real world. I didn’t understand how gritty and imperfect life was. I lived in a bubble, in my own imagination where everything was supposed to be happiness and sunshine all the time. I should have understood that what he was giving me was good enough.”
Emma folded her paper towel into a square and then into a smaller square, and then into an even smaller square. The empty hollows behind her eyes where she imagined her tears formed began to ache.
“But it wasn’t good enough for me. Even though I loved him, it was never going anywhere. We would never be a we. Not in any real, acceptable way. He was never going to change his life or rearrange it for me. I just didn’t realize that soon enough.” Emma sighed and finally looked at James. “After he left, I felt so alone. After two weeks of not hearing from him, I finally broke down and called him. I sent him messages, telling him I was sorry, asking him to talk to me. Anything. But he never responded. I guess I wasn’t worth it. I wasn’t worth loving or talking to or forgiving.”
James leaned back and crossed his arms over his chest. “Did it ever occur to you that Thomas was wrong about how he defined you? Did you ever think that when you felt you weren’t good enough, it’s because he wasn’t good enough for you? What if he was wrong about everything, Emma? Especially about you?”
Emma shook her head and rubbed her fingers across her collarbone. “I made so many mistakes. I should never have been with him. I sincerely believed he loved me, but that was naïve and foolish.”
“You’re human. And don’t take all the blame. Everyone makes mistakes. But look at all the beautiful things about you.”
Emma frowned at James and made a scoffing noise in her throat.
“Don’t look at me like that,” James said. “You have a good heart. You’re kind, and look at how you care for those around you. Morty might not always act like it, but he’d be lost without you. I know how much he needs you around, and I know how much you’ve chan
ged his life by being in it. Maybe falling for a man who isn’t single wasn’t the best idea, but I bet you were good to him. I bet you made him feel special and important. Love is complicated, and we all make a mess of it at some point. No one is perfect.”
Emma picked up her pizza slice and pointed it at James. “Says the hero.” She dropped her unfinished slice into the pizza box.
James shook his head. “Hey, I’m just one guy who made one good decision. Anyone can be a hero if he wants to be. This is your story. You get to write it. I think it’s time you stopped writing yourself as the villain.”
Emma unfolded her paper towel, wiped her hands on it, and stood. Just thinking about eating anything else made her stomach churn. Leave it to her to allow Thomas’ memory to ruin another perfectly good day. “In that chapter, I’m pretty sure I was the villain.”
James pushed away from the table and stood. Emma felt startled to see that his hazel eyes looked angry.
“Says who?” he asked. “Says the guy who was angry about what he couldn’t give you? The guy who wouldn’t make time for you because he had a list of excuses? The guy who pursued you even though he wasn’t free? It sounds like he wanted it all, and he expected you to agree to his terms and that your life together would always be on his terms. It doesn’t sound like what you wanted mattered a great deal to him. That doesn’t sound like love. It sounds selfish. I think he did you a favor by disappearing, even though it hurt you. But he’s not the verdict on you as a woman. Look at you. You’re smart and kind and weird and funny…and beautiful.” James walked around the table and closed the distance between them.
Emma pressed her back against the bookshelves and watched him. She hadn’t been called beautiful since Thomas whispered it to her one night in his car, and even then she had doubted his sincerity. James stopped in front of her and brushed his thumb across her cheek before cupping her face with his hand.
“What if he was wrong about you? We’re meant to love and to forgive each other. Not count flaws or pick each other apart. If he believed all those hurtful things he said, if that’s what he chose to focus on, if he failed to see and appreciate your goodness, then he never knew you. Only a fool would take for granted and gamble with something as precious and rare as love. I’ve known you for a scattering of moments, and I can see who you are.”
The Legend of James Grey Page 10