Ward looked at me with wide eyes. Even after staring into them over and over, the color of his eyes would always amaze me. Such a clear, bright, crystalline blue made brighter by the contrast with his dark hair and long eyelashes. And right now, Ward’s incredible eyes looked utterly confused. Lost. I hated that it was my fault he looked unhappy. I never wanted to make him sad. I just couldn’t continue to delay my own inevitable heartbreak. It was better to get it over with.
“Alright Emma. I understand.” Ward’s voice was even and soft. Gentle. He swallowed, and his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down in his throat. “I appreciate you being honest with me.”
There was no anger in his voice, or aggressiveness to his body language. He was simply listening to what I had to say and accepting my right to leave. Like a gentleman. Once upon a time I thought that Ward was a chauvinistic asshole, but he’d proved me wrong time and time again. The way he was handling this conversation was just more evidence that he had a hell of a lot more class than Adam, even if he didn’t have a PhD and a vocabulary the size of Texas.
I nodded. “Of course.”
In the time I’d known Ward, I had come to realize that he was not the type to share what he was feeling. So even if he was saddened that I’d ended things, it wasn’t showing on his face. But more likely, he simply didn’t care that much. I was done. It happened. I was just another hookup in a long line of women that had graced Ward’s bed. I hadn’t missed the fact that he kept a box of extra toothbrushes and women’s toiletries under his sink. He had the whole one-night stand thing figured out.
“I also think I need to quit the bar,” I told him next. I’d saved this bit for last since I figured it was the most likely piece of news to provoke a negative reaction. “It would be too weird for me to keep working here.”
Ward looked at me. His gaze was unsurprised. “Ok. If that’s what you want to do, I get it.”
“I’m sorry to quit without giving notice.”
“It’s not a big deal.”
I shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot. “Can you just mail my last check to me?”
“Of course, I can.”
“Alright.”
“Ok.”
Ward was staring at his feet. He wasn’t saying anything. No jokes. No comments. Nothing. Just staring at his feet like they provided some answers that I couldn’t.
Ward was a good guy. Someday maybe he’d realize that. Maybe, someday he’d let somebody love him again. But it wouldn’t be me.
While I’d been obsessively rehearsing my lines to myself as I wiped down tables, I’d entertained a brief, hysterical fantasy where Ward refused to let me go. In the fantasy, he’d tell me that he loved me, sweep me up in his arms and kiss me. We’d ride off into the sunset and live happily ever after. God, I was such an idiot sometimes.
Rationally, I knew that the likelihood that two men would confess their undying love for me in one night was ridiculous. Especially if one of them was Ward. Ward famously didn’t do relationships. He’d made that clear from the very beginning. It was unfair of me to even imagine that he would change his mind just because I wasn’t going to be his fuckbuddy anymore.
I knew it was time for me to go, but I couldn’t seem to move my body. Once I walked out of the door, I’d probably never see this office again. Once I walked out of the bar, I’d probably never see Ward again. Or Willie. Or Kate. I hadn’t realized until this moment how much it would hurt to say goodbye. I got attached to this place so easily, and so quickly. I hadn’t even realized it was happening. And now it was over.
“I hope you aren’t angry with me, Ward,” I whispered. My hands were starting to shake uncontrollably, and my voice was wavering. “I just can’t do this.”
Something in me broke—snapped—and I suddenly couldn’t stand to stay in the same room with Ward another moment. His gaze snapped up to my face, but before I could see him become disgusted with me and my stupid feelings for him, I ran away. I fled, out of the room, out the back door, and down the alleyway to where my car was parked. As I went, I passed Kate in the alley. She was sneaking a cigarette. She looked at me in surprise, noted the tears that were already running down my face, and said nothing.
Just like her brother did, Kate let me go.
36
Ward
Emma was gone, and it felt like all of the air had left with her, leaving me suffocating in the tiny office. I hadn’t felt this way since… well, now that I thought about it, I’d never felt like this. Losing Emma was officially feeling like a new low, and there had been some pretty deep lows in my life. If someone had asked me five minutes earlier, I would have certainly said that the one-two punch of losing my career and fiancé in the same week could have never been rivaled.
The piece that Emma had published lay at my feet. I’d ordered my own copy of the magazine, so I wouldn’t have to steal hers. I’d made lots of little notes in the margins and been excited to talk about it with her. For the first time since middle school, I’d actually attempted to analyze and appreciate a piece of writing as art; I’d looked for themes and metaphors and stuff and highlighted them. I’d probably done a terrible job at it, but I wanted to show Emma that I cared.
My lame attempt was too late. Emma, who had never been mine, not really, had realized that she didn’t want to waste her time with me anymore. I could hardly blame her, but I thought we’d have more time.
If Emma had been anyone else, I would have been relieved. Even my most casual fuckbuddies never lasted three weeks. Usually because one of us found someone else they wanted to play with, but sometimes because things just got old. But Emma wasn’t anyone else; she was different. Special.
While I was staring despondently at the ground, Kate wandered into my office. Even her footsteps sounded smug. I looked up at her expecting the ‘I told you so’, her face shifted from knowing to confused.
“Ward? Are you alright?” Her voice was concerned. She moved forward and pressed the back of her hand to my forehead to check for a temperature. She thought I was ill? I probably looked as shitty as I felt.
“I’m fine,” I lied. “What’s up?”
Kate’s brow was furrowed. She looked like I’d knocked her off her game. I was still waiting for her to comment on how she was right, as usual. Instead, she shook her head. “I just saw Emma running to her car. She was crying.”
Emma was crying? Was that my fault? I felt like I’d been punched in the gut.
“Oh. Yeah. She quit.” My voice sounded casual. That was an achievement. “You were right.”
Usually Kate loved being right, but she wasn’t gloating. She bit her bottom lip and examined me closely. “Ward, you don’t look good.”
I think I have massive internal damage. Can’t you see? Doesn’t it show?
“I’m not feeling very good, either.” I grabbed my wallet and car keys out of the desk drawer I kept them in while working. “I think I’m gonna go ahead and go home. I think I need to rest or something. It’s been a long night. Can you finish locking up with Willie?”
Kate nodded. “Ok. Yeah.”
There was obviously at lot that Kate wanted to ask, I could see the questions on her face, but she didn’t push. For once, she let me walk out of the door without her snippy comments. Usually, Kate was very observant when it came to me. Too observant. This time, however, I was glad that she wasn’t telling me what she saw. I wasn’t ready to deal with it.
My condo, which I usually loved because of the panoramic views of downtown, didn’t feel like home. It was incredibly depressing to see the few little things that Emma had left behind. She had been very respectful of my space and careful not to put any of herself where it didn’t belong. But a few little things had slipped in: a few hair ties, a pair of silver hoop earrings, a toothbrush, and a little blue, see-through nightgown that she never wore (she always ended up in one of my t-shirts, or naked). I gathered up her things and put them in a paper bag, making a vague plan to drop them by her apartment when she wasn�
�t there.
I wondered if she was doing the same thing right now at her own apartment. I couldn’t remember leaving anything over there, but there were probably a few things there by now. Maybe a t-shirt or two. Would she call so we could arrange a trade? I wasn’t going to call her. That would be weird. This all felt a lot more like a breakup than it probably should.
I tried to think back to what things had been like when Jessie left and found that the memory didn’t sting nearly as bad as I thought it would. It was just a dull ache now. Jessie had moved all her things out of my place before I left the hospital. I’d returned home to a space that had been carefully cleaned of any female influence. The silver frame that had held our engagement photo had been moved to the kitchen counter. The photo was gone, replaced with the world’s briefest ‘Dear John’ letter. I could still remember exactly what it said: Ward, I’m sorry but this isn’t what I signed up for. I can’t do this. Forgive me. Jessie.
At the time I thought I would never walk again without a cane. When I saw the note, I remember whacking the countertop as hard as I could with that cane; shattering the frame’s glass and breaking the cane in two. We’d already broken up. Jessie wasn’t such a coward that she wouldn’t do it to my face, but the note just felt like a slap. Not as much of a slap as the fact that she kept her engagement ring, maxed out my credit cards, and cleaned out my bank accounts before she went, but still.
As bad as that had time in my life had been, it was the betrayal that hurt the most. Maybe because Jessie had gone on a shopping spree with my money just to reveal how truly materialistic and shallow she actually was, but on some level, I knew I was lucky to be rid of her. Jessie and I had never really loved each other; we were just playing house. I thought I loved her, but the person I loved never really even existed. It was all an illusion she sold me. Jessie was only with me to feed her ego and need for luxury. Emma wouldn’t even let me buy her coffee most of the time. She truly didn’t care about money. She’d shown no interest in my net worth, which was substantially more than she probably realized. I’d recovered well, although it had taken years to do it. Recovering my self-esteem had taken just as long.
As I lay down on my empty bed, I wondered how long it would take for me to recover from Emma. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to. If this was all I got to have of her, I drifted off to sleep thinking that it was still a lot better than nothing.
37
Emma
The morning after, I woke up crying. I’d cried myself to sleep at some point, and I guess my body didn’t get the memo because my cheeks were still wet when I woke up. As soon as I remembered everything, fresh tears started all over again.
When I finally stopped crying, I made myself go take a shower. The crying started again inside the shower, but it’s the best place to cry because you don’t have to worry about drying your tears or wiping your nose. You can just stand there until the hot water runs out, bawling. At least, that’s what I did.
I put on clothes, blow dried my hair, and tried to feel human. I still looked like shit. In fact, I looked like a I’d had a bad allergic reaction. I accidentally swallowed a bee once when I was kid, and I looked sort-of like that. I was puffy, swollen, blotchy, and pink all-over from rubbing my face. My nose was raw and red. I grabbed the concealer, the powder, and Lily’s expensive de-puffing cream and went to work. Fifteen minutes later, the now-presentable Emma in the mirror looked at me with a mixture of pity and recrimination.
My one consolation, if it can even be called that, was knowing that at least Ward was ok. He would be grateful that I’d handled things like a grown up. I hadn’t gotten all weird and attached to him. I hadn’t begged him to love me. I just cut ties and got out of his way. Although it hurt my heart to tell him goodbye, I knew that he was better off without some silly girl falling in love with him.
Adam’s words were still ringing in my ears.
Don’t ever be with someone who doesn’t really, truly love you, because it erodes your talent and wastes your time.
Now that I had cut distractions from my life, I could focus on my writing and finishing my PhD. I could focus on my future without getting mired in the present. Thankfully I’d earned just enough at the bar to cover my rent for the next month or two if I also used my emergency credit card and cut my expenses down to instant noodles and gas. It would be ok. I had enough time to get another job.
“Good morning Em—” Lily started to say when I emerged into the living room to grab my laptop charger. She took one look at me and fell silent. The spoon that had been delivering cereal into her mouth clinked back down into the bowl.
“Don’t say anything.” I replied. My voice sounded as beaten down and sad as I felt. “I know I look bad. Just let me go hide in my room, ok?”
“I’m going to kill him,” Lily announced, ignoring me. She put her cereal bowl down and put both of her hands on her hips like Superman. “He’s a dead man. What did he do?”
“Nothing,” I said, shaking my head. I couldn’t talk about this with her. Not yet. “I ended things, ok?”
Lily blinked. “Why?” Her voice was shocked, but her wide green eyes, much more vivid than my own, still looked furious.
I shrugged. “Because the casual thing isn’t for me.” I snatched the charger out of the outlet behind the couch and retreated to the hallway.
“Emma?” Lily clearly wanted to talk, but I just couldn’t.
“Later, ok?”
“Ok. Do you need anything?” Her voice was unexpectedly soft, given the anger she’d been displaying a second ago. I knew that ice cream and booze was only a request away, but it was eight-thirty am and I just couldn’t do it.
“No thanks.”
Back in the safety of my room, I opened up a new, blank document and… stared. I don’t know what I expected to happen, but the magic, cleansing power of ending things with Ward didn’t somehow transform me into a font of ideas. In fact, I didn’t even have one idea. I didn’t even have half of an idea.
After a few hours of starting and then deleting the same sentence over and over, I put the laptop down. It clearly wasn’t happening. Feeling empty, I reread my favorite poem for inspiration, An Arundel Tomb by Philip Larkin. I’d always loved it, thinking that it was beautiful to imagine romantic love even when it was fleeting or false. Today, however, the final stanza—telling of two long-dead aristocrats who, perhaps, never loved each other—rang much too true:
Time has transfigured them into
Untruth. The stone fidelity
They hardly meant has come to be
Their final blazon, and to prove
Our almost-instinct almost true:
What will survive of us is love.
On my phone, I pulled out the photo that Ward had taken of us on our fishing trip a few weeks earlier. Right before we became lovers, back when we were just barely even friends. I’d started the day furious with him. It was a masochistic thing to do but looking at the photo made me feel closer to Ward. I could imagine that in ten years I might be able to look at the photo without pain. Maybe one day I’d look at it and remember the good memories, the fun times. Perhaps what would survive of us—Ward and me—was love. Even if it was one sided.
The rest of the day was spent rolling around restlessly in my bed, occasionally venturing out to forage for food before deciding it was too difficult, and then retreating back to my bed. Getting ready and dressed had been unnecessary because I never even left the apartment. I barely spent an hour outside of my bed. When Lily returned that evening, she came armed with the intention to cheer me up and what she termed ‘special comfort pizza’. It was just regular cheese, but I was hungry enough to take the bait.
She lured me out of my room with it and we sat on the couch, not talking. Lily hauled out her laptop put Kate on a Skype call with us. Soon, all three of us were sitting there not talking. Kate’s little face on the screen was solemn.
“Today I went by Dr. Lieu’s office,” Lily said after a while.
/> Lily went to Dr. Lieu’s office almost every day. She worked there. I made a noncommittal grunt. Not very ladylike but it was the best I could do at the moment. Lily kept talking like I hadn’t just made an animal noise. She was clearly trying to make some type of point.
“Dr. Barnstead was just leaving,” she continued. Her eyes felt like they were boring holes into my skull.
“Hmm?” It was better than the grunt, but not by much. I took another bite of pizza and stared at the ground.
“Leaving, and also leaving, as I found out,” she said. I raised an eyebrow at her. That didn’t make sense and it must have shown on my face. “He resigned,” she clarified. “Dr. Lieu told me all about it. He was really quite cheesed off.”
“Oh.” Monosyllabic answers were apparently becoming my thing. In truth, I couldn’t think of something else to say. Adam wasn’t lying to me. He did come here for me. Either that, or he was playing a different sort of academic game with Dr. Lieu. That could be possible as well. Maybe he’d taken the position at UT in order to negotiate a higher offer elsewhere. He was scheming enough to run two cons at once.
“Emma, what happened yesterday?” Kate’s voice was soft and sympathetic over the tinny speakers of the laptop.
I took a deep breath to tell them but couldn’t seem to speak. My whole plan had been to remove the unnecessary and fake to focus on the necessary and real. But now I couldn’t even talk. Lily and Kate waited patiently until I found the words.
“Adam came by the bar. He told me that he loved me. I told him that I didn’t love him back—not anymore. I think he understands now that I want nothing to do with him. But he told me something that I think is true, too. He said that I should focus on the things that are important to me and seek love and happiness. That’s why I ended things with Ward. He doesn’t love me. He doesn’t want a girlfriend, just someone to sleep with. I can’t do that.”
Admit You Want Me Page 20