Save The Date

by K. S. Thomas

  If he had been looking for me, it didn’t show. He just seemed to stare blankly ahead, a sad sort of expression hiding behind his vacant smile. My heart ached just seeing him like that.

  Then, at last it was over and the reception began. I made a beeline for the groomsmen hoping to find Emerson, only he wasn’t with them. After wandering through the crowd of guests all mingling and catching up, I finally spotted him heading into the house. I couldn’t have asked for a better opportunity.

  I ran in through the French doors lining the wall to the pool and then stopped to listen. There was plenty of noise coming from the kitchen. The caterers were in high gear already. Maybe he had headed to his and Spence’s old room.

  I hurried down the hall and down the stairs that led to the basement. The door was open when I arrived at the end. There he was.

  “Hey.”

  He smiled helplessly. “Hey yourself.”

  He looked lost. Not at all the confident strong man I knew him to be.

  With every doubt being instantly obliterated, I flew across the room and into his arms. His mouth came down to greet mine, capturing my lips with such a tender force I knew I was his and he was mine. No amount of time, not past or future, could ever change that.

  “I’m sorry,” I breathed against his soft kiss.

  “Liss, considering the situation and the role I played in it, I’m going to have to call dibs on all of the apologies.” The smile was slowly coming back to his eyes and I felt my heart ache a little less.

  “You’re a jackass. And yes, you have plenty to apologize for. But so do I.”

  “Come again?”

  “I never should have run out of there like that. It’s just, I’ve never had anything in my life I wasn’t prepared to walk away from. So, when things get uncomfortable, or don’t go my way, I just…let it go.”

  “Are you saying…that you have something now that you’re not prepared to walk away from?” His eyes were locked onto mine, daring me to answer truthfully.

  “I’m saying, I now have someone that I’m not prepared to walk away from.” It had been harder to admit than I’d anticipated, but once the words had been spoken I’d never felt happier.

  He pulled me up into his arms, tight against him and still it wasn’t close enough. Not near close enough.

  “You want to get out of here?” he murmured into my ear.

  “Yes.” Anymore and my words would have led to propositioning him right then and there with the wedding party right outside the door.

  My hand nestled safely in his again, we went to make our getaway. Only, we didn’t get very far.

  My mother and Jake were blocking our path.

  Emerson and I were still out sight when we heard them having a heated argument out in the formal dining room. We stopped short in the hall, not wanting to interrupt. Not that eavesdropping wasn’t just as rude. If not more so.

  “Can you honestly tell me that you’re happy, Jake? Running your father’s business? You never wanted that! You were going to go to school. Become an architect. What happened to those dreams?” My mother’s voice was filled with anguish.

  “Those dreams weren’t practical, Sophie. No one but you ever expected me to follow through with them.” It was the first time I’d ever heard Jake’s voice. It was raspy, but his tone was surprisingly tender in spite of the heightened emotions.

  An unexpected sob escaped my mother. “Why, Jake? Why couldn’t you just let me love you? All you needed was someone to love you enough to want better for you. To want for you what you wanted for yourself. Why couldn’t you just let me give you that? Don’t you know how easy that would have been for me?”

  There was a sound of movement and I wondered if it was bringing them closer together or farther apart. Then, when Jake spoke again, his voice lowered, I knew he had gone to her.

  “Why can’t you see that that’s exactly what I was doing for you? Do you really think you would have accomplished all that you have if you had stayed with me? Look at the life you’ve lived. The business you’ve built. I don’t regret for one second giving up my dreams, knowing you have lived yours.”

  I could hear my mother crying. “You’re an idiot, Jake Rimmel, if you think I’ve been living my dreams all this time. You weren’t there. My dream never came true.”

  “You’re wrong, Sophie. You can’t see it, but you’re wrong. You’ve had a better life than I ever could have given you. I am happy running my father’s business. I married a woman who was happy being my wife. Staying home. Raising our children. Asking you to live that life would have been like taking one of your father’s horses and locking it in a stall for all eternity. You were never meant to stay put, Sophie. You were meant to run free. And I’d be damned if I had allowed myself to tie you down and hold you back in any way.”

  I was listening to them so intently, I barely noticed the tears that had started running down my own cheeks. Jake didn’t get it. My mother would never have been held back by him. I may never have known the wild girl she was, but I knew the force she was to be reckoned with today. My father had understood it. He hadn’t loved her for it the way that Jake clearly had, but he had known that she would do whatever she set out to, regardless of whether he was coming along or not.

  In that moment, I felt a surge of gratitude wash over me, knowing that Emerson and I hadn’t followed in their footsteps, had stopped before we’d made the same mistake. We’d never waste years of our lives being apart because we understood, same as my mother had, that life was what you made of it. Life was about the choices you made for yourself. Not the choices made for you by others.

  I had barely come to my conclusion when I felt his hand slide out of mine and in a moment of horror I realized, Emerson had sided with Jake.

  The pain that seared through me as I dropped her hand from mine was enough to take my breath away. And, when I watched her head turn down to look at the break in our hold and then move up to meet my eyes, the panic in her face told me she understood.

  “What are you doing?” she whispered, her words rushed with fear.

  “The right thing.” And it was all I could do to stare straight ahead and walk out. There would be no turning back. There would be no changing my mind.

  Chapter 14

  It was Steph who found me later that evening, a pile on the floor of that hallway. I hadn’t been able to move other than to slide down the wall until I hit the ground where I stayed undisturbed for hours. I had been too shocked to even cry. I’d just sat there, staring at the nothingness in front of me, wondering how everything had changed so fast. How I had been so happy one moment and devastated the next.

  I had no idea what had become of my mother or Jake. Somewhere in the midst of my own unraveling romance, I had lost track of theirs.

  “I don’t want to go back to the farm,” I said quietly as she helped me to my feet.

  “Then we won’t. Where do you want to go? Tell me. I’ll take you.” I was barely standing when I flung both my arms around her neck and hugged her tight. I had come to rely on Steph so much over the last few years. She had become my rock. More solid than even Tori, whose friendship was still based on the girl I’d been in first grade.

  “I just want to get out of here. I want to go home.”

  A few hours later and we were sitting on a plane headed back to New York. I was done with Kentucky. The Ashcrafts could have it. And Emerson with it.

  I spent all of Sunday in my bed wallowing, but come Monday morning I was back at work, taking my life by the horns, so to speak. I understood everything perfectly now. My mother’s rigid work ethics. Her contentedness with being alone after the divorce. She had already found her soul mate. Knew who he was. Where he was. What was the point in going out and looking for something no longer left to find. And without love, what was there? Work. That’s what.

  The only way to put my heart out of commission was to let my head take over. And my head was brilliant. It was full of all kinds of amazing creative design id
eas and I showed up Monday morning ready to start sketching. I was finally going to stop talking about it and actually produce my own line of wedding wear.

  Not surprisingly, I felt a new sort of kinship with my mother, one I was fully prepared to build upon, expecting to have someone to genuinely commiserate with. However, my hopes for shared sorrows were short lived when in a strange twist of fate, Jake showed up at the office three days after our return.

  He had made an all-out fool of himself on behalf of my mother. Had announced to the entire place that he was in love with her. Had shared with everyone his memories. The first time they’d met. The last time he’d seen her. The moment he’d known he loved her. The speech had been beautiful and by the end of it my mother’s real dream had finally come true. Jake was hers. He’d always been hers. Just as she’d always been his. And now, the whole world knew it.

  My mother wasn’t the only one suddenly living happily ever after. I knew Steph was still talking to Blake, and even though she was trying to hide it from me, I knew she was falling for him head over heels. She’d be a goner in no time, so in my spare time, which was usually around four a.m., I would find myself browsing the jobsites in search of local schools hiring for guidance counselors. I liked Blake, but I wasn’t about to give Steph up without a fight.

  Two weeks after Savannah’s wedding and I received an email from her thanking me again for everything I’d done to help save her day. I was half-heartedly browsing through the pictures she’d sent of their honeymoon in Italy when Steph showed up in my doorway.

  “Cal.”

  I looked up. Something was wrong. “What?”

  “I just got a call from Blake. Cal…there’s been an accident.”

  I was eerily still, moving in slow motion even while Steph’s voice seemed strangely distant suddenly.

  “What kind of an accident?” My hands were gripping onto the armrests of my chair without my noticing.

  “Emerson. He was on his way to deliver some horses in North Carolina. He was driving through the mountains when a semi veered out of its lane and hit him.”

  “I have to get to the hospital.”

  I had no recollection of moving from my chair and across the room, but I was already running past her.

  “Cal, wait.” Steph reached for my arm, but I pulled it from her grasp.

  “No. I’m going to the hospital. I don’t care if he wants to see me or not. I have to go. I have to make sure he’s okay.”

  “He’s not at the hospital.” My mother’s voice cut through me like a knife.

  “What do you mean? Where is he?” I could feel the hysteria building up within me.

  “They haven’t found him yet. Apparently the truck and trailer were pushed up against the guard rail, but it was giving out against the weight. Witnesses said they saw Emerson get out of the truck to free the horses, but the shift of the weight and the movement…it was too much. The trailer slid and the truck went with it. And Emerson…”

  I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t do anything. Except run. I ran, faster than I’d ever run in my life. “I’m going to the airport. Someone book me a flight by the time I get there.”

  “Calista,” my mother called after me, but I wasn’t stopping.

  “I’m going!”

  By the time I arrived at the scene of the accident I couldn’t have told a soul how I had traveled there. Everything had passed in a blur and the only thing that had been racing through my mind on repeat was how I needed to find Emerson because I would not live the rest of my life knowing that my chance at true love, my chance for true happiness had died by the time I was twenty-three all because he’d been too pigheaded and proud to let me love him.

  I ran straight for the first policeman who crossed my path. “Have you found him yet? Is there any news?” The entire section of the highway had been blocked off while rescue workers continued to attempt to scale the steep drop off in search of Emerson.

  “Ma’am, you can’t be over here. You need to get back behind the tape please.”

  “You don’t understand. The man you’re looking for, he’s mine. I’m not going anywhere.”

  His face softened and he took my elbow, gently leading me over to one of the police cars.

  “You can stay. But you have to promise not to leave this car. I will send someone over here to update you on the situation momentarily, alright?”

  I nodded. “Thank you.”

  I waited until his back was turned and then abandoned my post to see for myself where Emerson had fallen. I heard myself gasp when I peered out over the edge. The drop off was deeper than I had expected. And the mangled mess of trailer and truck gave little to hope for when I realized that they’d caught on fire at some point after the crash. Probably some sort of explosion.

  “Ma’am, I thought we agreed that you would wait by the car.”

  “We did. I’m sorry.” A thought flashed through my mind. “Was there a dog?”

  The officer looked confused. “A dog?”

  “Yes, a dog. I was told he released the horses before the trailer went down the mountain. Was there a dog as well when you found them?”

  He shook his head. “No, ma’am. No, dog.”

  My heart began to pound in my chest, beating stronger with this sudden hope. I took another step closer to the edge, barely evading the officer’s grasp. “REESIE. REEEEEEE-SIIEEE.”

  “Ma’am, I really need you to take a step back,” he insisted.

  “No. Listen to me. This dog goes with him everywhere. He wouldn’t have freed the horses and not Reesie. If he’s out there. She’s with him.” I turned back to shout once more, “REESIE!”

  I continued calling her, even as the policeman was dragging me back to the safety of his car. I screamed louder, desperate and certain that she would show herself any moment. And then, “Reesie.” There she was. Her brown coat was covered in dust and she was limping as she came slinking through what remained of the railing and trotted over to me.

  “The dog. Holy – Guys! Over here! We’ve got something over here!” The officer had let go of me and was running over to where Reesie had just appeared, waving the others over for back up.

  “Reesie, go get ‘im. Go get Emerson. Good girl, go.” I pointed back out to where she’d just come from, and she understood. Moving slowly due to her own injuries, she made her way back down to where she’d been hiding in a group of trees several hundred feet away from where the truck and trailer had wound up.

  There, lying unconscious and broken between the tree trunks which had stopped his fall, was Emerson. Alive.

  I burst into tears the moment I heard the rescue workers announce that he was breathing. Everything would be alright now. He would be alright. And, in turn, so would I.

  The officer who’d been standing with me before came back to stay with me. “You know, you probably saved his life. I doubt we ever would have found him there on our own.”

  I just nodded, unable to speak.

  A helicopter arrived shortly after to take Emerson to the hospital, while I chose to take a ride from the policeman. I couldn’t leave Reesie. Not after everything she’d already been through. Of course, I hadn’t been the only one to rush to North Carolina. Noonie Skeeter and Poppy had made the drive as soon as they’d heard about the accident. Spence had been on his way, too. A few phone calls later and they were all meeting me down at the hospital where Noonie took Reesie from me to find a vet while I found Emerson.

  By some miracle, Emerson had escaped the near death experience with minor injuries all things considered. He’d hit his head pretty badly, and broken several ribs and suffered some internal bleeding from the blunt force trauma which had required immediate surgery, but aside from that it was mostly all just bumps and bruises. And Spence had assured me over and over again that he would be fine.

  It was well after midnight and I was sitting in his room beside his bed, waiting for him to wake up. The nurse had warned me that it could take a while, but I didn’t care. I s
at there, silently holding his hand, waiting for that last bit of relief I would feel when he finally opened his eyes again.

  “Liss?” His voice was raspy and raw from being intubated. Still semi-unconscious, he squeezed my hand softly.

  “I’m right here.” I whispered. “I’m beyond pissed at you by the way.”

  His lips curled up ever so slightly. “Alright, Firecracker.”

  “And hey, next time you want to see me, just give me a call. This whole ‘throw yourself down the side of a mountain’ thing tad dramatic, no?”

  “Worked though, didn’t it?” His eyes still hadn’t opened, but I didn’t care. It was enough to hear his voice again. Better even actually.

  He fell asleep again and I spent the rest of the night sitting beside him, perfectly contented.

  When I woke up again I was surprised to see it was daytime. I had no idea how long I’d been sleeping except that Lissy was still sitting in the chair beside me, her head resting on the side of my mattress. I couldn’t remember much of anything, but I had a vague memory of talking to her at some point during the night.

  The closer I looked at her the more I realized how disheveled her appearance was. Her feet were bare and her clothes were covered in dirt and dust. Had she been in the accident with me? No. Absolutely not. I hadn’t seen her since the wedding. I had made sure of it. And yet, here she was.

  Her head stirred and slowly lifted.

  “You’re awake.” There was something in her eyes I hadn’t seen there before. I didn’t like it. And I had a feeling I’d put it there.

  “How long have you been sitting here?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. How long you been laying there?”

  “Liss, you shouldn’t be here. Go home.”

  I had expected her to get upset. To have her feelings hurt. To storm out. But she laughed.

  “Don’t even start with me, asshole. I’m not going anywhere. And you can’t do a damn thing about it because you’re on bed rest.”