CHAPTER154
Finally, after a brief reflective silence, Sarah cuts in.
“Your mom keeps leaving messages on the answering machine. She knows you’re never here, and I know she has your cell number, so I guess she’s not actually trying to contact you directly.” She pauses, hesitant for a second. “I spoke to her briefly. She’s doing well; her nurse is taking care of her.” She smiles at me gently. Sarah texted me all this before and hadn’t been surprised at my non-responses to her messages. I remain impassive, making it clear my feelings have not changed.
“Did she mention her new boyfriend?” I say through gritted teeth and slide my mug onto the table, too full of so many hot drinks, with nausea rising. Sarah raises an eyebrow, then lets my comment pass. I haven’t told her about Ray, about what happened in Chicago. I will, I promise myself, tell Sarah everything, just not right now. This is all new to me, sharing … talking.
“Are you going to talk to her?” she asks instead, her bright blue eyes focused on my face. I avoid her gaze, looking at my hands in my lap, and I shake my head.
How can I ever talk to her again? How can I ever go back there?
Ray, Sophie, my past, her past, it’s all one huge ball of string waiting to unravel, and I don’t have the energy or the inclination to go there anymore. I have so many emotions about my mother, so much conflict, love, and hate. It’s not something I can evaluate anytime soon, especially not with all this new chaos overtaking me.
“What about the little girl?” Sarah asks, as though reading my mind. I had briefly told her, via text and the odd call, about Sophie when all that happened.
“She’s doing well. She’s going through the process of being awarded a protection order, so she can stay with her new family without fear of being returned home. Her father will be prosecuted. She’s in counseling,” I sigh at Sarah. I have been keeping tabs on Sophie through Leila, and Jake’s mother, and also Sophie herself by email. Jake told me his brother seems to have taken her under his protective wing too, and she seems to trust him which is a good sign.
That damned Carrero charm.
“You did for her what someone should have done for you, Ems.” Sarah is so direct and spot on that I snap my eyes to hers, inhaling lightly. I want to deny it, want to brush it off like old Emma would, return to cold and controlled ‘no one hurts me’ mode, but I don’t. I bite my lip, pushing away the force of emotion, and nod painfully.
“I know.” It sounds so sad, it hurts me. Sarah’s eyes widen, moisture glazing them; she knows how hard my acceptance is, how far I must have come to even admit this to her. She has seen the years of denial, bravery, and fight in me. She knows me better than anyone in the world, well, maybe except for Jake. He has even carnal knowledge now.
“Promise me something,” she soothes with a shaky tone, a solitary tear rolling down her cheek.
“What?” Right now, I wouldn’t deny her anything. I’m responsible for her sadness, and it’s aching inside of me.
“You won’t go back to hiding it all. I want you to talk to a professional; take this further, Ems, regardless of what happens with Jake.” There’s bravery in her eyes. She’s waiting for my reaction, pushing to see if I really am old Emma after all. This is a request she’s made many times over the years, the same one Jake made which sent me into a rage and had me accusing him of thinking me crazy. I bristle, old Emma habits are hard to kill. I stiffen as the defensive response forms on my lips impulsively, but I take a steadying breath, exhaling slowly to calm my reaction.
“I’ll think about it.” It’s all I can promise her. I note the elation in the depth of her eyes and her celebratory smile as she realizes that something huge has changed within me. I don’t think it’s something to be all that happy about, but it is what it is.
Jake has ruined all that I was.
* * *
For the rest of the afternoon, I help Sarah clean the apartment in companionable silence; we’ve talked ourselves out and there’s nothing more to say. I have so much to process on my own.
She keeps catching my eye and shaking her head at me in awe. I don’t think she can really accept that this is how I am now, as though she keeps waiting for the old Emma to jump out, to be in emotionless and commanding mode again, to pull out some tight tailoring and an iPad checklist. Her attention unnerves me, but I don’t want to freeze her back out again; she deserves more. I deserve more.
I keep checking my cell obsessively, but Jake doesn’t call or text. Every time I see the blank screen, I die a little more inside. I long for one of his song emails, a message, anything! I understand his silence; she’ll be with him. He has a lot to think about, talk about. He’s mad at me, and he’s overwhelmed. It doesn’t make this any less painful and it feels like eternity.
I spend an hour going through emails and work files before throwing my laptop aside listlessly. I’m trying not to focus on him, on her, on what we did. It’s like trying to turn back the tide in a way, and my head is my own worst enemy. I can’t even begin to dwell on what the future holds, for my job, for Jake and a baby, or seeing him again.
It’s like I’m in an alternate universe while sitting here in my own apartment, yet it looks so different to me. The whole atmosphere has shifted since I opened up to Sarah. I feel like I’m really home for the first time since I moved here, that this place actually feels like a safe haven from the outside world. I think back to my childhood room in Chicago; I never really felt like it was my home. I never connected with the city, or the people, or my own mother; I was always on edge.
Sarah had been a force to be reckoned with. She was shy and small and looked vulnerable, so I swooped in to protect her in the way that I needed someone to protect me. Except she wasn’t really that vulnerable at all. She let me believe it so that I had a purpose, a focus. That’s what I did; I fixed things, helped others have better lives than me, organized things to make it all so safe and steady and predictable. Much like my mother does for her homeless shelter patrons. I was trying to fool myself, trying to detach myself from my own life. It’s why I’ve excelled at my job, distancing from my own needs and emotions, robotically taking control.
Is that what my mother does? Are we more alike than I care to admit?
Jake flipped the tables on me when he brought my own life, my own flaws, my own insecurities into the picture. He didn’t want a brainless PA to do his bidding, he wanted involvement from me, a two-way friendship. He wanted to delve into my life and fix things, something that others failed to do. This insane need in him to pry and figure me out, like a kid with a toy, is the first time someone took control of my problems and wanted to hear them.
He is like a child sometimes, so it’s hardly surprising that I posed a challenge and an adventure to him. I was probably the first young female to grace his presence who didn’t want to bed him, who hadn’t fallen at his feet drooling. It was probably refreshing to not have a girl swooning demurely all the time. I was real. We bonded as friends and got to know each other, never posing a threat to one another at all. It caught me by surprise.
That’s how he got in, by being the one man I have ever met who didn’t want anything from me at all. He didn’t desire me; he didn’t frighten me. His easy, laidback manner forced me out of my formal mode, always pushing my boundaries further into laxness.
I crossed the line, not him; I fell in love with him, and in turn, I gave him a free rein to chase me as another conquest. He is a hotblooded male, and that’s what he does. I removed the rules to our friendship by kissing him, and opened a can of worms, sending us both spiraling into confusion, blurring the lines of what we were, causing chaos between us. I only have myself to blame.
* * *
Marcus returns mid-afternoon, his short shift for the day over, and offers to take us both for a late lunch, which shocks me. The fight between them has been forgotten and replaced with giggles and hugs, like it never happened.
I still can’t warm to him so decline the offer, aware of Sarah’s eyes on me. She’s wanting me to give him a chance for her sake, and I throw her a look which I hope conveys the message, “Baby steps”. They finally leave, giving me space to think and time to figure out how I’ll face Jake at work on Monday."
