by L. D. Davis
She started towards the bedroom but stopped halfway there.
“Luke, why don't you sleep in the bed tonight? You've been working your ass off and sleeping on a blow-up bed. It hardly seems fair.”
I stared at her. She was inviting me into the bed? With her?
“Are you trying to seduce me, Miss Grayne?” I asked teasingly while praying she’d say yes.
She snickered and rolled her eyes. “I'm pretty sure my girly parts have withered up and turned to dust by now. I'm serious, though. Just come to bed when you're ready. I can come out here.”
The little bit of hope she had given me she quickly stole away. I tried not to visually deflate.
“I'll think about it,” I said with a slow nod. “Goodnight.” I walked over to her and kissed her cheek as I did every night.
“Lata.” She threw me the peace sign.
I smiled at her corniness and watched her until the bedroom door closed. I stood there for a long time staring at the door. I wanted to walk in there, knowing she was in there changing out of her clothes, and grab her semi clad body and pull it to mine. I wanted to catch her off guard and take her mouth with mine. I wanted to lift her in my arms, lay her down on the bed, and run my hand over her smooth skin while my tongue searched her mouth.
I walked to the door and put my hand on the knob. With my chest warm with anticipation, my lips burning to touch hers and my cock rising quickly in my pants I found the strength of a thousand men to pull myself away from that door. I palmed my forehead in frustration and made my feet carry me back to the dining room table.
I worked hard for the next several hours, trying not to think of Emmy lying there in bed, expecting me. I had to remind myself that she was also expecting to get up and go sleep on the couch.
“Not happening,” I muttered to myself as I started shoving files back into my briefcase. “She’s going to sleep in that bed with me if I have to tie her down.”
I walked through the apartment turning off lights before easing into the bedroom. The bed was illuminated by the moonlight. Emmy lay in the lit bed like an offering from the gods. Who was I to turn down an offering from the gods?
I eased into the bed behind her. She immediately stirred and blinked her eyes open. I bit back my frustration. She slept like the dead when she had her nightmares, never even knowing I was there. Now the one time I was actually invited back to my own bed, she decided to be a light sleeper.
“I’ll go to the couch,” she mumbled and started to move away, but I put a hand on her hip, restraining her. The hell if I was going to just let her get up and go so easily. Never again.
“Does it bother you to sleep in the same bed as me?” I asked her.
She looked over her shoulder at me and her mouth fell open. She stared at me for so long I wasn’t sure if she had heard me. Why the hell was she staring at me like that? A nervous tension eased into my chest as I began to believe that maybe she was remembering all of the nights I held her through her nightmares.
“What did you say again?” she asked.
“Does it bother you to sleep in the same bed as me?” I asked again, convinced that she was just too tired to focus.
“No,” she sighed. “I thought it bothered you.”
“Maybe in the beginning,” I admitted. “But not for the reasons you would think.” Like even when I thought I hated her she still had the ability to make my dick hard.
She settled back on her pillow. “I didn't put much thought into it.”
We lay there in silence for some time. Emmy seemed to be drifting back off to sleep, but I was wide-awake. I wanted to settle in and pull her body to mine. I wanted to sleep with her in my arms without having to sneak out later, but I couldn’t shut my mind off.
“I want to ask you something, and I want you to be straight with me,” I told her.
She rolled over on her back to give me her full attention. I smoothed my hand over her belly and propped myself up on my other hand.
“What is it?” she asked.
It was now or never.
“Did Kyle hit you?”
I heard her breath hitch and even as the clouds began to block the light of the moon, I couldn’t miss her wide eyes.
“Why are you asking me that?” she asked in a harsh whisper.
“You alluded to it months ago. You said something about being used and abused, and then when I asked you about your last day in Philly, you said you didn't want to talk about it.”
“That doesn't mean anything,” she said with panic in her voice.
Now that I opened that door, I was going to have to push her a little. I needed to put a dent in one of the many walls she had carefully erected.
“Yeah, I knew you would react this way, so I talked to your mom and Mayson.”
“What the fuck,” she muttered.
She rolled out of the bed and made a beeline for the living room. I was right on her ass. I was going to make her hear me.
“Mayson said you came back from a trip to Miami with a broken wrist, and the day after the cast was off you were walking around with that fancy bracelet. You told her you fell while you were drunk, but she didn't believe you, and she especially didn't believe you after you started wearing the bracelet. She thought it was some kind of compensation from Kyle probably breaking your wrist.”
“Mayson is a crazy bitch. You can't believe anything she says,” she snapped so viciously, she almost shocked me into silence. It was the biggest show of anger I’d seen from her since she moved in.
“That's cruel and wrong and you know it,” I admonished her.
She kept walking away from me and I stayed on her ass. I knew I would have to stop soon before I pushed too far, but I couldn’t just let it go like her family did. I couldn’t just accept her words and put on my blinders. Wasn’t gonna happen.
“Your mom said she didn't even know about the broken wrist until I asked her today. You gave her a different story about the bracelet. She also said you called her a little after midnight New Years and told her you were going to be there later in the day. You got there a day late, claiming you were in a car accident to explain away the fresh bruises on your face, on your arms, and even on your back.”
The emotions that formed on her face damn near broke my heart. She was horrified and terrified. Worse than that, she looked humiliated and guilty.
“He really fucked up your head, didn't he?” I said. “You feel like you deserved everything he did to you.”
She didn’t answer. She stared at the floor and I stared at her. I wanted to take her in my arms and apologize, but I wasn’t sure how she’d react. I pushed for enough already for the night.
“I'm sorry,” I said. “I shouldn't press you like that. When you're ready to talk about it, I will always be ready to listen.”
I put my lips on her cheek, wanting so badly to touch her, but I again made myself walk away from her.
I went back into the bedroom, hoping and wishing that she would come back, but I knew she wouldn’t. I lay there for a long time, praying that I had not pushed too far. Every time I pictured the look on her face my heart hurt for her. She thought she deserved whatever Kyle did to her, her lack of a response told me that much. Even in all of my anger when we broke up and after I found out about Lucas, I would have never wished that kind of punishment onto her. I would never have wanted her to be physically hurt, nor blame herself. It wasn’t until she failed to answer me that I really understood how damaged Em was.
I couldn’t give up. I wouldn’t give up.
***
I woke up and felt like shit. My head was pounding and I was feeling emotionally wrung the hell out from my confrontation with Emmy. There was no way I was going to go sit in the office all day.
I went into the living room, not knowing what to expect. She wasn’t dressed for work, but Lucas was dressed and she was packing up his diaper bag. She looked like she hadn’t slept at all. She was pale and looked even more emotionally drained than me.
<
br /> “I'm not going in today,” she said in a hoarse voice. “Can you drop him off at Lena's?”
“I'm not going in either,” I yawned. “I'll drop him off anyway.”
I left with Lucas a little while later. My sister didn’t waste any time telling me I looked like shit.
“Had a long night,” I said through another yawn.
“Wanna talk about it?” she asked, nodding towards the kitchen.
“No. I want to go back to bed.”
“How’s Em?”
“A mirror image of me,” I said, rubbing my head.
“Well, I guess that’s progress,” Lena said as she kissed Lucas all over the face, making him giggle.
“You call both of us feeling like shit progress?” I asked dryly.
“Don’t curse in front of my nephew,” she said firmly. “And yes, I do. This means there isn’t any more pussyfooting around. You guys are digging into the deep shit that needs to be dug into.”
“Why do you and Emmy yell at me about cursing in front of Lucas and then curse in front him yourselves?”
“We push babies out of our vaginas, Luke,” she said as if that answered everything.
I didn’t feel like arguing.
“I’ll be back for him before dinner,” I said. I kissed Lucas and left before my sister pulled me into the kitchen for a talk.
When I got back to the apartment I found Emmy in bed reading on the very kindle I had given her as a gift so long ago. She used to sit in bed trying to read and failing because I was always trying to get into her panties. Most of the time I succeeded, unless the book was particularly good, then she shut me down. I wasn’t going to try to get into her panties this time, but I did need something else from her.
“I have such a crazy headache,” I said as I took my shoes off at the foot of the bed. “I feel like my head is going to explode.”
I climbed into the bed and put my head in her lap. I closed my eyes and waited. A moment later, I felt her hesitant fingers slide into my hair. When she began to stroke my aching head, I relaxed.
Later in the morning after we had a couple of hours of sleep, we sat on the bed with the laptop open looking at houses. I had ordered some food and we were having a perfectly normal conversation about where to buy and how many rooms we’d need. I thought it was going very well. We sounded more like a couple than a couple of roommates—until Emmy fucked that up with one question.
“What are we going to do if, you know, you get married or something? I mean, it's something to think about if we're buying a house together.”
I looked at her as if she had just said the dumbest shit ever. We’re sitting in bed together looking at houses to share our son and our lives in and she asks that question. Obviously, we were on two different pages.
“What happens if you get married?” I asked, trying to be casual.
She laughed at herself. “I think my current state is as good as it's gonna get for me. I'm so not on the market.”
“Why would you even say that?” I demanded. I didn’t want her on the damn market—she was mine—but did she really believe she had no chance at being in a relationship again while I was sitting right in front of her?
“No one buys broken items,” she sighed, and reached in front of me to scroll through the houses.
“People buy broken cars and fix them up all of the time,” I said, stupidly comparing her to a car.
“I'm not a broken hot rod,” she said, as she continued looking at houses. “I'm more like…a shattered vase. No one buys those.”
“Why are we talking about you like you're an inanimate object?” I scowled.
“What about this house?” she asked, trying to ignore the conversation.
I shoved her hand away and slammed the laptop shut. She looked taken aback, but sat there with her eyebrows raised.
“This is driving me crazy,” I growled and got out of bed. “Sometimes I see that woman I knew so well, but as soon as she starts to come out, you push her back down into the dark.”
“That's poetic,” she said sarcastically with a fucking smirk. She started folding laundry with trembling hands.
“Why?” I asked. “Why are you so afraid to be her?”
“Maybe you've forgotten, but that woman you knew so well screwed you over and broke your heart,” she said without looking at me. She was putting an unordinary amount of focus into folding the clothes.
I felt little bands of patience snapping one by one.
“You know what? Honestly?” I said angrily and snatched the clothes from her hands. “More often than you think, I do forget, and really, I may never forget entirely, but I have forgiven you. I forgive you entirely, no more animosity, but you can't forgive yourself.”
“Luke, really!” she yelled. “Why are you bombarding me with all of this serious shit lately?”
“Because in order for us to move forward, we need to deal with that shit, Em,” I said, almost yelling myself. “You need to deal with what Kyle did to you and you need to deal with your feelings about yourself.”
“I am dealing with it!” She yelled.
“Hiding behind your kid and your job will only hold up for so long,” I said tauntingly
She rolled her eyes and stormed out of the room. I followed her, yelling.
“Great idea! Run away! That's a great way of dealing with your problems.”
I watched her burn a path in the rug as she paced anxiously back and forth. I tried to rein in some of my anger and frustration before speaking again.
“So, you've made some mistakes,” I said. “We have all made some mistakes.”
“Yeah, your mistake was, how did you put it? Oh yeah. You had this inflated idea of who I was and it's not my fault that I didn't live up to your expectations.”
She stood in the middle of the room, staring at the floor. Her chest rose and fell heavily. I couldn’t miss the injury on her face and in her voice. I wished I could take back all of the awful things I had said to her, even if she half deserved some of them. Had I known what I knew now, I wouldn’t have made things any worse for her.
“I was hurting pretty bad,” I said softly. “I wanted you to feel my pain. I apologize, I didn't really mean it. Had I known then how deeply damaged you really were, I would have behaved differently, and I should have anyway. I didn't treat you the way I should treat the mother of my child. I've really been trying to make it up to you and be a better man.”
She looked up at me, surprised by my words. She didn’t understand that I had been trying hard to win her over. I guess I wasn’t trying hard enough.
“Em, I know you're broken, okay?” I said, desperately trying to make her understand. “But I need to know what broke you so I can fix you.”
She stared at me with a dumbfounded expression. Clearly I hadn’t tried hard enough or she wouldn’t again look so stupefied that I’d want to fix her.
Her expression changed in a matter of seconds. She looked worried and sad.
“Why would you want to bother?” she asked in a small voice. “Is it making me a bad mom?”
“You're an excellent mother,” I said honestly. “I want to because I love you, and it kills me to see you like this.”
I watched her face after my confession. Utter confusion and shock.
“Oh.”
Oh? Oh? I told her I loved her and she said Oh.
The buzzer went off. I think we were both glad for the interruption. I went downstairs to get the food. On my way back up I decided not to continue the conversation. Honestly, my fucking feelings were a little hurt. I had waited a long time to tell her I loved her. Even more, I made it clear that I wasn’t going anywhere, and that I wanted her, and I wanted to fix her, and she said, “Oh.”
We were both dysfunctional people. For the rest of the day we avoided serious conversation even though we were sitting on a mountain of serious conversations. We both pretended as if our intense conversations had not happened. We watched television, ate food, joked around,
talked about work, and acted as if we were both at ease when we each knew that the other was not. We even slept in the same bed, but I stayed to one side of the bed and she stayed to the other. We may as well have been sleeping in two separate universes.
I woke up early, before Emmy and before Lucas. I stood in the kitchen for a long time thinking over a cup of coffee with the radio playing softly in the background. I wasn’t ready to give up on Emmy, but I didn’t know if we were really getting anywhere. I needed to change my approach. Forcing her to talk about her pain was only leaving both of us frustrated and possibly a little more fractured than before.
By the time Lucas woke up, I had formed a plan. By the time Emmy got up, I was downright giddy about my plan. It was so simple that I felt stupid for not thinking of it sooner.
“Are you playing hooky again?” Emmy asked me.
“Impossible. I am co-owner of the firm. I can do whatever I want,” I insisted.
“Humble,” she smirked.
“I want to take Lucas to the zoo today and tonight you and I are having a date night.”
“Date night?” she asked doubtfully.
So simple. We didn’t need to have any uncomfortable conversations. We didn’t need to talk about how damaged we were. No confrontations or yelling or frustration. I was going to take her out, like I used to, just the two of us. A night on the town with some dinner, drinks, and whatever else the city had in store for us. Emmy had not had one of these nights in a very long time, probably since before Lucas was born. She needed this. I needed this. We needed this—together.
“Yep. I already asked Diane to babysit,” I said. “I know I'm not Brad Pit, but I think I make a pretty good date,” I said when she remained silent.
A small smile appeared on her face. “I guess.”
“Oh my god, Lucas! Did you see that?” I exclaimed.
“Smartass,” she muttered before walking away.
“And don’t think you’re cute ass is getting out of this,” I called after her.
“Stop cursing!” she shouted from the kitchen.
“You need to get out. You never do anything. You’re a hermit. You’re hermit lady. All you need are cats.”
