I nodded, and as I pulled out of the lot and back onto Marietta Street, I looked back to see him staring after me. He raised one hand in a small wave, and then I turned the corner and he was gone. I was all alone, and I was finally about to do what I should have done a long time ago.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
* * *
NW Creative, the advertising agency Nick owned, was located on Poplar Street, just nine blocks from the hotel. It was pathetic that I knew that, but between his website and his company’s Twitter feed, I always knew far more than I should. He had designed ads for charities, and he had several regular clients whose campaigns were always award winning. I imagined him as a real-life Don Draper, building an empire. I was proud of him, although I had no right to be.
It was strange that I still cared, but I couldn’t turn those feelings off. He was like a guilty addiction, something I knew I should be quitting but that I had found impossible to put behind me. And so, nearly nineteen years after I’d last seen him, I was standing on the sidewalk outside his building, looking up at the fourth floor, wondering whether he hated me.
“You going in?” asked a delivery driver who had somehow materialized in front of me, a package tucked under his arm. “Or are you just going to stand there?”
He was holding the door open and looking at me with mild annoyance. I cleared my throat and made the only decision I could possibly make. “I’m going in,” I said. I could practically feel his eye roll as I hurried past him and pressed the button for the elevator. He followed me into the building and disappeared down a hallway, muttering to himself, just as the elevator doors slid open. I took a deep breath, stepped in, and hit the button for floor four.
When the elevator dinged and the doors opened several seconds later, I found myself staring straight at Nick’s company logo—an N overlapping a W—and I realized that his office wasn’t just located on the fourth floor, it was the fourth floor. I swallowed hard, blinking back the tears that had sprung to my eyes. He was okay. His life had worked out. I was thankful for that.
“Can I help you?” asked the dark-haired, twentysomething receptionist sitting under the giant logo. She was pretty, and for a moment, that made me hate her in a terribly irrational sort of way.
“Um, yes,” I managed. “Is Nick Walker in?”
“Do you have an appointment?”
“No.” I hesitated. How could I explain why I was here? You see, I once gave birth to your boss’s baby, but the thing is, I never told him, and I’m here to finally face up to it. “I’m an old friend.” He was the love of my life, but I threw him away, because I was terrified. “I was in town, and I thought I might drop by to say hi.”
She gave me a strange look, as if she’d heard the words in my head instead of the words I’d said aloud. “It’s your lucky day,” she said. “He’s still in. Who should I tell him is here?”
“Emily.” It was all I could manage. And somehow, I knew he would know.
She nodded and stood up. I watched her walk to the back of the building, where she knocked and entered an office. I nervously smoothed my skirt as I waited. A moment later, the receptionist emerged, looking flushed. But I barely saw her, because there was another figure emerging from the doorway behind her, his eyes fixed on me.
Nick.
He was two decades older than the Nick I remembered, graying around the temples, laugh lines and crow’s-feet spidering gently across a face that had been smooth and youthful the last time I’d seen it in person. His shoulders were broader, his frame bigger. I had left a boy behind, and he’d become a man—a dark-haired, solid, gorgeous man.
He was staring at me, his gray eyes flickering like the sky before a storm. I stared back, and for a moment, every single word I’d rehearsed, everything I thought I’d say, was lost to me. If someone had asked me my own name in that moment, I’m not sure I would have known it. All the pieces of my life were tumbling around in my brain, finally settling into an alignment that left me only one crystal-clear thought: leaving Nick Walker was the stupidest thing I’d ever done.
“Miss?” I could hear the receptionist’s concerned voice, but she sounded very far away. “Miss?” she asked again, more loudly this time. She was probably wondering why the air was crackling between us, why her boss was staring at me like he’d seen a ghost, why neither of us had said a word yet. “Miss, would you like to step in to Mr. Walker’s office?”
“Yes.” It was the only word I could muster, and silently, Nick moved aside as I drifted toward him. As I passed, my arm brushed against the cool gray of his crisp shirt, and I breathed in deeply, taking comfort in the fact that all these years later, he still smelled faintly of Ivory soap. I felt a powerful surge of attraction and did my best to quell it.
“Have a seat.” They were Nick’s first words to me in nearly nineteen years, and I was struck both by the way his voice had deepened and the icy edge to it. I took another deep breath to steel myself and sat down in the chair he had gestured to. A moment later, he was sitting behind his desk, and I wondered if he was aware, as I was, that it felt like a tangible barrier between us.
Silence descended. I knew he was waiting for me to say something, to explain why I was here, but I couldn’t. So instead, I gazed around his office, soaking everything in. There were splashy, retro drawings on the wall, and I realized they were early mock-ups of some of the ad campaigns he had done. There was also a framed diploma from the University of Georgia and a framed award from the Atlanta Ad Club. On his desk were several photos, and as I leaned forward, I could see just one of them, which was facing slightly outward. Nick was in the middle of the frame with a gorgeous blond child on each side—a little girl and a little boy. I felt a sudden crushing weight on my sternum as I managed to choke out, “They’re beautiful, Nick.”
He followed my eyes to the photo, and his eyes lingered there for a moment. “They’re Abby’s kids,” he said, and suddenly, I could breathe again. Abby was his little sister. The kids weren’t his. Did the great sense of relief I felt make me a terrible person? But then he added, “My wife and I . . .” before trailing off. My heart sank, and I looked away, blinking furiously to dry my eyes. “I don’t have any children,” he concluded firmly. I looked back at him, and he held my gaze for a beat. “What are you doing here, Emily?”
I took a deep breath. The could-have-beens didn’t matter. He had a wife. He had a life that didn’t include me. And I had no one to blame for that but myself. “I owe you an apology.”
“Go on.” The storm in his eyes had turned icy, and I imagined sleet and hail.
“I should never have left like that.” The words were woefully inadequate. “I was young, and I was stupid, and I was scared, and . . .” I left it at that because my brain suddenly felt fuzzy.
He stared at me, clearly waiting for me to go on. When I didn’t, he leaned forward, his jaw set stiffly. “That’s it?” he asked. “Almost nineteen years have passed—nineteen years, Emily—and that’s all you have to say for yourself?”
I was startled by his anger. I could feel it rolling off him in waves. “Nick—” I began, but he cut me off.
“No, I need you to listen to me now,” he said, and it was the first time I recognized something else in his tone. Hurt. “Do you have any idea what it felt like to have no idea whether you were dead or alive? To have loved someone the way I loved you and to just have that person vanish one day without looking back? Do you know how scared I was that something had happened to you?”
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered.
“I was in my second semester at UGA when Wendy Toliver—remember her from our trig class?—called me and said she’d seen you at UF. In the student union. Do you know I drove down there that night? I had to see for myself that you were still out there. Do you know I wandered around that campus for almost a week, looking at every single face?”
I stared at him. “You came to UF?”
He barely paused. “I saw you. On the fifth day I was there. Yo
u were walking across campus, laughing with another girl. And I thought, ‘Well, that’s it, then. She just didn’t want to be with me anymore.’ You were happy. You left me, you let me worry about you so much that I couldn’t sleep half the time, and meanwhile, you were out there happy.”
“I wasn’t happy,” I whispered.
“You were happy,” he repeated firmly. “You just didn’t want to have anything to do with me.” Some of the anger faded from his voice as he added more softly, “After that, I could finally let you go. You weren’t lying dead in a gutter somewhere. You’d just made a choice, and it didn’t include me.”
“I’m so sorry.” I’d never meant the words more. “Nick, I’m so, so sorry. I don’t deserve your forgiveness, but I owe you an explanation. And I’ve come here because I need to explain.”
“Emily, I’m not trying to be cold, but whatever it is you’ve come to say is too little, too late.”
“Nick—”
“I loved you, Emily. Do you know that? I really, really loved you.” He paused, and I tried not to visibly flinch. “I didn’t love you in the way that a normal teenage kid loves the first girl he falls for. I loved you. Damn it, Emily, I saw a future and a life with you. I thought you felt that way too!”
“I did. You have to understand that. I felt exactly like that.”
He laughed, but the sound that came out was sharp and strangely choked. “Give me a break. You don’t get to come here and rewrite the past.”
“I’m not.” I paused and looked at my hands. Say it. Just say it. “Nick, I had a baby,” I blurted out.
Time seemed to slow. Nick’s face froze and he stared at me. “You . . . what?”
“We had a baby,” I amended, my voice shaking.
He looked like I’d punched him in the face. “We had a baby,” he repeated, his tone flat and disbelieving. “You and me. That’s what you’re telling me?”
“Y-yes.”
“What the—?” He looked dazed, shocked.
“I gave her up for adoption.”
He blinked a few times. “It was a girl? We have a daughter?”
I nodded.
“And you gave her up? Without consulting me? Without even telling me that I was a father?”
I hung my head. “It was the worst thing I’ve ever done to anyone. Ever. I was so screwed up after my mother died, and I was terrified that if I stayed, you’d leave me, and I’d be all alone. It was stupid, Nick, but I was scared and . . .” I stopped, midsentence, because the expression on his face was breaking my heart.
“What happened to her?” His tone was suddenly deadly calm. “Where is she?”
“I don’t know. Nick, I don’t know. I’ve wondered about her every day, and I’ve been looking for her since before she turned eighteen, in case she was looking for me too, but I haven’t found her.” I paused. “I know that what I did was terrible. I talked myself into believing that it was for the best—for you, anyhow—that you wouldn’t have wanted to raise a baby with me, that it would have ruined your life.”
“Emily—” His voice had softened, but I didn’t let him finish.
“I was wrong. A thousand times over, I was wrong, Nick. I hurt you. I took away your chance to be a father, and that wasn’t my decision to make. But please believe me when I tell you that I’ve suffered every day. I made the wrong decision, and I’ve had to live with that. It’s become a part of who I am, something that’s woven into me. I’m broken, Nick, and I have no one to blame for that but myself. I just don’t want you thinking that I rode off into the sunset and lived happily ever after, because I didn’t.”
He just stared at me. Finally, he shook his head. “I can’t . . .” he began, but he couldn’t seem to finish the sentence. He looked down for a long time, and when he looked back up again, his eyes meeting mine, he appeared so sad that my heart nearly shattered under the weight of his gaze. “Please go, Emily,” he said at last.
A lump rose in my throat. I hadn’t expected forgiveness, but I’d come prepared for his anger. I wanted him to tell me I was terrible, to tell me he hated me. I would have taken it, all of it, because maybe it would have been a first step to forgiveness. But instead, he just wanted me to leave, and that hurt more.
“Of course,” I whispered. I turned when I got to the doorway and saw that Nick had stood up, his back hunched, his hands on his desk. I cleared my throat, and Nick looked up slowly. “Her name was Catherine,” I said.
“After your mother.” His voice was so quiet that I could barely hear him.
“Yes.” I showed myself out, slinking by the pretty young receptionist with her whole life in front of her. I scribbled down my name and number and left them with her in case Nick ever wanted to reach me. She accepted them without a word, and I could feel her eyes on my back as I walked away. I waited for the elevator to arrive, and I didn’t begin to cry until the doors slid closed behind me.
* * *
I was sitting in the armchair in my hotel room, staring at the wall, when there was a knock on my door later that night. I ignored it at first, but then it was repeated, more loudly and insistently.
“Who is it?” I called out, my words slurred by sorrow.
“It’s your father. Are you okay?”
I closed my eyes and then opened them again to look at the digital clock beside by bed. It was just past eleven. “What are you doing here so late? You should be asleep.”
“I was worried about you.”
I laughed at that, thinking of what Nick had said earlier. He’d been so worried that he’d driven three hundred fifty miles from Athens to Gainesville and lingered on campus for four days until he saw me. I hadn’t deserved his concern then, and I didn’t deserve my father’s concern now. “I’m fine.”
“Emily?” He paused, waiting for a reply that I couldn’t manage. “Can I come in?”
“Please, just go away.”
He hesitated. “Not until I see that you’re all right.”
I waited a moment before hauling myself to my feet and shuffling to the door. I was in pajama pants and a T-shirt, and I’d cried off every ounce of makeup. My eyes were red and puffy. But I’d already hit my emotional limit for the day, and I felt like I was sleepwalking. I opened the door.
My father stared at me for a moment. He was in jeans and a gray T-shirt, his thinning hair rumpled. Without a stiff button-down shirt and perfectly creased slacks, he looked older, smaller, more fragile, and for a moment, I was fixated on that. He looked like a man with cancer. How hadn’t I seen it?
“Emily?” He interrupted my blurred thought process.
“Hmm?”
“You don’t look okay.”
I could feel my shoulders sagging. “Yeah, well.”
He took a step closer, until he was filling my doorway. “What happened?”
I stepped aside to let him in. “Nothing. Everything’s fine.”
He came in and closed the door behind him. “I might be sick, but I’m not blind. What is it, Emily?”
I gestured to the chair I’d been sitting in, and I perched on the corner of my bed. “So remember how I told you about Catherine? My daughter?”
“You named her after your mom,” he said softly.
“Yes.”
“She would have liked that.”
I let the words sit there for a moment. “I didn’t tell you about Catherine’s father.” I closed my eyes and rubbed my temples. “He was a good guy, Dad. He is a good guy. He was my high school boyfriend, and I was head over heels in love with him. The thing is, I had his baby and I didn’t tell him.”
“Oh.” My father’s expression wasn’t judgmental. It was just sad. And that made me feel worse.
“Until tonight. I told him tonight.”
“Oh.” He hesitated for only a second before coming to sit beside me on the bed. He put a hand on my back and rubbed gently, just like he used to when I was a little girl. “That’s where you went after you dropped me off?”
“Yeah.”
“And I’m assuming he didn’t take it too well?”
I looked up. “Would you?”
He hesitated. “No. Probably not.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know what I expected. I wanted him to yell at me, to tell me he hated me. But instead, he just wanted me to leave.”
“I’m sorry. But you did the right thing.”
“Nineteen years too late.”
“But you still did it,” he said. “That’s the first step. Now, you have to try to look forward, not backward. You’ve done what you can.”
“What if he can’t forgive me?”
My father’s hand paused on my back. “Then you have to live with that. The same way I have to live with your feelings toward me. It’s your penance.”
I wanted to tell him that I was trying to forgive him, that I could feel myself thawing. But I wasn’t sure I was ready for that yet. So instead, I asked, “Is your cancer the reason why you’ve been calling me more often lately?”
He didn’t answer right away. “Being sick has shown me that life can be short,” he said. “Too short. And you have to try to right the wrongs before your time is up.”
“So I’m just a wrong to be righted? Something to check off your conscience list?”
“No.” His answer was firm and immediate. “I’m very afraid that the ways I’ve hurt you have echoed again and again in the decisions you’ve made in your own life. And I want that to stop. I want you to understand that the things I did had nothing to do with you. And I want you to be able to live the rest of your life without being held back by me.”
I sniffled. “You haven’t held me back.”
“Of course I have,” he said sadly. “Every time someone hurts you, you carry a little piece of that with you. When it’s one of the people who’s supposed to love you most in the world, well, I’d imagine that takes a whole chunk out of your faith in humanity. Maybe my father’s absence did that to me a little bit too. I’m here because I don’t want that to be my legacy to you.”
I stared at the floor and thought about the decisions I’d made and the way that, yes, some of them could be traced back to him. But ultimately, I’d made my own choices, and I had to accept responsibility for that. “You can’t blame yourself for who I’ve become.”
When We Meet Again Page 18
