I slid my arms around him. “But I’d rather risk the possibility of heartache than wade through life without experiencing what you’ve helped me feel.”
He swallowed hard.
I twisted toward the sink. “It took me falling apart to figure all that out. Along with a few good kicks from people who love me. A. J. being one of them.” I set the coiled washcloth on the counter but couldn’t face the mirror. Not after knowing how much I’d hurt him. “He was a good friend to me when I needed one.”
“He loves you, Emma.” Riley turned me around, his eyes soft and earnest. “Are you sure you’re making the right choice?”
Did he still not understand?
“Come here. I wanna show you something.” I led him down the hall. Standing in the doorway to my bedroom, I pointed to the pressed leaf that had never left my desk. “That choice was made for me a long time ago.”
He crossed the room, ran his fingers along the grains of the picture frame next to the leaf, and lifted the laminated memory underneath the desk lamp. “I can’t believe you kept this. After everything.”
Didn’t he see? “I think part of opening my heart again meant finding the courage to let you go, but I never stopped loving you.”
He set the leaf against the base of the lamp and left his head bowed so long my heart started to race waiting for him to move again. Slowly, his eyes found mine.
No words. No space outside of the way a single look could make me feel. A look that intensified with each step bringing him closer to me.
His hand smoothed over my cheek. With equal tenderness, his lips pressed into mine. “I love you.” He kissed my wrist. “More than I think I understand.”
My fingers trailed down the threads of his shirt and entwined in the fabric along the hem. “Would you stay?”
His body tensed.
“Until I fall asleep?” I amended before his frown turned into an audible objection.
“Just until you fall asleep.”
He propped the pillows up against the headboard. My body fit into the outline of his the closer I nestled. His heart thundered through his cotton Henley onto my cheek. Slowly, it eased into a steady rhythm. Listening to his heart was like listening to a song written expressly for me. One I’d never tire of hearing.
As Riley sang softly, the sweet cadence lulled me deeper into the mattress. The emotional exhaustion of the day drained into the comforter curling around my sides. I’d be asleep in minutes, and he’d be gone. But for now, I burrowed tighter and soaked in the warmth of his arms, feeling his breath dance over my hair.
“Where do we go from here?” he whispered.
I’d asked that same question so many times, always driven by fear, but something had changed. “We stay right here,” I whispered back. This—this feeling, this moment—this was real. More intense than a memory and more enrapturing than a dream.
I think that was what Austin had tried to tell me. That each moment, a day at a time, was where we painted our stories. A part of that canvas came to life in me over the last few days, and I knew exactly what I had to do in the morning before I added another brushstroke.
chapter thirty
Release
A rush of brisk morning air swirled around my neck on its way past the porch. I zipped my jacket up the rest of the way and pocketed my cell phone. Courage, Em.
The dew-covered grass shimmered in the beams of sunlight weaving between buildings like a beacon leading me across the campus. In front of Eliot Hall, the sun’s warmth poured down my hair and sprawled onto my back. I gripped the door handle, inhaled. You can do this.
Evidence of the night crew’s work lingered in the Clorox-scented entryway. My jacket swished as I walked, echoing throughout the still hallway. I tapped my knuckles against the office door.
“Come in, Miss Matthews.” Mr. Oakly shifted some papers on his desk. “I have to admit, I’m surprised you called. I wouldn’t normally be here this early, but it sounded urgent.” He motioned to the chair in front of him. “Have a seat.”
I hovered in the doorway, a twinge of something pulling me in the opposite direction. Say it now before you change your mind.
“Actually, I’m not staying. I only came to tell you that I put in a request for Miriam Chen to take my place at Edwards Jones. She found the position first anyway. She just needed the right recommendation to get her in.”
He blinked. Twice. “You what?”
I moved to the chair and gripped its top edge. “I don’t know what Miriam’s GPA is or if she’s smarter than I am, but I’ve realized it doesn’t matter. It’s not a competition. It never has been. She deserves the same chance I do.”
I traced the seam along the chair’s fabric. “I’ve decided to finish the second half of my internship at the Portland Center instead, starting this summer. I know it’s not as prestigious as my Financial Analyst position, but it’s where my heart is.”
Mr. Oakly’s fingers pitched a tent over his stomach. He stared at me from above the rims of his glasses, his face mirroring the blank computer monitor. I couldn’t tell whether he was hiding his shock or analyzing my motives.
A second later, his chair sprang forward, and he arched over his desk. “Let me get this straight. You’re giving up everything you’ve spent the last three years working for? A respectable internship. Guaranteed job security. A promising future. All to go work at some inner city mission.” He dropped his pen on the desk and hunched backward again.
“No, Mr. Oakly.” I leveled out my shoulders. “I’m giving up trying to force myself into a mold of the way people say life is supposed to be. All the top grades, scholarship titles, and job securities mean nothing if there’s no fulfillment in them, no joy. I don’t want to spend my life trying to prove my merit. I want to spend it doing what I was made for.”
I paced across a carved-out path between stacks of dusty books. “I think I’ve finally found it. Something meaningful. I can actually look to my future with real vision now. And it’s—it’s incredible.”
Hands on my head, I stared at the burgundy carpet tiles, talking more to myself than to him. “Yeah, to be honest, the thought of losing security scares me.” My hands dropped down to my neck. “But maybe that’s part of what it means to open your heart—trusting things are going to work out even when you can’t see how.”
The tread on my sneakers gripped the carpet. My arms fell to my sides. Was that what Dad had been trying to teach me?
His faith in me ushered in a confidence I didn’t fully understand. I faced Mr. Oakly. “Things are going to work out,” I said again.
Leaving him speechless in his desk chair, I walked out of his office and through unseen barriers that’d always held me back. I soared down the hallway to the stairs, whirled around the banister, and didn’t slow down until my feet hit the landing. In that empty stairwell, something awakened inside me.
Freedom. Borderless freedom.
I covered my mouth with both hands to keep from squealing.
A cherry blossom-scented breeze welcomed me outside. Warm and bright, the sun doused the whole campus in colors of spring. Colors I’d been missing. Standing in the exact place Austin and I had eight months earlier, I heard his words again. “I know this is hard, Em, but trust me. You’re braver than you think you are.” Maybe he was right.
A sense of newness followed me all the way to the apartments until the scuffmarks along the sidewalk drew me to a stop. The scene from last night tore right through the scene from Mr. Oakly’s office. An awful realization stood in place of both. I hadn’t finished learning to walk by faith.
Trevor and Jaycee bounced through the apartment door and met me on the walkway.
“How’d it go?” Jaycee asked.
“Um, kind of amazing, actually.” I nudged a stick into the grass with my foot. “I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to see what I’m supposed to do with my life.”
Trevor patted my arm. “All part of the journey, Em.”
“Th
anks, Dr. Phil.”
He puffed out his shirt. “I do what I can.”
A couple of jocks strolled past us, tossing basketballs in the air. The stockier one hooked his arm above his head and pointed toward Trevor. “’Sup Andrews? Up for a little two-on-two?”
Trevor roped his arm around Jaycee’s waist. “Sorry, boys, not today.”
The taller one held the ball out with his palm. “Aight, aight. We got you, bro. We’ll hit up Bowers instead.”
I stared at the marks on the concrete, last night closing in again. “How is he, Trev?”
“Don’t know. He drove off before I made it to the parking lot last night. I waited up, but . . .” He squeezed my shoulder. “You know how A. J. is. He’s more of a hot head than I am.”
“And that’s saying something,” Jaycee piped in. Trevor squished her to his side, squeezing all the air out of her laugh. She unlocked his arm from her back. “Don’t worry, Em. If Ashlea has her way, A. J. will be forgetting all about his sorrows in no time.”
“Ashlea?”
Trevor flipped his ball cap around. “Wow, and I thought A. J. was blind.”
Jaycee smacked him in the gut. “She’s been a little preoccupied, in case you haven’t noticed.” She tilted her head at me, lips to the side. “Don’t worry. A. J. will work it off, cool down, and things will go back to normal.”
“Doubt that. I’m not even sure what normal is anymore. So much has changed.”
Jaycee pecked Trevor on the cheek and motioned toward the car. “Give us a sec, ‘kay?”
He headed down the sidewalk, and she turned in front of me. “You need to give yourself some time to decompress. You had a pretty emotional day yesterday.”
“Congrats, you just won the understatement of the year award.” An inward wince immediately followed the memory of A. J.’s voice.
“Kinda hard to do that when I know how upset A. J. is.” I craned my neck back. “I should’ve done things differently. Not depended on his friendship as much. Kept my distance.”
She cocked her head. “Like he would’ve let you.”
“Still should’ve tried.”
“You were straightforward with him. He knew where you stood.”
Just like I knew where he stood. Both of us wishing things were different, hoping we’d change the other’s mind.
Another set of friends strolled by. Two guys, two girls, dressed like they were going on a hike. Together.
“What if I’ve lost him for good?”
“He cares about you. When the emotions of it cool down, he’ll remember that. I doubt he’d throw your friendship away any more than you would.”
As I watched the group drift down the hill, my stomach clenched with the sense of something drifting out of reach.
What if Jaycee was wrong?
chapter thirty-one
Tomorrow
Time regained the upper hand. Another week. Another Friday night with the gang. Another absentee A. J. The splinter in our friendship filled the empty space on the sidewalk where he should’ve been standing. I let go of the blinds. The creak of the bending vinyl echoed the lecture I gave myself for hoping he’d have forgiven me by now.
My throat almost closed completely by the time I made it from the living room window to the group huddled beside Trevor’s car. The steam in Ashlea’s eyes scalded with an unspoken accusation her glossed lips seemed to struggle to hold back. A. J. wasn’t here, and it was my fault.
My line of sight ricocheted from person to person until it stopped on Trevor. “Where is he, Trev?”
He glanced at Jaycee. “In the gym,” he mumbled.
I turned but hesitated in front of Riley.
“It’s okay.” He nodded toward the Sports Center. “Go.”
I reached up on my tiptoes to kiss him and started down the hill, away from my group of friends and toward someone whose friendship I had to find a way to repair.
The sound of a single basketball bouncing against the waxed floor shuddered across the gymnasium. Standing at the free throw line, A. J. looked at me for a split second before glaring at the net again. “What are you doing here, Emma?”
It sounded more like a complaint than a question. A string of rehearsed platitudes rang through my mind, but he deserved better.
“I promised you a game of basketball, remember?”
A. J. made another foul shot. The snap against the backboard jutted into the edge in his voice. “It’s Friday night. You should be out with your friends.”
His exclusion of himself as my friend knocked the smile from my face. Behind the out-of-bounds line, I picked up the ball and clenched it in my arms. “I am,” I whispered.
The evidence of his rigorous workout soaked through his shirt. He snatched his water bottle up from the sideline, rubbed a towel over his face, and whipped it over his shoulder.
The sharp noise struck against my already-tense body. I gripped the ball tighter. Its grooves bore into my palms. “It’s been two weeks. You can’t give me the silent treatment forever.”
He stared at the wall and squirted water in his mouth.
I grabbed his forearm. “A. J., please. Just talk to me.”
He looked right at me then, eyes lifeless. “What do you want me to say?”
The pain in his words plunged through me. It’s hard to trust things will work out when you’re staring at the proof it’s too late.
My voice grew faint. “I want you to tell me the truth. I want you to talk to me, please.”
He wiped his face once more, chucked the wet towel on the floor, and wheeled away from me. Head down, he stopped midway to the locker room. “What can I say that you don’t already know?”
His sneakers scuffed over the floor in a half-circle. A strain of anger and affection tore across his face. “I love you, Emma. Have from the very beginning. Even after I knew your heart wasn’t free to give away, I couldn’t hold mine back.”
He faced the ceiling and laughed sadly. “Guess that’s what happens when you live without regrets.”
My courage drained to the floor with his balled-up towel. The gym blurred through the tears rushing to my eyes with everything I couldn’t find the words to say.
A. J. came to me. I dropped the basketball and wrapped my arms around him. Each bounce resounded across the room, waning one by one like a shot clock running out of time. My tears added to his sodden shirt.
No matter how tightly I held on to him, we’d already forfeited the chance to keep things the way they were. Outside this moment—this timeless moment of love and friendship—stood the reality of choices made. Love and loss, friendship and brokenness, memories and regret.
He lowered his head close enough for his lips to touch the top of my ear. “You’ll always hold a part of my heart,” he whispered. “I’m not saying goodbye. Just give me some time.”
I held on, knowing what once was, and the hope of what might have been, would dissolve as soon as we let go. He kissed my cheek and crossed the gym.
“A. J.?” The tremor in my heart shot straight to my voice when he turned. “I’ll wait for you.”
Even if the words didn’t mean what they had when he’d spoken them to me, his smile reassured me he understood. He disappeared into the locker room, and my face fell to my hands.
The streetlamps blinked on while I walked up the hill toward my apartment. Riley rose from the stoop. He’d waited for me. I clutched my sides tighter.
“Everything worked out?” he asked.
I wasn’t sure how to answer that question. I might not have lost A. J., but I’d hurt him.
“You’re a good friend, you know.”
I almost snorted. “Is that what you call it? I’m not so sure breaking a friend’s heart bumps me into the good category.”
Riley chuckled and threaded his fingers through my hair. “He’s lucky to have a friend who cares about him as much as you do.”
After the way he’d cared for me, he deserved that much. But maybe it was too hard. For
all of us. I dragged my shoe down the corner of the stoop. “You’re not mad at me?”
“For caring about A. J.?” He shook his head, looked down. “I used to be afraid you’d realize he could love you better than I could.” His arms circled around me. “But I’m starting to learn what it means to love. To trust.” He rested his forehead against mine. “I’m not afraid anymore. Not after what you’ve taught me about grace.”
Of all the things he could’ve said, he’d responded with the only thing filling his eyes. Selfless love. The kind I wasn’t sure I’d earned.
The corners of his mouth sagged. “You still don’t see.”
“See what?”
“What I see.” With my cheek in his hand, the tenderness in his touch poured into a kiss so soft I gripped his sleeve to keep from melting with it.
He leaned back just slightly, a smile reemerging. “Tomorrow.” He kissed my forehead and headed toward his car.
Did I miss something? “Tomorrow . . . ?”
He shuffled backward down the sidewalk. “Tomorrow, I’m going to show you.”
“Show me what?”
He waved as he turned, his response hidden behind an unreadable grin.
I gripped the railing, a little afraid of what that meant.
chapter thirty-two
Undone
Amazing how long a single night could feel. The reheated cup of tea Jaycee had made me earlier soothed and coaxed in perfect form until the clock took another stab at me. Twenty minutes left before Riley got there.
I fell face first onto my bed. Stupid nerves. I lifted onto my elbows. “It’s fine. I’m sure whatever he has planned today will be fine. Stop overreacting.” I snagged my economics textbook from my desk and yanked off a highlighter cap with my teeth. Consumption and Investment, I read. “Tell me about it.”
Eyes Unveiled Page 22
