She is quiet for a long second before she raises her hand and brushes it softly against my cheek.
“I feel perfect.”
I want to tell her how twisted up I am. How much I regret my whole goddamned life. How, if I knew how much this day would hurt her, I would never have jumped into the Laurel River after my mother. I would have done everything different. I would change it all just to avoid feeling this way. Just to avoid hurting her. Just to avoid causing both of us this kind of pain. But I bite my tongue again because I know the words will only hurt her more, and I am finished hurting her. Finished.
I bend down to the floor and slip my still-damp shoes off of my feet. I toss my socks on top of them and climb into bed with Emma. I wrap her in my arms and hold her against my body. My face sinks into the soft flesh of her neck, and she tells me everything is going to be alright.
Chapter 8
David—Present Day
I spend the rest of Thursday in Emma’s hospital room. We watch television and play cards, but we don’t say much. At lunchtime, Matt calls to find out if we are okay and to let Emma know that he took care of explaining to their boss why she isn’t at work today. I tell Matt that she’s going to be released in a few hours. Emma should be back in her apartment by dinnertime.
As I talk with Matt, I can feel the weight of a thousand unanswered questions on top of us. Our conversation is superficial—but it is also burdensome, because I know what he’s thinking. I know how many questions he has, and I know that tomorrow, when he sees Emma at work, he’s going to want all the answers. He’s going to want us to justify his lies, and he’s going to want to know why we risked everything. And why I sucked him into the whole damn thing in the first place.
The thought of Emma bearing the burden of his thousand questions jabs at me, brings the biting flavor of self-loathing to my tongue yet again. The lies aren’t hers to tell. They are mine. My lies, my life, my answers. I decide that tonight, while Emma sleeps, I’m going to give Matt every answer he wants. I’m going to knock on his door, and when he opens it, I’m going to answer everything just so that Emma doesn’t have to. I’m going to weave a story to save us both. And in the morning, before she goes to work, I’m going to tell her every detail so that her story matches mine perfectly. I brought Matt into this iniquitous fold, and now I’m going to have to find a way to get him out of it.
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At four o’clock Emma gets the “all clear” to head home. She signs a pile of paperwork and gets a wheelchair ride to the taxi. When we get to the apartment building, I have to leave Emma in the cab and run upstairs to get some cash to pay the driver. My wallet and her purse are still in my car. I hope, anyway. Mrs. Pickett in apartment 12 buzzes me in without a second’s hesitation. She’s lived here forever, and her dementia allows me to access the building whenever I’m without my keys. In addition to grabbing a wad of cash from my dresser drawer, I also grab the key ring with all the apartment keys on it. Carl gave it to me the day he hired me to do the maintenance in five of his buildings. There are forty-seven keys on the ring, but I know exactly which one is Emma’s because I put a piece of yellow duct tape around the top of it the day I watched her move in.
On my way back down the stairs, I rip the tape off the key, fold it over on itself, and shove it into my pocket.
“I wanna take a shower,” Emma declares as soon as I open the door to her apartment, “and then, when I’m done, I wanna have something real to eat. Like a pepperoni pizza.” Her walk across the living room is quick and purposeful.
“I’ll call in the order.”
She stops short on her way down the hallway and turns back to look at me. I’m standing in the living room with my hands in my pockets, rubbing the little piece of yellow, folded-over duct tape between my fingers. She smiles at me, and my heart pushes its way up into my throat, suffocating me and making me want to rip myself into pieces.
“You know,” she says softly, “I know why you didn’t save them.”
What? Holy fucking hell.
She sighs and shrugs her shoulders up to her ears, cocking her head to the side and pursing her lips.
“It’s because you were waiting for me.”
And then her back is to me again, and she’s closing the bathroom door behind her.
My blood pounds in my ears. I sensed it on the bridge, but now I know it’s true. She knows. She knows that she wasn’t the only one. And I have no idea what she’s going to do about it.
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While Emma’s in the shower, I pour myself a drink from the bottle of vodka she keeps in the fridge. Each sip burns my throat and cures my worries, if only as a temporary elixir. I sit down on the sofa, sipping it slowly, thinking about what might happen next.
Fifteen minutes later, I hear her walk to her bedroom. I don’t know what to do or say, or how I should act. Should I even still be here? Her words and actions are so casual, so deliberate, so self-assured. Why isn’t she freaking out? Why isn’t she running the hell away from me as fast as she can?
What the fuck is this woman thinking?
The pizza guy comes, and Emma emerges from the bedroom dressed in a pair of shorts and a white T-shirt. I can see the outline of her father’s dog tags, the ones I had remade for her, beneath it. Inside my head, everything is hanging in a precarious balance, ready to crumble with a simple blink of her eye. But the mere sight of those dog tags…it steadies me. Braces me. Their presence calms my skittering thoughts, wipes that taste from my tongue, makes me feel like, somehow, we will be alright. Somehow we will figure this out. Her intention sinks into me; she knew I would see them and feel reassured. It was a deliberate—and mystifying—move.
Emma’s red hair is still wet and hanging around her face. She sits down across from me at her little table and tucks her hair behind her ears. She opens the pizza box and tears into it with a small sigh. There’s nothing timid or nervous about her, and it confuses the fuck out of me.
I decide to put it all out there and lay myself at her feet.
“I don’t know what to do here, Emma,” I say softly. “I’m lost.”
She’s in control now and she knows it. For the first time in my adult life, someone else is holding the reins. It’s both terrifying and energizing to have put so much faith and control and power into her hands. She didn’t willingly take the reins, after all; I threw them at her, didn’t I? From the moment I told her what I needed from her, she had a full, purposeful grip on them. She’s the one steering us. She’s the one steering me. She’s the one with all the power now. Not me. And she’s the only person I’ve ever known who is strong enough to handle it.
She takes a bite of her pizza and chews it slowly, looking down at the table the entire time. When she finishes, she puts the piece down onto a folded napkin and brushes the crumbs off her hands by rubbing them together. Her eyes rise to mine, and her body visibly relaxes. Her hand lifts up to her chest, and she silently touches the dog tags and silver raven pendant hanging beneath her shirt.
“You know things about me, David,” she says boldly, “and now I know things about you. We could hurt each other. Really badly.”
She pauses briefly, and I’m not sure if I’m supposed to talk. I lean back in my chair and cross my arms over my waist, watching her brain bend and flex with its new, intoxicating power.
“But something inside me tells me we won’t,” she continues. “Something inside me tells me I’ve saved you in the exact same way you saved me. And it feels good. It feels right.”
She’s telling me how she feels, but she’s wrong. Dead wrong.
Fury rushes through me like a tidal wave. She’s a fool. You can’t save someone who’s done what I’ve done. I’m unsalvageable. Unfixable. Unsaveable. I’m pissed off at her for not recognizing that. For not recognizing that fixing me is impossible. And I’m pissed off at myself for managing to con
vince her otherwise.
There is no redemption for someone like me.
“It isn’t the same.” I uncross my arms and lean over the table toward her. A smidgen of control seeps out of her and back into me. It’s sweeter than I want it to be. “I saved you from your jackass stepfather. I saved you from someone who hurt and humiliated you. I saved you from a past of physical and emotional abuse. But that’s not what you think you did for me. It’s not the same thing at all.”
“That’s bullshit,” she shoots back at me, her face steaming with energy and strength and fire, “and you know it. I’m not talking about ‘saving’ in the literal sense. I’m talking about two fucked-up people who are ‘saving’ each other simply by understanding where the other one came from. By seeing beyond the fucked-up parts of each other and loving them regardless.” She uses her words to reinforce her grip on the imaginary reins and sinks back into her seat.
I take a few deep breaths and constrict my jaw.
“I should have seen this.” I rub my hand into my forehead. My own stupidity pokes at me. “This shit is going to implode. Maybe not today, but someday. Someday you are going to realize that my fucked-up parts were not worth saving. Fuck me for turning you into a living victim of my son-of-a-bitch self."
“Nothing is going to implode, David,” she spits, trying to maintain her self-control, eyes widening with defiance, skin streaked with red. “And I am not a victim. I chose to do this for you, just like you chose to do what you did for me. Nobody swindled anybody into anything. I knew the risk, and once I was up on that bridge, I knew I wasn’t the only one. I knew you’d done it before. I might not know how you got those women up on to a bridge, or why you decided not to save them, but I sure as hell know how I got up there. I walked out onto that bridge without a single second’s hesitation. It was my choice, and I know, with every ounce of my being, that you are not the same person you were with them. That person—that son of a bitch—is gone. He’s dead. What I chose to do for you up on that bridge was his motherfucking funeral. You saved me because you wanted to save me, and I didn’t fight you because I wasn’t afraid. I was three thousand percent confident you wouldn’t fail me. I’ve never been so sure of anything in my life. I did save you. And fuck you for not believing it.”
What the hell is she saying? She really thinks she saved me. From what? From myself? Is she saying that she still wants to be with me knowing what she knows?
Jesus Christ. Who is this woman?
A few moments of weighted silence hang between us, and my mind runs rampant with thoughts.
“I’m not sure if I can live with all this,” I say at last. I don’t think I can handle her knowing about the others. The thought of her carrying all that around makes me sick. She will look at me and see them. The idea of it is a bullet straight to my brain.
“Well, you’re going to have to,” she says angrily, lifting her eyebrows and twisting her lips, “because I’ll be damned if I’m going to watch us self-destruct over this. I did not risk everything only for you to turn around and doubt my choice. We’re not going to look backward and flounder over the asinine choices made by some sick bastard you used to be. On that bridge, I gave us the power to move forward. And we’re going to use it. I’m done talking about it. Because it’s over. Over. Put your big boy pants on, David, and realize that, from here on out, your life is different. You’re twenty-six years old, and you are done with him. Consider yourself born-again, courtesy of Emma Searfoss and the 9th Street Bridge.” Her words are drenched in insolence and self-confidence. She picks up her pizza and starts eating again. Both her mental and physical composure tell me there’s nothing I can say to change her mind.
It doesn’t matter anyway because I have no words to say. I’m speechless. It never occurred to me that she would see the six other women I told her about as the victims they were. But now, now I am stuck with the knowledge that the woman I love knows what a sick fuck I am. Those six women weren’t some sort of goddamn steppingstones. They were people, and I ended them. The same way I could’ve ended her. She knows about them now, beyond a doubt, and yet she is sitting here telling me she truly believes that because of what we did—because of what she did—I am born-again. It’s biblical and self-righteous and utterly ridiculous.
Still…
A tiny sliver of hope penetrates my thoughts, forcing its way through my veins and into my heart. It’s clear that her entire being believes she’s changed me. Saved me. From all my transgressions. From the person I was for the past nine years. From everything that’s ever been wrong with me, inside and out. This woman, this motherfucking remarkable woman, knows she has done all this. She knows she is right. To her, redemption is not just possible, it’s already a done deal.
It isn’t, though. She might not realize it, but I sure as shit do.
It is impossible for someone like me—someone with a sin-list capable of wrapping itself around the world—to find redemption. To be repaired.
I wonder, though. Is it possible for me to accept the way she feels, even if I don’t believe it’s the truth? The sliver of hope tells me it is. The sliver of hope tells me that if she’s ready to move forward, maybe I should be too. Maybe I should shut my fucking mouth and let her believe it. Maybe I should do what she says and be done with the old me. Maybe I should hurl my past into a vacuum and consider it dead.
Redemption is impossible.
But maybe life isn’t.
“You might doubt yourself, David, but I do not,” she declares, my thoughts still ringing through my brain.
She is either the most amazing person on this planet or the biggest fool in the universe.
“Don’t make me have to kick your ass,” she says, without so much as a trace of a smile.
“Yes, ma’am,” I say quietly.
With those two words, her face cracks open and everything that is good and right and insanely brilliant about us shines straight out of her smile and into me, fusing my pieces back together and forcing me to believe, just for a second, that maybe she’s right.
Maybe I can be born-again.
I get up out of my chair, walk over to her side of the table, and stand over her. Her eyes are still filled with fire, and it excites me to see such strength in them. A pulse of eagerness jumps into my chest, and before I can say another word, she reaches up and puts her hands on my face, tilting my head down toward hers. Her breath brushes against my face and then her lips are on mine, pressing into me and lapping into my mouth. With each swipe of her tongue, I am comforted, soothed. Her wordless mouth is telling me she isn’t going to back down. It’s telling me there’s not a single doubt in her mind; she knows we are right. She knows I am done. She believes in a me that no one has ever seen before. Not even me. Her tongue tells me all these things and somewhere, deep inside, I can see him too. He’s just a shadow for now, but for the first time ever, there’s a chance that he exists.
She stands up, and I put my hands around her waist. My thumbs press into her hip bones, and I pull her body to mine. I want to find a way to thank her. To show her that I need her to keep believing in me, even if she’s the only person who ever does. She’s pressed against me, and I harden as her hips grind forward into mine. A few minutes later, when our lips part, she tilts her head back and closes her eyes. I lift off her shirt and drop it to the floor. The dog tags hang there, reassuring me with their stiff, meaningful presence. I want to touch her, to let her know how much I fucking feel for her. I grab the back of her neck with one of my hands and use the other to drag down her shorts. I lift her by the ass and put her up on the table, kissing her and tugging off her panties. Those panties. She’s wearing the light blue ones again. The ones with the black lace. The ones that melt me into nothing. She knew this would happen. She knew I would fall.
I step away from her and stand there, holding her panties at my side. Thoughts of her body beneath mine remove all the doubt. All the questions. I look at her for a minute before I turn and walk toward the bedroo
m. “Come on.”
She follows me to the bedroom. By the time we get there, I’ve taken off my shirt.
The sight of her body, clothe-less and freckled, pushes me to the edge. I need to feel her from the inside. Her eyes burn through me as I walk over to her and begin to skim my hands lightly across her body, touching her everywhere. Her shoulders, her stomach, her wrists. When I am behind her, touching her lower back, my breath hits her neck and she shivers. My hands roll over every inch of her skin. She is naked in front of me. I could do anything I want to her body, but instead, I only want to touch her. Like this. Forever.
The last part of Emma’s body I touch is her face. Her neck, her cheeks, her lips, her temples. I string her freckles together with a soft swipe of my fingertip. And when I am done, I kiss her closed eyes. A second later, her mouth is back on mine, kissing me full and hard, soothing me yet again. She slides her arms down between us and unzips my pants, pushing them to the floor. She tugs me over to the bed and we lie down together, on our sides. Face-to-face. My hands begin to touch her again, but this time there’s no tenderness. There’s only heat and want.
I push her shoulder against the bed. She’s flat on her back now, panting for me. I lean over her and begin to circle my fingers into the soft, wet flesh between her legs. That beautiful, deep place that makes her mine. She looks up at me, her eyes fire-filled and certain. Her hips respond to my touch by arching up and curling into me. She is writhing against the bed now, and I know she’s close. I stop touching her and position myself between her legs, driving myself into her over and over again.
Fucking hell. She lifts her hips in time with my movements and wraps her legs around my waist. I want to pound into her, to sink myself so deep inside of her that we both forget who we are and where we came from. My motions become more forceful, more impatient, and my hips smack against her skin and vibrate through her bones. I can feel us both rise.
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