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Taking in one last breath, I lift my head to look up the stairs before heading up and there she is stopped three steps above me, looking scared to continue her journey to the bottom of the stairs.
“Hey,” I say.
“Hey,” she says back as she takes two more steps pressing her back to the wall. She’s as far on the other side of the stairwell as she can get and is now one step higher than where I stand.
“So, Mick’s your brother, huh?” I huff out sarcastically.
“Yep, you two work together, I hear?” She asks meekly and clearly to make polite conversation.
“We do,” I say with my arms crossed not giving her anything.
“So, have you been in Portland long?”
She’s trying to make conversation and I’m just making things awkward by being so cold. I know that I tell myself that I hate her. But it’s just not true. Seeing her, right in front of me, clearly feeling uncomfortable in my presence makes me feel like an ass.
“Four years. Devon talked me into it,” I say trying to lighten my tone and be nice.
Awkwardly, she says, “Oh. Well, that’s great.”
I have no idea why, but I just have to know if she’s with him when I ask. “So, you know Riley?”
“Uh, I do. We went to school together, but I haven’t seen him since I moved to California.”
Thank Christ!
“You just visiting or do you live here too?”
“I just moved back into town this week. Alex came down and made the drive with me and Cami this past weekend. I’ll be staying with Mickey for a while.”
Great, she’ll be living in my neighborhood. That’s just fucking karma for ya right there. And who the fuck is Alex?
“Cool.”
My one-word answer makes her uncomfortable and she starts playing with her dragonfly necklace, just like she always did when she was nervous.
“You still have your necklace, I see,” I say with a nod of my head in the direction of her hand on the necklace.
Her hand stops moving and she says so quietly that I can barely hear her. “You remember?”
“I remember everything about those nine days, Gracie. I always told you that there wasn’t anything you did or said that I didn’t remember. And I remember it all. Right up to the last minute.”
2
Emily
Standing in the stairwell of Kells, it feels like my worst nightmare has come to life. I’m finally face to face with Jonathan again—just like he said we would be—and he hates me.
“I remember everything about those nine days, Gracie. I always told you that there wasn’t anything you did or said that I didn’t remember. And I remember it all. Right up to the last minute,” he growls. This is not the way I had always dreamed this would go. No, this is right out of my nightmares. It’s almost like I can hear disgust in his voice.
Not knowing what else to say I reply. “You do?”
He’s now talking through his teeth like he’s seething. He leans forward, just inches from my face, and says with all the barely contained rage that I can feel radiating off of his body. “It wasn’t me that wanted to say goodbye and not try the long-distance thing. That was all you, sweetheart. I don’t tell somebody I’m in love with them and then just leave them blowing in the wind. No…that would be the way you do things, sugar.”
I just stare at him. Who is this person standing in front of me? Where is the Jonathan that I fell in love with? He looks like my Georgia and smells like my Georgia, but his eyes seem dark and he looks tired and seems so angry.
Then with so much venom I nearly jump from the sting of it he asks, “So, you still not available?”
Not answering him I just say, “I have to go!” and run up the stairs forgetting that I ever needed to use the bathroom. I resolve not to shed a tear in front of him or anybody in this bar.
