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“Can I talk to you for a minute?”
She considers me for a long beat before she shoves her door wider, turns around, and heads back to her bed, where I’m assuming she was sitting when I knocked.
My eyes absentmindedly glance over the papers and books and laptop around her, but then I look at Emily and find her staring at me, clearly waiting for me to say whatever I came here to say.
“Look, I’m sorry for snipping at you.”
“You should be.”
I huff out a laugh. “I am. When you suggested therapy, I…” I pause, reaching back to scratch at the back of my head as I play my words over again in my mind.
When I do, my eyes catch on Teddy’s crib in the corner.
“You planning to keep that?” I ask, unable to help the laugh that falls from my lips.
Emily gives me a small smile. “I meant to tell you about it so we can take it down and put it away somewhere.”
I nod. “I’ll get that sorted this weekend. Anyway, I just… When you brought up therapy, I was reminded of the last time I went to therapy. With Melody. Things clearly didn’t work. There was nothing wrong with the suggestion, and if I’m completely honest, yeah, sure, I probably could benefit from finding someone to talk to.”
Emily watches me, her eyes narrowed, but not in irritation. If anything she looks curious.
“Can I ask you about it?” she says, her head tilted to the side. “What happened with your wife? Or is that too far?”
I let out another sigh then move farther into the room, leaning back against the dresser and crossing my arms.
“Go ahead. But I can’t promise I’ll answer every question.”
She thinks it over then asks me the most vague question anyone could ever ask.
“There have been several different rumors around town, but…all of them only seem half true. What actually happened?”
I bark out a laugh, one devoid of any humor.
“What didn’t happen?” I ask back. “She had an affair, we thought about divorce but decided to give things another try with a fresh start. We moved here and she started her new job then started seeing other men again.” I shrug. “The shit you’ve heard around town is probably true.”
Emily gives me a tiny smile. “Well, one of the rumors is that she was having an affair with Zach Efron, and that he gave her that car you destroyed with a baseball bat.”
At that, I laugh for real, the hilarity of that idea easing the tension in my back.
“The Zach Efron thing isn’t true. At least, not that I know of. But the smashing up the car part is very true.”
She nods, her face open and understanding. “When I was in high school, my mom sold the laptop I was renting from the school to write my papers. She sold it for $300 so she could get highlights in her hair for a date she was going on.”
My mouth drops open, surprise whipping through me.
“So when you tell me you smashed up a car in anger, I understand. A part of me wanted to creep into my mom’s room that night and cut all her hair off.” She giggles and shakes her head. “I’ve never told anyone that before, and to be honest, it’s a really embarrassing thought.”
“But you didn’t actually do it.”
“I didn’t,” she tells me. “Because I had a great guidance counselor who I talked to about my problems at home. And then when I got to college, I used those free therapy sessions and talked with someone about the anger I was dealing with from my past.”
“And it helped? Really helped?” I ask, kicking off the dresser and moving closer to her, my hip leaning against the edge of her bed frame.
She nods. “It did. But it helped because I was committed to figuring out a way to not feel the way I felt all the time. Broken. Angry. Abandoned.” Emily shakes her head. “Find the right person to talk to and really be there to do the work on yourself, and you’ll sort through it.”
“But that’s the thing that’s so frustrating, the thing that’s not fair,” I tell her, saying it out loud to someone for the first time. “Melody should have been the one to go to therapy to sort through her bullshit. This isn’t about me. It’s about her.”
Emily gives me a sad smile. “But Melody is gone.”
