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In that weird way that Emmett knows everything, he immediately pulls back, reaching for my face to tilt it up to his.
Thankfully the room is dark, but he looks for a minute, and I try to lay my head back on his chest, but he rolls over and flips on the bedside lamp. I squint with the light, but I don’t miss the shock at him seeing my bloodshot eyes and puffy face.
“What the hell happened? Are you alright?” He immediately sits up and smooths my wet hair back from my face, looking over every inch of me, my neck, my arms, squeezing my legs. “Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine. Sad.”
He lets out a low chuckle. “I see that, but why? What happened at girls' night?”
Meg and I finally convinced Lainey to go out with us. After months of pestering her and trying to make her my friend, she slowly came out of her shell. She’d join us in the alcove for a quick break, and cracked jokes occasionally. So, when all three of us happened to leave the hospital around the same time tonight, and Meg called out to her in the parking lot that we were going out for a drink, I nearly peed myself when she nodded that she’d join us.
There is something about her I couldn’t place. She seems to have it all. She’s beautiful, she’s smart, she’s so kind and never loses her cool, never complains. She has a lot of qualities that the average person would be envious of, but she’s timid. It wasn’t until a couple beers in, and my persistent nagging, I questioned her seemingly sudden move to Chicago and her history when she finally spilled her guts.
“I’m sad for Lainey. Tonight, I found out she moved here to escape a nasty past, a long history with an abusive ex–boyfriend, and the things he did to her . . . the things that woman had to overcome,” I choke, feeling my words get caught in my throat. I’ve never known someone personally who has experienced abuse. We will get the occasional patient in the hospital who experienced something traumatic, and I learn a piece or two of their story. Hearing it from a friend is so very different. It hit too close to home.
“Jesus,” he mutters, grimacing as her story pours from my lips. “What the fuck is wrong with some people?”
“I can’t imagine what that would be like, to be in a relationship and have someone do that to you.”
Emmett wipes my tears as they come, making me cry harder.
“I don’t know why I’m being such a baby about it all. I’m not the one that suffered.”
“I’ve told you before, sweetheart. You’re a caring person. Whether you realize it, or whether you want to be, when you’ve decided that you care about someone, you’re all in. With me, with Allie, with Meg, and now with this girl. I can tell she is someone you’re going to wrap your arms around. When your heart is in it, it will make you sad.”
Lainey still holds onto a lot of anger, understandably, and she still beats herself up for not seeing the signs. She blames herself, which is horse shit. We talked a lot tonight about the world, and about the evil that seems to lurk around every corner.
Lainey grew up with a lot of love. With caring parents, involved grandparents, and a string of accolades after her name. She had love, sheknewlove. It shouldn’t happen to anyone, but it sure as hell shouldn’t have happened to her.
Between the three of us, something like that could have most likely happened to me.
“My mom was a bitch,” I blurt out, laughing, thinking that I should feel guilty for saying that about someone who isn’t alive to defend herself, but it’s true. “She was mean to me my whole life, but I never questioned it or fought back until I became a teenager because it was all I knew, so I accepted it.” My dad supports me from a distance, but he’s never told me he loved me, never said I made him proud by my choices. His version of being a parent is a card on my birthday and an occasional text.
Without having anyone to show me what love felt like, I could have grown up begging for it. I could have ended up with the wrong type of people, the wrong friends, hanging with the wrong crowd, looking for attention from anyone who would hand it out.
“Most of my adult life I’ve had this fuck-off mentality for anyone who doesn’t treat me right.” I was picked on all the time as a kid, and I thought it came with the territory of being the weird new girl, the girl who was too tall, with puffy, tumbleweed-curly hair. I never fought back. I’d go home and tell my mom what happened, she’d sigh and tell me to get over it. Yet, it happened at every school, every first day, but the last time someone picked on me was Nasty Natalie. First day of sophomore year, and Emmett put a stop to it.
“I think I knew, but didn’t realize it until tonight, that when we were fifteen years old, you showed me what it was like to be cared for, to be wanted. You showed me how people were supposed to treat me long before I knew what love was. Do you realize how good you were to me?”
He invited me into his world on day one. I went to family dinners at his house. He supported me through school, through every crummy part-time job. He studied with me so I wouldn’t fail, sat through volleyball games and cheered through college classes. Whatever the situation was, it was always him.
“God, if I hadn’t met you, I don’t know where I would have ended up.” The tears begin to fall at a pace I can't control.
He sits up, kissing my face, wiping my tears with his shirt.
“Even if you hadn’t met me, I think you would have done amazing things with your life. That's who you are, Jenna. You’re wild and crazy and you don’t give up.”
I shake my head in disbelief, “Because of howyoucared about me, I learned my worth. I learned I deserve better. My mom made me feel like I didn’t have a lot to offer someone, and some days, I still think that’s true. But I love you, and I love Allie, and I’ll do whatever it takes to be in your life.”
He lays back on the pillow, pulling me with him and I curl up against his chest, sniffling as the tears fall. We lay in silence, him grazing lazy fingers over my back, combing through my hair, finding all of the ways to soothe my broken heart. And once I can breathe again, once my tears have dried and I can see clearly, I roll over, pressing myself against his lips. When I pull back to see his face, to apologize for waking him up and sobbing into his pajamas, I'm surprised to see he doesn't look exhausted, he’s looking at me like . . . like I’m the greatest thing he’s ever seen.
“What’s that look for?”
He releases his grip on me and smiles, pushing the blankets off of his legs. He gets up, rushes over to the closet and flips on the light, immediately pulling out old boxes from the top shelf.
“What are you looking for?” I call out after him, moving so I’m kneeling at the edge of the bed. “I'll be damned if you pull out a hidden sex toy or something right now.”
I rise to my knees, trying to see what he’s digging for as he pulls something from the shelf and tucks it in his pants before stacking the boxes back. He returns to the bed, ushering for me to sit down, so I do, pulling the comforter back so he can sit next to me.
