Someone knocked on the doorframe to Emma’s room. We were snapped instantly out of the little bubble we’d been in for the last three hours.
It was Maddy.
“What in the hand, foot, and mouth is this?” she said from the doorway, grinning in at us.
I rolled off Emma under the covers and she scooted up. Luckily we’d only been kissing at this point, but if Maddy had been half an hour earlier she would have had quite the show.
“Maddy,” Emma said, clutching the sheet to her neck. “You’re back early.”
“It’s Friday,” she said. “I’m back exactly when I’m supposed to be.” She looked at me. “Heeey, Justin.” She gave me a Cheshire Cat grin.
I waved, red-faced. “Hey.”
“How’d you get here?” Emma asked. “You didn’t call me to pick you up.”
“Neil brought me.”
“They’re back?” she asked, surprised.
“Yeah. I ran into them at the airport. Got to ride home with them and everything, my own little chariot from hell.”
She sat up straighter. “You saw Mom? How is she?”
Maddy shrugged. “Wearing a big-ass diamond bracelet and fawning all over him, so I’m gonna say okay.” She turned to me. “So how long have you been here?”
I looked at Emma. “Three—no. Four days?” Maddy nodded sagely. “I see.”
“I got super sick,” Emma explained. “He came to take care of me, and then he got sick.”
“We basically spent the whole time barfing,” I said. “Well. Not the
whole time.”
Maddy looked amused. “Clearly. Hey, Neil’s waiting on the dock in case you want a lift back, Justin. We saw your car in front of the house. It’s raining like a motherfucker through tomorrow so if you’re planning on leaving today, I’d take the boat option with a roof.”
I looked at Emma. I didn’t want to go.
What had just happened between us was a big deal. We were post sex- for-the-first-time and had things to talk about. I wanted to be here, feel her out, know where she was with all this.
“You should go,” Emma said. My face fell. “Are you sure?”
“If you have a boat with a roof you should take it.”
Then I realized that if I stayed, she’d have to drive me later in the rain on the pontoon. I didn’t care about getting wet if I got to spend another few hours with her, but I cared about her boating in a storm.
“Yeah,” I said. “Sure. I need to get my dog anyway. Get the kids.”
“I’ll tell Neil to wait,” Maddy said, reaching for the doorknob. “I’ll let you two get dressed.” She bounced her eyebrows and left.
When the door closed, Emma didn’t say anything. She just got up and started putting on clothes, so I got up and dressed too.
I kept looking over at her for any sign of what the past few hours meant.
She didn’t even glance at me.
I pulled my shirt over my head. “This was great, Emma. I really enjoyed our time together. When can I vomit with you again?”
She laughed a little while she hooked her bra, but she still wouldn’t look at me.
The real question was under the joke. When would she see me again?
Would she see me again?
I finished putting on my clothes and waited for her. When she pulled on her tank top, I came around the foot of the bed and drew her into my arms. I nuzzled the spot behind her ear. “Can I take you to dinner this week?” I whispered. “We can do the Thai food thing. Or the ribs and the brown bread from the Cheesecake Factory—”
She felt stiff. “I’ll get back to you.” “I could bring it here…”
“Justin.” She made some space between us and peered up at me. “I need to think. Okay?”
I studied her. I knew she liked me. She liked me more than like. But she’d also said it scared her. So what did that mean?
She gazed at me. “I wish you could come with me…” she said, almost too quiet for me to hear.
I held her eyes. Tried to decipher what that meant too. The horn of a yacht blared outside.
“You should go,” she said. “Can I call you tonight?” “I’ll call you.”
I swallowed. “Okay.”
I kissed her. She did kiss me back, but by the way she was talking, I wondered if it was goodbye.
I grabbed my backpack and stood by the door to look at her one last time, then turned and made my way out. She watched me leave like she was getting a last look.
On the way back to the mainland, Neil was like Charon, the ferryman of Hades, taking a dead soul to shore.
I’d said what I could to Emma. I’d done all I could do.
My car felt foreign to me on the drive to Brad’s to get my dog. For four short days, my whole world had been her and that island. Now it wasn’t her. Maybe it never would be again. And now it was time to get back to real life.
I didn’t want my real life.
I drove around collecting my dog and my kids, the car getting louder with every pickup. Chelsea was grumpy and whining, probably because she was overly tired and sore. She looked like she’d spent the whole four days on the back of a pony, which she probably had. She had dirt under her nails and was sunburnt and needed a bath.
While I appreciated that Leigh took her, I wasn’t sure the trade-off was worth it if this was how I was going to get her back, and realizing that gave me a whole second wave of defeat because it meant I had one less viable option for overnight help.
Alex was going on animatedly about Leigh’s and I was trying to act
interested, but the whole thing just felt overstimulating and exhausting.
I came home to laundry and a mailbox full of bills and a long list of back-to-school bullshit. By the time I got Chelsea cleaned up, I had to make dinner. I wanted to DoorDash something, but then I remembered I was back in the real world and needed to start tightening my belt, which only put me in a worse mood. I was days behind at work, Alex was on me to get his school supplies and he wanted to go to Target, Brad was scratching again and probably needed a medicated bath and to go to the vet for another allergy shot, Sarah wasn’t even back from Josie’s family’s cabin, so the stress wasn’t even at full steam yet.
This was the price I paid for those four days. And I wouldn’t have changed it for anything. Well, I might have changed the puking part. But not the rest of it.
I wanted to go back to the island.
I wanted to pretend to be young and child-free with a girl I was falling in love with, in a place where we could imagine it was all possible, because the further I got from those four days on the island, the more I realized it wasn’t. And the reality check was sobering.
She could never meet me here.
Who would want to? Why would she give up a lucrative career and traveling the world with her best friend for this? Dinners of frozen dino nuggets, corn that tastes like the can it comes out of, soggy Band-Aids in the bathtub drain, and all the mundane shit that my life consisted of now.
I wasn’t worth it. I didn’t even blame her.
Maybe that’s why she was crying. She liked me, but she didn’t want everything that came with me, so she felt torn. I was the right guy at the wrong time.
And maybe she was the right girl at the wrong time for me too.
I couldn’t think of a worse period in my life for this to be happening. By 10:00 Emma didn’t text, and it didn’t even surprise me.
I got Chelsea in bed and I sat down at the desk in my room to try to get some work done. An hour into it she finally called.
I watched the phone ring for a few seconds. She was going to break things off with me. I knew it in my soul. I could feel it.
I hit the answer button. “Hey.”
“Hey,” she said. Her tone was apologetic. I pinched the bridge of my
nose and braced for it.
“I was wondering if you wanted some company,” she said. I raised my head. “Huh?”
“I’m outside.”
I froze for a solid five seconds. Then I bolted up and ran to the window. She was standing with an umbrella on the sidewalk under the streetlamp. She had the rosebush with her, sitting at her feet. The rain was falling softly and she peered up at me. I put my fingers on the glass.
“We’ll try it,” she said, into the phone. “I’ll stay.”
