Beg, Borrow, or Steal (When in Rome, #3)(82)
“Yes. Come home, Madison.”
She smiles fully, sighing a year’s worth of sighs. “Okay. I will then. I’m coming home.”
God, it feels so great to be the pieces-picker-upper again. I needed this. And besides that, my heart is glowing thinking of having my sister back home once again. We’ll have our regular Hearts tournaments again before Noah and Amelia leave, and even when they’re gone, we’ll still get to have sister nights with Annie. Maybe she’ll even want to come back to work at the school.
But then there’s a flicker of something inside me that suddenly doesn’t quite feel right. Even as Madison is looking relieved and finishing her hot chocolate while talking about how she’s going to have to email her instructors and that she’ll have to arrange a good time to go out to New York and get her stuff, I’m only half listening. The other part of my brain is holding a flashlight and trying to chase down the sensation of discomfort.
Madison is still talking a mile a minute as I pick up her mug and carry it to the sink and rinse it out. But then, all of a sudden, her voice goes silent. After I load our mugs in the dishwasher, Maddie’s voice carries again. “Emily . . . I was going to search for a new movie we could rent, but . . . what is this?”
“What is wha—” I freeze once I turn the corner and see what Madison is looking at. She has my laptop open on the other end of the table, and thanks to her knowing my password, I’m willing to bet she’s looking at the email I never closed.
“Did you . . . did you write and submit a romance book to an agent?”
I blank, trying to think of a good lie. Something that will cover my tracks and throw Madison off my scent. But when her dark brown eyes lift to mine, an unexpected dam of emotions breaks. Everything I’ve kept bottled up since first finding that email from Colette rushes to the surface, and before I know it, I’m sinking to the floor—sobbing.
Maddie drops to her knees and grabs me around the shoulders in the fiercest, most protective hug in the world. She pulls me into her arms, and I let her even when my pride is demanding that I get up.
Instead, I sit here for a while, crying and crying and crying while Maddie rocks me in her arms. She pushes my hair from my temples while I continue on as a disgusting conveyor belt of snot and tears. I’m going to be so embarrassed about this tomorrow but for tonight, I cry.
“Emily, tell me what happened.”
So I do. It’s a muffled mess but I somehow get it out even between the hiccups. I tell her absolutely everything except for the part where I love Jack and that he’s AJ Ranger. And all while I’m talking and relaying the story of writing and editing and how much hope I felt for the whole process until Colette dumped it into a trash compactor, I realize that every damn thing Jack said was right. I love it. I love writing more than I’ve loved doing anything in a long time. And to give that up would hurt more than I care to think about. Possibly more than hearing Colette tell me my characters were as bland as burned toast.
It was just so unexpected. Maybe I was na?ve, but . . . I thought it was good. I thought the book was good and I loved my story.
Madison’s face is livid. “I am going to fly back to New York, because I assume that’s where Miss Colette lives, and I’m going to chew fifteen pieces of Dubble Bubble and then I’m going to stick them all in her hair while she’s sleeping. And then after she wakes up and sees the horror show in her hair, I’m going to pop out of the closet and cut it all off in the most jagged terrible cut she’s ever had!”
I laugh and wipe my nose. “Stop it.”
“No.” She squeezes me like I’m a giant lemon. “No one is mean to my big sister and gets away with it.”
This of course brings fresh tears to my eyes. My heart whispers to me how deeply it needed this.
“I’m sorry for crying so much,” I say, pressing the heels of my hands into my eyes. “I seem to be doing this a lot lately.”
“That’s okay. I always cry a lot. It feels good.”
I know this about her. I’ve witnessed it. I’ve held her through it. And I’ve always been jealous of the way Maddie is reckless with her emotions. She throws her arms out wide and sends tears from her eyes that could rival Niagara Falls. And then ten minutes later, she’s dancing and singing along to her favorite pop song while making brownies on a random Tuesday at three-thirty. Her capacity to feel everything all the time is astounding. And I’ve missed the wild energy she brings to every space she enters.
“I hate to cry.” Just saying the word seems to have the same effect as mentioning a yawn. I’m sobbing again. “I don’t know how to stop once I get going.”
Maddie laughs gently at me. “That’s probably because you’re always holding it in for too long. The trick is to have little breakdowns all along the way.”
I look up at her, trying to determine if that was a joke, but it wasn’t. She’s serious as she pets my hair out of my face. “I’m no therapist by any stretch of the imagination, but I do have quite a bit of experience with tears—and in my thirty years on this earth, I’ve found that crying starts to feel like exercise. The more you do it, the more comfortable you become with it. And then it isn’t so overwhelming anymore.” She shakes me gently on my shoulder. “Cry more, Emily!”
“But that sounds atrocious.”