She reaches her hands out to me, but I don’t take them.
“Em, I had to get that close to him to see what he really was. If I hadn’t slept with him, he never would’ve told me all of that. He was bad for you, Em. All he ever wanted to do was to control you. And I couldn’t tell you because of what I’d done, but I thought, I could at least try to make it up to you. And then, once I figured out what he was doing to you, I knew something had to give.”
“What do you mean?”
She takes a deep breath then, and leans forward, placing her hands on her knees. “Em, he was killing you.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
My eyes are watery, and my skin goes cold as I stare at her. “He was what?”
“You know I’m right,” she says, coming to her feet. “You know how sick you were, how sick you suddenly got out of nowhere? Whose fault do you think that was?”
I’m shaking my head now, backing away. Matt is a lot of things, but a killer?
“Chess. There’s no way Matt was poisoning me.”
Chess stares at me, and there’s that expression on her face again, that look that’s half love, half pity.
And then she laughs. “Em, you’ve been writing those murder books for way too long. I didn’t say he was poisoning you. I said he was killing you. When did you start getting sick? Honestly, think back. When was the first time you remember feeling that bad?”
My mouth is dry, my thoughts spinning, but I can pinpoint the date exactly. It was Valentine’s Day, of all fucking things. Matt had made his big announcement to my parents the previous November, and he’d expected us to be pregnant by February. The thing was, I hadn’t stopped taking my pills. I hadn’t felt ready yet, had started working on that thriller idea, and figured I’d eventually get on board with the whole baby thing later, maybe by the summer.
But that night, while we were getting ready to go out to dinner, I’d been rummaging in a drawer in the bathroom and he’d seen the pills. Seen the date printed out on the prescription sticker that proved I’d just had them filled a week before.
We’d fought about it, really fought, the biggest argument we’d ever had. He said I’d lied to him, that he’d actually been expecting me to tell him I was pregnant at dinner that night, and here I was, knowing there was no chance.
And I’d argued that I was working, that I had never really told him that I was ready, he’d just assumed because he wanted it, I did, too.
That Valentine’s Day ended with Matt sleeping in the guest room, and the next morning, I’d apologized. I was never really sure why, only that it seemed easier than fighting with him, and I’d agreed to stop taking the pills.
But later that afternoon, I’d been hit by the first dizzy spell, a wave of nausea climbing up my throat, and I hadn’t felt like myself again until he’d moved out the next spring.
“The body always knows,” Chess says now. “Chapter Six of The Powered Path. ‘The world warns us about putting toxins in our body, and assumes toxic people can only hurt our souls. But there are people just as poisonous to us as any chemical.’”
“That’s bullshit,” I croak, but Chess shakes her head.
“How can you say that after what you went through? How many doctors looked at you and told you nothing was physically wrong? How many medicines did exactly fuck all for you? Your body knew. It was warning you.”
She moves closer. “He was the wrong man for you, Emmy. And you were on the wrong path. Your body was trying to tell you.”
I almost want to laugh as I slide back down onto the sofa. But could Chess be right? Was it all in my head after all, just like all those doctors said?
The ENT who told me it could be my inner ear tricking me.
My gyno saying that sometimes stress makes the body think it isn’t safe to support a pregnancy.
The acupuncturist who told me I needed “healing sleep” in order to fully rest.
“That’s why you got better once he left. Which is what I told him to do, by the way. Isn’t that right? Isn’t that when you started getting better?”
It is, and she knows it, so I don’t bother responding.
“And that’s why you got sick here when you talked to him,” she goes on, crouching down next to me. “Think about it. You were fine for weeks; fifteen minutes after talking to him, you were on the bathroom floor.”
It sounds like the same psychobabble bullshit that fills all of her books, but she’s right. I can’t deny how my body responded. It felt like it was shutting down all over again.
“You told me to talk to him,” I remind her, and Chess smiles.
“Look, I knew I was right, but I still wanted just a little more proof. And come on, Em. Ostrich Moment? Surely you think I’m a little better than that.”
“I knew I hadn’t read that shit,” I reply, and she actually laughs a little.
“Anyway, as soon as I saw you there on the floor, I realized you needed to know what happened between me and Matt. For us. But also, for the book.”
“The book?”
“Honestly, as soon as I read the first pages, I got it. I understood all of this had happened to lead us right here. It’s why Matt had to leave you, it’s why we needed to come to Italy. It’s what the universe wants for us, to finally write together. Like we should have been doing this whole time.”
My world is slowly tilting on its axis, but Chess keeps going, pacing around the room. “I can’t write these self-help books forever, Em. And even if I could, I wouldn’t want to. Do you know how boring it is to come up with mantras? Do you know how fucking sick I am of lemon water? I don’t even like lemons, Em. And there’s no future in this. The only way this ends is with me streaming my vagina on Facebook Live, or being canceled for making one fucking misstep, and I want something better than that.”
She stops in front of me. “You’re a great writer, Em. Better than you know. Those cozies aren’t setting the world on fire or anything, but that’s just because you’ve been too scared to do anything but play it safe. You’re great. Honestly. And I want you with me. I want us to write together.”
“Then maybe you shouldn’t have slept with my husband,” I reply, my voice flat, but Chess is, as always, unfazed.
“Haven’t you been listening? That was part of this journey, Em. It was an ugly part, and I’m so sorry I did it, but without it, who knows what might have happened? Maybe Matt would have actually fucked with your birth control. You might have gotten pregnant and felt a whole lot more trapped in a marriage that was slowly killing you. You might have gotten even sicker. In a way, that one stupid afternoon is the best thing that ever happened to you. To us.”
“That’s … actually fucking nuts, Chess,” I say, but she only smiles at me, that beatific smile that has gotten so many women to download her app, even though it costs fifteen dollars a month and is just the same shit she puts on Instagram, slightly repurposed as “Your Daily Chess Move! ”
“I told you, stupid,” she says, touching her finger to the tip of my nose. “It’s fucking love,” she says. “You’re my best friend, Em. I did something that hurt you, but I promise, I’m going to make it up to you.” She leans in close, pressing her forehead to mine. “And, admit it. Admit that you never would’ve started that book without me. Admit that Matt leaving you and you deciding to come here with me and writing something that actually mattered to you has made your life better.”