They were close enough that their breath mingled. In that moment, kissing him seemed inevitable. He leaned forward just a fraction and she met his lips. His passion filled her with warmth, with hope, with desire. She felt loved.
Their lips broke apart. “My Queenie,” Rob whispered, as if in awe of what had just happened.
“My R—” was on the tip of her tongue, but then Ezra’s words came to her. The ones he said at their wedding. I will do all I can to give you my best self until the end of my days. And she’d said them back. They were vows they both took, that they both wrote together. This was not her best self.
She stepped away, her lips no longer a whisper from his. “I can’t,” she said. “I’m sorry. I can’t.”
And that was when she started to cry.
“Queenie,” Rob said. “Emily.” He looked like he wanted to hold her again, comfort her, find whatever had just been lost, but he knew he shouldn’t. His arms hung, useless, at his sides.
Emily felt panicked, her heart a hummingbird against her rib cage, her stomach twisting with guilt. “I’ve got to go home,” Emily said, mascara running down her cheeks. “This was all a huge mistake.”
There were so many things Rob wanted to say, but he chose the simplest. “Okay,” he said. “I’m sorry if I pushed too far. If I read into something that wasn’t there.”
He hadn’t. That was the problem. He hadn’t.
But she wouldn’t tell him that.
Instead she said, “Thank you for showing me another way to see myself. But this is the life I chose.” It was all she could do to keep her voice from shaking, to keep from falling apart completely.
He nodded, not taking a step closer, staying where he was, hands still at his sides, as if it took every ounce of his concentration to keep them there. “If you ever . . .”
She took a deep breath. “You know how to get back to your hotel?” she answered.
He nodded. She wiped her eyes, smearing makeup across her cheek. His hand rose, just a hair, as if he wanted to fix it for her, but then it rested back at his side.
“Sleep well,” she said, biting her lip to keep her composure.
“You too,” he answered. He watched her walk away. And just like last time, she took a small piece of him with her.
43
Emily hailed a cab and got inside. She felt shocked by what she’d done, and guilty. Even though it was two o’clock in the morning, she called Ezra. She couldn’t wait for him anymore. She needed him. She needed to talk to him. She needed not to go looking for love somewhere else. She was still hurting from the miscarriage—mentally and physically—and she needed him. She needed him to care for her like he used to. He didn’t pick up, but she wasn’t surprised. He was probably sleeping after his double call. He often turned his phone off when he could, when he knew the hospital wouldn’t be calling him. She left a message. “Can you please come home?” she said, her voice thick with tears. “I miss you. I love you. I choose you. I want you to choose me.”
Then she got out at their building and walked inside alone, her phone in her hand, waiting for him to wake up, hoping it would be soon.
Instead of going to bed, Emily went back into the second bedroom and rummaged through a box of her old notebooks to find her journal. The one she’d started years before at the recommendation of Dr. West, a way to tell her story, process it as she explained it to someone else. She hadn’t written in it for years. Not since right after she’d gotten married to Ezra.
When she found the notebook, leather-bound and navy blue with gold on the edges of the pages, she brought it, along with a pen, to the couch in the living room. Instead of reading it over, which she used to do sometimes—when she needed grounding, when she needed reminding of who she was—she opened it to the next blank page and flattened it in front of her.
I want to feel whole again, she wrote. And then looked at the words. What did that even mean? I want to feel loved again.
Her phone vibrated and she looked at the screen, expecting Ezra. But instead there was a text from Tessa. For a moment, Emily couldn’t remember how in the world Tessa had gotten her number, but then recalled the lunchtime of babysitting, which seemed forever ago now. A sense of dread filled her. There was no good reason that Tessa would text her in the middle of the night.
She clicked open the notification and read: I don’t know who else to reach out to. I need help. Are you there?
Emily wasn’t usually up at 2:27 in the morning, but today she was. She was there.