Page 21 of Right Where You Left Me
“I said not to laugh.” She pouts, her cheeks scorching. I don’t even fight the grin on my face at that.
“I’m not! That weirdly is very fitting for you.” I say softly. A pastry. Dainty and cute, and so perfectly her.
Her eyes brighten at my words and I give her a small smile in return. This doesn’t feel too bad I guess. Being nice to her. Maybe… we can end up friendly after all.
“Okay, well. We should discuss what you came here to talk to me about.” I say, clearing the weird knot in my throat. Maybe I am getting sick. All this emotion can’t be good for me.
“Right.” She says, her eyes pinging over to where River seems to be making himself comfortable at his tattoo station. He’slounging on his client chair, arms behind his head, smiling at the two of us.
I make a face at him and he just grins back. The nosy motherfucker. “River.” I snap.
“Yes, Sagey?”
“Can you kindly, fuck off?” I say and bat my eyes at him. “This is a private conversation.”
“That you’re having in the studio.”
“River!”
“Fine, fine.” He grumbles and takes his sweet ass time walking into the back room.
“Sorry about him.” I say, running a hand through my hair. “He’s nosy as fuck, but he’s harmless. If he hears anything back there he’ll keep it to himself. I promise.”
“I— I know. He didn’t have to leave.” Emma says, looking down at her feet. “I know this is his space too.”
“But you would’ve been uncomfortable, and although I don’t like you, I’m not that big of a bitch.” I say and shrug.
“Thanks, Sage.” She says softly.
We stand there in awkward silence, her lip back in between her teeth as her eyes stay glued to the floor. I sigh. “Emma. What is it you want to say?”
I watch as she steels her spine, tilting her chin up. “Well, to start, I want to apologize. Clearly what happened in the past hurt you a lot more than I realized. And, I want us to be able to put that behind us and move forward.”
“You did hurt me, Emma. Do you not remember what you did?”
“I mean, of course I remember, Sage. But, what I don’t understand is why you’re letting something small, that happened such a long time ago, remain a problem. I just want us to be friends again. I want to be able to put it behind us.”
“Something small.” I say flatly.
“Yes!” She says, her arms raising in exasperation. “Sage it was over a decade ago!”
“Emma.” I say, pained. How can she think that what happened was anything small? “I?—”
“What? What has you so hung up on what happened?” She asks, pleading. “I know that I fucked up and made a mistake, but we were basically kids still. We were barely legally able to drink!”
What happened?Does she really not think what she did was awful? That she hurt me so much, sodeeply? She was mybestfriend and she just fucking ditched me without a word. Literally zero explanation, justpoof. Gone. She was my first real heartbreak, how can she not get that?
“I was fucking in love with you!” I find myself shouting, and flinch as soon as the words are out. I didn’t mean to tell her that, but, I guess we’re going all out now. Laying it all out there and hoping I survive the fallout again.
“Wait, no you weren’t?—”
“I loved you, and I kissed you because Iwantedto. Not because we had been drinking, not because I thought it would be funny. I kissed you because I had been dying to for so long, and I was finally brave enough to do it.”
She sucks in a breath, but I keep going before she can get another word out. Now that I started the words tumble out easily, like lancing a festering wound.
“And then you bailed. You told me to forget that it happened and you just, you walked away from me and I thought that things couldn’t feel worse than they did in that moment. I felt rejected and alone and everything was falling apart while I watched you close your door without even looking back.
“I knew that you were feeling a lot of things and I figured I would give you some space to calm down and we’d move on, but then you stopped responding to my texts and my calls. You wouldn’t answer your door when I came to check on you. Youcompletely shut me out of your life, Emma.” My eyes burn, but I don’t let myself cry. I spilled too many tears over this woman already. “I thought, ‘It’ll be okay. Emma’s my best friend. She’s freaked out, but once she’s processed we’ll be fine. Everything would always be fine, because no matter what it was always the two of us. Nothing could ever rip us apart…’
